“Cry, let it out, and then you’ll tell me what’s happened.” I kept my voice low and even, hoping to soothe her with more than my hold.
I felt her shake her head and try to pull out of my arms. “Liam. You don’t understand. It’s…it’s bad.”
“Bad enough to want to be reassigned?” I asked, staring at the far wall. Anger boiled up, but I tamped it down. “So bad that you want to leave me, Bella? Why?”
“I won’t be mated to liars. To murderers.”
I stilled then. I didn’t breathe and I swear my heart skipped a beat. For this, I had to look at her so I slid her out of my hold and onto the testing chair beside me, pushed her back so she was reclined. I turned my upper body and put my hands on the chair’s arms to pin her in place. Looking down at her, I saw the unshed tears in her dark, wild eyes.
“Explain.”
She licked her lips, took a deep breath. “Evon and Rager. They’re in on it.”
“In on what?”
“On the thefts. Using your security code. The murder.”
That, I was not expecting. Maybe Evon had been too dominant and scared her. That seemed unlikely given her eagerness to submit, but it was in the realm of possibility. I’d worried that perhaps she’d been denied an orgasm. Perhaps our seed power was too much for her small human body to process and she’d become overly emotional. I’d feared that perhaps she was homesick since Viken was most likely nothing like Earth.
But in a million years, I never expected her to say Evon and Rager had gone bad. I didn’t believe it, but Bella did, and that was what mattered.
“How do you know this?”
She narrowed her eyes at me, remained quiet.
“You don’t believe me,” she said finally, her voice cold. She tried to get past me, but there was no way I was letting her out of this chair. With one hand still on the armrest, I used the other to push her back, placing my palm between her breasts and holding her in place. Gently, but I would not relent.
“I believe you are convinced your words are the truth.” Tears slid from her eyes again. I kept her gaze, ensured she was looking at me as I spoke. “But your words are serious and I wish to know what proof you have seen. You are intelligent. You have honor, mate, and wouldn’t make false claims without reason.”
She relaxed then. I kept my hand on her, not to hold her in place, but to feel the beating of her heart.
“Evon took me down to one of the command stations. It took me a few hours, but I hacked your security system.”
I smiled. I couldn’t help it. My beautiful, brilliant mate.
“I found out it was Thalia who used your security codes. Evon and I watched her do it. He saw the video. He got angry and ordered me to turn it off.”
“Video?”
“The security footage, the moving images. I told him it wasn’t you.” She sobbed again as she continued. “It wasn’t you, it was Thalia.”
My eyes widened and I sat up. My mind began to spin with possibilities. More questions. My mate had broken into Viken’s security system? Pride filled me at my mate’s cleverness even as an unfamiliar ache squeezed my chest for the man I called friend, for our fragile new family.
Evon would be devastated. His sister had betrayed us all, betrayed her family? She was responsible for the security breach? The illegal transports? The death of the guard? Why? I lifted my hand to Bella’s face and cupped her cheek. “I’m so proud of you, mate. But I don’t understand. You said Evon and Rager are in on it? And Thalia? Fuck. Thalia?” I was about to add more, more about how broken Evon would be at this betrayal, but Bella yanked her face from my touch and turned away from me.
“No. That was Rager’s job.”
I frowned. “What?”
“Fucking Thalia.” She tipped up her chin, her tears now gone. In their place was steely resolve, a woman scorned. Pain. Soul-shattering pain that would harden her heart against us forever.
“Explain.”
“Rager is fucking Thalia.”
I stood then, paced the small room, ran a hand over my long hair. I wanted to blurt out it was impossible, that Rager wouldn’t do something like that. He thought of Evon’s sister as his own sister. He wasn’t interested in her. If he had been, he would have mated her years ago, the first time she asked him. She’d been after him for years. Her obsession with Rager was well known to everyone at IQC. But Bella was new here, didn’t know the history.
How could Bella not feel Rager’s devotion as her matched mate? Hell, his head had been between her thighs earlier in the day as I worked her ass. How could she question him? A few hours ago, I’d seen something in her eyes that made my entire body sigh with contentment. Love. Trust. Tenderness. Things I’d not had from a woman before. From my woman. Rager and Evon were as entranced as I. I had served with them for years, knew them almost as well as I knew myself. They were devoted to Bella, as I was.