Dr. Stedmeyer shrugged. “You’re right, itshouldn’thave been possible, Ms. Amante, and yet here you sit. Right now, your body is going through a total genetic change and we still aren’t sure what sorts of side effects will come with it.”
I would have been less surprised if he had told me that I’d actually been abducted by aliens and found in a cornfield somewhere.
But this? This was insane.
Twilight zone level insane.
In-a-coma-dream level insane.
My brain was having trouble computing all of the information I had just been given, so it just seemed to give up on me as I reached down and pulled the too-scratchy hospital blanket over my head and decided that, maybe if I ignored them, all of my problems would go away.
And for a few minutes, they did. One of the benefits of being deaf was that it was really easy to pretend like nothing was happening around you if you just closed your eyes.
It was my specialty, borne out of years and years of lectures from my father that I couldn’t keep up with because he was talking too fast.
Half of the time he didn’t even notice when I did it, too wrapped up in himself to care about his disappointment of a daughter.
Unfortunately, Elio never let me get away with it for too long because after a few minutes he was giving me little nudges to let me know that my sulking time was over.
Pulling the blanket over my head, I glared at him.‘What?’
‘You can’t hide from this, Cini,’he told me firmly, his big hands forming the words with ease.‘It happened and now we need to figure out where to go from here.’
I narrowed my eyes at him, remembering all of the reasons why I had been ignoring them in the first place before I was taken.
‘Maybe you can try to get married to someone again. That will solve everything, right?’I shot back, rolling my eyes at the alpha whose face flushed with hurt.
My words suddenly reminded me that Ihadn’tbeen alone down in that hell and no one had mentioned Peregrine since I’d awoken.‘What happened to Peregrine? You didn’t leave her there did you?’
Ranieri spoke for the first time since he’d come into the room. The jerk was just as handsome as always, not a hair out of place on his perfectly coiffed dark blond head despite the dishevelment of the rest of his pack.‘We didn’t. We’re assholes, not monsters, Cini.’
‘Could have fooled me,’I said with an inelegant huff of breath, watching the golden haired alpha roll his eyes and open his mouth to reply in kind.
‘She’s with her alphas,’Nicolo told me before Ranieri could really get into it.‘She’s safe.’
‘And the other one?’I pressed, thinking of the alpha woman who was strapped on the other table in the room.
The guys glanced at each other before Elio answered.‘We set her free and she ran. Didn’t stick around to see if she was safe because the FBI was raiding the whole place.’
I wanted to ask them a million more questions about my kidnapping, but before I could get the chance I noticed their gazes shift away from mine to the door and their expressions changed in an instant.
Following their eyes, my stomach dropped when I realized that my father had walked through the door wearing the same smug smile as always.
“I am so pleased that you found her!” he said, his face changing so that a faux-distraughtness filled it for the audience he had just walked into.
My breathing hitched in my chest as I stared at him, and instinctually, I knew for sure he was to blame for my being kidnapped. I had been holding onto a sliver of hope that I had been wrong about my hypothesis—that Alessandro Amante hadn’t sold me off to the Russians to be their experiment.
But now, looking at his blue eyes that held nothing in them—no worry, no sadness, and certainly no affection for me—it was clear that he had been at fault.
Anger filled me from the strange invisible thread in my mind and I felt the same vibrating sensation in my throat from earlier as I glared at him.
“My, was that a growl?” my father said, his blond brows lifting in surprise. “The doctors told me you were different, but seeing it is a completely different story.”
I wanted to rail at him. To have the doctors remove him from the room regardless of who he was and what family he ran.
But I never got the chance.
A cold sweat broke out over my skin as I tried to push down the sudden nausea that was rising in my stomach. The overhead light, which had been manageable before, now felt too bright as I looked to Elio with wide, panicked eyes.
