One thing was for damned sure, though, she thought on a sudden sigh; there would be no going after Jason by herself, and there wasn’t a chance in hell Rule would allow her to kill him herself as Cullen had. And she wondered if anything else would exorcise the ghosts of her past?
...
Did she love him?
Had she just accepted the mating, nothing more?
Standing in the lobby of the hotel as he leaned against one of the stately pillars that supported the atrium, Rule crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the doors as he waited for Lawe to roll into the courtyard with his mate. Allowing her to make that trip without him had been hell.
He’d been a part of her in one form or the other since her final surrender to him the night before. Exploding like the fourth of July and crying out his name, she had opened every part of herself to the link he had forged within her soul. And still, he was damned if he could sense whether that love was there.
“Damn creatures,” Dane murmured as he sidled up beside him. “I can tell by your glare, fixated into space, that the lovely Gypsy McQuade is no doubt driving you to distraction.”
“You got back fast enough,” Rule grumbled. “How?”
Dane chuckled. “Father ensures that I have the fastest, most technologically advanced vehicles possible whenever I’m out of his sight. He’s somehow convinced himself it lessens the danger I may find myself in.”
“Or just gets you there faster?” Rule grunted. “Tell me, Dane, was that your technologically advanced personal jet-copter that Gideon caught a ride on earlier?”
“I was wondering if there was a way I could take credit for that one,” the Breed sighed morosely. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. And the black-hearted bastard is refusing to answer my calls.”
“Well, go figure.” What the hell did the f**king hybrid expect? He was dealing with a psycho, not just another manipulating, calculating Breed as he usually did.
“Gideon was nearly dead when I found him.” Dane’s voice lowered as he too leaned a shoulder against the pillar. “Nearly emaciated to the point of death, so savage Father feared he would have to have him caged. And the Leo does not keep cages on any of his estates, you know.”
Rule flicked him a look.
His dark blond brows were lowered, his green gaze distant as though his look into the past wasn’t a pleasant one.
“The secrets he knows,” Dane whispered. “So much intelligence, Rule. Insights into Breed physiology unlike anything you could even guess. The few months he was healing in South America after we found him, Mother was in scientific heaven just from his ramblings.”
“And once he healed?” Rule asked.
Dane inhaled heavily. “One night he was fevered and rambling about a transfusion and why it had driven him insane, speaking of the creature pacing, lurking and breaking free. Mother left the audio recorder on and went to check on another of the unfortunate Breeds we were attempting to coax back to health. When she returned, the recorder had been turned off, part of it obviously erased, and Gideon had simply vanished through a steel door or concrete walls. We’re really not certain how, because strangely, the recording from the camera trained on him was destroyed for nearly an hour up to the moment Mother returned.” Dane chuckled. “Smart-ass f**ker had taken a moment to get into the camera and hack the programming from within the device itself. Though how he fuzzed the equipment before doing so eludes me.”
“What are you up to here, Dane?” Rule asked when the explanation finished. “Why not just go to Jonas, tell him you could acquire what he needed and allow Ely to continue the injections?”
“Jonas would have never allowed it,” Dane told him, his tone suddenly weary. “At the most, he would have injected them himself to take the responsibility from Ely’s steadily weakening shoulders, and only Gideon truly understood what he was doing. It was far better to maneuver my baby brother rather than watching that sweet child, or Jonas and Rachel, being destroyed from the inside out should something go wrong.”
Rule stared outside the main doors for long moments once again, his eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun as it spread across the glistening lobby floors.
“Callan so resembles Father that there are times I find an edge of jealousy rising inside me,” Dane said, his voice filled with amused self-disgust. “And such pride the Leo has in him, despite their differences. But if one knew the Leo as only Mother and I do, then they would see the pain he suffers each time Jonas is about. The guilt and self-recrimination, the unspeakable nightmares that have haunted him for years where one of his children is concerned. And this was before we learned of the reports he’d acquired that Jonas’s maternal genetics were from Mother rather than Madame LaRue, as we had believed. Since he learned that piece of information, his anger at himself often worries Mother.”
“Leo doesn’t seem to be the type to stress over past mistakes,” Rule offered. “Or children who were created rather than conceived by him.”
“Ah, but how little all but I and Mother know him,” Dane retorted mockingly. “Father suffers for past mistakes, decisions that resulted in less than the situations he anticipated, and the children who carried his genetics. His pride in Callan is absolute. But his pride in Jonas is ever growing, my friend. A pride that demands that Jonas acknowledge that choices are often made with a knowledge of the outcome and its tragedy, but they are never made without regret and without grief.”
“Jonas understands that.” Hell, of all people, Jonas knew that better than anyone Rule could think of. “Leo has amends to make, Dane. Many of them.”
“Jonas resents Leo for leaving him in the labs when he feels he could have gotten him out.”
Rule shook his head, staring back at the other man in surprise. “Is that what he thinks?”
“That’s what Jonas states. Often.” Dane’s look sharpened.
“No, Dane.” Rule was the one to breathe out roughly now. “It wasn’t that Leo left him in the labs. It was that Leo left Harmony there. That Harmony suffered as long as she did and that he was forced to turn on her to ensure her survival. He will never forgive the Leo for the price he paid when he lost his sister’s love. A condition that continues, even now.”
Silence stretched between them now. For the first time since he’d known him, Rule watched as Dane appeared saddened. No manipulation. No calculation. Just unaccountably saddened.