17. Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

F ury

I set Tally's beloved photograph out of the way and tug her onto my lap, humming a song of my people as I rock her.

" Aylich nockten bayo ," I sing, " Aylich aften wo ." Gently using my claws to comb through her hair and soothe her scalp, I explain, "It's a song we sing before a difficult hunt, to uplift ourselves, give ourselves strength and purpose."

I kiss the top of her head. "I give this to you, Tally. All the optimism and hope and power you need for the next part of your journey."

She twists to plant a kiss on my lips. It's far from erotic, just the opposite. It's sweet and affectionate.

"Thanks, Fury. That means a lot."

"Maybe it wasn't so generous, Tally. I needed it, too, because… I'm ready to tell you my story now."

This feels momentous, even as I'm locked away from the outside world with this singular, remarkable woman who looks at me and sees a person, not an Other or a symbol or an enemy .

So I take a deep breath, pushing down the fear and the fury and the urge to keep my darkness hidden.

And slowly, haltingly at first, I speak, my words dragged from the depths of memory like a rusted blade wrenched from a festering wound. It hurts, Goddess it hurts, to give voice to the horrors I've spent so long trying to outrun.

But Tally doesn't flinch, doesn't look away. She holds my gaze steadily, her hand a warm anchor on my arm as I speak of those early days on Earth. I relate the terror and confusion of finding myself ripped away from everything I knew, thrust into a hostile world that saw me as something less than sentient. Less than an animal, even. A specimen to be studied, quantified. Experimented on.

"They kept us penned up like livestock." My voice sounds distant to my own ears, detached in a way that belies the old, smoldering rage simmering just beneath the surface.

"It wasn't bad enough that I was torn from my home and family, just a young adult with no anchor, no support. No, they yanked me from the rest, and transported one hundred of us to some laboratory and put us in cages. Cages, Tally!"

Fuck. A thousand fucks. I'd hoped I could expose myself, give her a window to what makes me tick. Maybe knowing the why of me would help her care for me despite what an asshole I am. Was I really so na?ve that I thought I could get through this without being buried in my old pain? I am a special kind of stupid.

She edges closer, keeping her gaze from mine, and runs her fingers through my shoulder pelt. "You don't have to say another word, Fury. Not now, not ever. I never have to hear the rest. You've said enough."

This woman is so sweet, so compassionate and caring, but she's wrong. I might as well lance the boil, spill the poison, vomit out even the worst of it now. If I'm right about what's happening between us, if we're really connecting, perhaps setting the stage for an actual… relationship, she should know .

I press my lips to the top of her head and continue. "They ran test after test, poking and prodding and taking samples. Trying to figure out what made us tick."

Tally makes a small, wounded sound, her fingers tightening on my forearm. "Fury, I can't even imagine… I'm so sorry…"

A bitter laugh scrapes my throat raw. "Sorry? You've got nothing to apologize for, Tally. You're not the one who strapped me down and cut me open just to see how fast I'd heal. Or waterboarded me, or zapped me with electricity to gauge my pain tolerance."

She flinches at that, a spasm of guilt contorting her delicate features. For a moment I'm confused—it's not as though she was there, like she had any part in the horrors inflicted upon me and mine.

"I knew what they did was bad, but I didn't dream their treatment was so terrible."

Every muscle in my body tightens as her words ring in my ears. Those tortures—experiments, they called them—were kept secret from the public. Wouldn't want the citizens to know the cruelties their government was capable of, right?

"What… did you know, Tally?" My question comes out slowly, the words harsh, the tone paranoid. By the way she pulls away from me, it's clear she knows our conversation has shifted from my confession to what's going to become an interrogation.

"I… uh…"

Her eyes are wild as she swallows convulsively.

"Tally." Her name falls from my lips like a lead weight, heavy with dawning dread. "What aren't you telling me?"

She heaves a heavy sigh, and, her gaze avoiding mine, continues, her voice monotone. "I had a starter marriage to Andrew Marsh. My maiden name is Smith. "

She pauses, waiting for my mind to fill in the blanks. It does, alright, like the last piece of a complicated puzzle. A moment ago, sadness and pain and the faint echoes of my impotence had filled my mind. Now, the only things I'm aware of are growing suspicion and anger rising from sparks to flames.

I don't jump in to save her, don't tell her she doesn't have to continue, although that's what she offered me. Instead rage explodes along my synapses. I don't say another word, waiting for her to confess all of it.

"My dad was Dr. Anton Smith."

My body is vibrating. I'm shaking with such intensity, I absently wonder if my limbs will simply fall off my body. Tally's father was Dr. Smith. When we had moments in our cages where we were close enough to talk to our fellow prisoners, we called him the butcher. His experiments were so brutal that though our group started with one hundred, only seventy-two were released.

My mouth is working, but no words are coming out. All I know is I don't want to breathe the same air as Tally. I certainly don't want her flesh near mine.

How could she do this? Does she hate Others with the same passion as her father, the butcher? Has she been stringing me along? Making me fall for her in order to break my heart the way her father broke my body and my spirit?

She knew. Didn't she just admit "I knew what they did was bad"? This whole time, she'd known and hadn't said a word. She let me pour out my guts to her, relive the worst moments of my miserable life—she encouraged it—all while hiding this single damning truth.

I'm on my feet before I realize I've moved, putting distance between us as though I've been scalded. Tally reaches for me, eyes huge and pleading in her bloodless face.

"Fury, please, let me explain…"

"Explain what?" I snarl, baring teeth that suddenly feel too large for my mouth. "That you've been lying to me this whole time? Playing some kind of fucked up game while I spill my trauma at your feet?"

Shaddai startles awake at my raised voice, whining in confusion and distress. I barely spare him a glance, all my attention locked on the woman I thought…fuck, I don't know what I thought.

That she was different, maybe. That she saw me. The real me, beneath the rage and the scars.

Fool. I'm a fucking fool.

"It's not like that!" Tears spill, unchecked, down Tally's cheeks, but she doesn't back down, doesn't cower. "I wanted to tell you, I did. At first, I wasn't sure you were one of my dad's test subjects. It wasn't confirmed until just now. I didn't know how to tell you my maiden name was Smith, that my dad was responsible for your pain. I didn't want you to hate me, was scared you'd look at me as though I'm just like him."

"Aren't you?" The question is pure acid, stripping my throat to the bone. "Like father, like daughter, right?"

"You know that's not true." She's openly crying now, the words thick and clogged. "I am not my father, Fury. Nor do I condone what he did, not for a single second. When you fell to Earth, I was only eight years old."

I want to believe her. I want to grasp at the sincerity in her voice, the devastation painted across her face.

But I can't. Can't see past the red clouding my vision or hear past the roaring in my ears, can't think past the animal panic clawing at my guts. My senses are filled with white walls, a metal table, the glint of a scalpel, and the sound of clinically detached voices taking notes on the decibel-level of my pain-filled screams.

"I can't do this." The words taste like ashes, like surrender, but I choke them out anyway. "I can't… I need to not be here right now."

Wheeling away from her stricken expression, I make for the door, hardly noting the frigid blast of air that greets me. Behind me, Tally lurches to her feet, staggering under the pain of her injured ankle.

"Fury, wait! Please don't…"

But I've already jammed my feet into my boots and am slamming the door behind me as though I can shut out the truth, the hurt, the bitter tang of betrayal coating my tongue.

The snow swallows me whole, a barren, endless expanse of white that mirrors the numbness seeping into my bones. I run, without a coat, heedless of direction or destination, my pulse a deafening roar in my ears.

Run. It's all I know to do. All I've done for decades, centuries, a lifetime spent fleeing from a pain that has no end, no balm.

And yet, even as I plunge deeper into the merciless cold… I know the truth.

There is no outrunning this. No hiding from the simple, awful fact that the one person I'd begun to trust, to open myself to… is just one more human who lied and deceived and played me. Who sees me as something to use.

Less than a person. Less than a male. Less, always and forever less.

The howl building in my throat has nothing human in it. It echoes across the treed expanse, a sound of pure, boundless anguish.

My muscles change, grow more powerful. My fangs elongate. My emotions are so big, so powerful, I shift into my more feral self. It's no blessing. It simply means I'll be able to run farther before I can't run another step and finally stumble in a frigid pile of snow.

I run. I run. I run.

But I cannot escape myself, or the cruel weight of the past that dogs my every step.

I am alone. As I have been for decades. As I always will be.

And oh, how it aches.