Alphas Unleashed (37 page)

Zoey opened her mouth to protest but George froze midsentence and stared at Aron, eyes glazed over like no one was home.

Aron stood still as a marble statue.

“What are you doing?” She shoved at Aron’s shoulder, trying to get him to release George’s hand. “Don’t hurt him.”

Aron turned those dark eyes on her and what she saw behind them paralyzed her. Nothing human stared back at her from those eyes. No soul. He looked like a machine, an empty computer downloading data.

She tensed to punch him when George coughed and staggered back. “Whoa, there, son. That was interesting.”

Aron stepped forward and caught the old man when his knees started to buckle. “You should rest, you old geezer.”

George laughed out loud and allowed Aron to help him into his house. “We friends now, boy?”

Zoey shook her head and followed them inside through the short hallway to George’s bedroom where his wife’s handmade doilies still hung on the walls and her quilt still covered the bed. What the hell just happened? Had Aron just called him an old geezer?

“Yes, sir. We most definitely are friends.” Aron helped George lie down and placed a quilt over him. She stood propped in the doorway, trying to figure out what was happening here. Sir and a tuck in? Aron turned to her and she raised an eyebrow.

“What is going on? What did you do to him?”

“Don’t worry, Zoey. He’s fine. I didn’t hurt him.”

George piped up from the bed. “I’m fine. Go on home now and let me sleep.”

Zoey looked at Aron and didn’t move a muscle. “What did you do to him?”

Aron crossed to the door and stood before her, so close that the heated air exiting her lungs flowed off his massive chest and warmed the skin on her face. “Let’s go. I want to take a shower and grab a bite to eat. I need to use your laptop, Google a few people and print some maps. Then I’ll get out of your hair.”

Zoey craned her neck back and looked up into Aron’s face. Since when did he start talking like a modern asshole instead of a prehistoric one? “I want to interview you and post it on my blog.”

He met her gaze and lifted one hand to lightly skim up and down the side of her face. “Okay. But audio only, no video. I know you’re careful, Zoey, but I can’t have the Triads looking for either one of us. You’ll have to use a voice scrambler and make sure they can’t track you through your web host or credit card.”

What the hell happened to the guy who’d never seen a truck before? Now he was talking about the Triads like they were an accepted fact? The Triads were more mysterious and legendary than the Illuminati, the Masons, and the darkest secrets of the C.I.A. combined. Rumors of their existence filtered through the web like shadows and mist. The Triads were reported by a rare handful to be powerful aliens who lived on Earth, walked among us and ran everything from top to bottom. World governments, organized crime, large corporations, banks and every military organization on the planet supposedly answered to a Triad.

Trouble was, no one really knew what they were. Did Triad mean three aliens? Three branches of wacked-out alien government? Three laws? Three different alien species? Either no one knew, or no one was talking.

Zoey suspected any human who did discover the truth died soon after.

But not Aron. He knew. He spoke of them as matter-of-fact.

Zoey blinked away her surprise and led him outside, through the shadowed yard to her house. She showed him to her sister’s suite and told him to shower first. He didn’t ask how to use anything and she didn’t offer to show him. When she heard the water turn off she spent a few minutes writing down questions and trying to wrap her head around everything Aron. She had a pretty decent list, but wasted two-thirds of her time staring at her king-sized bed and wondering how small it would feel with him in it. She couldn’t discipline her brain, couldn’t stop thinking about making love to a complete stranger. Except it wouldn’t be love, just sex. Hot sex. Hot alien sex. With someone she’d only known a few hours.

She looked at her reflection in the mirror above her walnut dresser. Her blonde curls were a fiasco, tangled and matted to her head from the combination of her hat and very unladylike sweat. Her face was smudged and three scratches were on her cheek. No blood at least, but no makeup or lip gloss either. She looked like a wild cavewoman from some nineteen forties black-and-white horror flick. Me Jane. You Tarzan. Ugh-ugh. Even worse, the black circles under her eyes made her look like a vampire from
Salem’s Lot.

Here she was thinking about sex while she looked like a complete and total mess.

Time to stop whining and move. Keep moving. Keep breathing. Keep hunting for answers. That was all she’d done since Jiselle’s death.

With a herculean effort, she willed herself back to George’s house and gathered the metal into an old pillowcase. She lugged it back and dumped it in her garage before heading into her bathroom to strip. Showered and changed into soft, smiley-face PJ pants and a bright yellow tank, she headed for the hall closet and her pathetic selection of first-aid supplies. Everywhere the manacles had rested he’d been raw and bloody. It had to sting like the devil in the shower. She had some antibiotic ointment and basic bandages. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.

She rapped with one knuckle against the closed door in case he was asleep. The door opened on lightly squeaky hinges and she did her God’s honest best not to stare. He had a navy-blue towel wrapped around his waist. His hair was sleek and wet. Combed back from his chiseled face, the thick length fell past his shoulders just like every girl’s dark vampire fantasy. His chest and shoulders were massive and looked hard as stone before tapering down into a trim waist and cut abs that disappeared beneath the towel in her own personal hell’s version of peek-a-boo. She wanted to rip it from his body and crawl all over him.

“I brought bandages.”

He stared, eyes lingering on the tight nipples saying hello to him through the thin yellow tank.

“Thank you, Zoey. But there’s no need.” He placed his hands next to one another, wrists up, and held them out for her inspection. His skin was clean and the wounds had closed. His new skin was like a miracle.

She stepped into the room and dropped her medical supplies on her sister’s white chest of drawers, forgotten. Zoey turned back to him and grabbed his wrists so she could run her hands over his skin. How could this be? She didn’t trust her eyes, but felt nothing under her sensitive fingertips but soft skin and muscle. Uncaring what he thought, she dropped to her knees and inspected his ankles, running her hands over flesh that not an hour ago had been worn down to bone in several places.

Stumped, she sat back with her feet tucked beneath her and placed her hands on her hips. “How did you heal so quickly?” She continued to stare at his ankles, a string of possible answers flowing through her mind…at least until she noticed the bulging calf muscles and soft hair on his legs.

Oh, God. She lifted her head so quickly she thought for a second it might snap clean off her neck. But that was an even bigger mistake. She knelt in front of him.
Right
in front of him.

Oh, if only the floor could swallow her up and make her disappear! Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to happen. The heat in his eyes as he looked down at her told her he didn’t want it to. She scrambled to her feet and took a step back. “I…” She wrung her hands and grabbed at the bandages, desperate for something to do. “I’ll get you the clothes George brought over. I forgot. Sorry.”

“Wait, Zoey. Please.” She turned back to face him, sure her face was fifteen different shades of red. “Would you look at my neck?”

She hesitated, torn by the desire to touch him, and the urge to run.

“Please. I can’t see the back of my neck. I need to know.” There was something in his voice that called to the deepest part of her. Pain. It was pain.

“Need to know what?”

“If their claim on my flesh is completely gone.” He took the bandages from her hands slowly, as if afraid she’d run. She might. But his words hurt, a physical ache that had nothing to do with running around a mountain all night, or pacing for hours in George’s garage. Her feet and her head ached. This was more. This was inside her heart.

“Was it the Triscani?” When he nodded she asked what she both needed and feared to know. “Why did they take you?”

Aron grabbed her hand where it rested against her thigh and pulled her forward to begin her inspection of his neck. He placed her hand on his shoulder, turned his face away from her and lifted his hair. She had to stand on tiptoe to see anything, but she craned her neck and listened. “Because of my sister. They wanted to find her and destroy her.”

His sister? Zoey’s chest tightened like she was a cork in a bottle of wine and someone had started twisting the corkscrew down her spine to pull her apart. She placed both of her hands on his shoulders to hide their trembling. “Why? Why did they want her?”

The air in her lungs froze as she waited for his answer.
The Answer
. The answer to everything.

“Their leader is looking for a girl, born on Earth, a girl prophesied to determine the outcome of his war with the home world.”

“A girl?” She looked up, met his dark green gaze and held perfectly still waiting for more. This was the moment she’d been chasing for months. Her sister. His. Innocent girls hunted and killed because of a stupid alien prophecy? “You people are big on the whole prophecy thing, aren’t you?”

“Yes. They didn’t know who my sister really was. They made a mistake, thought she could be the girl from the prophecy and decided to kill her.”

“And did they? Kill her?” Zoey looked down to see that she was squeezing his shoulders so tightly her knuckles were white. He didn’t complain, didn’t chastise her. She loosened her grip and lightly rubbed the offended muscles in apology. But she couldn’t apologize, her throat was frozen closed with dread in anticipation of his answer.

“I don’t know. They killed my mother and separated all of us. I haven’t seen them since. I know my brother lives, it was his mate that helped me escape. But my sister? I don’t know what happened to her.” His fists clenched at his sides. “I can’t feel her anymore.”

“And are they still hunting for this Earth girl?”

“In all the years I was held captive, their leader came to see me but a few times. Each time was to gloat that he’d killed the girl again.” Aron lifted his left arm and wrapped one blonde ringlet around his finger.

His answer didn’t make any sense. “What do you mean again? How many girls have they killed?” She whispered her questions, terrified of the answers. Her knees wobbled and he wrapped his free arm around her waist to hold her up. Pressed against him, she felt safe for the first time since her sister’s death. Safe. It was such a lie. But Aron felt strong. Right. Ignorance was her enemy, it kept her weak. But with Aron, she’d know the truth. He’d make her strong, too.

“They’ve murdered countless humans to try to eliminate her. Millions.” With the words came images, memories he’d absorbed from the Triscani he’d killed raged in his mind…and hers.

Jiselle’s screams echoed through her soul. Jiselle’s sweet face twisted in pain and horror, and the Triscani who’d killed her had enjoyed it. Relished a young girl’s pain.

Aron had killed the one, the monster who’d taken Jiselle.

Her knees gave out and he swept her up into his arms and carried her to the bed. Leaning his shoulders against the headboard, he settled her across his lap. Her cheek rested pressed to his bare chest and she listened to the steady beat of his heart under her ear. He was warm. Alive. She focused on the sound and pushed the screams of the dying away until she could function again.

“By the gods, Zoey. I’m sorry. I never meant for you to feel any of that.” Aron’s right arm was wrapped around her waist, holding her close while his left hand massaged her temple and combed through her damp mess of hair. He kissed her forehead softly, reverently. “I’m so sorry.”

She couldn’t summon the will to be angry with him. His torment came with the noise in her head, his pain. The Triscani as a whole had killed millions of humans. The five monsters Aron himself had eliminated? They’d murdered hundreds and the memory of each act, the rage and evil behind every slaying, now lived inside Aron’s mind. How was he still sane? How could he summon the tenderness with which he held her? How was it possible for him to be anything but a crazed monster? She would be, if she’d had to live through all that.

“How long? How long were you their prisoner?” She waited for his answer.

“A very long time, Zoey. Since I was fourteen summers.” Holding her gaze, he reached up and pulled his hair to the side, giving her a clear view of the right side of his neck. She could see better now, sitting on top of his legs. She could see his skin, perfect despite centuries of captivity, and smell Jiselle’s unscented bar of white soap overlapping the overwhelmingly male scent of him.

“How long?” She lifted her right hand and ran it over his collar bone and the side of his neck to inspect for wounds. She already knew she wouldn’t find any lasting injury, but she needed to touch him. He was the only thing holding her together.

He sighed and closed his eyes. He dropped his head forward until his forehead rested against her biceps and she shifted to look at the back of his neck as he spoke. “Eight hundred forty-two years, twelve days, fourteen hours, twenty-seven minutes and four seconds.”