"Council scientists?" he snorted.
"No." She frowned, remembering the past ten years, knowing Styx was telling her the truth. It wasn't her father's friends who had protected her, as she had believed, but it was the Breeds. She knew it was, and the sense of bitterness that welled inside her was like a dark cloud over the contentment of moments past.
"Who then, lass?" His fingers stroked down her spine, calloused and warm, easing the tension from her before it really had a chance to take hold.
"Friends." She breathed out roughly. "Dad told me someone would find me, and protect me. That he hadn't left me alone. I guess I always hoped that was who it was, and that they would reveal themselves when it was safe enough. I thought perhaps they couldn't risk the Council recognizing or identifying them."
She'd lived in a dreamworld for so many years. For so long she had believed someone would truly come for her to claim the data chip and wipe away the danger she faced.
As she lay there, she realized that there was no white knight. There was no one to ride to her rescue. But she realized that there never had been, and she had managed to stay alive anyway.
But how much longer would she have managed that?
"Your da did send someone for you," he stated heavily, causing her to lift from the warm comfort she had found, to stare back at him in suspicion.
"Lass." He shook his head. "The suspicion in your gaze breaks my heart. Jonas was part of the team that rescued the Breeds at the Omega lab. He was racing to your da's small home, but he arrived too late. You were to await him at an abandoned mountain cottage where your da had hidden a vehicle whose engine Jonas had provided in case of emergency. But he arrived there too late as well. You had already run."
"So you're telling me Jonas was the person my father meant to meet me?" She held back her mockery and disbelief.
"The one he meant to have the data chip," he clarified. "And that's no lie, lass, no matter your suspicions."
And her suspicions were great, but she didn't totally disbelieve it. She found herself wanting to believe though, and that terrified her.
"Dad said he would come to me and tell me." Forcing herself from the bed, she wrapped the sheet around her and stared back at him, as a sense of betrayal pricked at her heart.
He had to be lying to her. If Jonas was the man her father had wanted to have that information, then her father would have given her some indication, or at the very least Jonas would have told her. The man was not lacking in daring.
"Jonas didn't know the importance of the information," he revealed, as though he regretted that fact. "You were eighteen before he found you, and by then you were already outspoken against the Breeds. He wanted you to come to us willingly. To trust us. He didn't want to make your distrust worse. So he sent Enforcers to shadow you, to protect you, hoping you would see that you could trust us with the information your da gave you."
"How convenient," she murmured as she fought back the anger, the fear that he would lie to her so easily and make her want to believe it so desperately.
"Aye, I agree, lass." He rose from the bed, tall, powerful, his muscular body darkly tanned and ripped with lean muscle. "And disbelief and suspicion are all you know. I can't blame you for it, but I can ask you to look at what I say with an open mind."
"I lost my open mind ten years ago," she informed him, her fists clenching in the sheet as she fought with herself and became angrier each minute that she ached to believe in him.
She didn't believe in anyone. She couldn't believe in anyone.
The look he gave her was filled with pity. "And that's too bad, lass. Because sometimes, an open mind is all we have to keep our hearts open."
This time, her smile was mocking and bitter. "An open heart as well? Is that what you're counting on? No, Styx, I don't have a heart. It was cut out of my chest the last time a lover died and a friend paid for what others wanted from me. Breeds, Council. It doesn't matter which, I had nothing for either of you."
She turned and walked slowly to the bathroom, then to the shower.
She couldn't afford to have a heart, and if she did, she couldn't afford to allow Styx into it.
One thing was for damned sure though, if she didn't get the hell out of Haven, then she would end up losing what she claimed she didn't have, and trusting the very people she swore she would never trust.
If she didn't get out of Haven, she was going to fall in love with her Breed.
CHAPTER 14
"Come on, you're going to dinner wi' me." Styx stood in the bedroom as Storme walked from the shower later the next evening, his arms crossed over his chest as he stared back at her impassively.
The past twenty-four hours hadn't been easy ones for her. A sense of impending doom, of disaster, had settled over her, warning her it was time to go.
Over the years she had developed an uncanny sense of danger, a premonition of coming disaster, and that self-preservation instinct was riding her hard to run.
"I'm not hungry." Tightening her fingers on the towel, she stared back at him with a sense of trepidation. She couldn't leave the house, not yet. Not until she had a plan in place and an idea where to run.
Each time she had moved for the back door since the evening before, she had felt a bull's-eye painted on her chest. When Styx had walked from the house, she could have sworn she saw it painted on him as well.
And it scared her. It scared her more than her own emotions scared her, and those emotions made her damned nervous.
"Too bad." He shrugged, as though it didn't matter. "Get dressed, lass. I've grown weary of your stubbornness now. You're going with me."
Storme's lips tightened. "You don't want to force this, Styx. I'll only embarrass you."
A red brow arched in mockery as his blue eyes gleamed with confident arrogance. An arrogance she hadn't really glimpsed until now. That look had her stomach clenching, her pussy creaming, and something softening in her chest that shouldn't be softening.
Had she been so busy surviving that she had missed out on more than she had ever imagined? Was she only a woman who could sense danger, but had no idea what her own emotions were? All she had was the knowledge that it was time to run.
"Then I'll only embarrass you back by turning you over my knee and paddling that cute little arse of yours," he informed her, his voice hard as she watched him, wishing things were different, wishing the past ten years hadn't been as they were. That she had learned what other women had learned by now. That she had deciphered her emotions as a teenager, like most women did. Instead of standing here wondering if he would truly paddle her for embarrassing him, and wondering why her butt cheeks were clenching as though it might be enjoyable.
Storme had a very bad feeling he wasn't joking about the spanking, just as she had a feeling he might have scented the sudden rush of excitement that heated her clit and the inner depths of her pussy.
There was a strange look in his eyes. One of pure male determination and male lust, and that look was frankly terrifying to some hidden, feminine part of her psyche. That look had warning signals flaring in her brain that were nearly as imperative as the self-preservation instinct urging her to run.
"I'm not much of a social person, Styx. Besides, I get damned tired of watching you and Cassandra Sinclair fawn all over each other," she informed him as she dropped the towel and padded to the small dresser where he had deposited what appeared to be some rather sinful underclothes earlier. New ones. She loved new under pretties. She'd been forced to stop wearing them years ago because she just couldn't afford them. But these, damn, she couldn't resist.