Dawn’s Awakening (27 page)

“Good.” She turned away.

“Dawn, don’t turn from me,” Callan growled.

She turned her gaze back. “I have put my body in front of your mate’s to protect her,” she whispered hoarsely. “You led mine into danger and ordered me back.” She remembered that, distinctly, clearly. “What happened to you, Callan? Once, long ago, you would have never betrayed me.”

It hurt, that knowledge. Knowing that he had done the one thing guaranteed to force Seth out of her life ten years ago had been bad enough. But now, this time, he had led Seth into danger.

“Callan doesn’t control me, Dawn. Don’t ever imagine that’s possible.” Seth’s voice was hard now, cold. “And the next time you put your ass out there like that I’ll paddle it.”

She turned back to him, her responses still slow as she frowned. “I’m trained to.”

“And you think I’m not?” His lips tightened dangerously. “You don’t protect me. Understand that now. You will never place yourself between me and danger, or you’ll not sit on your ass for a week after I get finished.”

A frown jerked between her brows. He was daring to threaten to spank her?

“I’m gonna shoot you,” she mumbled.

Callan snorted, and Dawn wanted to grin at the sound of amusement she heard in it. But she couldn’t grin. She had to blink against the flash of horror that snapped inside her mind. The feel of shackles at her wrists, her ankles. Cold steel holding her down. She jerked before managing to control the reaction.

“Are you okay?” Ely, ever observant, checked her pulse, her hands carefully covered by the thin gloves she had specially coated to examine Breed mates.

Her touch brought no pain, only a sense of discomfort.

“I’m fine.” She shrugged the doctor off. “Go aggravate Moira and leave me alone.”

Ely grinned at the order.

Brutal eyes flashed in front of Dawn’s memory then. Hazel brown, filled with smug satisfaction, with horrible pleasure, as thin lips smiled. A smile of triumph behind a black mask.

“We’re tracking the tranq we found next to your body,” Dash told her drawing her back. “The attacker took the one he used on Moira, but whoever shot at him frightened him away before he could retrieve the one he used on you. We’re hoping we can trace him with it.”

“What shooter?” She wanted to shake her head, but she was afraid to. Afraid any shift in her body would bring another flash of horror.

“Someone shot at your attacker. Someone positioned in the trees, we suspect. We haven’t found a sign of him, or his scent. We hoped you had.”

Dawn blinked back at Dash. “There was another unknown out there?” she asked faintly. “That’s not possible.”

“All guests were accounted for when we got back to the house,” Dash continued. “There were none missing. All our men were accounted for and none of them took the shot. We were rushing to your location when it was fired.”

“He was going to cut me.” The edge of the blade over her face flashed before her mind. “Mark me.”

“We heard.” The ice in Seth’s voice was frightening to hear. She had never heard him so cold, so killingly furious.

“We heard everything on the link,” Callan told her, and his voice was just as dangerous, just as lethal. “When the shot fired, he disappeared.”

“Scents?” She frowned. Surely one of them had smelled something.

“Covered. A combination of subtle alterations that we haven’t been able to pick up on the guests. We haven’t placed the underlying scent yet,” Callan told her.

“Capzasin.” She licked her dry lips slowly. “I could smell it on him, but it was wearing off even then. I recognized the underlying scent.”

She had to clench her teeth to hold back the fear that wanted to grow inside her then, the panic. Ten years of training and still, it nearly escaped.

“Who?” Seth’s single word echoed with the need for blood.

She stared up at him miserably, wishing she could hold back the words, wishing she could hide what she knew.

“Dawn?” Dash’s voice was lower, commanding. “What did you recognize?”

She turned back to him. Better to see his eyes rather than Seth’s.

“The labs,” she whispered, her gaze flicking to Callan. “The eyes, the voice, the underlying scent. It was the soldier…” She inhaled roughly and jerked her gaze from them, her jaw tightening.

“No.” Callan’s growl rumbled from his throat. “He’s dead. They’re all dead, Dawn.”

She shook her head. “He’s not dead.”

She knew he wasn’t dead. He had touched her, held her down; she had seen his eyes and his smile and she had known. And beneath the sense-numbing scent of Capzasin had been the scent of a unique rot, an evil she didn’t want to remember.

“You remember the labs?” Dash asked then.

“I remember him.” But the memories were returning and she knew it. She could feel them moving inside her, gripping her soul with sharp talons and raking across it.

The pain was almost enough to steal her breath. She refused to look at Seth, refused to let him see fear in her eyes again.

“Dawn, it’s not possible,” Callan snapped. “I made certain of it.”

She inhaled roughly and turned back to him. “I saw those tapes, over and over, for years,” she whispered. “Dayan made me watch them, Callan. For hours on end. I know his voice. I remember his eyes and I remember his scent. Like a rotting soul mixed with the scent of the man. I remember it.” Her eyes locked with his and she flinched at the pain she read there. “He managed to escape, or he wasn’t there when the labs blew. But it was him.”

Callan’s fists clenched as he glanced over at Seth. Dawn refused to follow his gaze, refused to let Seth see what she was feeling, the panic beginning to ride inside her, the fear that rolled in her stomach and had the bile gathering at the back of her throat.

“I’m sorry,” Callan suddenly whispered, his face smoothing out, his expression becoming cold, remote. “I failed you again, didn’t I?”

Dawn sighed. “You’re not Superman, Callan. What happened then or now isn’t your fault.”

She ignored Seth’s muttered curse and Ely’s worried gaze as she pushed herself from the pillows. Her wrist was wrapped, her ankle tender, and her head throbbed as though gremlins were ripping holes in her brain.

“Ely, I have a headache.” She sighed tiredly. “Do you have afix?”

“An injection,” she answered. “You have a concussion. I still have yet to treat it.”

“Then treat it before those pickaxes burrowing in my brain do some real damage.” She lifted her hand and gingerly felt the knot at the back of her head.

“Dawn, talk to me,” Callan bit out. “You have to be wrong about this.”

Dawn closed her eyes as Ely prepared the injection. She wasn’t wrong. She wanted to be. They had no idea how much she wanted to be wrong, but every sense had been tuned into her surroundings then. The animal she had learned to control had taken in everything.

“He’s older now,” she mused. “Not as strong, but just as arrogant, and just as cocky. And perhaps more insane than ever. He was possessive. You heard that?”

“He’s playing with you,” Callan snarled. “It’s not the same man.”

“Yeah, it was.” She steeled herself as Ely placed the syringe against her arm and injected the medicine into her system.

She felt distant, separated from what she knew and what she felt.

“He wore gloves and camouflage clothing,” she told them. “A black mask. The clothes were treated to shield his scent, and the smell of Capzasin was wearing off. His voice was a little huskier, but it has a distinctive sound of lust.” She almost, just almost, flinched as the voice from the past echoed around her. “The eyes were the same, but there was more madness in them, as though he’s slipped over an edge that he was teetering on before.”

“You don’t fully remember the labs,” Seth rasped from where he stood beside her. “You said you didn’t remember.”

She swallowed tightly. She felt numb, the numb that comes before realization.

“You should have recognized the voice, Callan. You just don’t want to. I don’t blame you that he’s out there. You can’t kill them all.” She shrugged as though it didn’t matter.

The pain was easing in her head, the pressure against her scalp receding as Ely’s drugs began to reduce the headache and the swelling in her brain.

Her fists clenched in the comforter beneath her as she felt those shackles against her flesh again, felt her own blood dampening her skin.

This was going to be bad, she thought. Could she control the pain and the fear that would swamp her when those memories returned?

She touched her forehead and fought them back. All it took was control. She was weak right now; she knew how weak she became when she was concussed, how hard it was to keep from drowning beneath the fogging memories that wanted to roll over her.

“He has my knife.” She could feel the weight missing against her thigh.

Callan cursed as he turned away and paced across the room. Dash watched her silently, and she could feel Seth at her side, the rage barely contained as he fought the information.

“We’ve searched every inch of this island,” Dash finally said. “We’ve found nothing. Whoever he is, he’s hiding himself well.”

“We’ll clear the island,” Seth retorted. “Get the guests out of here and see what he does.”

“No.” Dawn would have shaken her head, but her brain still felt a little edgy.

“Don’t tell me no, Dawn,” he snapped furiously. “I won’t risk your life this way.”

“And I won’t risk yours,” she said calmly.

She felt too calm. She knew what was coming though. It wouldn’t take long before the fallout began.

“We’re clearing the island.”

“Then we’ll transport you to Sanctuary and have you locked in a bunker for your own protection.”

“You don’t want to try that,” he warned her quietly, though his voice rasped with shocked fury.

She turned to look at him then. She loved him. She loved him until she felt as though her heart would burst with it.

“We play this out here.” She eased to the side of the bed. “I need a shower, if no one cares. I need to wash the stink off me. Dash, have our shooter, Byron, flown in. He’s the best eyes we have, even better than Jonas. I want him on the top of the house.”

“He’s here,” Callan snarled.

The anger in the room was going to smother her. It was weighing down on her like a heavy, wet blanket as the testosterone pouring through the three men nearly overwhelmed her.

“Moira’s to go back out tonight. I want her with Styx. Tell him his chocolate will become nonexistent if he babies her. I want her back up to peak. I’ll meet with the team in a few hours…”

“You’re no longer lead, Dawn,” Dash reminded her calmly.

“Get over yourself, Dash,” she grunted as she reached the bathroom door. “I trained for this. He’s my mate. If you don’t like it, then go growl at Elizabeth, because I don’t want to hear it.”

“Elizabeth growls back,” he muttered as she closed the door behind her and leaned back against it.

The shaking was starting now. The tremors were working through her muscles and she had to swallow tightly before turning on the hot water and pouring the basin full of a scented liquid soap. Its scent was strong, hopefully enough to mask the smell of fear from Dash and Callan. Because she was scared. More scared than she had been since Dayan’s death.

The past was returning with a vengeance and she didn’t know if she could bear it.

Seth stared at the closed door, then at the Breeds that watched it as well.

“She’s terrified,” he said softly.

Callan sighed heavily as he raked his hands through his hair and gave him a brutally fierce look. “I’ve not smelled fear like that rolling off her since we were in the labs. And it makes me crazy. Son of a bitch. Those bastards nearly destroyed her there.” He stalked across the bedroom. “There was nothing we could do. No way to help her. And there’s no way to help her now.”

“Yes, there is,” Dash said. “We find him and slice his throat for him. It’s that simple.”

“Her blood pressure is also elevated and the hormonal readings on her blood work are off the charts,” Ely said as she moved from the small desk where she had set up the analysis equipment she had brought with her. “If she follows the pattern as she does with the nightmares, she’ll head out at dark to hunt.”

“The hell she will.” Seth wasn’t having it. He glared at the doctor, then Dash and Callan. “She does not leave this house.”

“Then it’s your job to keep her in it.” Dash shrugged, his expression savage though his eyes glimmered with an edge of humor. “Try taking her to the exercise room you have in the basement. Let her work it off there; otherwise the adrenaline will make her crazy. Dawn’s survived, Seth, admirably, by remaking herself. Don’t try to change who and what she is now. Let her fight it out, even if she has to fight with you.”

“She’ll have to fight,” Callan injected. “She has to let the rage out or it festers into the worst of the nightmares.”

“I’ll handle Dawn. I want that shooter and the bastard that attacked her found,” Seth snapped, angry with both the situation and the men who gave their advice so easily.

They wanted to continue to pamper her, and, Seth admitted, he wanted nothing more in this world than to protect her himself. But Dawn wouldn’t be protected. She was ten years past the ability to allow anyone to stand between her and danger.

It didn’t mean he wouldn’t try.

And she had been in that bathroom alone long enough.

“I want a progress report before nightfall,” he ordered coldly, moving to the bathroom. “And I want that bastard found, Dash. I want him found and I want his blood.”

He jerked open the bathroom door and stepped inside, closing and locking the door carefully behind him.

Steam rolled from the shower, but Dawn wasn’t standing beneath the spray. Seth took just enough time to toe his shoes off before he jerked open the door to the large shower and felt his heart break with grief and pain.

Dawn wasn’t crying. Dawn never cried. How many times had he heard that over the years? Tears did not roll down her cheeks—instead they sliced through her soul. She lifted her head and stared back at him, the eyes golden brown, and filled with pain, as she stared up at him from where she sat, her legs pulled up to her bare breasts, her back against the shower wall, the water falling around her.