"Jonas, whatever his faults, whatever his secrets, my father loves me."
"Would you submit to a Core Level DNA test?" Jonas asked then.
Core Level. The deepest genetic testing available and the only level that a recessed Breed could be identified at. It was also the only level at which proof of genetic tamper- ing could be proven.
"You believe my father had my genetics tampered with?" she asked him. "That tech- nology is only now a thing of science fiction, Director Wyatt."
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"And Breeds were only a part of science fiction one hundred years after the first one was created," he said gently.
Liza clasped her hands together, her fin- gers holding to each other in a fierce grip as she fought to control fears that had no name and panic that had no reason.
"No DNA tests, Jonas." It was Stygian who rejected the idea.
As Liza fought to hold control over the shadowed screams that had her lips trem- bling, Stygian gripped her hip as he stood be- hind her and faced his director.
A spasm of what Liza could only describe as agony crossed Jonas"s face before he glanced away from them for a moment.
Turning back, he nodded slowly before fo- cusing those strange eyes on her.
"Thank you for the help, Ms. Johnson."
"Jonas, I need to discuss a few of your new security measures before you leave," Stygian stated as he slowly released her.
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"Talk on the way back to my suite," Jonas breathed out roughly. "Amber had a difficult night and I"d like to get back so Rachel can rest."
That hard knot of searing guilt gripped Liza"s chest as Stygian moved past her and followed Jonas out the door.
Left alone, Liza drew in a hard, deep breath before covering her face with her hands and fighting back the sobs rising in her chest. As she did, the memory of what she had told Stygian three nights before raced through her mind.
"You will destroy me-"
She had just given Jonas Wyatt the means to do just that, she feared, and she had done it for the man she had given her heart to.
As strong, as fearless and filled with honor as he was, she couldn"t allow him to see her as weak as she knew she was.
She was terrified.
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"Why?" Jonas asked as they stepped into the hall and started moving toward the pres- idential suite.
"Contact Dash," Stygian urged him as he caught the director"s arm to draw him to a stop. "I need Ca.s.sie here."
He didn"t know why, he had no idea why his instincts were certain the DNA tests were the wrong answer, yet Ca.s.sie, the eerie little waif who saw ghosts, was the right one.
"Dash refuses to bring her out." Jonas"s lips pulled back in a frustrated snarl. "Do you think I haven"t already tried that?"
"Try one more time, Jonas," Stygian urged him. "You know how Dash and Ca.s.sie work.
Dash will refuse at her request because she"s waiting on something. Tell him to tell her it"s time. Tell her I need her here, Jonas. My mate needs her."
Once, when Ca.s.sie had been a little girl, she had stopped him as he moved across the backyard of the Ruling Pride"s home. She"d 692/862.
looked up at him, solemn and eerie, and told him the day would come when he would need her to help his mate-his mate would make a choice that would require her help.
Ca.s.sie"d promised she would be there for him.
That time had come.
Staring back at him, Jonas sighed wearily as he nodded his a.s.sent. "I"ll contact Dash."
His expression turned questioning then. "Are you sure this is what you want, Stygian? If she sees Liza as anyone other than who she is, she won"t hold back, you know that."
He knew it. He hated it, but he knew it was the only answer.
"A Core Level DNA test isn"t going to con- vince Liza of anything, and if her genetics were wiped and replaced, there will be no way to know for certain who she was before the wipe," Stygian warned him. "Ca.s.sie will see more than DNA. She"ll see her fears, a memory, a nightmare or whatever the h.e.l.l it 693/862.
is that Ca.s.sie sees that will pull those memories free if she is Honor or Fawn."
"She"s Honor Roberts, Stygian," Jonas said then, his gaze heavy. "I can sense it. I feel it.
That woman is Honor Roberts, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt she can help us save Amber."
Jonas stared back at Stygian, hating what he knew he was putting his enforcer through, hating what he knew that young woman he claimed as his mate would soon go through.
"I"ll protect her, Stygian," he swore with a desperation that burned inside his soul. "I swear to you, if need be, I"ll give my own life to protect her if I"m right. I"ll do whatever it takes because I know together, she and Fawn Corrigan are all that can save Amber."
"How?" Stygian snarled in frustration now, unaware until this moment that the question raged inside him. "How can they help her, Jonas? They were children. They 694/862.
would have no idea the makeup of that drug."
"Honor Roberts had a photographic memory before she entered that lab," Jonas hissed, hope suddenly burning in his eyes.
"The reason the Genetics Council wanted her back after they released her to her father was because of the anomalies her Council-controlled nanny noticed. She"d developed a photographic memory and was often left with the coded notes and diagrams the sci- entists used while developing the serums they tested there. Judd and Gideon de- veloped the photographic memories after the tests began. Each of the three would make certain, day by day, that they saw the notes and files on the tests and the serum used.
Fawn Corrigan never saw the codes that we know of, but that nurse told us what she nev- er told the scientists: Honor, Judd and Gideon would write out or draw what they saw, and Fawn would translate it. She could 695/862.
crack a code without a key, Stygian. She could decipher all the files we have, all the notes, everything we haven"t been able to crack where those experiments are con- cerned. With Honor"s memories of their par- ticular serums and experiments, her memory of the codes used, combined with what little we know where the serum Brandenmore gave Amber is concerned, and all our ques- tions would be answered."
Together, they would have the ability to save Jonas"s daughter"s life and to help de- cipher all the encrypted files scientists had left over the decades of Breed research and the mating phenomena.
One without the other wouldn"t work.
"We also have Gideon to worry about." Jo- nas sighed as he looked up the hall to the suite he and his family occupied. "He knows by now where Liza and Claire are. He"s prob- ably already one step ahead of us." He turned back to Stygian. "And he couldn"t care less 696/862.
about Amber or what it would do to her par- ents to lose her. All he cares about is killing Honor Roberts, Faith Corrigan and the Bengal Breed who was a part of those experi- ments with him."
"He won"t get her," Stygian growled, pray- ing to G.o.d he was strong enough to keep Liza out of Gideon"s reach.
Jonas nodded, clasped his shoulder then turned and continued up the hall.
Stygian watched him go. Jonas"s shoulders were as straight as always, his head as arrog- antly lifted as it had ever been. But Stygian could feel the weariness dragging at the dir- ector, as well as the fear.
If they lost Amber, then Jonas"s mate, Rachel, would never be the same. h.e.l.l, no one who had ever met that child would ever be the same.
Two years old, bright as h.e.l.l, loving, gener- ous. The heart Stygian sensed within the tod- dler was one that shined with such 697/862.
compa.s.sion that seeing her pain, feeling her fear, could humble him as nothing else he had ever known.
This particular spell caused by the serum she had been injected with had lasted longer than any other. At the most, until recent weeks, the spell would last a few days to a week and then the child would pull out of the weakness and pain and once again she would be her bright, childlike self.
This time, she was growing weaker, the pain at times so strong that Stygian could sense it even across the distance between Jo- nas"s suite and his own.
There were times he swore he could feel the toddler"s tears.
And there was nothing he could do to help her. He held Honor Roberts in his arms every night and listened to the nightmares that plagued her.
Her pleas that the pain stop, the terror that filled her as she begged that "they" not 698/862.
harm her again was killing him. All he could do was hold her through the dreams that he sensed filled her with horror and pray she would remember them when she awakened.
And she never did.
She never remembered them and he never mentioned them, because his animal in- stincts reined in the words each time he began to mention them to his mate.
Returning to the suite, Stygian followed the scent of his mate to the suite they shared and stood in the connecting doorway, just watching her as she stood in front of the heavy curtains that blocked the small bal- cony outside.
"How could they do it?" she asked softly, though she never turned from the view of the curtains.
"How could anyone change something so basic as a teenager"s memories, her hopes and her dreams?" Her voice be- came softer, her pain became deeper. "How could they steal that part of a person and 699/862.
give them someone else"s?" She turned to him then and the tears that glistened in her eyes, the dampness on her cheeks, broke his heart.
"Tell me." Liza sobbed then, her breathing hitching as she wrapped her arms across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and fought to hold back the rage that would have had her screaming. "Tell me how they could do it, Stygian? How could science have reached that peak?"
She couldn"t fight the truth any longer. She couldn"t fight the knowledge that even if she wasn"t Liza Johnson, then she still had no idea who she was.
Or what she was.
If she had been one of Phillip Branden- more"s experiments, then only G.o.d knew what he had done to something as basic as her very DNA.
"Science hasn"t reached that peak." He fi- nally sighed. "Your DNA can be altered but never completely changed. A Core Level 700/862.
DNA test, as we discussed before, isn"t the answer either. Because those core genetics can, in certain instances, be changed but nothing can change it back. As for the memories, I can"t explain those, Liza."
Miserable, so frightened of what was com- ing, it was all she could do to hold back the shudders that would have worked through her. Terror waited on the fringes of her con- trol, just waiting to strike, to take over her mind with all the shadowed, barely remembered nightmares that haunted her sleep.
"It happened the weekend of that wreck."
She had pinpointed that much at least. "I re- member waking up in the hospital, and there were bandages on my face. Dad said the wreck had damaged it, but I remember thinking then, sensing, that he wasn"t being honest-not completely. And when they re- moved the bandages, there was a second that 701/862.
I didn"t know the person staring back at me from the mirror they gave me."
She remembered that.
As Stygian took her in his arms, Liza re- membered that moment as clearly as she would always remember that first kiss she had shared with Stygian.
Staring in the small mirror, she had seen her eyes, her hair, her face.
Her nose was too rounded, the arch of her brow hadn"t been right. There had been something odd about the shape of her lips and the sharp, high cheekbones. But there had also been the knowledge that there were several scars marring her body that were too old to have been caused by that wreck.
"Stygian." Her lips trembled as more tears escaped her control and slid from her eyes.
"I"m scared. I"m so scared."
She was suddenly terrified of what was coming, of what memories could spill free when Liza Johnson accepted, to the very 702/862.
depths of her soul, that she no longer exis- ted, and released whoever was trapped inside.
"No." That growl, it was pure, wild Wolf-a low rasp of danger as primal and fierce as any animal that walked on four legs. "No fear, Liza. Trust me. Trust me to guide you through this. To hold you when it hurts, to protect you if there"s danger."
In a few short steps he was before her, hands gripping her shoulders, holding her firm, capturing her gaze as flares of brilliant blue gleamed in the black background of his gaze.
"Trust me, Liza, I"ll protect you."
Lips trembling, her chest tight with the need to cry, Liza laid her head against his chest.
She needed to hear, to feel the beat of his heart.
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She needed the warmth of him wrapping around her, holding her, providing a haven in a storm of spiraling emotions and fears.
"No fear, baby," he whispered again, his arms wrapping around her, his head lower- ing until his lips were against her ear, his strength holding her on her feet. "No matter what comes, no matter what happens, no matter who you are, I"ll be here, and I"ll hold you."
Curling her fingers into the material of his shirt, she closed her eyes tight.
"Hold me now," she cried out, the pain burrowing so deep inside her that she felt the raking talons of it digging into her heart.
A surprised gasp left her lips as he curved his arm beneath her knees and lifted her un- til he was cradling her in his arms.
A feeling of intense feminine weakness swept over her as she looped her arms around his neck and let her head fall to his shoulder.
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