Was she so wrong for wanting to love him again? For loving him in the first place? Outside the lab, was their relationship messed up?
Ryder seemed to think so.
But here in the human world, being with him had been heaven. Everything she’d ever hoped for when she risked her hide to get him transferred out of the lab.
Taylor understood her and Ryder more than most. Maybe she’d talk to him in person when she got back.
Kira got her stuff together, feeling lifeless as she headed to her car, got in, and shut the door. She set her GPS for the SRP, which was thankfully only a few hours away.
Whatever awaited her there, she would go face it.
But as she headed onto the main road, the facility from yesterday haunted her. What if no one could be assigned to shut it down before the light fae came to use it again?
After all, she’d accepted this mission before she’d even been assigned to Ryder. Because it was just the right thing to do.
Ryder had told her to just go back to the SRP, but who was he to go calling the shots when it was her job to see this through?
Kira made a left instead of a right, the path up into the mountains still embedded into her memory. She’d always had a good sense of direction.
Besides, she’d seen the deactivated golems yesterday, so the lab should still be safe. And if she did run into trouble, she could take care of herself.
In fact, the one thing she couldn’t change about herself, the thing Ryder still probably hated, was the one thing she had going for her right now. Her abilities as a fae and her familiarity with their labs.
Kira continued her ascent into the mountains, trying to not think about Ryder’s crestfallen expression just before he’d flown off into the night, headed for who knew where. All she could do was hope that he was all right, finish what she came here to do, and go back to the SRP and face whatever awaited her.
Sometimes doing the right thing meant doing it in spite of others’ opinions on the matter.
She found the bumpy road and turned onto it, trying to hum along to a tune on the radio with a catchy refrain, something about walking five hundred miles or a thousand miles. By the time she pulled up to the steel door, she was determined to not let heartbreak get in the way of her plans.
Kira had lost Ryder once. She could learn to live with losing him a second time.
Even if their memories of the past couple weeks were all she’d have to sustain her for the rest of her life.
The facility was quieter, even eerier without Ryder, as she descended into the main hub and found the primary access terminal. Crates that were unbothered yesterday were open now, and she would have laughed at Ultraviolet’s obsessive plundering of the light fae’s materials if there hadn’t been more pressing matters at the moment.
The system booted up, and everything worked normally for a minute as she activated the shutdown subroutines. Maybe this would be easier than she’d anticipated.
Suddenly, the screen went black, and everything shut down in front of her. To her surprise, though, all the lights went on, and Kira suddenly got the very real, very terrifying impression that she wasn’t alone in there anymore.
Several pairs of footsteps echoed across the hard floor, the sound disappearing into the huge space around her.
“Welcome back, radiant fae.”
17
Ryder’s eyes shot open as the realization he had no clue where he was hit the back of his mind like a brick.
He groaned, aching all over. The sun was only barely rising over the buildings surrounding him, and he realized he was sitting hunched over on cold concrete steps.
“What are you doing here?” a familiar voice asked, blotting out the sun with its towering figure and long hair. Ryder looked up to see Taylor looking down at him with his arms folded.
“I don’t know,” Ryder replied. He looked at his hands and realized he was half shifted, arms covered in green scales, claws extended. “I feel like hell.”
“You look like hell. Here, let’s get you inside. Can’t have anyone seeing you like this now that the sun’s up.”
When Taylor leaned down and pulled Ryder to his feet, Ryder wanted to wave away the too-nice dragon’s help. But from the way everything hurt when he moved, he was grateful as Taylor helped him through the empty lobby of the SRP and upstairs.
A minute later, Ryder was sitting in a comfy chair in what he could only assume was Taylor’s personal office. Pictures of him with a woman (perhaps his mate) hung on the walls, and little knickknacks littered his desk. A guitar sat in the corner.
“I texted Mindy. She should be here in a second. You reek.”
“Thanks,” Ryder replied drily. “That makes me feel great—”
“I mean of chaos. You know, that nauseating, sick-to-your-stomach feel.” He filled a cup with water from a container in the corner and handed him the glass. “That’s why I’m having Mindy come.”
Ryder downed it in one swig. “She’s your mate, right?”
Taylor opened his mouth to reply when suddenly, the door flew open and a woman wearing a distressed leather jacket strode in.
“Ryder, meet Mindy. Honey, this is the person we were talking about,” Taylor said, beaming whenever he looked at his much shorter mate as she took a good look at Ryder.
“I came as fast as I could. You were right. It’s bad.”
“What’s bad?” Ryder asked. He didn’t feel any different.
Except for the pain in his head and all over his body.
And the hole in his heart where Kira belonged. If only he could go back, take her in his arms, make the past go away again…
Mindy interrupted his thoughts by waving a hand, and pink energy filled the room, tickling his skin and making his chest warm. The scales on his arms receded, and for the first time since last night, Ryder felt a little more clearheaded, a little less like he was going to die from the inside out.
“Your mate’s a radiant fae?” Ryder asked, dumbfounded as the pink sensation abated.
Taylor just grinned mischievously. “Yup. Turned out she didn’t get a dragon power after we mated because she was actually a beacon the whole time.”
“It just surprised the heck out of us when I started manifesting a couple months in. By then, Chad and his mate, Isabella, were around to answer our questions because we didn’t know what was going on,” Mindy said, walking up to stand next to Taylor, who immediately put an arm around her. “You were right, though. This guy is strange. Not only is there something else mixed in with the chaos, but it’s deep inside him as well.”
That didn’t surprise Ryder, given what he’d remembered last night. He’d always known he was screwed up, warped and twisted, and he’d always had the chaos tearing through him to blame.
“I haven’t met anyone else like that, except for… well.” She looked up at Taylor, and Taylor nodded gravely.
“I know.” Taylor pulled his desk forward, the wood creaking as he perched on the front of it, looking down at Ryder while Mindy stood beside him. “First off, where’s Kira? Is she back at her place?”
Just remembering Kira’s beautiful face looking over at him last night as all his worst fears came true brought pain and despair crashing like waves over rocks.
“I don’t know,” Ryder said darkly. “We aren’t working together anymore. She’s… she’s…” He shook his head. “She shouldn’t be trusted.”
Genuine shock registered on Taylor’s face, and he did a double take from Mindy back to Ryder, his soulful sapphire eyes full of surprise.
“Are we thinking of the same person?”
Ryder’s heart throbbed at the scattered memories, and he clenched one fist. “I remember what she did to me. All of the lies…”
“What?” Taylor stood up fully, watching cautiously.
“She’s a liar, and no one should trust her. She’s one of them.” He didn’t want to believe it, but it was true.
Ryder didn’t even see Taylor’s fist coming
as it slammed into his cheek, sending him backward on the legs of his chair and onto the floor, dazing him and clearing his head for a second. A moment later, Taylor was glaring down at him, gaze furious.
“Don’t you dare talk about our friend that way. Kira’s a saint, and you of all people should know that.”
Ryder just stared, and Taylor offered a hand, pulling him and the chair back up.
“Now before I do something that would get me fired, I need to tell you something, Ryder. Something Kira and I agreed to never tell you because we thought it was for your own good.” His face was stern, a different side of Taylor that Ryder hadn’t seen before. “But judging from what you’re telling me, I think something’s mixed up in your memories.”
“What do you mean?”
Taylor huffed, and Mindy rubbed a hand over his shoulder. “I know you’re a dragon-fae hybrid. In fact, I know you’re DFH 2.0.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’m the original DFH. Or at least the first successful one.”
Ryder’s head spun a little. It made sense. Something about Taylor had been different from the moment he’d met the big dragon. But because he kept everything so secret about him, Ryder hadn’t been able to get a proper read on him from the start.
“I know something of what it must have been like to go through what you did because I went through it too.” There was deep, hidden pain behind his eyes, and Ryder just listened. “It’s where I first met Kira too.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
Taylor shook his head. “I only met her a couple times. She was like an angel helping lost souls, the only nice person in those dark places run by the fae. My facility was smaller, run by a mix of chaos and light fae. She showed up and cleansed chaos off of test subjects, kept some of us who were really at the end of our rope from dying. The light fae treated her like shit and punished her for going against them to help some of us, but she still did it no matter what it cost because she cared that we were in pain.” Taylor sighed. “No one else did. Anyway, later, she was transferred to the main lab, assigned to a special project that demanded her full attention.”
Ryder didn’t have to guess who that project was. Him.
Taylor exhaled. “Sometime later, I escaped, taking the whole place down with me. But I never forgot the only fae who cared if we experiments lived or died, suffered or thrived. And she didn’t have to. No fae was required to have compassion. Plus, it should be obvious to anyone who knows her that she was coerced into it as well. I got the feeling from her that the only reason she didn’t run away sooner was she didn’t want to leave the experiments without help. If she even could have run.” Taylor exhaled roughly. “So yeah. I can’t let you say she’s one of them.”
“That’s nice that she was kind to you,” Ryder said. “But it doesn’t change the fact that all I remember is her helping them turn me into a monster.”
“I’m sure that’s not the whole story,” Taylor said. “Something has to be wrong with your memory.”
“All I can see are the worst parts. The syringes, the pain, the thrashing. Her face watching.” Rage, directed at his own broken self, thumped in his chest, making him rise from his seat.
Taylor’s big hand shoved him back down into the chair. “Easy there, big guy. Hold on. We’ll get through this.”
“Why can’t I remember?” Ryder grabbed the sides of his head as if there were some vault he could somehow open, all his forgotten past locked away in it.
“When Kira first told me you’d forgotten everything, I agreed with her it was best to not go digging around. But I had my misgivings. It looks like this whole plan backfired on us.” Taylor folded his arms, calming slightly. “Is she your mate?”
Ryder’s heart pounded painfully. “I had thought so…” He couldn’t keep his pulse from racing, his head from pounding. It was so hard to mix the Kira he’d been working with, the one he’d fallen in love with, and the images from the lab.
“If she’s your mate, then you need to confront your past. Pull it out and examine it fully. Otherwise, it clearly will never stop messing with your future.”
“How? How can I do that?” He’d do anything so long as it gave him a chance at the happiness he’d been so close to.
If he was wrong, if there was any way that he could be with Kira without it destroying him, he wanted it.
So bad he could hardly breathe.
He loved her. How could he live without her?
But was there really a way that this could all work out?
Taylor glanced to the side. “I don’t know. I could ask Van about—”
“Not Van. Anyone but him.” Ryder didn’t trust the sketchy purple dragon as far as he could throw him.
“Chad’s away on a mission.”
“I think I know someone who could help.” Mindy chimed in, giving Taylor a knowing glance.
Taylor sighed, rubbing the side of his arm. “Okay.”
“Wait, you can help? What am I missing here?” Ryder asked as Taylor stood directly in front of him, a serious expression on his face.
“I may not be a purple dragon, but I’m silver,” Taylor said. “Which means I can hear and read thoughts much better than most dragons. Some silver dragons can even access old memories, though they can’t erase them. Thankfully, we’re trying to do the opposite of forgetting here. Perhaps your brain was just damaged in the explosion at the lab.”
“I don’t care what happens or how you do it so long as I remember.”
Taylor rubbed his hands together, looking pensive. “I warn you, Ryder. Our minds work the way they do for a reason. If your mind was holding back all those things, including any memories of Kira, then it was probably because they were too painful to recall.”
“From the moment I was rescued, I knew what had happened to me but didn’t have any memory of it,” Ryder said. “As you say, it could have been the explosion.”
“I’m sure all the chaos energy the fae used didn’t help either,” Mindy said with a grimace.
“It certainly didn’t. It has a way of making people lose themselves,” Taylor said thoughtfully. “Anyway, I’m just going to see if there’s a way to pull things forward so you can see them. Just… don’t get your hopes too high. There’s no telling what will come out. All that matters is that you’re ready to face the truth. Are you?”
Ryder nodded. If he was wrong, he needed to know so he could go find Kira. He already wanted to. Not having her by his side was a painful ache throbbing in his heart. If the answer was in his head… then he wanted it found.
“Take a deep breath,” Taylor said, and Ryder felt Taylor’s hand on the side of his head, the tips of his fingers barely brushing the spot behind his ear.
At first, Ryder felt nothing, and for a moment, he wondered if anything was going to happen at all.
Then, like a rush of heavy water over him, thousands of moving images flowed through the space of his mind in quick succession.
He was like a boat adrift in a sea of memory, everything moving backward from the time he met Kira to the time he’d come to himself when he’d seen Liz and Ian and all that came before that.
For the first time in his life, he saw… everything.
Endless days locked in the lab. White walls and white-haired men and women in white robes coming to and fro. One man in particular, the head of the project, Ryder remembered with specificity, the malice and cruelty he casually wore in his expression as clear as the rising sun.
And with it, all of the pain, all of the loneliness, all of the hurt and horror of a life that seemed to have been lived in a five-foot cell.
There were other times he’d been tested. Forced to show his forms. To become a dragon, a fae, and everything in between so they could see what he was capable of for whatever purpose he’d been made.
Then, like a ray of sunshine, Kira had walked into his life. And even though he’d been a sad, pathetic creature without hope, she’d been the only source
of the rarest resource imaginable.
Compassion.
Thoughts continued to flood his mind at an overwhelming pace, and Ryder became completely oblivious to the world around him.
He saw himself sitting across from Kira while they talked. While they shared thoughts. While she comforted him and while he tried his best to make her laugh, make her smile. She was never smiling enough, so he wanted to do anything to brighten her spirits.
Then more injections. Dragon blood and chaos energy that coursed through his veins like wildfire. He could see what he’d seen last night like errant clips of a video that belonged to a greater whole.
Despite all of the pain and anguish in that laboratory, between him and Kira, real love had bloomed. And he’d spat in the face of it.
He remembered their conversations too. Talk of a life outside the lab. The feeling of hope so foreign, so forbidden it was like holding on to burning hot coals when he had pictured a life they could share beyond his pitiful cell.
Then he’d been transferred. That must have been what she was talking about yesterday. She thought he was mad because she’d let him be transferred.
He’d only been mad because of his broken brain.
Ryder’s lids flew open, bringing him back to the present, where he realized his vision was blurry.
Tears were streaming down his face, their cool wetness reminding him of how he’d just felt. “I… I’ve screwed up. Really badly. I need to talk to Kira right away.”
“One second, buddy. How are you doing?” Taylor asked. “I felt a lot going on in there.”
Ryder stood up, brushing off Taylor’s hand. “I can’t right now. I have to find Kira.” His heart was racing. “I was so wrong.”
“What did you see?”
Ryder looked at Taylor and Mindy. “She was the only good thing in my life, the only person I felt anything toward. My…” He held his chest, trying to make the squeezing sensation abate. “My soul bond. She always was, always will be. I don’t know how I got so mixed up.”
Taylor gave him a reassuring glance. “You’ve been through a lot. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Just go from here. If she’s the right person, then things will still work out. Mates can overcome anything together.”
Dragon Redeemed (Reclaimed Dragons Book 2) Page 12
