Page 118 of Hunted to Be Mine
“Your purpose?” The word scraped. “That’s bullshit. You’re not some self-destructive missile I point and fire.”
“In this case, I was exactly that.”
I tried to stand. Pain snapped through my ribs. “So you decided your life was worth less than mine. No discussion, no—”
“You weren’t available for consultation.” Dry humor flickered. “Kidnapping complicates rescue planning.”
“Don’t make jokes.” My anger started to crack. “You could have died.”
“I weighed the risk.” He came closer, tone softening. “Dresner’s obsession with my conditioning made killing me unlikely. And his fixation on our connection made keeping me alive useful.”
“That’s your defense? ‘I probably wouldn’t die’?” I shook my head. “What if you’d been wrong?”
“I wasn’t.”
“You could have been.” Frustration scraped my voice raw. “Dresner talked about opening your skull. He told me.”
Something dark moved behind his eyes. “Unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate?” Speechless. “You’re impossible.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“This isn’t funny.” Despite everything, his absurdity tugged at me. “You walked into the lion’s den with no backup, no extraction plan—”
“I had a plan.”
“Oh, really? Get captured, get mind-wiped, hope for the best?”
His mouth almost curved. “Something like that.”
I wanted to throw something. My options were limited. “Your brilliant strategy was to get yourself captured?”
“It worked.” He gestured to the room. “We’re here. We’re alive.”
“Barely. And only because you somehow resisted their conditioning, which you couldn’t have known you’d do.”
“I knew.”
“How?”
His eyes held mine, intent and steady. “Because of you.”
The fight drained out of me. “What?”
“The connection between us.” His voice was quiet. “I knew it would hold.”
“You couldn’t have known that.”
“I did.” No flinch. “I’ve never been more certain.”
“That’s not science, that’s…” Words failed.
“Faith?” His brow tipped up.
“You bet your entire identity on something you can’t measure?”
“Yes.” He knelt in front of me, bringing us eye to eye. “They could try to erase memory. They can’t erase what I feel for you. That lives outside their programming.”
