he didn’t even seem to realize he was still speaking out loud. “I thought I was looking at my sister. I thought she was Maddy.”
It was clear from the tremor in his voice and the acceleration of his pulse that he cared a great deal about his sister. It was also obvious to Mackenna that something terrible had happened to her.
“Did she die in the Purge?”
Cade blinked several times and wiped a hand roughly over his face. “Uh, yeah, she died in the Purge.”
“Oh, Cade, I’m so sorry.” She wanted to get up, to go to him, but she wasn’t sure if he would be receptive to her comforting him just then.
“I lost her a long time before that, though. Drugs,” he clarified when Mackenna tilted her head again. “She had this new boyfriend who got her hooked. It didn’t matter what I said to her. She wouldn’t leave him.”
“Cade…” She didn’t know what to say, had no words to ease his pain.
“The boyfriend finally left,” he continued, “but she was already addicted at that point. She’d run off, and I’d go find her and bring her home. I’d get her cleaned up, and she’d do okay for a little while.” He dropped his head and ran a hand over the back of his neck. “It just never stuck, though. I hadn’t seen her for about a year before the virus hit.”
Mackenna couldn’t take it anymore. Tossing the blanket off her legs, she struggled to sit up.
“Hey, whoa.” Cade jumped up from his chair and hurried over, placing a hand on her shoulder to keep her on the bed. “Easy, Mack. What are you trying to do?”
“I was trying to get up so I could give you a hug.”
“Give me a…” Chuckling under his breath, he rolled his eyes as he scooped her up from the mattress and took her place, repositioning them so that she was settled securely on his lap. “This good?”
“Well, I was supposed to be hugging you.” She snuggled deeper into his arms and buried her nose against the side of his neck. “This works, though. I’m really sorry about your sister.”
“Me, too. I just wish I could have been there. I know I couldn’t have done anything, but I hate that she died alone.”
Mackenna’s heart ached for him. “What about your parents?”
She felt him shake his head. “Dad ran off when I was a kid, and my mom died about ten years before the Purge. It was just me and Maddy.”
“Where were you when it happened? The virus, I mean.”
“I was stationed in Georgia when everything went down. I had a little house a couple of miles off base. I guess it was about three days after everyone started getting sick when I came home and found Maddy on my couch.” He paused and swallowed hard, straining the muscles in his neck. “She was already gone. There wasn’t anything I could do for her.”
She couldn’t even imagine what that must have been like for him, and she hadn’t thought it possible, but the story only got worse from there.
He talked about being held captive briefly by a pack of werewolves in St. Louis, then sold to the Abraxas coven—a name she actually recognized. Thankfully, she’d never had any run-ins with the vampires, but the name alone was enough to elicit fear in even the bravest Gemini.
When he got to the part about being slowly drained for weeks inside an abandoned movie theater, she pressed a hand to her chest, hoping to ease the ache in her heart. It didn’t work.
“Oh, Cade.”
He shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal, but his scent reeked of bitterness. “The Revenant saved me. They got me out and fixed me up, but Abby wasn’t there.”
Understandably, his knowledge of how the female had ended up in an auction and eventually purchased by the Ikande lion shifters was a little fuzzy. “Apparently, they’re this group of albino shifters. Generations of inbreeding isn’t the best way to produce a strong line. So, they started kidnapping females or buying them from these auctions to…uh…breed them.”
Mackenna almost threw up in her mouth. “That’s where you were headed when you found me, isn’t it?”
Cade nodded, his cheek rubbing against the top of her head.
He was still healing from his imprisonment with the Abraxas coven, but he’d still been prepared to risk everything to bring Abby home safely. Instead of going on with the rest of the team, however, he’d stayed behind.
He’d stayed because of her.
Obviously,