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“Not this time.” Dr. Dante looked at him again. And god, Johnathan never wanted him to look away. “Nash and Luca set them off. Seung’s betas too.”
“I can’t believe I slept through that. I mean, I don’t normally sleep that deep.”
“They were relatively quiet.” Of course it helped that Craige kept Dalton’s face shoved into a pillow.
“Doesn’t matter… normally.” Dr. Dante waved a hand close to his ear. “Ever since… you know. My hearing. It’s really sensitive.” Worry formed a crease across Dr. Dante’s forehead. “Is that normal for whatever I am?”
Johnathan pushed himself up.
“I don’t know. There’s a lot we don’t know. A lot was lost. What wasn’t lost was destroyed.”
“Happens a lot, it seems. Not just to you, I mean, but other cultures, races… in your case species….” He took off his glasses and cleaned them on the tail of his shirt. When he put them back on, he said, “Why didn’t you tell me about… the whole hunt thing?” His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down the column of his neck.
“I could never find the right time.”
“You should have told me.” He curled his hands into fists. “I deserved to know right up front.”
“I wasn’t sure right up front.”
“When were you sure? At your compound? The drive there? When we first met? Or before.”
If only Johnathan could lie to him. “My brother told me a few days before he died. I didn’t believe him. He wasn’t exactly in his right mind by then.” His drive to possess the ichor had poisoned his reason long before he saw it in person. After? There’d been no reason left. “Then you survived the bite.” Johnathan blew out a breath hard enough to make his cheeks pop.
“That’s when you knew?”
Johnathan shook his head, nodded, then shook it again. “Like I said, we’ve lost a lot of our history.”
“But you knew at some point.”
“When I smelled you. But I was sure when we talked in the compound.”
“And you didn’t say anything.”
Johnathan rested his elbows on his knees. “Would it have mattered?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If the Wardens or Senate had found out about that bite on your shoulder, they would have killed you. If you hadn’t come with us, you’d probably be dead right now. And what would that have accomplished? At least now you’ll be alive, and you can help us.” Johnathan flinched. “I’m sorry, I said that wrong.”
Dr. Dante’s scent spiked with anger. “I think you said it exactly like you meant it. You never gave a shit about me. It was about fixing your serum and saving your species.”
Johnathan dropped his gaze. “You’re right, it was.” God, he wanted a rock to crawl under. “But not now.”
“Because now you know I’m an Urja?”
If he said yes, it would sound callous. If he said no, it would be a lie. “Do you want me to arrange for you to leave?”
“I thought they’d kill me?”
“Not back to Georgia. I can arrange to have your identity changed, send you to a different country, whatever.”
“I thought Seung said it wouldn’t matter.”
“The Varu have less of their history than we do.”
Hope flashed in Dr. Dante’s eyes. “And what would I do for money?”
“I’d make sure you had more than enough to live on for the rest of your life.”
