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He stepped closer, gave a mild shake of his head. "You don't seem crazy to me."
"You don't know," she replied, her voice quiet. "Nobody knows, except for Amelie."
"Nobody knows what, Savannah?"
"That I...see things." She let the statement hang between them for a long moment, her gaze searching his eyes, watching his face for a reaction. "I saw the attack on Rachel. I saw how she was murdered. I saw...the monster that did it."
Gideon held himself still at her mention of the word monster. He kept his expression neutral, a carefully schooled show of outward calm and patient understanding, despite that inside his Breed instincts were on full-alert, alarm bells clanging. "What do you mean, you saw your friend's killing? You were there?"
She slowly shook her head. "I saw it afterward, when I found one of Rachel's bracelets outside Professor Keaton's office. She was wearing it that night. I touched the bracelet, and it showed me everything." Her lips pressed together, as though she wasn't sure she should go on. "I can't explain how or why, but when I touch an object...I can see a glimpse of its past."
"And when you touched her bracelet, you saw your friend's death."
"Yes." Savannah stared at him with a gaze that was far too wise. Bleak with a dark, unswerving knowledge. "I saw Rachel being murdered by something inhuman, Gideon. It looked like a man, but it couldn't have been. Not with sharp fangs and hideous glowing yellow eyes."
Holy. Bloody. Hell.
Forgetting the fact that she had just confessed to having a powerful extrasensory ability--something many mortals faked but very few genuinely possessed--it was Savannah's other revelation that had Gideon's veins going tight and cold as she spoke.
When he didn't answer right away, Savannah blew out a humorless laugh. "Now you do think I'm crazy."
"No." No, he didn't think she was crazy. Far from it. She was intelligent and beautiful, a hundred years of wisdom in those soft brown eyes that hadn't even seen twenty years of life yet. She was extraordinary, and now Gideon wondered if there was something more to Savannah that he had yet to understand.
But before he could pose the questions--questions about her ESP talent and whether her body bore any unusual birthmarks--she turned away from him and the answer was right there in his line of sight. A small red mark on her left shoulder blade, only partially visible beneath the thin strap of her white tank top. It was unmistakable: a teardrop falling into the cradle of a crescent moon.
Savannah wasn't merely human.
She was a Breedmate.
Ah, fuck. This wasn't good. Not good at all. There was a protocol to be observed when it came to the discovery of women like Savannah living among the Homo Sapiens public at large. That protocol certainly didn't include seduction or duplicity, two things Gideon was currently teetering between like a man on a high wire.
"Since I've obviously rendered you mute with my mental instability," she went on, as his uncharacteristic loss for words or a quick solution eluded him, "then I might as well tell you about the other glimpse I saw. There was a sword in the Art History's collection, a very old sword. The one item that went missing the other night. I touched that sword recently too, Gideon." She turned back to look at him. "It showed me the same kind of creature--a group of them, in fact. Using that sword, they slaughtered a pair of little boys a long time ago. I'd never seen anything so awful. Not until I saw what happened to Rachel. I know you probably don't believe any of this...."
"I believe you, Savannah." His mind churned on the implications of everything he was hearing, everything he was seeing in this frightened, but forthright, female. "I believe you, and I want to help you."
"How can you help?" He heard the desperation edging into her voice now. She was exhausted, emotionally drained. She drifted over to the sagging sofa and dropped down onto it Bent over her knees, she held her head in her hands. "How can anyone help with something like this? I mean, there's no possible way that what I saw is real. It doesn't make any sense, right?"
God help him, he nearly blurted out the truth to her, right then and there. He wanted to explain away her confusion, help her make sense of everything that had her so distressed and uncertain now.
But he couldn't. He didn't have that right.
The Order needed to be informed of Savannah's existence. As a warrior--hell, like any other member of the Breed race--Gideon was duty-bound to see this female gently introduced to their world and her place within it, should she choose to take part. Not plunged carelessly into the worst of it.
"What I saw doesn't make sense," she murmured. "But maybe I should go to the police and tell them anyway."
"You can't do that, Savannah." His words came out too quickly, too forcefully. It was a command, and he couldn't take it back.
Her head came up then, her brow creased in a frown. "I have to tell someone, don't I?"
"You did. You told me." He walked over, sat down beside her on the sofa. She didn't flinch or withdraw when he put his hand on her back and slowly caressed her. "Let me help you through this."
"How?"
He reached up with his free hand to stroke the velvet curve of her cheek. "For now, I just need you to trust me that I can."
She held his gaze for a long moment, then gave a nod and curled into his embrace. Her head rested over his heart, her slender body nestled close, warm and soft in his arms. It was a struggle to hold his desire in check with Savannah pressed so sweetly against him.
But she needed comfort now. She needed to feel safe. He could give her that, at least for the moment.
