"Storme, I will hurt you." Gena turned back to her, raging again. "Trust me, once Marx starts playing with you, you'll be begging me to let you tell me the location of that chip."
Gena's hazel green eyes narrowed, spat in fury and glittered with an almost insane rage. How in the hell had she managed to hide this side of herself from Storme for so long?
Oh yeah, right, they only saw each other a few days at a time, perhaps once a month. Gena had pretended to help her all these years, which likely made controlling it easier.
Storme forced herself to stand, aware of Gena and Marx watching her suspiciously. Pacing back to the glass doors, she stared into the night, watching, waiting.
"The past six years have been nothing but a lie." She turned back to the other woman quickly, but rather than catching any hint of guilt in Gena's expression, she found only mocking amusement mixed with the anger.
"You were eighteen when I found you outside that bar in Dallas," Gena sneered back at her. "Starving, dirty and stinking. Tell me, Storme, did you really think I helped you out of the kindness of my heart?"
There had been those who had tried to help her out of the kindness of their heart, and they had paid for it. Which left Storme staring into the face of the one person she had actually trusted until Styx.
How could she have been so wrong? And did it really matter now?
"It doesn't matter." Storme forced the words past her lips as she rubbed at her arms, feeling lost and alone. Styx wasn't out there, he wasn't going to rescue her or he would have already done so.
How was she going to face life without Styx now? Without the chance of feeling the warmth of his arms.
Rubbing at her arms, she felt the ache centered in the pit of her stomach, and could have sworn she felt the subtle taste of cinnamon in her mouth.
Why had it taken her so long to realize so much? "I trusted you," she whispered to the other woman as she stared into the dark once again and fought the overwhelming grief.
She had tried to assure herself he was okay. The few moments of consciousness before she'd fully awakened, she'd kept expecting that when she finally managed to escape the heavy darkness surrounding her, then Styx would be there.
But he wasn't here.
Gena and Marx had managed to destroy the beauty of the courtyard, as well as the security of Haven. Just as Gena had managed to destroy any security Storme had thought to find in the past years.
Gena's low rasp of laughter raked over her nerve endings.
"You trust too much in human compassion," the other woman informed her censoriously. "There is no such thing as that, just as there is no such thing as Breed mercy. I would have thought you had learned that lesson years ago, Storme. I kept expecting you to get a clue, and you never did."
Storme flinched at the sarcasm in Gena's voice while quickly considering her options, and the best route for escape.
"And the reason the Breeds and Council soldiers and Coyotes kept finding me was because of you." She should have realized that years ago. All the signs had been there, but as Gena had said, she just hadn't gotten a clue.
"Not hardly, sweetheart," Gena grunted. "The last thing I needed was a team of furry Breeds on your ass when the Council grew tired of trying to reason with you. I work for the Genetics Council, not those f**king upstarts that think they deserve some sort of respect." She sneered. "No, Storme, I'm no Breed lover. What I am, is your worst f**king nightmare if you don't tell me where you hid the information your father stole from those labs ten years ago." Her voice slowly rose until she was screaming and Storme turned to face her.
The business end of that damned laser-powered handgun stared back at her as Gena's face twisted with renewed fury and Marx glared at her as though she had actually cut his dick off rather than just wishing she could.
She was so tired. She was tired of running, tired of being hungry, alone, and hurting. And she couldn't forget the few short weeks that she had been safe, warm. When Styx had kissed her, held her. When she had felt as though the next day would bring more than just additional danger.
She stared at the weapon and knew the end of the road was here. She had run as far as she could run, and at the end of the road she found herself exactly where she had begun at the tender, too innocent age of fourteen.
Alone.
"Look, don't make me have Marx hold you down and rape you, Storme. Styx mated you. You're aware by now that another male's touch is going to be agonizing." She glanced to where Storme was still rubbing at her arms. "It still hurts, even now, hours after he hauled you out of Haven. Imagine how it's going to hurt when he f**ks you until you're screaming."
God, she would love to ask Gena what the f**k she was talking about. One thing was for sure, something was wrong with her. Just beneath her skin was a tingle of pain, as though she should be bruised. And that didn't go along with the fact that there were no bruises on her arms, only her face and possibly her ribs.
Storme stared back at the former friend and the weapon she pointed, as she fought to find a way out of this particular mess. She had never entertained the nightmare that Gena could possibly turn on her.
She had been suspicious of everyone else in her life, but never Gena. Gena had found her when she was hurt, hungry, dirty and at the end of a mental rope.
She had been running for four years the night Gena had walked behind that bar and found her cowering in fear. Storme had been panicked, terrified and grappling with her conscience as she fought the need to disobey her father then as well.
If she turned over the information her father had stolen, to either Breed or Council, then the danger would just go away. How many times had the Breeds sworn they would protect her, compensate her, provide any payment she asked in return for the data chip?