Her face softened, her eyes sobering with concern. “You think something happened to him, don’t you? You think whoever went after Laurel has gotten to your friend too.”
Razor nodded. “If Theo Collier isn’t dead yet, I think he will be soon. Or wishing he was.”
Willow swallowed. “I’m sorry, Razor. I mean that.”
He wasn’t good with emotion, a hazard of his upbringing in the Hunter program. Willow’s tenderness only made him yearn for something he’d never had and never missed until he was staring into her soft gaze in the thin illumination of her little flashlight.
He forced a shrug. “Bad things happen to good people sometimes. You know that well enough.”
“Knowing it doesn’t mean it makes any more sense.” She studied him for a long moment, her eyes filled with compassion and gentle curiosity. “How did you and Theo meet, anyway?”
“It was a long time ago.”
“How long?”
“Twenty-two years,” he said, meeting and holding her questioning gaze.
He could have kept the details about his past vague where she was concerned. He never talked about his years in the Hunter program, or the ones that followed his escape from the ultraviolet light collar that had kept him—and the rest of his Hunter half-brothers—shackled to Dragos’s sadistic whims.
He didn’t particularly want to revisit that time again now, but Willow’s imploring gaze and patient inquisitiveness helped loosen his tongue. Besides, by this time tomorrow she would be safely ensconced in the Order’s protection and he would soon be just an unpleasant memory she’d eventually put out of her mind for good.
“Twenty-two years,” she murmured. “That’s around the same time my family was attacked by Rogues.”
He nodded. “It was a dark time for everyone. For many, including me and my brothers, Dragos’s evil didn’t end on that First Dawn after his Rogues were set loose on the world. I was nine years old then. His laboratory was the only home I ever knew.”
“His laboratory?” Willow hesitantly asked.
“I was born into Dragos’s Hunter program.”
Her eyes widened slightly. “I’ve heard of it. He bred assassins in that program and kept them obedient to him by fitting them with UV collars.”
“Yes, he did. I was one of them. As were my four brothers who managed to escape with me during the chaos of that time. We were lucky, getting away before the Order ultimately destroyed Dragos and his entire operation.”
“You were a child,” Willow remarked. “Younger than I was when I ran from St. Anne’s.”
Razor grunted wryly. “Hunters were never children.”
“What did you do?” she asked. “Where did you and your brothers go after you escaped?”
“Once we helped each other break loose of our collars, we split up and ran. We didn’t know what was happening or where to go. I ran north. I stopped only to wait out the daylight in any form of shelter I could find. When night fell, I ran some more.”
“Were you afraid?”
“As a Hunter, I didn’t know what fear was. I felt . . . nothing. Only the need to survive.” He exhaled. “Eventually, I fell asleep in a barn on a small farm somewhere in Canada. I wasn’t sure where. I was awakened by a beam of sunlight slicing in from the opened barn door. A boy walked in—a human boy, about my age. He’d come to feed the horses and found me hiding there.”
“Theo,” Willow guessed, a small smile playing at the edge of her lips.
“He could’ve raised an alarm. Anyone else would have. By then, I was gaunt with hunger. I’d been running on bare feet for hundreds of miles every night, wearing just the thin clothing from the lab. I’d hardly seen a human for days, let alone had the chance to feed. My first thought when I saw Theo was my blood thirst. If he had opened his mouth to scream or to call for help, I would’ve been on him like the predator I am. There’s no doubt in my mind that I would’ve killed him.”
“What did he do?”
“He asked me if I needed help.” Razor chuckled under his breath at the memory. “No one had ever asked me that in my life. I didn’t know how to answer. While I stared at him in mute confusion, someone shouted Theo’s name from a distance outside the barn. He told me his father was coming, and that I needed to hide quickly.”
“Were you found out?”
“No. I hid at the back of the hay loft while Theo left the barn to keep his father from coming inside to look for him. Later that afternoon, Theo came back with spare clothing and a pair of his father’s old boots for me. His acts of kindness that day saved my life.”
“How long did you stay in his barn?”
