With Everything I Am (The Three #2)(122)

She decided to wait it out. She’d created this, now she had to bear the consequences.

However, apparently, he was done, for he asked, “Do you understand?”

Sonia did understand.

Boy, did she understand.

She lifted her hand to the side of his face, her fingers going into his hair but her thumb swept along his cheekbone and she replied softly, “I understand.”

He studied her face and must have approved of what he saw for the intensity moved out of his, his big body relaxed into hers and his fingers started stroking her back.

“So we’re good?” he queried, his deep voice as soft as hers.

No, they weren’t good.

But they were as good as they were going to get. And, as always, Sonia had to accept that.

Feeling his warm strong body against hers, gazing into his handsome face, allowing the stroking of his fingers to relax her she thought perhaps she was wrong.

Perhaps, if she simply gave up her dream, she could do this and she vowed at that moment she would.

Therefore, she nodded.

“All right, little one,” he was still speaking softly but, for some reason, his arms were getting tighter, “we have one more thing to talk about.”

Committed to her new vow, Sonia nodded again.

Then he stated, “You heard Regan and Ryon arrive.”

Forgetting her vow completely, Sonia automatically jerked in his arms to try to get away.

Those arms tightened further.

Panicked, she stared at him and denied, “I didn’t.”

“You did,” he returned firmly. “You heard the person fall outside yesterday as well.” Her panic rising, Sonia kept pushing against his arms but he held her fast. “You hear a lot you don’t let onto hearing, you smell a lot too.” At the extent of his knowledge, she started to struggle but he didn’t let her gain an inch. “You see a lot too. More than any human does.”

“I don’t,” she lied.

“Sonia,” he warned.

She shook her head.

His brows drew together and he asked in a far less soft tone, “Why are you hiding it?”

She stared at him and then something pierced her panic.

He’d heard Regan and Ryon as well and the person falling outside yesterday and he’d heard Waring arriving at the cabin weeks before. And he smelled them between her legs, just as she did. Thinking about it, she’d noticed it often in a distracted way that he could sense the same things she could.

And her attackers that night, they’d sniffed her. They could smell her and she’d forgotten or blocked it out of her mind but she’d thought, at the time, they were just like her.

It was because they were Callum’s kind.

So much was going on she never thought about it but Callum consistently exhibited the same abilities, the same gifts of sight, hearing and smell that she did.

And he never hid it. Not once.

“You have heightened senses,” she breathed in wonder.

He continued to watch her with knitted brows. “All my people do.”

“They do?”

“Yes, Sonia, they do,” he replied and his arms gave her a squeeze. “All my people do. What I want now is for you to admit that you do too.”

She didn’t know what to make of this. She’d never met anyone who had her gifts except her father. She had always been the strange one, worried about what people would think, how they’d react if they knew.

But Callum was just like her.

She stared then she swallowed.

Then she thought about her destiny and how it brought her to this man who shared her gifts.

Then she took a huge chance, hoping her father wouldn’t disapprove and, quietly, she shared.

“Father told me never to tell anyone,” she whispered and watched his brows unknit and lift.

“Why the f**k not?” he asked irately.

She shook her head and answered, “Humans don’t have my gifts. He said I should be proud of them but I had to hide them from everyone. Everyone. I could never tell a living soul. And I didn’t. Even Gregor and Yuri don’t know.”

His mouth got tight at that but he didn’t speak.

“If they knew, Callum, they’d think I was a freak,” she went on to explain. “They might even fear me.” She pressed closer and her voice dropped back to a whisper. “They might even harm me. My senses are that good. They could think I was a mutant. They could want to study me.”

As her lifelong, perhaps hysterical fears were verbalized, Callum gave her a shake. “Baby doll, no one is going to hurt you.”

“Not now,” she agreed. “I have you to protect me. But before, who knows?” she cried. “It’s not just that, it’s more,” she added. Now that she’d let it go, after so, so long, she couldn’t stop the information flowing. “Animals don’t fear me. And I’m not just talking dogs and cats, I’m talking all animals. Birds and the wild animals Papa and I would see when we were out in the woods. And even more, I can feel eyes on me, smell people from far away but I know if they’re good or they’re bad. I’d been sensing your people watching me for years and I knew I had nothing to fear. I also knew those men who attacked me that night before they came into my house. I knew them because I’d been sensing them for weeks.”