Breeds: Stygian's Honour Part 33

Her thoughts, or the growling of her belly.

"'Kay," she mumbled.

"You have to move, mate." He chuckled beneath her.

"Why? Phone's by the bed. Use it."

"Sorry, baby, that line's not near secure enough to suit me." A quick kiss to her lips and he was rolling with her.

469/862.

Depositing her to her back, Stygian lifted himself from the bed and padded naked into the other room.

Liza stayed where she was. Her legs were still jelly. She swore she'd fall flat on her face if she had to actually walk.

"We have to return to the hotel."

It was the harshness in Stygian's voice that had her turning to her back and staring up at him with a frown.

"What?"

"Get dressed. Gideon Cross was sighted at a service station just outside Window Rock an hour ago and he was asking about you and Claire. There's no time left, Liza. We have to move."

"How do you know that?" Gripping the quilt to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, she stared back at him, apprehension beginning to churn through her. "Why would he let himself be seen?"

"I don't know why," he growled. "Ashley and Emma sighted him and called in. By the 470/862.

time they turned around, he was speeding away on a trail bike and hit the desert. They lost him from there."

He was asking about her and Claire?

Liza could feel herself shaking from the in- side out. Feel a sudden terror racing through her.

She could feel, sense some knowledge rising inside her. There was something she needed to tell him, but as quickly as the thought flashed across her mind, it was gone again.

Where was that internal distance that had been so easy to find earlier?

Where was that ability to retreat? To hide from the sudden, bone-chilling fear and the flash of a face?

But it wasn't a mature male with a Bengal's slash across his face. It wasn't de- monic yellow eyes glistening with rage as in the pictures Jonas Wyatt had shown her.

471/862.

No. It was a young man. In such pain, so fierce and so determined to help them- Liza stumbled from the bed, suddenly sick to her stomach, capping her hand over her mouth, terrified she would lose her pride and the lunch she had eaten earlier right there on the floor.

She wanted to hide.

She wanted to go away.

Oh G.o.d.

Oh G.o.d, she had to go away.

She had to escape and there was only one way to do it. There was only one place to hide. There was only that place so deep with- in herself that there was no chance of danger- "Liza, stop. You're safe. Listen to me, baby, you're safe."

Stygian had her. His hands were wrapped around her upper arms, holding her to her feet, his voice was calm, firm, insistent, holding her to the present when all she wanted to 472/862.

do was sink as deep inside herself as possible.

"You're safe," he said again. "You have time for a quick shower. Dog and his team are moving in and they'll escort us to the hotel, along with Flint and Rule, where Claire and the team sent to collect her will meet us. Everything's fine."

She nodded slowly.

Everything was fine.

Everything but Liza. Because, in a few short minutes she had managed to lose her sense of her training, her independence and her certainty that not just Stygian but also Cullen and the team would be there to sup- port her. For one horrifyingly dark moment, she was alone and facing almost certain death.

She couldn't let this happen to her. She couldn't lose herself this way every time something happened. She couldn't let those dark, hidden memories that weren't exactly 473/862.

memories, that she knew couldn't belong to her, erode her control.

And she wouldn't allow it to, she promised herself, not ever again.

Never would she be weak again.

CHAPTER 14.

Claire was waiting with her parents, as well as Liza's, in the Presidential Suite, sitting still and silent, her hands folded in her lap as she stared down at them.

Entering the room, Liza stared at the as- sembled Breeds and parents, their expres- sions quiet, savage or just emotionless.

"Good, we're all here." Jonas Wyatt moved to the center of the room as Liza sat slowly in the wingback loveseat next to the matching chair her friend had taken.

Glancing at her father, she was taken aback by the anger that glittered in his eyes, and the barely hidden fear in her mother's.

475/862.

"What's going on?" she questioned the director.

She'd rather hear any bad news from someone she wasn't certain she liked than to hear it from anyone else.

"Gideon Cross, the fourth member of the Brandenmore Omega experiments, has ar- rived in Window Rock, and he's asking spe- cifically about the two of you. What, Ms.

Johnson, do you and Ms. Martinez have to do with all this?"

He wasn't questioning her, he was inter- rogating her.

Liza shook her head. "Nothing. I don't know why he's asking about us, or what he wants, any more than we know why the Gen- etics Council has targeted us."

But a part of her did know- "Are you aware that the county health de- partment was broken into several weeks ago and only your and Claire's childhood files are missing?" Jonas asked then.

476/862.

No, she hadn't known that.

"Dad?" She turned to her father question- ingly. "Did you know?"

The health department would surely have informed him of the situation if they had been unable to reach her.

Of course, there was no reason why they couldn't have reached her other than the fact that Ray Martinez's cousin was the director there. If he had asked that she make him aware of any problems before Liza and his daughter were told, then that was exactly what would happen.

"There was no sense in worrying you," her father stated as though it were of no import- ance at all.

She could only blink back at him.

She wasn't going to berate her father in front of strangers, but there was a sense of disbelief and even a sense of betrayal that he had withheld something so important.

477/862.

"We can discuss it later, Liza," he prom- ised her, as though he had sensed her feeling of betrayal. "I wasn't intentionally keeping it from you."

Yes, he had been, but once again, she wasn't going to confront him here and now.

Not when so many interested eyes were watching, suspicious, a.n.a.lyzing every move, every look, every word spoken.

Not when Stygian was keeping her from retreating, from hiding within herself by the invisible bonds of a mating she still didn't understand.

She turned back to Jonas, determined to hold on to the anger building inside her.

"I want to know why the Genetics Council and Gideon Cross have targeted us just as much as you do," she informed Jonas. "We're n.o.bodies, Mr. Wyatt. An a.s.sistant and a re- ceptionist?" She all but laughed at the ab- surdity of it. "Why target us because of two girls no one has seen in over twelve years?"

478/862.

"Evidently, for some reason they believe the two of you are those girls, or can lead them to the girls, as I've already explained."

"Then explain it again, Mr. Wyatt." With her gaze locked on the eerie silver eyes of the director, she stared back at him confronta-tionally. "I'm sick of hearing about these two girls and all the reasons why all these a.s.sholes think we can lead them to them. We don't know them. We haven't met them. And we sure as h.e.l.l can't help anyone find them.

So tell me why the h.e.l.l they keep coming after us?"

She'd had enough.

"If none of the above applies, Ms. John- son, then I have no idea."

"And you're a liar," she accused him roughly as she came to her feet, her gaze slipping to Wyatt's wife, Rachel.

She noticed the other woman was not jumping instantly to her husband's defense.

479/862.

Let another woman call Stygian a liar and see how fast Liza could get up in their face.

Instead, Rachel Broen-Wyatt glanced at her husband with somber concern.

Wyatt's brows arched with curious mock- ery. "And how would you know if I were ly- ing?" he asked. "Unless you know something that you're not revealing."

Liza stared back at him, holding on to the sense of mist and memories that seemed de- termined to overtake her.

Not now. Not even a hint of self-doubt could be allowed to escape or every Breed here would be on her like a pack of wild animals.

"Stop with the games, Jonas." It was Stygi- an, rather than her father, or Claire's, who stepped from the side of the room.

Except Stygian.

He would stand between her and h.e.l.l, she suddenly realized. A part of her could actu- ally feel-feel him as though he were an 480/862.

integral part of her being-determined to protect her.

Liza felt his hand settle at the small of her back, a warm weight that pulled her back from the slight distance she'd managed to achieve without realizing it.

A distance she desperately needed right now. She had been deliberately receding from reality, hiding from the world or from whatever truths or knowledge she didn't want to see until Stygian had come into her life. Now, she realized not just what a relief those retreats had been, but also how easy it would be to hide from any truth she might not want to accept. As well as the night- mares. Those hazy, terrifying dreams that had haunted her for so many years. The ones she never remembered, and hadn't wanted to remember.

Had she always done this? Was it because she didn't want it to be real? That she didn't 481/862 want to face what she was beginning to sus- pect was the truth?

"I don't think I'm the one playing games."

Jonas sighed as the mockery eased from his expression, leaving a sort of weary accept- ance. "And I don't think your mate is either, Stygian. Whatever she knew has obviously either been stolen, or it's a knowledge she's unaware she even has."

The look the director shot her father and Ray was telling. He believed they knew the truth, and Liza was certain they did.

"You don't know what the h.e.l.l you're talk- ing about." Her father stepped forward, an- ger echoing in his tone even as Liza glimpsed a flash of guilt. "Do you think I wouldn't know my own daughter? That I wouldn't know if she had been replaced by another?"

Heavy mockery filled his tone and marked his expression.

"Enough, Audi," her mother protested as she laid a hand on his arm, her fingers 482/862.

trembling as she caught Liza's gaze. "This is only upsetting Liza. Let's see what we can do to help her, rather than upsetting her."

The love she had always seen in her moth- er's face was there. There was also all the love and acceptance she had always known.

Her life, until now, had been charmed. Lov- ing parents, an uneventful past, a good job.

She had everything but the husband, kids and white picket fence.