“You’re just saying that to keep me from feeling guilty for breathing. If I’m dead, they fail, Clay,” I explain.
“Remove her weapons, and start an immediate surveillance,” Clay says to the room full of people acting pissed at me for thinking.
Damn mind eavesdroppers.
“I won’t let her out of my sight,” Hale murmurs angrily.
“You have to sleep sometime. Call me when you do,” Brazen interjects while glaring at me.
Nicholas leans over the table to stare into my too purple eyes now that the acid from my earlier tears have dissolved the blue contacts.
“Call me too. I don’t sleep much,” he murmurs with more guilt than anger.
“That goes for us as well,” Angelica says on behalf on her and Grayson.
Hale pulls my hand as he starts leading me out of the conference room, and he snarls at me once we’re outside.
“You find out you’re the first of our kind to have the chance to live forever, and you start planning a way to die,” he scolds.
“Hale, I can end this now. They’ll never succeed if I do,” I whimper. “I don’t want to, but I could save so many.”
“Stop. Stop right now,” he says as tears stain his eyes.
He whirls me around to face him, and he wipes the tears from my eyes as he pulls my lips to meet his. I feel the fear, pain, and dread in his breath.
“Araya, no one will survive because of your death. No one. Especially not me. Now damn it, I’ve got you. I have seven-hundred-fucking-years left on my span, and I’m going to spend every second of them with you. I’ll be damned if you think you can end this by leaving me. I won’t fucking let you. Do you hear me? I won’t fucking let you,” he says through his emotional strain, and more tears fall from his eyes as he disarms me.
He shreds the guns, and then he tosses the pieces to the ground. He pulls me behind him to his home I haven’t seen in so long, and the moment we’re inside, he slams the door.
“Hale, I don’t want to fight,” I whimper.
“You’re damn right you don’t. Because this is one I won’t let you win. Damn it, Araya. Don’t you get it? Even if you die, their fleet will still go on. Someone didn’t spend this much time and energy on creating a new species to let their dreams fail. They’ll do it no matter what. You’re just the stabilizing component.”
“It’s my fault they were ever able to do this in the first damn place, Hale,” I cry out.
His eyes soften, and he rushes over to be at my side as he pulls me into his lap.
“Don’t do that. You didn’t create these monsters. You didn’t call the madman to your blood. Someone else…”
He stops short as something seems to suddenly occur to him.
“Did you have to give blood at Cheyenne?”
“None other than the blood they beat out of me,” I say a little too casually, and he flinches as he grips me a little tighter to him.
“The blood you shed during the lashings and other things, did they bottle it up or anything?”
“No, they cleaned it up as if it was spilled water. Cheyenne has something to do with this, but not because of my blood. Whoever is behind this learned about my blood five years ago when they abducted me.”
“Araya, they abducted you because they knew. No United official gets taken for testing when they could go pick any random hybrid. If they wanted just any gifted hybrid, they would have gone after the entry level ones. They don’t go after someone as guarded as I kept you. I’m so fucking stupid for not seeing it sooner. They’re using Cheyenne as a base. You said it from the beginning it had to be a Cheyenne person who was familiar with the underground tunnels. Someone there used your blood. I just need to know who had access to it,” he insists.
“Hale, there was nobody. I watched them clean it up every time. Shit, half the time they made me clean it up myself. No one took my blood.”
“Then it was someone who did it without you thinking about it. Did you blood fuck anyone from there who might have taken your blood and bottled it up?”
“Hale, I don’t know. I’m a damn hybrid. Did you keep a damn roster?” I snark.
“No, but I know details about everyone I ever shared that intimacy with before you. I know you don’t take that lightly. Tell me if you ever blood fucked anyone with a link to Cheyenne,” he demands.
