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I decide then that I have to be honest with him, because I need to be honest with someone, and I need to trust him. I just hope and pray it’s not a mistake. I push off the couch and slide between him and the window, my hands resting on his chest.
“Creed,” I say softly. “I don’t know that he did, but I’m going to tell you something I won’t tell anyone else. I’m going to trust you.”
“Are you sure you want to do that, Addie?” His hands catch my waist, and he leans me against the window and his touch connects us in ways that feel different than any other touch I’ve known. I can’t explain it. We have a connection, and it’s real enough for me to be standing here, putting it all on the line.
“Yes,” I say, my fingers curling in the springy dark hair on his chest. “If he did this, if he gave the command to inject you with that serum knowing what it was, my mother would expect me to stand with you, not him. And I will. You need to know I will.”
“And if he continues to deny it?”
“That’s just it. My father doesn’t have it in him to deny something he sees as magnificent. I believe he sees Project Zodius as magnificent.”
“Because monsters are magnificent.”
“You are not a monster,” I say, flattening my hand over his heart, the race of its beating telling me he’s affected in every way by this conversation.
“Enemies fight, Addie.”
“We’re not enemies.” I wrap my arms around him and press my face to his chest, relieved when he folds me close and holds on tight.
But I don’t know if he will forever. I don’t even know if he will tomorrow. Blood and that damn serum have forged two swords on the verge of a war and place us on the opposite sides of the battle line, but I want to stand in the middle. And I think Creed could make all the difference if he stands there with me.
But no matter what.
War is coming.
It’s in the air.
Chapter Twenty-Three
General Lawrence
I grieve my wife by honoring her, spending the weekend at the secret facility where we’re holding the bonded couples for observation and working toward the answers she would want us to find. The results are explosive, at least in my mind, as I watch these men with their women, who I fear somehow weaken their minds, if not their bodies. When they are near these marked women, our testing thus far shows country isn’t first. That woman is first.
Dr. Chin, our leading researcher, a fifty-something biology and astrobiology expert, who’s deemed the process as “lifebonding,” and those involved as “lifebonds,” a kind of mating for life is the assumption yet to be fully validated. Only time will tell us if life really means life. The prospect is terrifying and dangerous rather than romantic. Men are primal beings with wandering eyes, which is part of how they become such warriors. They live for battle and a piece of ass, not love, and this new development could destroy our perfect warriors. But then, at this point, those involved in Project Zodius are far more something else than they are human.
Ironically, considering the way this bonding process weakens my soldiers, I wake Monday morning to not one but two phone calls. The first one I’ve campaigned for and now finally won. A call from the Secretary of State, to chat about just how effective Project Zodius can be in defending our country. In other words, locking those couples up this weekend was critical and the right decision. The White House, the President himself, wants assurance the program cannot backfire. That means it cannot backfire.
The second is a call from Dr. Chin about research developments I “must see.” I arrive at the central lab where we’ve set-up a meeting to find both him and his assistant, Ava Lane, present. Ava’s a stunning thirty-something redhead who I almost declined to hire for the distraction she causes us all. Men might not naturally want to mate for life, but they certainly want to fuck a woman like Ava. But ultimately, her credentials all but equal Chin’s.
“We can clearly validate at this point,” Dr. Chin states, “that the decision to contain the marked females and their male lifebonds was a smart one as it allows us to rapid-fire research, what we could not otherwise.”
"Well, this sounds interesting already,” I say. “What are we talking about?”
“We came in this morning to discover the lab rats we’ve converted to X2 positive some months back turned abruptly aggressive. Several turned on each other and killed the other. We assume a trigger, but we have no indicator of what that might be, but this drives my concerns that our X2 soldiers are walking time bombs.”
