Page 18 of Blade's Battle
Hell, he was grabbing at straws. Of course, she knew. Genetic engineering wasn’t a career a person fell into. Discovering the right gene wasn’t like throwing peanut butter and chocolate together and coming up with a winning combination. He didn’t want to believe she was a part of this mess, but she was, and he had to face it. The question became, what would he do with her now?
* * *
ANNA
Anna thought that she’d feel better finally telling Blade the truth, but she didn’t. She felt worse. Why she thought she could confess her sins to Blade and escape unscathed was beyond her. The look on his face—that look of horror as if she were a mass murderer—convinced her that nothing could right this wrong. And that’s when the truth struck her. Shewasa mass murderer.
Drake had told her of the dozens of shifter deaths across several packs and Tess had confirmed the deaths of several shifters in his pack. Ravirez, the shifter virologist Drake had recruited, had developed a cure using Tess’s blood, but its efficacy fell short of expectations, with only an eighty percent rate of success.
Anna had tried pleading with Drake to listen to her. The alpha harbored a great deal of hatred for the WSSO. His need for revenge consumed him, no matter what she said to appease him. She’d even offered to help Ravirez develop a vaccine. Her help would have been minimal since virology wasn’t her specialty, but she’d played up her abilities, struggling to survive Drake’s abuse. Drake wanted something from her she could not give.
Yet despite all Drake had done to her, one look at the disappointment in Blade’s eyes told Anna that Drake wasn’t the monster. She was.
“I won’t go back to Drake, no matter what you do to me,” she said, throwing her remaining energy into her voice.
Blade’s brow lifted. “And how would you stop me?”
“I don’t know.”
Without another word or even a glance at her, he stripped down and lowered himself into the stream to wash the dried blood, dirt, and grime from his body. Even now, when she should be shuddering in fear at the prospect of returning to Drake, she wasn’t, and it was all because of the shifter who was sluicing water over muscles that worked hard to protect her. Even though she’d shocked and angered him, her instincts said to trust him, that he wouldn’t harm her.
That treaty that he had told her about would protect her, even if Blade decided not to. He couldn’t return her to Drake, not without revealing that Blade was the one who had killed Drake’s shifters.
Blade wasn’t fond of humans and she’d given him one more reason to hate her people—to hateher. Anna wanted to curl up into a ball and simply sleep, dream about Kurt, and wake up in another time and place.
“You made a promise to take me home,” she reminded him. Appealing to Blade’s sense of honor was a desperate gambit, but she didn’t have another choice at the moment.
“That was before I knew what you’d done to deserve Drake’s wrath.”
“The treaty—”
“The hell with the treaty,” he said, putting an end to any and all hope she had of making it out of the forest alive.
* * *
BLADE
Blade had been foolish making that promise to her, and he’d been stupid to let his guard down around a human. He’d let all of Hayden’s stories about Drake’s sadistic tendencies and Tess’s pleas to rescue Anna get to him. For as much as a lowlife as Drake was, he’d never been known to randomly kidnap and torture humans. Blade should have known there was a reason he’d kidnapped Anna.Haydenshould have known that, but he’d been too busy taking over as alpha after Damien had gone feral.
Even if Blade didn’t agree with Drake’s methods, Drake had been focused on weakening the WSSO, learning what he could about them to ultimately help shifters survive the virus. Blade never thought he’d see the day when he and Drake were on the same side.
Blade took another look at the small female with the indomitable spirit. Anna lived in a lab, conducted research. She had probably never even slapped a person before let alone killed anyone. . . except she had. By unleashing a deadly virus she’d killed hundreds, maybe thousands by now, and there was no end in sight.
“Get moving,” he said, pointing downriver, not caring that he sounded like a fucking guard. What the hell was he going to do with her? Let her go so she’d return to the WSSO to continue her research against shifters? It was only a matter of time before the WSSO went after the bear and cat shifters next. He had no fealty to them, but they didn’t deserve to be wiped out any more than wolf shifters. He’d already decided he couldn’t return her to Drake.
The very thought, the memory of how Blade had found her in that cave, made him nauseous. Drake and his pack had left her naked in a dark cave, with little food and water and feeling justified—entitled—to abuse her however they liked. It didn’t matter what her crime was, no one deserved that. The mere thought of them touching her made his wolf want to tear out their throats. Fuck! Why did she have to be complicit?
Blade liked her, hereallyliked her.
A few feet ahead of him Anna walked downriver. He could smell her fear, see the pain she was in from her injuries. Even how she walked, slouched and lifeless, disheartened him. Her spirit had finally begun to emerge, all sunshine and flowers, and now this truth, this ugly, incomprehensible truth enshrouded her.
And all Blade wanted was to fold his arms around her and rest his chin on her head while he told her everything would be all right.
“Why did you do it?” he blurted out.
She stopped short. “I had my reasons.”
“What reason would you have to—”
