Chapter 12 Secrets Buried in Blood #2
Damien's voice had become unusually distant.
"The walls were white."
"There was a clock."
"I remember..."
He closed his eyes.
"...listening to it."
For several seconds neither man spoke.
The silence wasn't empty.
It felt as though Damien's mind was reaching toward something buried beneath years of carefully constructed barriers.
"I thought those memories were gone."
Ethan remained perfectly still.
"Don't force them."
"I'm not."
"They're..."
Damien frowned slightly.
"...coming back."
Another page.
Another report.
Another fragment of memory.
A bright hospital corridor stretching endlessly beneath harsh fluorescent lights.
The smell of antiseptic.
Cold metal beneath his hands.
Footsteps approaching.
Voices speaking somewhere beyond a closed door.
The memories arrived without order.
Scattered.
Incomplete.
Yet undeniably real.
"I remember signing something."
Damien opened his eyes.
"But I couldn't read it."
"Why not?"
"My vision..."
He touched his forehead unconsciously.
"...everything kept drifting out of focus."
Ethan immediately looked toward one of the reports.
A line near the bottom caught his attention.
Sedation maintained throughout neurological assessment.
His stomach tightened.
"Damien."
"I don't think you were fully conscious."
Damien slowly nodded.
"I wasn't."
Another memory surfaced.
Someone adjusting an intravenous line.
A physician speaking quietly to another researcher.
"Increase the dosage."
"He's responding."
"Record instinct suppression."
The voices echoed briefly before disappearing again.
Damien rubbed both hands across his face.
"I thought..."
He paused.
"I thought I was dreaming."
"You weren't."
"No."
"I wasn't."
The realization carried surprising sadness.
For years he had dismissed those fragmented memories as nightmares created by trauma.
Now they looked disturbingly authentic.
Ethan continued reading another report.
His expression gradually hardened.
"There's something here."
Damien looked toward him.
"What?"
"They monitored emotional responses."
"To what?"
"Everything."
"Stress."
"Fear."
"Compassion."
"Protective instincts."
He looked directly at Damien.
"They weren't just studying biology."
"They were studying your emotions."
Damien felt another memory pressing against the edges of his consciousness.
This one clearer than the others.
A narrow observation room.
A large mirror covering one wall.
At the time he had assumed it was ordinary glass.
Now he realized people had been watching from the other side.
He remembered being asked the same questions repeatedly.
"Do you recognize this omega's scent?"
"No."
"Again."
Another scent.
Another face.
Another answer.
"No."
More injections.
More examinations.
More questions.
Again.
Again.
Again.
He could almost hear the rhythm of it.
Relentless.
Methodical.
Designed to wear away certainty.
"They kept testing me."
The words came quietly.
"Every day."
"They wanted a different answer."
Ethan's heart tightened.
"What happened when you couldn't give it?"
Damien's expression became strangely blank.
"I don't remember."
Then another image flashed across his mind.
A physician looking disappointed.
A clipboard.
Someone writing notes.
"Increase suppression."
"Subject continues resisting target response."
He inhaled sharply.
"They changed the medication."
Ethan looked back toward the reports.
One page listed multiple pharmaceutical compounds administered over several weeks.
The dosage increased almost every time.
"They weren't treating you."
"No."
Damien's voice remained steady despite the emotion beneath it.
"They were changing me."
Silence settled over the library.
Outside, rain began tapping softly against the windows.
Inside, years of unanswered questions slowly found their answers.
Damien reached the final report inside the folder.
Unlike the others, it contained a concluding assessment.
Most of the page had been heavily redacted.
Only a few sentences remained visible.
Subject demonstrates exceptional instinct suppression.
Bonding responses remain inactive.
Emotional attachment significantly reduced.
Program objectives substantially achieved.
Damien read those lines twice.
Then a third time.
His chest felt unexpectedly heavy.
"So that's all I became."
Ethan looked at him immediately.
"What do you mean?"
"A successful outcome."
"A completed objective."
"They reduced an entire life..."
He touched the page gently.
"...to four sentences."
Ethan quietly moved closer.
"They were wrong."
Damien looked toward him.
"They measured biology."
"They never measured who you became."
"You built a company."
"You protected veterans."
"You created scholarships."
"You changed thousands of lives."
He smiled softly.
"They couldn't engineer kindness."
Those words settled somewhere deep inside Damien.
For years he had believed something inside him had been broken.
Now he understood something entirely different.
Nothing had broken naturally.
Someone had deliberately tried to remove parts of him they considered inconvenient.
His instincts.
His ability to bond.
Perhaps even his capacity to trust.
Yet despite everything they had done...
He had still learned compassion.
He had still chosen loyalty.
He had still fallen in love.
The realization steadied him.
He looked once more at the final assessment.
Then carefully closed the folder.
"I spent ten years believing I was defective."
His voice carried quiet certainty.
"I wasn't."
Ethan gently took his hand.
"No."
"You never were."
Damien looked into the fire for a long moment before speaking again.
"They didn't create the perfect Alpha."
He shook his head slowly.
"They tried to."
"They wanted a soldier who never questioned orders."
"An Alpha untouched by instinct."
"Someone who could fight without hesitation and obey without emotional conflict."
His eyes met Ethan's.
"My inability to bond wasn't fate."
"It wasn't genetics."
"It wasn't some rare medical condition."
He drew a slow, steady breath.
"It was engineered."
The words echoed through the quiet library.
Not as a question.
Not as a theory.
But as a truth finally uncovered after more than a decade of silence.
And now that Damien remembered enough to understand what had been taken from him, he knew there was only one path forward.
He wasn't going to spend the rest of his life wondering what Project Aegis had stolen.
He was going to make certain the people responsible never had the opportunity to do it to anyone else.
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