CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Awakening abruptly, Lara jerked to a sitting position, finding herself on top of a bed with Damion looming over her. A bed she unnervingly realized he’d put her in while she’d been passed out.
“Easy, sweetheart,” he said in a gentle tone, settling a hip on the mattress next to her. “You’re okay. You’re in the ER.”
Her gaze swept the sterile hospital room, that could, she thought grimly, just as easily be a torture and interrogation room. She still couldn’t believe she’d trusted him, only to have him bring her here to Sunrise City. “How long was I out?” she asked, afraid to think what might have happened that she didn’t know about. “And has a doctor examined me?”
“Not yet,” he said. “And you were only out long enough for me to carry you down the hall from the elevator.”
Any relief she felt from that little piece of good news faded into another concern. “What about Caleb and the Renegade that was with him? Where are they?”
“They went to check on Chale,” he said.
“So they’re coming back?”
“Relax, Lara,” he said. “If they do come by, it will be to check on your health and no other reason.” His hand settled on her arm, oddly comforting considering he was the one responsible for her presence in a hornet’s nest of Renegades, and a Renegade himself. “No one is going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
“Until I refuse to tell you what you want to know,” she said brusquely. “Who’s going to torture me when that happens, Damion? You? Or maybe that big menacing one—Michael?”
He grimaced. “The Renegades don’t torture people. I won’t lie to you and tell you we don’t want to talk to you. This is a war we’re living, and you may well have information that could save lives. But we aren’t doing anything until you get well. Besides, I’ve made it clear that the only person persuading you to talk—is me.” There was a sensual heat to those words, an underlying meaning followed with a hint of a smile. “And so far, you’ve done a damn good job of letting me know when my methods of persuasion don’t please you. I’ve got the bite marks to prove it.” He patted her leg. “Why don’t you try and rest until the doctor gets here?” He pushed to his feet, intending to let her do so, and she burned to do just that.
Every muscle in her body screamed for rest, but she moved as he did, twisted around to let her legs dangle off the side of the mattress, ready to launch herself into action if need be. Not that she had a chance in hell of escaping Sunrise City, but it made her feel better—more in control.
“Okay then,” he said disapprovingly, noting her sitting position. “I guess you didn’t like the idea of rest.”
He’d placed himself between her and the door, and somehow it felt intentional, as if he didn’t quite believe his claims about the other Renegades leaving her alone. She didn’t miss the subtle tension etched in his handsome, chiseled face. He was the lean, mean soldier she’d seen by the pool, assuming a façade of casual that didn’t fool her.
“Would you rest if you were in my shoes?” she asked.
“You’re safe, Lara,” he said, stepping toward her and settling his hands on her shoulders. “No one is going to hurt you here. I won’t let them.”
She felt herself melt into the touch, her body reacting to the intimacy without her consent. The smart move would be pushing him away, but like so many other times, she just didn’t have it in her. “You didn’t answer my question,” she said instead. “If you were in my shoes, would you be able to rest?”
“I’d make myself rest,” he said. “I’d want to be my best and my strongest as quickly as possible.”
She made a sound of disapproval. “You wouldn’t dare shut your eyes for fear you’d never open them again, and you know it.”
He didn’t bother denying she spoke the truth. “What can I do to prove to you that you’re safe enough to rest?”
“I’ll rest when you take me out of this place.”
“That’s not going to happen, not until I know you’re well. So you might as well lie down and rest.”
“You mean not until you have the information you want.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest, silently declining. “Tell me about the doctor I’m going to see. What’s her interrogation experience?”
He grimaced and ran a rough hand over the light brown stubble framing his jaw. “You have to be the most stubborn woman I’ve ever met.”
She grimaced right back at him, comfortable with the combative exchanges they continued to share, even welcoming the familiarity. “I bet you say that to all the women you kidnap and tote around like luggage.”
“I did not—” he started, but someone cleared her throat from the doorway, a delicate, feminine sound that had Damion turning and Lara assessing the petite, thirtyish brunette in hot pink scrubs who’d appeared there.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” the woman said. “But I wanted you both to know Dr. Moore is on his way.”
“Not Dr. Moore,” Damion corrected. “I told you Dr. Petersen.”
“Yes, but Dr. Moore is on duty, and he—”
“Treats humans. Lara is not,” Damion said.
Surprise flushed the woman’s heart-shaped face to a rosy red. Her attention jerked to Lara and honed in on her eyes. She knew what she saw—knew she was too drained to camouflage the black coal of her GTECH eyes.
The nurse’s throat worked in a hard swallow. “Oh my,” she said, the surprise she’d shown seconds before shifted to obvious discomfort—and fear?
“She’s not a Lifebond,” Damion said, as if answering some unspoken question. “And she’s not bound to a Zodius. She was injected with the serum.”
Again, Lara found the nurse’s attention on her, this time with a mixture of stunned disbelief and horror in her face. “They injected you?”
A fizzle of unease went through Lara at the “they” reference. “Yes,” Lara agreed, cautiously avoiding a lie and eye contact with Damion. “I was given injections.” She could feel Damion’s attention sharpen, almost hear his mind racing at her choice of words. There was no doubt, he suspected the truth—that Adam hadn’t been the one to convert her.
“It was Ava, wasn’t it?” the nurse asked, as if feeding off Damion’s silent contemplation. “She convinced Adam the injections would bypass the Lifebonding process and make you fertile without it, didn’t she?”
“Emma,” Damion warned gently, saving Lara from pulling some brilliant reply from a hat, when there was no hat in sight. “Lara has a real need to see Dr. Petersen.”
“Yes, of course,” Emma replied, casting Lara an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry or make you uncomfortable. I, of all people, know that’s not what you need right now. I’ll get Dr. Petersen for you right away.” She wasted no time departing, pulling the door shut.
Lara stared at the door, a hollow, horrible feeling carving a home inside her as she replayed Emma’s words. I, of all people, know that’s not what you need right now. “She was in the sex camps in Zodius City, wasn’t she?”
“Yes,” Damion confirmed, stepping between her and the door, his arms crossed in front of his broad chest, and Lara couldn’t fight a moment of pure female appreciation as she took in the sight of him—tall and hard all over—but his next words dashed her with enough ice water to end her distraction. “She’s part of a group of fifty women we rescued last year. There were more than a hundred inside Zodius City at the time, but Ava’s ability to brainwash many of them proved impossible to overcome during rescue.”
“They force the women to have sex with the soldiers there,” she said, the words heavy on her tongue. “Trying to find a Lifebond connection to make them fertile. She thought I was one of those women, and yet it scared her.”
“Ava’s able to brainwash most of the women into believing they want to be with the men,” he said. “They believe becoming a Lifebond will make them royalty among the Zodius. It’s a small comfort to know the women don’t feel raped while they are there. But not all women are susceptible to Ava’s skills.”
“Emma wasn’t,” Lara said, reading between the lines.
He shook his head. “Emma wasn’t. And now she’s terrified of anyone who might be loyal to the Zodius, as are all the women we rescued from the camps.”
“And if I had been a Lifebond to a Zodius soldier, she would have assumed I would be loyal to that Zodius.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Once a couple Lifebonds, they’re bound in life and death—if one dies, the other will die. That’s pretty intense loyalty by default. That loyalty is what Adam is counting on when he throws women like Emma to his men, like they’re meat to the damn wolf packs he keeps.”
Lara barely suppressed a shiver at the idea of being passed around a group of Zodius soldiers for sex. That was what Adam did to women, and what she’d thought the Renegades would do to women as well. They didn’t though, and Emma was proof of that.
Suddenly, Lara just couldn’t swallow the idea of connecting herself to Adam, allowing herself to be thought a monster in order to protect Serenity. “I was telling the truth when I said I was never inside Zodius City,” she said. “And I would never be a part of something as horrific as what happened to Emma.”
“I know,” Damion said, sitting down beside her and gently pressing her back against the mattress. His hands settled beside her head. His eyes captured hers, reached inside her, and seemed to be searching clear to her soul. She could barely breathe with the certainty he could see too much, her heart and adrenaline kicking into overdrive.
“Emma made me remember one of my initial assumptions when I realized you were GTECH, Lara,” he finally said. “The only way Adam would let go of his precious stock of serum for a female would be to breed you with his soldiers.” Lara’s heart slowed to a standstill, the room shrinking with the foreboding knowledge that she was cornered, with no escape.
“You would have been put through medical tests and subjected to aggressive attempts to Lifebond you, with hopes that you no longer needed that bond to get pregnant. You simply had to have enough sex. In other words, you would have spent lots of time in the sex camps long before you would ever be used for other purposes. You asked too many questions about those camps for someone who’s been inside them. You aren’t working for Adam. I’ve said that before, but always with doubt. This time, I know it’s the truth. You’re working for someone else.” A knock sounded on the door, but he didn’t move, his gaze locked with hers, as he added, “And you’re going to tell me who.”