"Gunfire. Howls. Maybe screams." There was no fear coming from her, but there was an edge of confusion. The scent of her was distressed, as though a conflict waged inside her. He hoped that conflict involved emotions for him that she couldn't deny.
He could sense the emotions there, but he also sensed the battle against them.
"Gunfire, howls and screams?" He almost laughed, but he held the response back.
"Storme, we've shadowed you for years and never attacked. What made you believe there would be such things here?"
She breathed out heavily. "I knew I was being shadowed. I believed it was my father's friends doing it."
Storme knew she should move. She knew she should force herself to get out of the bed, to dress, to put some distance between then. She couldn't make herself do it though. She was comfortable, she was warm. Lying there naked against him, there was a feeling she didn't know or understand. A feeling that held her in place, that kept her against him and refused to allow her to move.
"Council scientists?" he snorted.
"No." She frowned, remembering the past ten years, knowing Styx was telling her the truth. It wasn't her father's friends who had protected her, as she had believed, but it was the Breeds. She knew it was, and the sense of bitterness that welled inside her was like a dark cloud over the contentment of moments past.
"Who then, lass?" His fingers stroked down her spine, calloused and warm, easing the tension from her before it really had a chance to take hold.
"Friends." She breathed out roughly. "Dad told me someone would find me, and protect me. That he hadn't left me alone. I guess I always hoped that was who it was, and that they would reveal themselves when it was safe enough. I thought perhaps they couldn't risk the Council recognizing or identifying them."
She'd lived in a dreamworld for so many years. For so long she had believed someone would truly come for her to claim the data chip and wipe away the danger she faced.
As she lay there, she realized that there was no white knight. There was no one to ride to her rescue. But she realized that there never had been, and she had managed to stay alive anyway.
But how much longer would she have managed that?
"Your da did send someone for you," he stated heavily, causing her to lift from the warm comfort she had found, to stare back at him in suspicion.
"Lass." He shook his head. "The suspicion in your gaze breaks my heart. Jonas was part of the team that rescued the Breeds at the Omega lab. He was racing to your da's small home, but he arrived too late. You were to await him at an abandoned mountain cottage where your da had hidden a vehicle whose engine Jonas had provided in case of emergency. But he arrived there too late as well. You had already run."
"So you're telling me Jonas was the person my father meant to meet me?" She held back her mockery and disbelief.
"The one he meant to have the data chip," he clarified. "And that's no lie, lass, no matter your suspicions."
And her suspicions were great, but she didn't totally disbelieve it. She found herself wanting to believe though, and that terrified her.
"Dad said he would come to me and tell me." Forcing herself from the bed, she wrapped the sheet around her and stared back at him, as a sense of betrayal pricked at her heart.
He had to be lying to her. If Jonas was the man her father had wanted to have that information, then her father would have given her some indication, or at the very least Jonas would have told her. The man was not lacking in daring.
"Jonas didn't know the importance of the information," he revealed, as though he regretted that fact. "You were eighteen before he found you, and by then you were already outspoken against the Breeds. He wanted you to come to us willingly. To trust us.
He didn't want to make your distrust worse. So he sent Enforcers to shadow you, to protect you, hoping you would see that you could trust us with the information your da gave you."
"How convenient," she murmured as she fought back the anger, the fear that he would lie to her so easily and make her want to believe it so desperately.
"Aye, I agree, lass." He rose from the bed, tall, powerful, his muscular body darkly tanned and ripped with lean muscle. "And disbelief and suspicion are all you know. I can't blame you for it, but I can ask you to look at what I say with an open mind."
"I lost my open mind ten years ago," she informed him, her fists clenching in the sheet as she fought with herself and became angrier each minute that she ached to believe in him.
She didn't believe in anyone. She couldn't believe in anyone.
The look he gave her was filled with pity. "And that's too bad, lass. Because sometimes, an open mind is all we have to keep our hearts open."
This time, her smile was mocking and bitter. "An open heart as well? Is that what you're counting on? No, Styx, I don't have a heart. It was cut out of my chest the last time a lover died and a friend paid for what others wanted from me. Breeds, Council. It doesn't matter which, I had nothing for either of you."
She turned and walked slowly to the bathroom, then to the shower.
She couldn't afford to have a heart, and if she did, she couldn't afford to allow Styx into it.