He bent down and brushed at her tears with his lips, and then tipped her face up to his. Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding. She looked up at his face. She loved his face. Loved his eyes, even though at that moment he looked a little watery. He brushed more kisses over her cheeks, eyes and lips.
“Stop crying, baby, and let’s talk about this. I love you exactly the way you are. Those women made their choice when they listened to Whitney and went running to him for every little thing. I’m in love with you and I want you to come with me when I leave here. My people can fix your identity, but they’ll know about you, Amaryllis, and they have to eventually anyway.”
She pushed her forehead into the heel of her hand. “How do you know no one will betray you, Malichai? The more people who know, the more likely that is.”
Malichai moved away from her, pacing again, taking most of the warmth of the room with him. “My entire team is enhanced. We’ve banded together because we have enemies on every side of us. We know that and we prepare always for a fight. Wyatt’s little girls were scheduled to be terminated, designated failures. We took them and we protect them. His wife escaped that same lab. Trap’s wife was also scheduled for termination. She’s with us now. My brother’s wife was sent out with a virus that would kill her if she didn’t get the antidote. I could go on and on. Whitney uses us and sends his supersoldiers against us every now and then to test us, or them, who knows what’s in his head, but he fights against the faction in the White House that wants all of us terminated. And then, there’s the enemies we’ve made by the missions we’ve taken on.”
“You paint such an enticing picture, Malichai.” There was humor in her voice.
He turned back to her, those eyes of his once again gleaming in the darkness. “I want you to know up front, what I’m offering you isn’t rosy. I’m not going to lie about what you’re getting into. Some days it feels like we have to fight every minute for a decent chance with our families. Other times we have months of peace, and we all know it’s a luxury. There’s my leg. Realistically, I could lose it. I’m worth too much money to sideline me, so they’ll fix me up with some kind of fancy bionic one, but I know some people have an aversion to body parts that aren’t natural.”
She pointed to the chair opposite hers. “Sit down, Malichai. I mean it. And don’t insult me. I am not one of those people, and you’re not going to lose your leg.” He was exasperating. He just kept up that pacing as if he couldn’t make himself stop. She wanted to yank him into the chair herself.
“If you don’t stick around and save it, I might,” he pointed out.
She clenched her teeth. “You are an exasperating man. You could tell your brother and he’d have a team of doctors here tomorrow.”
He stopped moving then and when he did, her heart stopped with his movement. He turned his head slowly to look at her and the bottom dropped out of her stomach. Her heart began to pound. He knew. He’d known all along. She wasn’t certain. She had a gift but she had no idea how to use it. It was undeveloped.
“What good will a team of doctors do, Amaryllis? You know they can’t save that bone. If I know it, you know it.”
She hadn’t known it, not really. She had instincts. She could have called up energy and power to heal but she didn’t really know what she was doing. She wanted to stay with him more than she wanted to run and hide from Whitney, but now this . . . What if she failed him on top of everything else? She would be responsible for him losing his leg. She didn’t know anything about healing. Nothing at all. She really didn’t. He didn’t understand that.
She sighed and looked down at her hands. “It’s such a risk, and I just can’t ever go back there. I’ll never have a child with that disgusting soldier Whitney wants to pair me with. And Whitney will never get his hands on any child I have.”
“Have your children with me, Amaryllis. I can keep you safe. I can keep our children safe. My team is building a stronghold in the middle of the swamp. It’s unbelievable. We can visit Marie and Jacy and have them out to visit us. I’ve already talked to Lily and asked her to look into getting Jacy any surgeries she needs for free. Also, to pay off Marie’s hospital bills. It didn’t sit well with me that she had those bills at all. I had some money in the bank just sitting there. Marie and Jacy need it far more than I do.”