Chapter 12
Chapter twelve
Bright spots of color dotted Wynn’s cheeks the longer Iax held her hand in his. Her pupils dilated, the appealing brown of her irises shrinking to a slender ring.
Those eyes held him captive while the tingling connection continued between them, his essence speaking to hers in a way he had not been sure it would.
But he had wanted to try.
And it worked. Despite not being able to touch her mind and taste her thoughts, he could stimulate the foundational makeup of her cells.
In its wake, a new and pleasurable sensation rippled through him.
He yearned for more, his body responding biologically to a need that, for most of his life, had remained dormant.
His eyes skimmed downward over the thin material of her top.
Her chest rose and fell in rapid bursts, nipples puckered beneath, but it was not fear that crashed over him.
It was a warmth that matched the one simmering in his chest and stomach, and even lower.
His internal temperature increased along with his heart rate.
The urge to explore this emotion pushed at him. He needed to see how hot he could make her burn if he touched her elsewhere.
But she was bleeding. He broke their stare and concentrated on the life force that hummed below her skin, speaking essence-to-essence to heal the damage.
Her lips parted, and she tipped her chin to focus on their joined hands. Beneath his palm, he concentrated on sealing the laceration in increments. Her emotions swooped toward him, crashing over his head in waves, then receded.
When he was certain he had healed all the damage, he removed his hand, keeping her wrist supported underneath. Blood marred her skin, but she was no longer injured.
She gasped and snatched her hand from his. “How the hell did you do that?” She opened and closed her fingers quickly.
He was about to answer when her entire body stiffened, her eyes flying to his.
“No,” she whispered, then stared at her other arm.
She took hold of the cuff of her shirt, and yanked it upward, revealing the smooth skin hidden beneath. The three thin white lines he had noticed on his arrival, the scars, were gone.
She rubbed the skin back and forth, and her eyes welled with moisture. Then her shock morphed into something more volatile, the wave of anger surging against him so violently, he took a step back.
“What did you do?” She swayed, and he reached to catch her.
She straightened, stumbling sideways out of his grasp. “Stay away from me.”
At her words, he remained by the counter. She spun around to face him, one foot in the kitchen, and the other in the hallway. Her hands clenched at her sides, the one sleeve rolled up over her elbow, exposing her unblemished skin.
“What did you do?” she repeated through gritted teeth.
He did not understand her upset, why she reverted to her original hostility in the wake of him healing her injuries.
“How did you heal me so fast without a regenerator?” Her voice shook, and he found he did not like the sound of her uncertainty.
He would give her the answers he could. “You are Calypson.”
She shook her head, and crossed her arms over her chest. “That makes no sense. Explain better.”
He noted how her eyes flicked down the section of healed skin, then back at him. “You are Calypson, and I encouraged your cells to heal your cut.” It was the clearest way to describe it.
“There’s no way I could be Calypson and not know about it until now.”
His eyes roved over her face, then to where she crossed her arms. “You are Calypson. Your blood is Calypson. You have the capacity to heal yourself just as I do.”
She shook her head again. “I’m not. I don’t have your super speed or eyes that glow. You and I are not the same.”
“You are correct.” The pot beside him sputtered its water, some splashing over the edge to sizzle on the element.
She dropped her arms, rocking back on her heels. “But you said I was Calypson.”
“It is true. You are Calypson. You are also an anomaly.”
“An anomaly? What the hell does that mean?” She tugged the sleeve of her shirt down until it covered her entire arm.
Her question verged on the area of his mission he was not supposed to disclose. He combed his mind, the directives The Four had given him, searching for a way to explain without going against their wishes. Iax found none.
Wynn gritted her teeth the longer he remained silent, but he had promised he would not lie.
“There is no way I’m Calypson,” she asserted, and crossed her arms over her chest again. “You can’t prove it.”
“I can.”
Her arms dropped, and her jaw when slack. “Then do it.”
He stepped toward her.
“Ahhhh!” The cry of alarm stabbed at him as she jumped back.
He stopped his advance and tilted his head to consider her reaction.
Wynn’s throat bobbed in a swallow, her hands clenching and releasing at her sides. “What are you doing?”
She glowered at him, words passing through her eyes that he could not taste. But he could freely sample the emotions pressing against him.
He straightened. “You asked me to prove it.”
“I should have asked for specifics before making such a demand.” She inhaled a breath through her nose, then exhaled slowly. “Explain how you will prove it before proceeding.”
Caution battled her curiosity. Something else lived there too, a warmer emotion that simmered below the other two as steadily as the cooking pot of vegetables. He could not name this emotion, had no history of it in his former life.
“I will escort you to your lab space where you will analyze your blood.”
“I don’t need escorting. I can get there on my own. Don’t touch me without my permission.”
His eyes skimmed over her hair, her face, the way the material of her garments clung to body. She was curvier and more appealing than anyone he had known, eliciting new emotions deep in his stomach and a need to connect with her in more than one way.
“I will not touch you without your permission.”
Her shoulders relaxed at his agreement. “Okay, let’s go to the lab.” She backed up one step, then two, then turned to stride down the hallway.
Before she was out of sight, he bent to retrieve the towel where it had fallen on the floor. He traveled in the opposite direction, through the living room, to meet her in the lab.
She had stopped inside the doorway, looking over her shoulder with a frown on her face. When she turned to find him already there, she jumped, her hand flying to her chest.
“Shit, you’re fast.” Her gaze dropped to the towel in his hand. “What are you doing with that?”
He extended it toward her. “You can analyze it.”
She shook her head as she took small steps toward him. “I’ve analyzed my blood before, for school, many times. That won’t prove anything.”
He did not respond to those statements because he had nothing to add. The only way to prove she was Calypson was for her to perform the task herself.
Eyes narrowing, she crossed to the secondary terminal and gestured to the flat surface in the middle. “Place it there.”
He moved toward her, and she tensed, her eyes flicking up to his, then down to the towel as he set it on the glossy black surface. She tapped the terminal, and the panel lit up beneath the towel.
A moment later, data streamed above the terminal, breaking down the makeup of the towel and any liquids within its fibers, including her blood. She enhanced that portion, the white blood cells now as large as his hand, traveling in a sea of red blood cells.
“It’s human blood. Nothing unusual about it,” she stated, waving her hand at the information scrolling beside the holographic reconstruction.
He stepped closer, and her spine straightened. Emotions shot toward him, then mellowed when he did not get any closer, a half meter separating them.
“Change your analyzing filters to the following,” he said, then listed filter adjustments that would allow her to see the truth.
“Hold on, hold on,” she said, holding up one hand. “Repeat them again.”
He started at the beginning and spoke slower the second time. Tiny bumps developed across the back of her neck. A sudden urge to brush his fingers over those bumps overwhelmed him. His fingers twitched, but stayed at his sides. He would not touch her without permission.
She changed the settings as he spoke, until the images hovering over the terminal shifted, revealing an entire spectrum of color. He was about to tell her to magnify a portion of the white blood cells when she did it on her own.
“What in the…?”
Red fissures cracked along the surface, snaking like fingers.
She drew back at the sight, then shook her head. “You could have put that there. It isn’t a clean sample.” Her fingers flexed on the edge of the terminal. “With your own blood or something.”
He had not tampered with the sample, but he did not want her to think he had lied when he had promised not to. He took one step backward. “You can provide a fresh sample.”
She stared at him for a long while, a multitude of emotions crossing her face, and along with it, echoing waves.
His own rose in response, and he was not sure how to process it all.
These emotions felt ancient, a distant memory that he could not fully grasp.
So much of what he had experienced in his life since had replaced those sensations.
“Fine,” she huffed, reaching underneath the terminal to open a cupboard.
Many items crammed the small space. Pushing some of the larger containers aside, she grabbed a small one like she had used in the greenhouse for her seeds.
Standing, she closed the cupboard with her foot and set the container beside the bloody towel. It opened with a click. A flick of her gaze to his, and she swiped the dermal syringe from its place nestled in the foam that protected it.
She turned her body slightly, lifted the sleeve of her shirt, and pressed the syringe against the vein on the inside of her elbow. It hissed quietly. She pulled it away from her skin and set it inside the analyzer cradle beside the towel.
The image of the new sample took the place of the old one. Red blood cells spun around in a vortex, white blood cells interspersed among them. All the data showed regular human blood. Her shoulders lowered.
“You must change your settings,” he reminded her.
She twitched, then shook her head slightly before doing as he said, resetting the terminal for a modified analysis. Her heart rate accelerated as the image shifted, revealing the same darker red substance coating the white blood cells.
“What is it?” The question was a whispered plea, matching the shock that washed over him in waves.
“You are Calypson.” It was the only explanation he could give her that encompassed everything.
She seemed to want to deny the evidence in front of her, because she kept shaking her head.
He tried out the movement, back and forth, wondering if it was enjoyable. It did nothing for him.
“Oh, you don’t shake your head at me.”
At her harshly spoken words, he stopped, uncertain why she took exception.
“Your answer neither provides more information,” she went on, “nor makes sense. I can’t be Calypson. You came here for a reason. You must have more of an explanation than ‘you are Calypson.’” Her eyes searched his face. “Why don’t you actually tell me the truth?”
A sensation raced through him, surprising in its potency. She stared at him with those large brown eyes, and he wanted to tell her more, but these questions verged on the territory of the untouchable.
A crack of thunder filled their silence. He turned his head. The volume of the noise was less than that of its predecessors. Was the storm finally dying down? The following display of lightning dispelled that hope.
When the thunder ebbed, a sizzling sound echoed from the other side of the building. He jerked his line of sight toward it, changing his vision to see through to the kitchen.
Wynn’s eyes jumped to his. “Shit. The soup.” She darted out of the room as fast as he had seen her move, heading to the hallway.
He turned his head to follow her path, his gaze lingering on the empty doorway a moment before he followed her hasty exit.
“Not Calypson. Not Calypson.”
The repeated words led him toward the kitchen.
He paused in the doorway and watched her turn off the heat beneath the pot.
Moisture dotted the surface of the counter, and she didn’t look up as she wiped it up with a matching towel to the one that remained in her lab covered in blood.
Her jerky movements continued beyond where the liquid had bubbled over the edge of the pot.
“Not Calypson. Not Calypson,” she repeated, the rhythm of her words matching the strokes of her hand as she wiped down the counter.
A small laugh left her, one high pitched and tinged with instability. A chaotic swirl followed, crashing over him. Along with it came the urge to leave, to spare himself from the emotions of this situation.
He stayed where he was, accepting the chaos into himself. He could not taste her thoughts, but he could experience this. The longer he spent in her presence, the easier it was to digest these feelings, and he realized they were more appealing than stroking another’s mind, even when volatile.
“I’m losing it.” She continued wiping vigorously. “I’m losing it,” she repeated.
Another small laugh escaped her, but this one she smothered with a sniff of her nose. Her hand paused, but her chest rose and fell in rapid breaths. She stared at a section of the counter that did not seem to be significant, but held her rapt attention.
A shuddering breath shook her body, then she let go of the towel to cover her forearm with her hand—the same place where the three lines used to mark her skin.
He had thought she was not aware of his presence, but then she straightened and said, “I just…” She cleared her throat, then looked him in the eye. “I need a moment alone.” Moisture welled in her eyes right before she stumbled past him and headed toward her sleeping quarters.
Another sniff resounded down the hallway. The sound cut off when the door closed behind her.
Need rippled through his body—a need to help. She demanded space, but he could not leave her in distress.