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“Let him hold me.” My voice was urgent, pleading. “What would happen? If anything, it’ll calm both of us down.”

Slowly, the Drone straightened on the stool and propped an ankle over a knee. “Very well.”

Michio crumpled to his knees and toppled over me. His expression didn’t change, but the muscles in his biceps flexed as he woodenly caught his weight, hooked his arms around me, and pulled me into the cage of his body.

His hand cupped the back of my head, and it was with that specific gesture that I finally felt him. His touch. Our bond. God, I hadn’t realized how much we needed that. It was such a small mercy that grip on my head, yet it meant everything.

I pressed a kiss to his sternum and found myself hurdling through an unexpected stream of visions. I imagined massaging his back after he’d spent a long day of providing medical care for a civilized world. In the next image, I made dinner—lasagna and bread sticks—of which Roark appreciated the most. Then I washed Jesse’s hair while we soaked in a tub. So fucking domesticated, yet there it was, filling my chest with longing.

I tried to hold on to it, to keep my guardians with me, but as Michio rolled us to our sides, chest to chest, I felt the essence that made him who he was vanish from his touch.

His arms locked into place around me like insentient steel bars, his breathing tempered into inhuman steadiness, and his fingers lay lifeless against my back. His muscles held me, but he no longer animated the movements.

The chains clanked as I trailed a finger down his arm, and goosebumps cropped up along his skin. Goosebumps! Oh God, Michio could feel me.

I settled against his chest, melting against the familiar lines and ridges of his body, and reached deep with my mind, seeking the man that hummed beneath my skin.

My fingers lingered on the crook of his elbow then traced the bulge of his bicep. With each caress, I showed him how much I missed him, that I’d been incomplete without him, and that I knew he was with me, even if he couldn’t show me.

For too long, I’d carried a deep empty space in my heart. He was the part that had been missing, and now that I’d found him, the other two-thirds of my heart were missing.

I glared at the man responsible. “Where are Jesse and Roark?”

The Drone shrugged. “Where you left them. I pulled the army out of Missouri after Dr. Nealy secured you.”

My pulse raced with hope. He’d already said he would have them killed if I didn’t cooperate, which was why he’d kept them alive.

“They won’t find you.” He rubbed at a water spot on his patent leather shoe then lowered his foot to the floor. “You were transported in a vehicle. There are no tracks. Nothing to lead them here. But if I need to motivate you, I have spiders and aphids covering every mile of the continent. I can find your guardians within hours. Would you like that?”

I didn’t bother responding. I suspected he’d burned my house so that I wouldn’t have anything to cling to, but it was just a house. My guardians were my home.

Jesse and Roark must’ve been out of their minds with worry. No doubt they were trying to find me this very minute, but how? Would they look for witnesses? Men we’d passed on the way here?

The nymphs. My heart skipped. The nymphs would travel in from every direction, attracted to the women outside the dam. If Jesse and Roark followed them, they would find me. It was scary to hope, but it fluttered through every cell of my body, lifting me, giving me confidence. I just needed to delay the Drone’s plans for me, whatever those plans were, until Jesse and Roark arrived.

I met his eyes, the visual contact so unnerving I ached to look away, but I held firm. “You said I wouldn’t appreciate your methods unless you explained it from the beginning.”

“Yes.” He leaned forward and rested an arm on his knee. “The prophecy, the evolving species, the powerful child, all of it changed the course of my plans.”

The evolving species troubled me the most because I couldn’t make sense of its meaning. I tried to recall the conversation I’d had with Jesse the night he told me about the prophecy. The creatures would evolve…you won’t be able to save future generations from them…but our daughter can…without her, there will be no human race.

My fingers moved restlessly over Michio’s arm. “Surely you already knew the aphids were evolving?”

“The aphids have nothing to do with the prophecy. Dr. Nealy believes…” The Drone passed a glance at Michio. “Yes, he still believes the prediction refers to the evolution of my newest creation.”