“I promise you, my family has made a way for you,” she whispered. “Look at us, Callan. Look at me. I can’t be away from you for more than an hour without my body going into some kind of crazy withdrawal. I can’t live this way.”
“It will only be temporary,” he promised her. “Doc will fix it.”
“How do you know?” she bit out. “What if it can’t be fixed, Callan? What if we can never be free of each other? What if we don’t want to be?”
“I didn’t want to be born an animal, or an experiment. Wants don’t count.” His voice held a ring of finality.
“And if Doc doesn’t fix it?” His attitude only spurred her anger further. “What about me, Callan? Will you just run away and leave me to deal with it as best I can?” He grimaced, turning away from her. She watched his muscular back heave with a harsh breath, his head lower.
“If I must,” he told her softly, refusing to look at her now. “I will if I have to make the choice of revealing my secrets, or being with you, Merinus. My family must come first.”
“I know about your family,” she told him, unreasonably furious at the stand he was taking. “What’s to keep me from telling?”
He turned to look at her and the blood chilled in her veins. His eyes were cold, stone hard and as emotionless as his expression. Gasping, she backed away from him, fighting an instinctive fear that rose inside her.
“Callan.” Sherra’s voice stopped him from answering.
The tall blonde stood in the kitchen doorway, a syringe in one hand as she faced them.
“What do you need, Sherra?” he asked her sharply. “I have no time for more of your tests.” Merinus watched Sherra’s eyes narrow.
“Good, because I would more likely try to kill you rather than test you,” she said sweetly. “I’ve brought Merinus’ contraception injection. Perhaps you need to go outside and get your control back while she takes it.”
Callan gave her a hard look.
“You don’t intimidate me, brother,” she informed him, moving into the room in determination. “And you shouldn’t try to intimidate Merinus. This is hard enough on her.”
“I do not try to intimidate, Sherra,” he reminded her darkly.
“No, you usually succeed,” she admitted. “But now is the wrong time to practice that tough attitude. Go stalk something non-human for a change, while I explain to Merinus why you were forced to kill to save the young girl those soldiers found a few hours after we rescued her, rather than letting her think you did it in cold blood.”
Callan’s eyes narrowed, while Merinus’ widened.
“What?” she whispered in disbelief.
“Yes.” Sherra nodded, stopping beside her and indicating Merinus should lift her arm for the injection.
“When he went back to track them, disable them, then send them home in shame, they were in the process of attempting to brutalize a young girl they had kidnapped earlier. When he interrupted them, they elected to fight rather than surrender, and when Callan would have still shown mercy, one of them attempted to kill the girl anyway.”
Merinus took a deep, hard breath as she looked at Callan.
“They are still dead.” He sneered. “And they would have died for touching you alone.”
* * * * *
Callan watched Merinus blink at his statement. He hadn’t meant to reveal that, but the words had come out anyway. He had no intentions of leaving those bastards alive, as he would have normally done. He had been in a killing rage after rescuing Merinus from their hands, intent on destruction. The soldiers had just made it easier for his conscience to bear the weight. They had touched what was his. He recognized the emotion, the origin of the fury now. They had laid their hands on his woman, put their scent on her. They had crossed a line Callan had never known existed. One that assured their deaths.
It worried him, this attachment he had for her, the violent emotions that swirled in his brain and in his body. He wanted to deny them, not just to her, but to himself. How could he walk away from her if he couldn’t go more than a few hours without touching her?
He watched, fighting to keep his face expressionless as Sherra gave Merinus the injection. He knew Doc wasn’t giving her a normal contraceptive. The injection wasn’t as powerful as the Depo-Provera shots given in a gynecologist’s office. They lasted only days and didn’t affect the system as severely.
“I hate these shots, Sherra.” He could still hear the throb of anger in Merinus’ voice.
“I know,” Sherra soothed her as she pulled the needle free. “We have all the samples we should need for a while. Until there’s a change.”
“There better be a change soon,” Merinus said firmly. “I’m getting sick of this. There are things I need to do.”
She needed to leave. Callan tamped down the instinctive fury he felt at that thought. She wanted to leave here, to put distance between them if he continued to refuse to give in to her demands to return with her, to reveal himself. His teeth clenched. She was so innocent, too damned innocent. There was no way he could be free of the Council as easily as she believed. If it could have been done, then Maria and Doc would have found a way to do so before her death.