Burn For Me (Phoenix Fire #1)(65)
Author: Cynthia Eden

He knows what happened to my family. Cain was wrong. Wyatt wasn’t just toying with her. The guy actually knew about her parents. After so many years of wanting the truth, Eve couldn’t just walk away. “Why did they die?”

Cain wasn’t attacking. Wyatt was talking. She’d keep him talking for as long as she could.

Wyatt’s gaze flickered to her. “If your mother couldn’t be contained, she had to be killed.” Said so coldly. “My father—Jeremiah—believed it was too risky to keep her alive.”

Eve shook her head. She felt as if someone were ripping into her heart. Not just someone—Wyatt. “My mother—why her? Why was she picked for the experiments?”

The slashes on Wyatt’s arms had closed. Blood still pooled around his feet, but the guy no longer showed any sign of injury. “Because she was a dragon shifter,” he said, voice tight. “Jeremiah knew a dragon shifter was too dangerous to run free. Left on her own, she would have killed too many. She had to be stopped.” It sounded like he was reciting a story he’d heard many times before.

Maybe he was, but every word was new for Eve.

Dragon shifter. Her gaze fell to her own hands. She’d never shifted a day in her life.

“Even with her last breath, she was saving you,” he said. “Her fire stopped those vampires from killing you.”

The fire that she’d feared for so long? It had been to protect her? Her mother’s flames.

“Eve . . .” Cain’s growl.

“The fire doesn’t hurt you!” Wyatt rushed out, breaking over Cain’s voice. “It can’t. Your skin may look all soft and silken, but you’ve got dragon scales hidden beneath that surface. You can’t burn.”

She was having trouble breathing.

Looking too satisfied, Wyatt crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve got so many secrets. Secrets you can’t even guess at,” he muttered with a hard glare at Cain. “That’s why you can’t kill me. Why the vampire couldn’t kill me. If I die”—his eyes came back to Eve—“those secrets die with me.”

He was right. They couldn’t kill him. They needed him too—

“Too damn bad,” Cain snarled and fire exploded from his fingertips—fire that raced for Wyatt. Wrapped around him. Wyatt screamed and fell to the ground. He was trying to put out the flames, but he couldn’t. The fire was too hot.

“Stop!” Eve screamed. She lunged forward, but Cain’s arms wrapped around her, and he hauled her back against his chest. “Dammit, Cain, stop!”

“He has to die.” Flat. Hard.

But her past was dying with him. Trace was dying. All the others he’d hurt and experimented on could be dying. “No, please!”

His hold wouldn’t break. Wyatt’s screams filled her ears, and she barely heard Cain whisper, “I’m sorry.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Eve was twisting and fighting in his hands, but Cain wasn’t letting her go. Didn’t she understand? If Wyatt survived, he’d just continue to torture. To kill. They couldn’t let that happen.

He had to be stopped.

Eve’s nails dug into Cain’s skin. “You’re killing Trace!”

The werewolf was already dead. Cain had known that with one look. The beast had taken over. “The man is gone. Only his animal remains.”

“And when you come back from the fire, only the phoenix remains in you!”

Her words had him tensing, mostly because he knew how true they were. But, so far after his risings, he’d still managed to cling to the barest edges of his sanity.

Because of her.

She was looking at him with desperation in her gaze. “I haven’t given up on you when you stare at me with a stranger’s eyes, and I won’t give up on him!”

An alarm was sounding in the distance. A shrill beep that wouldn’t stop. Help would be coming for Wyatt, too late. The flames had burned so bright, Cain knew there was no chance of survival for Wyatt.

“When I stare into the eyes of the phoenix”—Eve snarled and her fist slammed into his chest—“I don’t give up on you. I fight to get you back. I fight for you.”

And he was fighting to protect her. Wyatt would use her. Abuse her. Lock her in a lab and slice her open. Cain wasn’t going to let that happen. Even if she hated him for what he had to do.

Better her alive, free, and full of rage than having her stone cold dead.

She pressed the barrel of her gun against his heart. “Stop it,” she ordered, voice trembling.

He didn’t stop the fire. It was too late. Didn’t she see that? “Shoot me if you must.”

“Damn you.” Eve jerked free of his arms, and spun to face the flames.

Then she jumped into the fire.

Instinctively, he killed the flames. He knew the fire wouldn’t hurt her, of course, but . . . he stopped the flames before he could even think.

He heard the low rasp of breathing. The fire had savaged Wyatt’s body, but the guy—he was still alive? How in the hell?

Hurt, in agony no doubt, but still breathing.

Eve glanced up at Cain with tears in her eyes. “He’s an experiment, too,” she whispered.

Cain had thought nothing else could surprise him. “He experimented on his own damn self?”

Eve’s hand hovered over Wyatt’s burned flesh. Flesh that was slowly starting to heal as Cain watched. “I don’t know.”

The alarm was louder. Shriller. But no guards had stormed inside yet to rescue Wyatt. Why the hell not? Wyatt had to be their first priority in this place, but no one was coming to save his ass.

Cain stared at Eve. Wyatt wasn’t a threat. Not then. But he still said, “If he comes at you, shoot him.”

With the gun cradled in her hands, Eve nodded.

But would a bullet stop him? Bullets hadn’t slowed Wyatt down before.

The guy’s breath rasped out as his body shuddered.

Cain heard a scream echoing up from the hallway, a long, pain-filled cry. He rushed out of the room. Looked to the left, the right—

A woman stood in the middle of the hallway. Flames danced around her. Her long, blond hair twisted around her shoulders, and her eyes were as red as the flames that surrounded her.

Phoenix.

He’d found Ryder’s lost lady, and she sure looked pissed.

She stared at him, not advancing, just watching. “Am I supposed to kill you, too?” Her voice was soft, barely rising over the fire, and completely without emotion.