Wyatt acted as if he didn’t even hear him. “Poor little girl,” he said, his accent thickening as his eyes swept over Eve. “Unlike Cain, you never had a problem with shedding tears. I read the report. Heard the stories about how you cried so long and hard when your mother died. When your father bled out before you . . .”

Eve’s heart slammed into her chest.

Cain’s hand curled around Eve’s. “He’s just screwing with you.”

No, he was torturing her. “Those vampires . . .”

The ones that had been in the pit, the ones they’d killed . . .

Wyatt’s smile widened. The bites had almost faded completely from his neck. He lifted a brow. “Remembered them, did you? One of my father’s . . . experiments. Unfortunately, those soldiers weren’t strong enough to adjust to the vampire DNA running through their bodies. They mutated. Became rabid feeding machines within just a few months of their transformation.” His smile faded. For an instant, he almost looked sad, but Eve knew that fleeting expression had to be just another one of his tricks. Wyatt didn’t care about anyone or anything.

“Your father transformed those men?” Eve held her body carefully still. Beside her, she could feel the leashed power vibrating within Cain.

Wyatt nodded. “A failed experiment. One of the few my father had.” Wyatt lifted his hands and stared down at them with narrowed eyes. “One of the few,” he said again, voice softer.

Why weren’t guards storming into the room? Swarming them? Eve glanced back toward the door. Everything was off about this place. But . . .

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.