Chapter 121-130

Chapter 121
“There’d been an outbreak,” he ground out. “That’s what they told me. Nick took me aside the day before I’d planned to return and said he was so, so grateful they’d taken me out and been controlling my contact, because there’d been an outbreak here, and Chimera were dying. It was the same germ, probably spread by the young. But it was beginning to take some of the adults. And it wasn’t safe for me to return until they had confirmed why I could resist it, to ensure there was no risk that I could contract it with extended contact.”

He gritted his teeth and forced himself not to see the images flashing through his mind—the carnage they’d described. The fear of the people, and his own guilt and relief that he was safe and could do what was needed to protect all of them… It was sick. So sick.

“Nick convinced me that our purpose was even more important than ever. I had to stay. I had to continue to take any willing female, to attempt to build the resilience of our species. That if we lost too many and the research couldn’t continue, that those who made the decisions would stop funding it and the Chimera would be executed so they couldn’t fall into the hands of anyone else.

“He said this outbreak put us at just as much risk—because if too many were lost, it would have the same result. He pleaded with me, tears in his eyes, to stay, to sacrifice my freedom. He made it sound noble and as if I had been given a purpose by God.

“I questioned the mating bond. But he was certain: I couldn’t form it, so the females wouldn’t either. By mating them, by bringing offspring into the world who were resistant as I was… He had me convinced.”

He shook his head and raked a hand through his hair. “It sounds so stupid now—so many things I could have asked or done to make sure this was real. But it hadn’t occurred to me. I knew there were a lot of our young who were sick. I had seen through a window four females in a lab room there who were near death—and they were all coughing. I had no reason to believe… Nick had always seemed so focused on keeping the Chimera alive and thriving… I was na?ve and stupid, and I regret it every day,” he said, his voice a low, hollow husk.

The other males began to murmur between themselves discussing what he’d said, and he let them because he had to tell Sasha something. He caught her eye and she squeezed his arm again, but he could smell the thick dread in her—fear of what he was going to say, and revulsion over what he’d already described.