“I want you to save her.” Jonas breathed out wearily as he pushed his fingers through his hair and grimaced with bitter anger. “Her and my child. If we don’t learn the truth, for certain, one way or the other, then the Genetics Council will take her and learn it for themselves. And if they take her, then you may never find her again.”
That was Stygian’s greatest fear. That somehow, the Coyote soldiers sent for her might actually manage to take her. If they took her, they could disappear with her in ways that Stygian could never find her.
Raking his fingers through his hair, he turned and paced away from the director, refusing to glance at the other Breeds there.
“Amber’s becoming more ill by the week, Stygian.” It was Rule who spoke as Stygian moved to the wide windows on the other side of the room. “The fevers are coming more often and they’re taxing her strength further each time.”
“Liza’s my mate,” he said bitterly.
She was his heart, his soul. They were asking him to betray every part of himself.
“And Amber is a child,” Jonas said softly. “Liza is a grown woman with the ability to make choices to determine her own fate. She suspects, Stygian, we both know she does. She’s doing nothing to learn the truth.”
Crossing his arms over his chest, Stygian stared at the desert beyond the hotel, wishing to hell he’d find a way to keep this from happening.
“We’re going to the crash site at dawn,” he told them. “She wants to know.”
“She’ll fight it. She’s probably fighting it now,” Mordecai said behind him. “But I have a suggestion.”
Stygian turned back slowly. “And that would be?”
“She keeps a personal journal on her laptop. I’ve tried to access it, but she’s not powered it up since she’s been here.”
“And you know she has a journal how?” Stygian growled back at him.
“I was almost in when she shut it down the last time she had the computer online,” Mordecai admitted. “I managed to pull some key words, though, which I used to be certain she may have information there. ‘Dreams,’ ‘nightmares,’ ‘labs’ and ‘pain.’”
Stygian tensed further.
“All you have to do is plug it in, power it up and attach a flash drive, I’ll take care of the rest. You don’t have to steal a password or hack in yourself,” Jonas assured him.
Stygian threw the other Breed a hard look. “And you think that will excuse the fact that I betrayed her? In her eyes or any others’? I’ll always be the only Breed to deliberately break the trust his mate has given him.”
“A mate who refuses to trust you?” Rule growled back at him. “She suspects she’s Honor Roberts, Stygian, just as you do.”
Stygian turned back to them again, the look he shot each of them filled with the mockery rising inside him. “It doesn’t matter if she trusts me or not. That doesn’t excuse betraying her.”
“Distrust excuses many things, my friend,” Rule said, as though reminding him of something he didn’t already know. “But if there’s no trust, there’s no love. What loyalty should any of us have to a mate that refuses to love?”
“What loyalty should any of us have to a mate that refuses to love?”
At that point, Liza rose jerkily from the bed, pulled her gown over her head, collected her robe from the floor and put it on with a furious shrug of her shoulders.
She couldn’t believe what she had heard.
Belting the robe with a furious jerk, she swept from the bedroom and headed for the connecting room.
Where had they lost their minds?
Just to begin with, had they forgotten that the connecting suite was tied into the intercom on the room phone? Stygian had set it up himself, just in case someone, anyone, attempted to invade their suite.
They were listed as staying in the connecting suite, not the one they were actually in. The precaution had been taken to ensure he and Liza had a head start in escaping.
Instead, it had given Liza a heads-up.
A heads-up into the plans Jonas Wyatt had, and why.
Gripping the door to the connecting suite, she pushed it open hard enough that the sound of it slamming into the wall behind it had Jonas, Rule Breaker and Mordecai Savant swinging to the side, their weapons drawing and leveling on Stygian as he jumped in front of her.