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“Why?”
“Because I’ve never been outside before.”
Oh no!
I covered my mouth when I realized my mistake.
They all stopped walking and towered over me. Three sets of stunned eyes gazed back at me.
“You’ve never been outside?” Rix asked slowly, pity filled his eyes.
I swallowed, then eventually shook my head. “No.”
“Like, you mean outside the compound walls. You’ve been in the yard in the compound, though, right?” Jorik’s voice held a hint of urgency to it.
“I’ve been in the compound yard and transport vans and transport aircraft, but I’ve never beenoutsideoutside. I’ve never seen a tree this close up.” At that, I elbowed my way out of their foreboding circle and went to press my hand against the rough bark of an evergreen tree. “I’ve only seen them from the window in my bedroom.”
“But you’re a Hellcat.” Rix scratched his head in confusion. “An assassin. Haven’t you been on assignments?”
I shook my head.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Jorik said, shaking his head, and tugging on his blond short-cropped bearded chin in thought. “She’s ahybrid. Surely that makes her the deadliest person on the planet. Why have they been keeping her locked up like a house cat?”
“Becauseshe’s the deadliest person on the planet and too valuable to release into the wild for a routine assassination,” Zane said slowly. His brow lifted, and his eyes bored into mine. “Right?”
I met his gaze dead-on, unwavering, and with just as much fake boredom as he was oozing. “Maybe.”
His nostrils flared. “Have you ever killed anyone?” Zane’s words were clear, precise and dead cold.
I wanted to lie. I really did. I wanted to tell him that my kill list was longer than his arm, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t lie. That habit had been beaten out of me as a young child before it’d even been able to take root. So I shook my head and lifted my chin. “No. I haven’t.”
“This is nuts,” Jorik said with a headshake. “This deadly weapon of a person was right under our noses and has been our source for over a year and we had no idea.”
“Too valuable a commodity.” Zane’s gaze slid over my body, but it didn’t make me squirm the way Moord’s traveling gaze usually did. No, Zane’s appraisal made my insides heat up and a tingly sensation begin between my legs.
What was that about?
“You’re a source and a test subject?” Jorik asked. This guy was clearly the brains of their trio. Zane was their leader, Jorik second in command and the one with the highest IQ—though I doubted any of them were idiots—and Rix was the youngest, and third in command. I hadn’t quite figured out his strength yet, but maybe it was charm. Because he was certainly charming. That smile alone disarmed me more than I was willing to admit.
“Yes,” I said after a moment of hesitation, avoiding eye contact with all of them.
“They’re probably synthesizing her genes to make more triple-threat hybrids using a Lambda surrogate somewhere.” Jorik lifted a brow. “Unless you’re Lambatoo?”
I shook my head, and moved my gaze to Zane, meeting his glare with one of my own.
No. I was sterile.
I couldn’t carry a child, and it was probably for the better.
I really didn’t know which fate was worse, destined for a life of servitude as a blood source and assassin, or a vessel used for carrying and producing test-tube babies until it killed you. Because that’s what they did to Lambdas. As soon as you bled as a teenager, you were impregnated with a Hellcat embryo that had been genetically altered with all four Stratera strains.
They’d tried creating just Kappa by only adding the Kappa variant to the embryos, but those weren’t viable. The same for Sigma, Theta and Lambda.
The embryo had to have all four strain variants added to it to even be viable, and even then, usually, only one strain became dominant, the other three dormant. Sometimes no strain became dominant and the child was born Amlin or “pure,” but Amlins were sterile.
Yeah, I was glad I was born a Kappa. I’d have probably killed myself by now if I’d been Lambda strain.
“She’s just a kitten,” Zane murmured, drawing my attention back to the present.
