Page 63 of Awakened Gifts
Her anger is keeping her pain at bay, hiding her tears that I can feel inside her. When she cuts her eyes toward me, I might shrivel up. I forgot how scary she can be when she’s pissed. She clears her throats when her emotion tries to surface and she turns away from me before speaking again.
“I’m your mother. I’m supposed to protect the two of you. Not the other way around,” she says in a whisper when her voice tries to betray her.
Rex looks like he always did when Mom scolded him as a child. He hates disappointing her. Always has.
“You protected us when we were kids. You protected us as new adults. You protected us as old adults. You raised us to take care of the ones we love,” Rex says softly. “We were just trying to emulate you, because you’d spare us from any pain you could.”
Mom turns around, her tears finally falling, and she walks over to jerk Rex into an embrace he wasn’t prepared for. He slowly returns the hug, tightening his hands around her small waist.
“I understand why the two of you tried protecting your mother from this,” Uncle Brazen says as he takes a seat on the steel table of the exam room we’ve confiscated. “But this is one of those times where good intentions could have paved the road to hell. Your Mom was distracted because of this information being spilled to her at the worst possible moment. That’s how he got the net around her. I was fucking helpless. These animals seem immune to uranium, which made my guns and grenades pointless.”
I suck in a breath when my eyes widen. Considering I never even bothered firing a gun, I didn’t know about the uranium immunity. “That’s why we weren’t making a dent, despite our numbers,” I say more to myself than anyone else, and then guilt hits me with a weighted hammer. “And they’re immune because they found a way to use my blood’s properties.”
Uncle Brazen nods absently, seeming lost in thought. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks at last, looking up to meet my eyes and then Rex’s.
I thought that would have been obvious. “Because you would have told her. You don’t keep secrets from her. Never have.”
Well, that’s almost true. He doesn’t keep secrets from her since the last time it drove her back into the arms of my father.
Mom stays tucked in my brother’s arms as he holds her as tight as he can. It’s actually heartwarming, given the circumstances.
“If I felt like it could have endangered your mother, I wouldn’t have said anything.” Mom glares at him, but he doesn’t cower down. “I didn’t wait this long just to lose you,” he tells her without fear.
She returns to her embrace with my brother, probably planning how to make Uncle Brazen pay for that comment.
“From now on, you need to include me in on things like this,” he says, ignoring the new scowl my mother casts him. “You can trust me to make the right decision regarding your mother.”
“How did they do it so quickly?” Mom asks, ignoring Uncle Brazen’s last remark while wiping away her remaining tears and releasing Rex.
“I think I can answer that,” Simone says while coming into the family meeting late, and I glare at her for abandoning us.
She gives an innocent shrug, batting her eyes as though she has no idea why I’m shooting daggers at her.
“Took you long enough,” Rex mumbles in a surly tone.
“I had to heal,” she says with even more innocence, playing coy.
Damn her.
“For over an hour?” I ask incredulously.
“Well, I was also examining one of the purple-eyed science experiments. Turns out, they’ve got a complex gene system. More complex than the hybrids Ty created out of humans.”
“We figured that much,” Uncle Brazen says while leaning back. “These were already hybrids with gifts, from what I could tell. I assume the Fire Hawks just amplified all their abilities. It would make sense to use hybrids with complex systems that wouldn’t be too overloaded with the new genetic code.”
Simone’s eyes are wide with surprise, and Uncle Brazen bristles when he feels insulted. “You know I’m more than just a pretty face,” he says, almost frowning, and I bite back a grin.
“You sort of stole my thunder, Uncle Brazen.” Her pouting tone lightens the air. It’s good to see the old Simone back. “To elaborate on the theory, though, I found an intelligence in the code like I’ve never seen before. This has taken centuries to formulate, and that means we’re dealing with a team that is full of patience. All they needed to finish the code was Aria’s blood. If they get ahold of her savage blood… There’s no telling the limits these things can reach. Ty Silvers was nothing more than a rookie next to these people. He was one scientist with a group of flunkies doing his grunt work. These people are using collaborative minds with one goal tying them together. Not even Dad could have mastered something like this on his own.”
And they got more than plenty of my blood. They can build more than an army; they can build an entire nation.
After muttering a few curses and inwardly kicking myself, I say, “I wouldn’t worry about them getting my savage blood. That jack isn’t coming back out of the box.”
Rex shifts uncomfortably, as does Uncle Brazen. I’m pretty sure my inner bitch scared the unholy hell out of both of them.
“Alice created hybrids that are strong enough to take down your mother. Hybrids strong enough to withstand uranium without their savage. We haven’t even seen what they’re truly capable of yet. What if they gain control of their savages? Not only that; do you think Alice would create a creature that was stronger than she’ll be? We might need your savage, Aria. As terrifying as that is, we might not have a choice.”
I can’t even process the last part because I’m too focused on what she said before.