Forsaken Duty (Red Team #9)(8)

Start at the beginning, he supposed, at the point where they lost themselves. “Tell me what you remember about the day you were taken,” he said.

Pain flicked through the edges of her eyes. Her gaze slipped to his mouth, then his chin, then the hand that held his whiskey. She shook her head. “No. I have no desire to slip back into those days.”

“Tell me about our son.”

She gasped. “He’s not your son. He’s mine.”

Owen drew a long breath, centering himself. “He’s my flesh and blood too.”

“We were together one night, Owen. It’s not enough to conceive.”

“Once is all it takes. You’ll remember the condom I used broke.” She waved that away with a flash of her hand, but he persisted. “Jax collected Augie’s DNA. I am his father.”

Addy’s eyes widened. Her nostrils flared on a broken gasp. “Is that why…is that why they took him?”

“I don’t know why they took him. It could be.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“I believe he’s with a group of boys who live inside the Omni world. These boys are called watchers. Their group is a pride. This particular pride is run by a boy named Lion. He’s a strong leader. If Augie is in Lion’s pride, then he’s in as good a place as can be until we retrieve him.”

She stared at him, then blinked. Her gaze darted about him, the sofa, the room as if energy was zinging around inside her like a tiger in a cage four sizes too small. “Wendell mentioned his theory that Augie had been taken into one of the watcher groups. I didn’t know it had been confirmed.” She lifted her crystalline blue eyes to his. “He said they named him Beetle. I wonder why?”

“It seems all the boys in prides get animal or insect names. Perhaps it has to do with a certain trait of theirs or a role the pride needs to have filled.” Did she really not know these things…or was she playing a role to throw him off some scent?

“Why did you name your son after me if you didn’t know he was mine?” Owen asked.

She lifted a shoulder. “Defiance, perhaps.”

Her eyes came back to his. Each time they did, a frisson slipped across his skin and down his spine. It was uncanny, as if, while the shell of her still looked like the woman he knew, the soul of her had been swapped out for someone else’s. Who was this woman sitting before him?

“Of course, that was before I understood who you were,” she said.

Owen frowned. “Who am I?”

She gave him a cryptic little smile then stood. “Why are you here, Owen?”

She’d make a helluva politician, so expert was her ability to say nothing. He stood as well, and when she started to move toward the door, he caught her arm at the crook of her elbow. Because he was touching her, he felt her whole body stiffen. He didn’t let her go. Instead, he turned her to face him.

“We’re not finished.”

She didn’t speak. Didn’t resist. Her face resumed its blank mask as she silently regarded him. Owen had no idea what was happening inside her head…as was no doubt her intention.

“I’m here because of you,” he said. The shadows had deepened around her eyes. She looked exhausted.

Her brows lifted. “Oh. Why?”

Why? Fucking why? Because she was his life. Though he’d believed she’d been killed a decade ago, she was still his first and last thought every day. She was the meter he’d measured every other woman by. She was why, though he might have accepted a sex partner in his life, he’d never loved anyone again.

She was as much a part of him as he was.

“How long are you staying?”

He studied her eyes, seeing nothing in them he recognized. “I don’t know. Until Jax gets back, I guess.”

She gave him a polite nod. “Then I’ll have a room made up for you.” She pulled free and walked out of the room, leaving him empty and confused and angrier than ever.





4





Addy made it out to the foyer and up the stairs, slipping behind a closed set of double doors leading into her wing of the house before collapsing against the moiré-papered wall, overtaken by the shakes. Her hands trembled. She flapped them about, releasing the energy pent up in her.

The Owen she thought she knew, the man she remembered—the real one—was here. Here. In her house. She could almost believe in him again. He’d said he’d come for her. She imagined he was angry at losing her to the world beyond the Omnis. She closed her eyes and huffed a laugh. As if she could ever rejoin the real world. This half existence she lived between the Omnis and the outside world was the closest she could come to freedom.

Maybe she’d never been in the real world at all.

Her little boy poked his head out from one of the doors in her hallway. “Mommy?”

“Troy.” She smiled at him.

He ran toward her and wrapped his arms around her waist. “Are you all right?” he asked.

The question cut her to the quick. She was the one who should be worrying about him, not the other way around. She brushed his thick brown hair back from his forehead and smiled into his light brown eyes. “Of course. I’m fine. You needn’t worry about me.”

His little face was starting to look more like a boy’s face and less like a toddler’s. He was almost six years old. Close to the age Augie was when they took him. A terrible thought occurred to her: had Owen come for Troy?