After a few moments of silence, he finally blurted, “I was born in a lab. Created. An experimental prototype.”
Chloe’s mouth fell open. She’d braced for him to tell her something awful, maybe that he’d had abusive parents, or that, before he’d joined the military, he’d lived on the streets, fighting to survive. But this…
“My creator was a geneticist determined to design the next evolution of soldiers.” His tone was dispassionate, as if he’d needed to turn off his emotions to get through this telling, but the fist in his lap was squeezed so tightly that his knuckles were white. “I was her first success. But I wasn’t the last.
“I’m not human, Chloe. Not fully. I, and the others like me, were created to be faster, stronger, and more aggressive than humans. Our DNA was spliced with that of animals to create another breed of predator.” Finally, he turned to look at her. “Wolf for me.”
That explained the teeth. Now that she knew they were there, as she’d watched him talking, she kept catching the barest glimpse of them as he formed certain words. Thinking back, she’d never seen Erik smile wider than the slightest curve of his lips. Never enough to show his teeth. Likely purposeful to avoid questions.
“We were also created to be expendable.” Emotion finally tinged his words, and they were pure bitterness. She reached for his hand, wanting to help him, show her support, but drew it back when he flinched.
Erik turned his head to look at the windows once more, and he’d somehow tucked all his emotions away again when he said, “We were educated for war, trained, pushed to our limits, but we were also experimented on. We were nothing more than specimens to them.” He raised his shirt, and Chloe spotted a QR code tattooed on his ribs. “Labelled like test tubes.” He dropped his shirt. “My face is a result of one of their experiments.”
He’d been purposely burned? A small, horrified cry left her before she could call it back, and she quickly covered her mouth with her hand as tears filled her eyes.
“It was to test the field viability of a new weapon. One of the subjects produces a highly corrosive substance in her glands. They wanted to see if it lost potency when bottled.”
Acid. They’d poured the equivalent of acid on his face. Chloe’s tears spilled over, and she choked on her words, but she needed to ask. “How old were you?”
“Seventeen.”
Chloe was sobbing now, her shoulders shaking, and suddenly she was in Erik’s arms. He was hugging her, his hands rubbing her back to soothe her. She couldn’t imagine what horrors he’d lived through, and here he was comforting her. Gripping handfuls of the back of his T-shirt, she hung on to him.
Monsters. Fucking monsters. He’d been seventeen. Practically a child, and they’d tortured him. “Please tell me they were arrested.”
“The military raided the facility, took the staff into custody, and freed us.” His voice suddenly turned distant, as if he were lost in the memory. “That was the first day I felt the sun.”
His words only made Chloe cry harder. He hadn’t said it, but she could read between the lines. He’d never been allowed to be a child. He’d probably never played unless it was a game utilized as training. He’d never run wild under the sunshine just being a kid.
“Shh, Chloe.” A featherlight brush of lips below her ear, as his hand stroked her hair. “Don’t cry for me.” Leaning back slightly, he held her teary gaze and brushed his thumb gently over her wet cheeks. “Not a single tear. I’m not worth it.”
Chloe shook her head. “You’re worth it to me.”
His face filled with confusion, as if he couldn’t understand her words.Because he’d been brought up to believe he was expendable.
Leaning in, she kissed him softly as she cupped both sides of his face with her hands. Against his lips, she repeated, “You’re worth it to me.”
A shuddering exhale left him before he kissed her more ardently. They clung to each other, a mix of comfort and need, and when they finally pulled apart, they were both breathing heavily.
“Tell me something good,” Chloe said, cuddling up against him. She needed to talk about something lighter to wash away the horror of what she’d learned. “Opera. You never did tell me how you ended up being a fan.”
“After we were freed, I was having a hard time adjusting, so General Davies –”
“Wait.” Chloe’s head popped up. “Did General Davies lead the raid to free you?”
“He was a colonel back then, but, yes.”
Chloe would be sure to kiss the general the next time she saw him. He was already one of her favorite people, but now, he’d earned hero status in her book.
“So General Davies had one of his friends come in to talk to me. Pete was a vet who’d lost his legs and suffered extensive burns from a bombing during the Gulf War. He brought his dog with him…” Erik trailed off, going quiet for a moment, maybe playing through the memory in his head, and a fond smile touched his lips. “She was a yellow lab named Blondie, and she’d get so excited to see me.” He huffed a laugh. “Her tail would wag so hard that she’d nearly knock herself over.”
Chloe grinned, liking this memory.
He shook himself. “Anyway, one of the times Pete came to visit, he said, ‘You know what your problem is? Your place is too quiet, and in the quiet, all the ugly shit inside of you festers. You need to fill this space with music.’ He claimed that was one of the things that helped him. When I admitted that I wasn’t familiar with a lot of music, he spent the day with me, listening to all the different genres, waiting to see what spoke to me.”
Quietly, Chloe asked, “And opera spoke to you?”
Erik breathed a sigh. “La Traviata. It was the first opera I ever listened to, and it will always hold a special place in my heart.”
