Page 19 of Jarran

He shrugged. “That’s what I’m thinking.”

“It sounds consistent with what Taron described. You were taken as a teenager. Held against your will, but no one knows what happened during your abduction,” she said. “This laboratory you describe, and the procedures on your head that may have caused forced obedience. These are very likely memories of your captivity.”

“The things they did to my head.” He touched his skull. “Is that what took my memories? What broke my mind?”

She was quiet for a moment. Thinking hard. He could almost see the gears turning. “I don’t know yet. Terti is what caused your current amnesia. That’s documented. But what you’re describing sounds like earlier neural interference. Significant interference.” She picked up the tablet again and scrolled through something. “There may be more to the puzzle of your past than anyone originally thought. The terti wiped your conscious memories, but if your neural pathways were already compromised by whatever was done to you in that laboratory, the terti may have interacted with preexisting damage.”

He wasn’t sure what any of that meant. “Meaning?”

“Meaning your brain may have been altered before you ever became Pella Rin. The raiders didn’t just abduct you. They may have changed you.”

Pella Rin. That was a name no one had said to him. And unless he was mistaken, Evie hadn’t meant to utter it so casually. She’d been thinking out loud and that name had slipped out.

Had he chosen to be terrible? Or had something been done to him that made the choice for him? He didn’t know and uncertainty sat cold and heavy in his gut.

“Who is Pella Rin?” he asked in almost a whisper, afraid to know the answer.

Evie winced. “I didn’t mean to say that name to you today.” She watched him. “But you should know it’s the name you went by for a while.”

“The way you said it…” He furrowed his brow. Words were harder just then, when his head wasn’t clear. “It was like he was me and also someone else.”

She’d pulled her lower lip between her teeth and her eyes were bright. The tension he’d noticed when she arrived hadn’t eased, but it had shifted. “That’s exactly what he was. You and someone else.”

He closed his eyes. “He was a bad person, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.” Her voice had a consoling softness to it. “Very bad.”

“I’m not bad.” He looked up and locked eyes with her. “The thought of hurting anyone is—” He cut off with a choked noise and a shake of his head. “Unthinkable.”

Her hand closed over his tense arm. “I know you’re not bad. Jarran Bando is a good person, and that’s who I’ve been working with all these cycles. That’s who I’ve come to admire and whose company I enjoy.”

His gaze was still latched to hers and this close, he could see everything. There were tears in her eyes and an earnestness that made his heart swell. She enjoyed his company. She’d trembled at his touch. That had to mean something, and if it didn’t…well, so be it. It was time to stop waiting.

“Evie.” He said her name reverently. “I need to tell you something.”

She went still. She didn’t even blink. “What is it?”

His heart hammered. The implant pulsed at the back of his neck, registering the spike, and he breathed through it. He could feel the heat in his face, the tightness in his chest, and underneath all of it, a certainty that he’d been carrying for cycles.

“I care deeply for you,” he said. “I think about you when you’re not here. I think about your voice and your hands and I want—” He cut himself off again, swallowed, and continued on. “You make me want to be someone who deserves to sit next to you.”

Her eyes went wide and her lips parted on a deep, shaky breath. She looked like she was readying herself, gathering the words for something important. Her expression was so open with emotion that his heart seized.

She was going to tell him she felt it too. He could see it in her face. Her eyes softened and she leaned forward, just slightly, closing the distance between them without seeming to realize it. She drew in a long breath and opened her mouth.

He kissed her.

His body moved before his mind gave permission. He leaned forward and pressed his mouth to hers and the world dropped away.

Her lips were warm. She froze against him for a heartbeat, her whole body going rigid, and then she melted. A small, broken sigh escaped her mouth and she kissed him back. Gently. Her lips moved against his with a tenderness that cracked something open in his chest, an ache that felt like joy.

Heat flooded through him. It spread from his mouth through his jaw, down his throat, across his chest, and settled low in his belly and his cock. His skin hummed. Every nerve ending in his body angled toward the point where they touched.

A sound rumbled up from his chest. It was low and primal as it rolled through his rib cage and into the space between them. He’d never heard himself make that sound before, but his body knew it. It was a groan of need and hunger. It growled, mine. It meant the closest thing to joy his damaged mind could produce.

He raised his hand and cupped her face. His palm covered her cheek and his fingers slid into her hair. The feel of her skin against his hand was so overwhelming he shuddered. Her cheek was impossibly delicate. Heat rose in her face. Blood rushed to the surface under his touch.

His tail moved on its own, uncoiling from behind him and wrapping around her calf, the barb at the tip angled away from the fabric of her pants. He hadn’t chosen to do that but he couldn’t have stopped it if he’d tried.