Shiloh Walker - The Unwanted

She shook her head, unsure what the hell he was talking about. “Caleb, what in the hell happened ?”

A mockery of a smile slashed across his face.

“I was careless. That last lover of yours…” A sneer curled his face. “His name was Trey. I remember that because I could hear you whispering his name, over and over, for nights. One night, I was out on an op, observation only. We were tracking down a group of human traffickers. And I was careless. I heard you…”

A far-off look settled in his eyes. “It was just a flicker. That’s all I ever got and I could have locked them out, but I didn’t. I needed them, you see. I needed them. Needed whatever I could get. And that time, I blew my cover. Nobody knows what alerted them to me. I didn’t make a sound. Didn’t move. Jones thinks one of them might have had some sort of psychic ability and just sensed me. Who knows? They put me that close because I had a knack for observation and I tend to pick up on things, notice things—it’s not a psychic ability, but it’s saved my ass, saved others. And if I’d been paying attention, I would have seen it coming.”

“Seen what?”

Dark brown eyes met hers and his voice was flat as he said, “I don’t know. One minute I was thinking about you—there was a tug, like one of the ones I’d feel when you were reaching for me. I reached back. And then…” He reached up, rubbing the back of his head. “I felt pain. Like something ripped through my head. I knew something was wrong, tried to block it out, but it was too little too late. I went down and everything went black. When I came to, I was in a dark, nasty little hellhole with three of the bastards they were using for their trafficking rings and they went to work on me.”

Nausea gripped her belly, twisted it as she stared at him. Dizzy, she tried to make sense of the lines and swirls she saw on his chest. Ragged marks…burns, she realized. They’d burned him. “When did this happen?”

“Ten months after I left,” he said quietly.

Ten months…

In the back of her mind, that calm, quiet part of her that still pretended to be somewhat in control did the math. Ten months. She could relive every moment of that first year without him. The first few months had been the worse, because it was like she could still feel him and she’d been so certain he’d come back.

Now she understood why she’d felt him.

Through that connection of theirs.

All of the times when she’d woken up in the night, dreaming of him, thinking that maybe it had been a nightmare, that he hadn’t left after all. Because he still felt like he was there . Now she knew why.

Part of him had been, because they’d never been able to block each other out.

Not until they’d damaged each other.

“Ten months,” she murmured, turning away.

It made sense. That was when she’d really started to spiral out of control. As long as she’d had some sense of connection with him, she’d kept herself under control better.

But one night, she’d woken from a nightmare. Awful and painful and bleak. Another one of those dreams she couldn’t remember, couldn’t make sense of, but the despair and misery that had flooded her had been unreal, sending her down a dark spiral that hadn’t let up for weeks.

Then, when it ended, she had felt…incomplete.

“You found a way to block me out, didn’t you?”

The thick fringe of his lashes swept down over his eyes. “The team tracked me down,” he said quietly. “It took them almost two days and they had to use one of the bloodhounds to get me.”

The bloodhounds were what they’d taken to calling the agents who specialized in finding missing persons. Two days…it didn’t seem like such a long time in reality, but in the hands of monsters, even two seconds was too much. She moved past him to stare outside as he took a deep breath.

From the corner of her eye, she watched as he tugged his shirt back on. “I was unconscious when they pulled me out of there, and stayed that way for three days. When I came out of it, Jones was in the room.”

Destin bit back the urge to curl her lip. She’d heard of the infamous Taylor Jones. Dickhead of the highest order.

Behind her, Caleb continued to talk. “He had one of the empaths with him. I’d worked with her before and she’d told me then that she felt a chink in my shields, said I needed to fix it. The reason they were able to get me out when they did was because she also had a touch of foreshadowing and she’d seen something dark coming. Jones was already mobilizing when I went down—he’d tried to contact me, but her warning to him came too late.”

The knot inside her twisted, almost painful now. “I’m not impressed,” she muttered. “If they’d kept you from being grabbed? Then I’d be more appreciative.”

A soft laugh escaped him.

Turning around, she glared at him. He didn’t even notice. Eyes closed, head tipped back, he looked like he was laughing with a couple of friends over a dirty joke or something.

“This isn’t funny,” she said quietly.

He rolled his head over to look at her, lifting his lids just enough to study her through his lashes. “It’s just ironic. I fucked up, did the same thing I was always telling you not to do…and I learned a painful lesson. They thought grabbing me would be a distraction and they could get their operation moved before anything else happened, but they underestimated Jones.” Slowly, he sat up, his long, rangy body uncurling from the chair in a graceful motion.

As he came toward her, he said, “Most people do. He already had another team in place to deal with them. So they went down—that one little group. They’re like an earthworm, though. You cut of bits and pieces and it still moves, still lives.” He passed a hand over his scarred chest, hidden by his shirt. “And they got me out. It took them longer to get to me but they did get me out. Nobody died. For the most part, it was a clean op.”

Gaping at him, the scars she’d seen so vivid in her mind, she wondered if he’d lost his mind.

“How can you call that a clean op?”

“Because my screwup didn’t blow a sixteen-month op down the drain,” he said flatly. “And we were lucky. I figured out fast that I had to find a way to fix things before I hurt somebody other than myself.”

It was a slap in the face—unintentional, yes. Deserved… oh , yes. But she recoiled from it all the same.

“Hurt somebody…” she echoed, her voice thick. “You mean like I did.”

His lashes flickered. “I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.” Passing her hand over her mouth, she managed to take the three steps it took to reach the couch and then she sank down onto the cushions. Drawing her knees to her chest, she pressed her face against them and tried to breathe past the pain wracking her.

“Destin—”

“I would rather that bastard had killed me than her,” she said quietly.

Silence stretched out, heavy and oppressive. As seconds ticked away without him saying anything, she finally looked up and met his dark eyes. Resting her cheek on her knees, she swallowed and forced the words out. “It would have been worth it…to me. She didn’t deserve to die because I wasn’t good enough.”

“Then you understand why I figure it was a clean-enough op.” Closing the distance between them, he sank to the ground by the couch.

She tensed as he lifted a hand, but all he did was curl it around her ankle, his thumb absently stroking her skin. “But what happened wasn’t your fault,” she said.

“Yeah, it was.” He continued to stare at her, dark eyes hooded. “I couldn’t let go of that one connection. I lied to myself and said I didn’t know how, that it was just a part of me now. But it was all bullshit. Once I made myself do it, I was able to lock you out. I felt like I’d shattered a part of myself but I did it. It hurt, every day, but I was able to do my job, able to function…without hurting anybody, without risking them. I don’t know if I can explain—”