“Why is it you’re the only one who ever smiles?” I snark.
He turns around slowly, his eyes hooded and dark.
“She smiles. She doesn’t have to smile all the fucking time,” he snarls.
“She would if she was in love.”
“She does love me, you fucking bitch.”
Suddenly there’s an explosion coming from the room beside us.
“Fuck,” he growls while rushing out, and I capitalize on the opportunity to speak to the girl truly in love with Clay.
“Symphony,” I call before she leaves the room.
She turns curiously to me and realizes her name sounds oddly familiar on my lips.
“What?” her fragile voice snaps.
“Symphony, you know me. You know Ty isn’t the man of your dreams. Hell, he doesn’t want to live happily ever after with you. He wants to add me into your mix. You love Clay Jude. Do you hear me? You love Clay,” I assert.
“I don’t know a Clay,” she murmurs dismissively, and then she disappears from the room.
Crap. I botched that one.
I listen to the room next door when I hear several other footsteps tromping through, and I realize it has knocked a gap in the sound barrier separating us.
“How the hell did this happen?” Ty barks.
“The machine overheated, Sir. I told you it wasn’t merging with her blood. You’d almost need Clay Jude’s abilities to make this work. Her blood is just too complex.”
“Damn it. It was merging. Fix the machine. Do it again,” he commands with urgency.
“As you wish, Sir,” an exasperated voice exhales.
Well now I know Frankenstein has an Igor, I just need to find a way into that room. I have to get out of these chains.
“I don’t want her with us,” Symphony says to the man she thinks loves her.
“It’ll be fine, darling. You’ll learn to adapt. The three of us can live in a world with no rules barring us.”
They still don’t know about my unspoken.
I’m weak, tired, and nothing in this room is going to help me break free.
“I said I don’t want her to be with us,” she growls. “I don’t like sharing, and she doesn’t want to be here. Let her go back or just kill her. I don’t want her here.”
“I do want her here, so she’s staying. I promise you’ll have me as much as you want me, but I need her too.”
He has dosed her with the new virus. That’s how he awakened new parts of her brain. That’s how she’s staying in her savage state. Clay will have to separate the virus from her blood to save her, and I don’t know if I can spare her in order to escape.
I summon up my strength while she’s distracted, and I hear a slight crack in the metal when I use my gift to start unlocking the shackles.
“I need to go topside for a while. We need supplies. Araya still needs to eat, drink, and all that. I love you,” he mutters to her.
“And I you,” she says coldly, but she doesn’t say love.
I hear his feet clanking against the ground, and then my second shackle falls free. I grip my wrist and then I feel the weight of my arms bearing down on me after being suspended over my head for so long. The aching is terrible, more so than it should be. My baby has to eat.
