Savage Hunger: Savage, Book 1 (35 page)

A good husband
. Warrick bit back a harsh laugh at the irony of the statement.

Kevin Peters’s reaction to the news this afternoon had been fairly good considering. There’d been no tears. No violence. He’d just grown pale and tired-looking, appearing much older than his fifty-something years. His main concern had been tending to Sienna, who’d emotionally imploded at the news the father she’d always known wasn’t her biological dad.

“Anita begged me not to do it. To wipe her.” Quinton’s voice cracked and he slid his hands into his white hair, shaking his head. “She was crying. Sobbing, actually. Hysterical. Sienna looked just like her mother in the safe house, when we tried to wipe her.”

No wonder Quinton had handed the remote off to Rafferty and had hesitated to do it himself.

“Anita was one of the first humans to be wiped,” Quinton said brokenly. “And she fought me until the process was complete.”

Ice crystals slid through Warrick’s blood at the similarities to what had happened with him and Sienna. He didn’t respond. Sensed the older agent needed to purge this secret that had no doubt haunted and tormented him for decades.

“I left the country for a few years after the affair. I couldn’t see her and live with what I’d done. When I returned and Anita had another child…I just assumed she was Kevin’s.”

But she hadn’t been. She’d been Quinton’s. Sienna was—always had been—half shifter. And they might not have ever known if Sienna hadn’t taken that dart yesterday for him.

Kevin Peters had gone into the lab immediately with a sample of her blood. Running various tests to discover that it was the drug she’d been shot with—the same one the ferals had in their blood—that had awakened her dormant shifter genes. Causing her body to try to shift.

If he’d been thinking clearer, Warrick might’ve seen it last night when she’d clawed up his chest during sex. The wounds had not been from a human fingernail. But he’d been too distracted by the passionate moment, and he’d healed too fast for him to really analyze them.

Warrick’s gaze slipped to Sienna once more and his chest tightened with emotion. She looked so damn young. Vulnerable. Curled up beneath a purple comforter, even though it was an almost eighty degrees outside. One palm was tucked beneath a tear-stained cheek, the other clutched the empty space beside her.

Everything within him wanted to crawl into the twin bed next to her and pull Sienna into his arms. Comfort her and reassure himself she was still here. He’d come so damn close to losing her again.

“I always thought she took after her mother in appearance,” Warrick said quietly. “She has your eyes.”

He glanced back at Quinton. Found the man staring at the daughter he’d never realized he had. There was a torment in his gaze that Warrick couldn’t begin to imagine.

“When I was interviewing Sienna out in the woods that day,” Quinton began raggedly, his expression haunted, “she told me her mother had struggled with depression until the day she died. I keep thinking…dammit. Did Anita remember me? Remember us? Subconsciously?”

Warrick’s brows drew together as he struggled to reply. “I don’t think that’s possible. All research has shown those who were wiped retain zero memories of the time we erased from them.”

Quinton nodded and for a moment Warrick thought he spotted the sheen of tears in his eyes. Clearly the older agent wasn’t convinced.

But then neither was Warrick. His gut twisted and his throat tightened. Anita Peters had always seemed so sad. When Warrick would come over as a kid to hang out with Daniel, he’d find his friend’s mom sitting in silence, staring off into space, or out a window. Always seeming so forlorn. So deep in thought. Lost. He’d always thought she seemed kind of lost.

A shiver jetted down his spine and he swallowed hard.
Jesus
. What if they’d been wrong? What if there were some things that couldn’t be erased? Like something so simple, and so complicated, as love.

He blinked rapidly, needing to dispel the repercussions of what that would mean. Right now they had enough on their plate.

“Kevin said he should have the antidote for the ferals by morning,” Warrick muttered.

“Yes.” Quinton’s expression lightened some, as if the distraction was needed for him as well. “We’re checking the numbers in the cell phones of the dead men. See if we can trace whom they were working for.”

Warrick’s cell vibrated in his pocket, and he pulled it free and answered the call from Larson. He hung up a moment later.

“I need to drive down and assist in the relocating of the ferals to the lab.” His gaze slid uneasily back to Sienna. “Could you—”

“I’ll stay with her.” Quinton hesitated. “I’d like to talk with her when she wakes anyway.”

Warrick’s jaw tightened. He hated to leave Sienna, but knew she would be out for at least another hour or two anyway. And even with all the shit that had hit the fan, he still trusted Quinton with a bone-deep intensity.

He crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, brushing his knuckles across the softness of her cheek. The slight frown on her face eased and she sighed.

“Did you regret it?” Warrick asked before he could stop himself.

Quinton didn’t even ask for clarification, seemed to know exactly what Warrick meant. Whether Quinton had regretted wiping Anita Peters’s memory.

“Every day of my life. She was—always will be—my mate. There’s never been anyone else.” Quinton paused. “When I learned that she’d died in a car wreck, I wanted to die. Knowing she was alive and happy had always kept me going. But knowing she was dead…”

And that she’d never
been
happy. Warrick didn’t need to say it aloud, and despite his determination not to, his stomach twisted with sympathy.

“If she wakes tell her I’ll be back soon.” Warrick leaned down and brushed a kiss across Sienna’s forehead, and then left.

Sienna squeezed her eyes closed, trying not to let the tears leak out. Not wanting to open them and face her new reality.

The tranquilizer must’ve faded from her system quicker than anyone had thought, because she’d surfaced to consciousness probably fifteen minutes ago. But she hadn’t given any indication of that fact.

Once again, she’d “played dead” to listen in on Warrick’s conversation with Quinton.

My biological father.

Her stomach churned and she bit her lip to keep from crying out in pain. But it wasn’t the excruciating physical stuff she’d dealt with last tonight. Instead, it was emotional. And almost more debilitating.

Everything she’d known was an illusion. Not a lie, because
nobody
had known. Not even Quinton. But he could’ve. If he hadn’t wiped her mother’s memory.

“How much did you hear?”

The muscles in her body went rigid, and Sienna blinked her eyes open. She’d hoped he’d just leave, but apparently he’d been waiting to talk. She’d avoided any one-on-one discussion this far, and had no intention of having it now.

“I heard enough.” She sat up, shoving the blankets off her and climbing out of bed, avoiding his gaze. “Where’s my dad?”

She saw him flinch from the corner of her eye. Too bad for him. Quinton might share her blood, but she’d never think of him as her father. He stood up and moved toward her, placing a hand on her shoulder.

“Sienna—”

“What you did to my mother was deplorable.” She rounded on him, her fragile composure snapping. “You
stole
her memory against her will. And you know what? I think you were right. She did remember deep down, even if she couldn’t quite put a finger on it. But she knew something was missing.”

Anguish flashed across Quinton’s hard face and reflected in his blue eyes. Eyes that were mirrors of her own.

Bile rose in her throat and her head began to pound. This man was a stranger. A stranger who was responsible for her life. It was insane. She needed to get away. Put as much distance between herself and Quinton as possible.

She wanted her dad. Her
real
dad—Kevin Peters. The man who’d raised her, loved her, and embodied everything a father should be. Jesus, what he must be going through right now?

“I can’t deal with you,” she muttered and backed away. “You’ve destroyed my life—my father’s life—in one night.”

“I never meant to hurt you, Sienna. I never even suspected who you were until back at HQ when you started showing symptoms.”

“It doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s all just a side effect of the drug. I’m not believing a thing until I see a blood test that proves it.”

“I know it’s a little easier to deny who I am, Sienna. What you are.”

It was
a lot
easier
. She gripped her head in her hands, trying to ease the throbbing and strode from the room to put distance between them.

Quinton’s footsteps sounded behind her and she cursed, breaking into a run.

She spotted the keys to her dad’s car on the kitchen table and scooped them up, and bolted out the door.

“Sienna, stop!”

Before Quinton could reach her, she’d gotten in the car and locked the door. She ignored his thumps on the window and strained pleas for her to get out, claiming it wasn’t safe.

Bullshit.

Sienna turned on the engine and slid the gear into Reverse. The car eased out of the driveway and into the darkened street.

What a horrible man. She hated him. Hated him in a way that couldn’t be healthy. And there was no way in hell she trusted him.

If he—

“Shit!” She slammed on the brakes, the car screeching to a halt in front of the man who’d suddenly appeared in her headlights.

Rafferty.
Relief slid through her, but still she only cracked her window a bit, frowning.

“What are you doing out here?”

He stepped up to the window and grinned. “Warrick asked me to take you to him.”

Sienna glanced in her rearview, half convinced Quinton would show up any minute. She wasn’t really sure where the ferals were being held, but still she hesitated to let Rafferty in. Which was silly after he’d saved her life earlier tonight.

“How’d you know where I was?”

“I was heading over to pick you up when I saw you leave.”

A perfectly acceptable answer, but she didn’t really like the way his gaze hardened. In fact, it sent the first shiver of unease through her.

“You know, I’m just going to give Warrick a call. See if he can meet me—”

Glass flew everywhere as Rafferty’s elbow smashed into the window. Sienna shrieked, twisting her head to avoid the flying slices.

Rafferty. He was the one working on the inside. God, she was blind.

She fumbled to hold the lock down, fear igniting inside her, but he’d already reached through and unlocked it.

“Warrick!” Instinct had her screaming her mate’s name, even knowing he was miles away.

The door wrenched open and Rafferty grabbed her shirt, dragging her from the vehicle.

Her back slammed into the side of the door, bruising her spine and knocking the air from her lungs. The flash of a blade at her neck had her stilling, even as the fear inside her quadrupled.

“You stupid—”

Rafferty’s words ended on a groan as a shadow hurled into him, knocking him to the ground. Quinton shifted back to human, struggling with the younger man as he screamed,
“
Get the hell out of here, Sienna.”

Her throat tightened and she moved automatically to obey, but her steps faltered as Rafferty gained the upper hand and pinned Quinton to the ground.

The knife arced in the headlights, a quick flash of silver that coincided with her scream.

The sound of the blade entering flesh seemed unnaturally loud and devastating and Quinton’s body twisted with the impact.

“No!” Her eyes burned with immediate tears of horror.

Instinct had her moving toward Quinton instead of away, and she knelt down beside the dying man.

“No,” she whispered again. The knife was still embedded in his chest, right above where his heart should be. Had it pierced it?

Should she try to remove the knife?

She pulled off her T-shirt, not caring that she only wore a bra now, and pressed it around the wound.

“Hang on, Quinton.”

Quinton’s hand covered hers and he winced, his eyes glassing over. “I’m so sorry, Sienna. Please…at least know that.”

Tears poured down her cheek as his eyes closed. She hadn’t wanted to care for this man. How could she go from hate to
this
? It felt like her damn heart was shredding.

“You bastard,” she raged at Rafferty through her tears. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“Time to go, princess.” Rafferty grabbed her by the hair, jerking her back from Quinton and toward the car.

“Please,” she begged, struggling to free herself. “We need to help him.”

“The jerk’s already dead.”

“But shifters heal fast—”

“Sorry to break it to you, but a knife in the heart is pretty much a deathblow whether you’re human or shifter.” Rafferty shoved her into the back of the car and slammed the door.