to know she’d been nearly obsessed with making sure he was fine. “I respected your courage and you wouldn’t allow them to break your spirit. What they did was a crime. I happened to be in there taking a break when Jacob entered your cell and I overheard him say he planned to kill you. I just couldn’t stand by without doing something.”
Fury seemed to ponder her explanation. “You never stopped any of the other things they did to me. Did you watch when they forced females into my cell and beat them to make us have sex together? Did you enjoy watching that?”
Horror kept Ellie silent. She’d had no idea the doctors had been doing those kinds of things. Perhaps because she was a recent transfer they had purposely kept her in the dark. Jacob hadn’t been the only one to sexually assault Fury. It made her sick inside. She wondered if they would have tried to force her to try to have sex with any of the male Species if she hadn’t helped bust the testing facility.
“They made you have sex with women? I didn’t know. I never saw any women inside your cell when I came in. Was it the other nurses and technicians? I never heard anything about it, Fury. I swear.”
“They were New Species females. They tried for years to breed us. They needed to make more of us but couldn’t successfully replicate the procedures they’d used to create us in the first place. I heard enough to know the doctor who had successfully spliced our genetics with animals had left them when we were young, took her research, destroyed what they had, and they wanted more of us. We were growing older and they feared we’d die.” Anger changed his voice to a growl. “An infant or a puppy? That was what one of those doctors joked. He laughed over the concept of finding out if our women were impregnated.” Fury’s voice deepened into a growl. “Did you ever try to save any of them from being forced to have sex?”
He had so many reasons to hate. His rage, directed at her, was even more understandable. “I didn’t know about any of that. I never even saw one of your women. I was the lowest-level technician with very limited movement within the facility. It came as a shock later when I heard there were females rescued. I only saw males, Fury.”
“You didn’t ask. The females were sometimes raped by the technicians. It angers me that you intervened for me but not them.”
“I asked plenty of questions but they told me it wasn’t any of my business. I had been ordered not to push too hard for answers for fear Mercile would grow suspicious of me. My handler thought they’d kill me if they had any inkling why I wanted to know exactly what they were doing down there and he was right.”
Ellie blinked hard to hold back tears. She knew horrors had been committed in the name of science but the things done to Fury and his kind staggered her. They had been treated as though they were guinea pigs, tools, and nothing more. Taking blood samples, forcing drugs into their systems, and keeping them locked up had been horrible but hearing they’d been forced to have sex, used as breeders, sickened her.
“I believed you wouldn’t harm me. Were you aware of that? When I didn’t growl at you every time you entered my cell, did that amuse you? I didn’t want to frighten you. You were kind with your smiles and tender with your needles. When you killed that technician, at first I believed you did it to prevent me from suffering.” His features tensed and his voice grew deeper, each word carefully pronounced. “Yet you left me there to be tortured by the guards for your crime. They whipped me and took turns inflicting pain. Some of them were his friends. They weren’t allowed to kill me but they caused great harm.”
Tears slid down the sides of her face. “I am sorry. I—” She knew nothing she said would erase his hate of her but she had to try. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know they’d do that. I thought only Jacob had it out for you after you’d broken his nose. I knew they valued you too much to kill you. I never thought they were doing breeding experiments either. I thought you’d be safe long enough for me to smuggle the evidence out and help could reach you. I wouldn’t have told them you’d killed him if I’d known you’d pay for what I did.”
His fangs flashed when his lips parted. “
“No.”
He took a deep breath. When he spoke, he’d obviously calmed a bit since he didn’t snarl anymore. “Sorry doesn’t change what happened to me, does it? It doesn’t take it back what you did to me or how betrayed I feel. I trusted you, yet I paid for your actions. I am not going to kill you but I plan to make certain you understand humiliation and helplessness.”
Fury agonized over how stupid he’d been to trust Ellie. The guards had even teased him before that incident about not snarling at her when she’d come into his cell.
He’d borne their harsh words and accusations that he wanted to mount the human female, their cruel taunts that she’d never want an animal to fuck her, but she’d been his weakness. The sense of betrayal had run deep after that day. He’d spent months hating her, reliving the torture he’d suffered and blaming her for it. She’d left him on the floor, sent guards in to kick him then chain him back to the wall where the abuse had continued.
Humans were deceitful, cruel creatures. He had already misjudged Ellie once. The painful memory of her actions tore at his heart. He would never allow her to fool him again by lulling him into a false sense of trust.
Every human he’d cared about had betrayed him. Memories surfaced from his late childhood. He’d almost thought of Doctor Vela as a mother. She’d given him cookies, a rare treat he’d looked forward to. He would have done anything for her. She’d promised he could earn his freedom if he became a skilled fighter. They had even videotaped him to show off how their drugs worked on his body.
It had been a lie to manipulate him into compliance. When they’d come to take him away to another facility, she’d laughed at him over how incredibly naive and stupid he’d been.
Hell had begun after that when they’d taught him to endure physical pain. That torture continued into adulthood. The beatings he’d endured as they’d tried to create drugs that would heal humans faster, the sickness and pain he’d suffered on the failed ones that nearly killed him—all those memories surfaced now.
There had been the female guard who promised to help him escape. He had been young, ruled by lust, and still experienced shame at how badly he’d wanted to mount the woman. Her name left a bitter taste in his mouth. Mary had unlocked his chains and he’d followed her out of his cell, down a long corridor, and straight into the trap they’d set up to test his fighting skills against a dozen heavily armed fighters.
They had hit him with clubs and shot him with Taser guns, and Mary had cheered on the guards from the
