Luna Evelyn Caine.
Her breath caught. With shaky hands, Morana clicked on the icon and found out why he was bleeding.
She couldn’t stop trembling.
Something had moved inside her again, shifted, been replaced, been awakened and deadened. Turmoil coiled in her belly like a hungry beast salivating for food.
Morana closed the bedroom door behind her and stepped out into the pale morning light that flooded the living room. Her eyes looking out the tall windows, she took in the sun that was barely out in the sky. The clouds were roiling along the horizon, headed towards the city, giving the skyline a majestic albeit morose backdrop as the wind whipped the sea into currents.
It was barely four in the morning, and she hadn’t slept a wink the entire night. Hadn’t even tried to.
And it wasn’t because of her arm.
It was because of what she’d discovered.
Morana didn’t know who the anonymous man or woman was, or if it was even a single person rather than a group, who had sent her the article a few hours ago, but they were resourceful, finding things she hadn’t even had an inkling of, from sources she hadn’t known existed.
Personal things.
Things that had twisted her stomach into knots and made bile rise in her throat.
According to the information in the folder titled ‘Luna Evelyn Caine’, Morana had found out, to an extent, truths that made a whole lot of sense but she had never known about.
She’d already known about the girls who’d gone missing never to be found again in Tenebrae and nearby areas about twenty years ago. She’d also known that Tristan Caine’s baby sister had been one of the missing girls.
What she hadn’t known were the speculations about the kidnappings. How the authorities had suspected one, or maybe two people working together, with no clue as to what purpose. But the anonymous source had given her enough evidence – which she’d pored over for hours – to make her realize it had been much bigger than one or two men. It had been the work of a group of very strong, very powerful people. What for, she didn’t know. What could young, little girls ever get anyone if not ransom?
There had been enough lewd details to make her want to be sick, but still, it hadn’t been that which had brought her to the edge.
It had been about her.
The fact that she’d been one of the little girls too.
She’d seen her own photograph staring back at her, her chubby cheeks wet with tears as she sat along with two other little girls.
One of whom had been Luna Caine. Dark red cap of hair, just a little older than her, rosy mouth, bright green eyes sparkling with tears of her own. There had been another toddler in the picture between them.
Three girls in the picture.
Twenty-five girls gone missing.
And Morana was the only one to have been found.
How? Why? Why only her and nobody else?
Legs shaking, Morana collapsed onto the stool in the kitchen, staring out the window, trying to remember something, anything from years ago.
She couldn’t.
She’d tried for hours to think back, to recall even the tiniest detail of being abducted, but she’d come up absolutely empty with only a mild headache to answer for it. Was it because she’d been barely three years old at the time, or because she’d buried the memory like people did sometimes? Could she even do that?
And was that why Tristan Caine hated her so much? Because she’d come back while his sister hadn’t? She’d lived life while his sister probably hadn’t? Was that why?
Her hands were trembling. They’d been trembling all night and no matter what she tried, it just wouldn’t stop.
God, she was breaking down.
Why had her father never told her about it? When it had been a part of serial disappearances? Why hadn’t anyone told her? The Alliance had mysteriously ended around the same time and someone had sent her this?
Her head hurt.
The sudden sound of a throat clearing made her jump in her seat. She turned around quickly to see Tristan Caine standing at the foot of the stairs, without a shirt but in unbuttoned jeans, his hair sticking up like he’d run his fingers through it repeatedly, his eyes slightly red.
Either he’d been crying or he hadn’t slept either.
She’d bet her degree it wasn’t the former.
His face was his usual neutral, controlled mask as he took her in, his eyes lingering for a split second on her shaking hands before coming back to hers.
God, she couldn’t do this. This intense eye contact game they played. She just couldn’t do it right now, not with the way she was barely keeping down the scream that had been building in her throat. It wasn’t a scream of fear, or devastation, or desperation. Not even frustration, truly. It was trapped somewhere between them all, bouncing from one to the other while they laughed in her face.
She turned back to face the window.
“Did I hurt you?”
The question, asked in that low, rough tone, caught her off guard.
Keeping her back towards him, her hands knotted together in her lap, Morana scoffed deliberately. “Why do you care?”
Silence.
He still stood exactly where he’d been. She was so completely attuned to his movements that her body tensed with awareness, spine straightening and shoulders rolling back even as she kept her gaze at the skyline.
“Did I hurt you?”
Low. Rough. Again.
“You did shoot me,” Morana pointed out with a lightness she didn’t feel.
Before she could take another breath, he was suddenly beside her, his fingers on her chin, the calloused edges pressing into her, his hold firm but gentle as he turned her to face him.
Morana blinked up at his sleep-deprived, yet magnificent blue eyes boring down into her, his warm musky scent even more prominent, not a hint of his cologne anywhere, his Adam’s apple bobbing once as he swallowed in her peripheral vision.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked again, his voice barely a whisper, his breath warm on her face as his eyes scanned hers.
She knew what he was asking. He’d not hurt her physically in the shower, he knew that too. It was another kind of hurt he wanted to know about, another kind of hurt which frankly, she hadn’t even considered in the light of the information that had flooded her.
So, she thought about it as he waited for her answer. She thought about how she’d felt when he’d seen her naked, how she’d felt when she’d pulled him closer, how she’d felt when he’d asserted the intensity that was as much a part of him as that limb holding her.
How had she felt? He’d been surprisingly possessive and unsurprisingly angry. In the light of the day, she could understand why. Not to say she agreed with a lot of shit that he’d said, but she could understand the anger. She felt for that pain.
But was she hurt?
She was thicker than that.
“No,” she told him quietly.
He waited a beat, blinking once before pulling back, dropping his hand and stepping towards the stairs without another word.
Morana looked at his retreating back, the beast in her chest clawing tighter and tighter until she thought it would choke her, and before she could even think about it, the words left her mouth.
“I know about your sister.”
Morana watched as he ground to a stop suddenly. He stilled, his arm on the railing, the muscles on his scarred back bunching, one lone muscle by one as he completely coiled his body, the action of his naked skin visible to her eyes. Her words were louder than bullets fired between them, confirming his worst suspicions and revealing her hand.