They held back as she cried. Broken sobs that should have been silenced long before this, and the tears that still soaked Seth’s shirt.
She remembered. The memories were bleak and ugly, filled with pain and hopelessness, just as the images had been. But that wasn’t why she cried. She cried because as the memories flowed over her, so had realization.
She hadn’t been deserted. Not by God, and not by herself. She had hid from them. She had hid from the child she had been because she had sworn, vowed to herself and to God that she would kill the bastard that had tried to destroy her. She had sworn it to every child that died by his hand during their stay there, and she had sworn it to herself.
But she hadn’t killed him. His blood hadn’t soaked her hands. She hadn’t tasted her own vengeance, and that was part of what she couldn’t face. That and the fear that she was lost, never a part of the true
circle of life. Neither human nor animal in the eyes of a supreme being.
“I’m sorry,” the half sob came as she tried to unclench her hands from his neck, tried to ease the desperate hold she had on him.
“Apologize to me for your pain, Dawn, and I really will spank you,” he snapped. “As God is my witness, if you take another helping of guilt on your slender shoulders then you’ll destroy my heart.”
She could do more than scent his pain now, she could feel it. His pain that she had suffered, his willingness to do anything, no matter the cost, to ease her. His complete, unquestioned dedication to her. Her true mate.
Something inside her had shattered as he held her down, as he yelled at her, as he forced her to remember, to realize what she didn’t want to remember or to accept. She had smelled his pain, felt it blending with her own, tearing through her, breaking down the walls she had erected so long ago. Those memories lived inside her. Knowing what had happened hadn’t helped her to know why she hid from it. Now she knew.
She knew, and knowing didn’t change anything. She had no identity to place to her ra**st. There was no way to taste vengeance or to fulfill the promise she had made to God as a child. If he would save her, she would kill. If he would just make the pain go away, she would shed that bastard’s blood and make certain he never raped another child, Breed or human. She had failed, God hadn’t.
“I didn’t keep my promises,” she told Seth as he stepped past Mercury and into their sitting room. She scented the other Breed’s compassion, and rather than shaming her, she felt thankfulness. The Breeds as a species, as a race, or however the world defined them, were worthy. God had given them a soul, no matter what the scientists believed. He had adopted them.
“I swore I’d kill him,” she whispered. “I didn’t.”
“Callan did it for you, Dawn.” He carried her into the bedroom, then to the bed. “You were a child. No one could expect you to do it all.”
He sat on the bed, still holding her, his arms so strong. He was so strong, so warm and so important to her very existence.
“I swore,” she whispered again.
“And He forgave,” he told her gently, his hand moving to tip her head back. And then she saw the destruction of his tears. His expression was ravaged, heavy with grief, his gray eyes nearly black with emotions as he cupped her face in his palm.
“I love you,” he whispered, and her heart stilled in her chest. “I have loved you since the day I saw you, and the depth of that love can never do anything but deepen, Dawn. Whether you stay with me, or you
walk away, I need you to know that. You define my soul.”
She blinked back at him, swallowing tightly.
“The mating heat…”
“Didn’t start until we touched,” he told her. “I loved you before I touched you. When I saw you, I felt my heart beat and I swear to you, I felt it beating for you.”
She stared up at him, feeling all the fears begin to lift, all the fears that he would reject her, even now, after the mating heat, after every touch he had used to show her how important she was to him.
“I wanted you then,” she whispered. “You left me alone, Seth.” Another tear fell. Another weight rose from her soul. “Callan was wrong. I didn’t want you to leave me.”
His lashes drifted closed as a pain-filled grimace twisted his expression. “It wasn’t time. You know it wasn’t time, sweetheart. As much as I loved you, you needed your distance, and you needed your strength.”
“And you had others,” she bit the words out. “You were going to leave me forever, Seth.”
His head shook, his gaze became rueful. “I forced myself to let go of you, or I would have withered away, Dawn. And that’s not your fault, it’s mine. But no matter what I wanted to convince myself of, Caroline was on her way out. She knew it, and I did as well.”
“She didn’t look on her way out.” Feminine fear, Dawn knew what it was, the fear of losing what she knew had to be hers.
“She wasn’t sleeping in my bed,” he reminded her. “And she wouldn’t have been. No other woman has slept in this bed, Dawn.”
And that she knew was the truth. There was no scent of feminine lust permeating the room, no taint of another woman’s hunger for his body.
“I didn’t want to remember,” she finally said. “I knew what had happened. It wasn’t the memory of the rapes I was scared to face.”