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Luke walks around the car and moves closer. “Are you okay?” He looks genuinely concerned and, for some reason, his distress makes my blood boil.
As if this wasn’t his fault!
If he’s so worried, why doesn’t he just let me go? But oh no, forget that. He would have me practically break my neck instead.
“No. Of course I’m not okay. The blond boy’s beast stepped on the car I stole and nearly broke me in half.”
“Glad to see you’re still your normal self,” Luke points out. “C’mon. Let’s go back.” He extends an arm in the direction of the walkway.
“I’m not going back!” The words rumble out of my chest. The gun trembles in my grip.
Luke’s eyes flicker to my hand, then back up to meet my gaze.
Tauro takes a step forward. “Let’s not do this again, Marci.”
“You stay out of this. Go join a rodeo or something.” I don’t even look at him. My gaze stays leveled with Luke’s. He’s the one who calls the shots here anyway, as unlikely as that still seems to me.
“Marci, be reasonable,” Luke says.
“Be reasonable? Be reasonable?! You tell me you want to talk to me, reveal only half of some disgusting truth you think I’m supposed to care about, then lock me up in an office when it pleases you, and now you ask me to be reasonable? Screw you! Either tell me what you need to tell me, or let me go.”
“Okay, fine. Let’s go inside. We need to discuss this in private.”
“I am not going anywhere.” My voice is firm. I grip my gun with both hands to help deliver the message a little better.
Mega Simba gives a tired snort and lowers his huge paws to the ground. The Jetta’s front tires settle with a squeak. He leisurely strolls to the side, plops his massive body down and begins to lick his paws. I watch dumbfounded. Everyone else, including Aydan, ignores him as if they’re used to this type of domestic behavior from such a wild-looking beast.
Luke gives a resigned exhale. “All of you, leave!” he orders with a wave of his hand.
“Are you sure it’s safe, sir?” one of the men behind Tauro asks. He gives a meaningful glance toward my gun.
Tauro turns and faces them. “Do as Mr. Hailstone says. Stay nearby, in case we need you.”
They nod and begin to retreat. Aydan hesitates. I catch his gaze and try to convey a reassuring message. He walks away with the rest of the men—his steps a little shorter, a little slower.
“Well, talk,” I say.
Luke brushes blond hair off his forehead in a tired manner. It’s clear he doesn’t know where to begin. The information he’s already shared with me is unsavory enough. How much worse can the rest be? I have a feeling what I’ve heard so far will be nothing compared to what comes next. I square my shoulders and armor-plate whatever sensibilities this world hasn’t managed to steal from me.
No matter what, I won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me upset.
Not again.
“Just spit it out, Luke. I don’t care at this point. We both know it won’t be pretty.”
“No, it won’t,” he admits. “I have struggled with this myself, especially with my parents’ decision to do what they did, the way they did.”
“Your parents? When you say that . . . would you mind telling me who the hell you’re talking about?”
I know—based on what Lyra has told me—that Zara and Tom Hailstone were responsible for Luke’s kidnapping from the NICU as well as his subsequent “pretend” adoption. They raised him as their son, even if biologically he’s Karen’s and . . . who else’s? Dr. Dunn’s?—the man responsible for impregnating Karen with a pair of infected, mismatched embryos.
“Zara and Tom Hailstone,” Luke answers, his blue eyes filling with sadness at the mention of the names.
“But Dunn was your real father, right?” I still remember him crying at the funeral and stupidly comforting him, believing he was my long, lost brother. Such a crock of lies.
“No. Tom was. Tom and Karen. Dunn was just a front. He worked for my parents, performed the in-vitro fertilization and implanted the embryos. He conducted the . . . experiments that led to us,” he says the last few words so very carefully that I feel as if I’m made of glass, and he’s afraid this truth will crack me into a million pieces.
We are experiments.
But of course.
My vision grows blurry. If I had a soul, would it have died at this revelation? I shake the thought away, swallow hard.
Now the rub is . . . What was the purpose of these experiments? And did they work?
I take a deep breath and ask the million-dollar question. “And my mother? Who is she?” I think I already know the answer, but I want to hear it from his perfect, inhuman lips.
“Your mother was Zara.”
The image of the woman dying at Luke’s feet rises in my mind. Lyra shot her point-blank. Luke tried to save her, carried her out of Whitehouse’s headquarters and called for help. They didn’t get there in time. She died on the concrete, in the middle of the battle, while Luke begged her to be strong and I wished her to died. Something twists inside my chest. It’s ugly and misshapen, like a tumor no one will ever be able to root out.
“Go on,” I say, my voice as cold as shards of ice.
Luke exchanges a glance with Tauro who is still standing to the side, immobile as a statue. Mega Simba is also still there, his huge head resting on crossed paws.
“Okay.” Luke seems puzzled and relieved at the same time.
He’s expecting me to fall apart again. But this one is not hard to digest. I could never see that woman as my real mother. I knew nothing about her. I only ever had one parent, anyway. My other half could have sprung out of the air, for all I care.
“For many years,” Luke continues, “my parents’ goal was to figure out how to allow our kind to . . . procreate. I’m sure you’re well aware of our limitations.”
I say nothing and think of the only Spawner I’ve ever seen, that hideous, tentacled creature at Elliot’s party.
“Well . . .” Luke pauses, lowers his head and paces in front of me.
“Well what? Are you saying this experiment . . . us . . . was supposed to help with that?”
Luke stops and looks at me sideways, his expression as sad as any I have ever seen. “Yes. My parents’ goal was to create two Eklyptors who could procreate.”
Two Eklyptors who could procreate.
Two Eklyptors who could procreate.
The words get stuck on repeat inside my head. They flash like traffic signals, guiding my thoughts down a brightly-lit street where all the pieces of the puzzle come together in perfect clarity.
Two Eklyptors.
Luke plus Marci equals two.
“But I’m not an Eklyptor!” It’s the only thing that bears saying, the one thing I hold on to—a drowning person on a life raft.
I’m not an Eklyptor. I’m not.
I. AM. NOT.
And I would never procreate with one of these beasts.
The angry thoughts tear through my mind like war tanks bent on destruction. They are so loud in my head that I barely hear Luke’s next words.
“You are supposed to be my mate.”