"About loving you? No." He sat up slowly, me still straddling him, our faces close enough to share breath.
"Pretty words." Gabriel's hand found my shoulder, trying to pull me back. "But she's already chosen, haven't you, sweetheart? Chosen who to protect, who to trust. And it isn't the brother who tried to give you artificial freedom."
I looked between them—Nathan bleeding beneath me, Gabriel bleeding beside me. Both monsters in their own way. Both offering different cages dressed as salvation. The chemical clarity Gabriel had promised was coming in waves, memories reassembling into patterns that made horrific sense.
The Institute. Gabriel's hands teaching me to crave my own destruction.
The safe houses. Three months of careful rebuilding. Nathan's hands teaching me to trust again, to feel human.
Both were real. Both were lies. Both were love wrapped in ownership, just wearing different masks.
"I can't." The words came out broken. "Can't choose. Can't think. Everything hurts."
"I know." Nathan's hand came up to touch my face, gentle despite the blood I'd drawn. "I know everything hurts."
His thumb traced over my cheekbone, and something in that touch—the careful restraint of it, the way he held back his strength even now—made the fractured pieces in my head shift. Like a kaleidoscope turning, showing a different pattern through the same broken glass.
Gabriel's hand tightened on my shoulder. "Come away, sweetheart. You're confused."
But I wasn't. Not anymore. The chemical clarity he'd promised was finally delivering, but not how he'd intended. Each memory slotted into place with surgical precision, the drugged haze burning away to show the truth beneath.
26
Clarity
Nathan, bleeding beneath me, refusing to hurt me even in self-defense.
Gabriel, bleeding beside me, pulling me toward him with ownership masked as care.
"That's what we did to you—both of us," Nathan was saying, but the words started fracturing, reassembling. "Made you into something caught between competing programs."
We. Both of us. The family.
But wait.
The memories came in fragments, sharp as broken glass. Nathan's sitting at the barstool, flirting with me every day until he caught me dismember a lead. The way he'd flinched when I'd cower after a nightmare. How he hardly ever called me pet names.
Gabriel, who'd known exactly how to seperate us when we walked in. Who'd walked through Nathan's security like it wasn'tthere. Who spoke of my training with fond remembrance while Nathan looked sick at every mention.
"Brothers," I whispered, testing the word. But Nathan's eyes—green like summer, nothing like Gabriel's winter blue. His hands, broader, scarred from work instead of precise practice. Even their stance, their movement patterns, nothing alike except...
Except Gabriel had said they were.
And I'd believed him.
"You're not brothers." The words came out wondering, tasting the shape of this new truth. "You've never even met before."
Gabriel's hand spasmed on my shoulder. Just for a second. Just enough.
"Sweetheart, the chemicals are confusing you. Nathan and I have history you can't begin to—"
"No." Clearer now, the fog parting like curtains. "He didn't know about the collar's full capabilities on our first hunt. Didn't know about the dining room configuration in your room. Didn't know about any of the specific conditioning until I told him."
Nathan's eyes widened slightly, hope flickering through the blood and bruising. He stayed silent, letting me piece it together, but his thumb kept stroking my cheekbone with infinite gentleness.
"You found us." I turned to look at Gabriel properly, seeing past the performance for the first time. "Tracked us down. But not because Nathan's your brother. Because I'm your—"
"Property." Gabriel's mask slipped, just slightly. "Months of careful work. Did you think I'd simply let that investment walk away?"
