"He'll come after you-all of you-next," she choked out. "He's crazy. He believes himself invincible and is convinced that if he has me he'll be immortal, that nothing can stop him. Death means nothing to him. God, Isaac, he inflicted terrible injuries on some of his own men and then forced me to watch. I was just a few feet away as they lay dying and they pleaded with me to save them, and yet I was powerless to do anything but watch because he wouldn't allow me to help them."
Isaac closed his eyes, knowing that he and Shadow had guessed precisely what the sadistic bastard had subjected Jenna to in the long hours of her captivity.
"He won't stop," she said in an aching whisper. "He'll never stop until he gets what he wants and he doesn't care how many people he has to kill to achieve his goal or even how long it takes. He'll always be out there, waiting and watching, and when we least expect it, he'll attack. Even if it takes multiple times and even if he has to wait years, he'll kill every single person who works at DSS and any family they have. You and I will never have a normal life together because every moment we'll be in fear of when he'll strike and I can't lose you, Isaac. I can't. You are the only person who has ever loved me, who has cared so deeply for me and who doesn't care at all about my ability to heal or try to use it and me to his advantage. When I'm with you, I'm not a freak who spent twenty years trapped inside the walls of a compound with no knowledge or understanding of the vast outside world. When I'm with you is the only time I feel normal. Like a real person and not some commodity to be used, traded or sold like I'm an inanimate object with no feelings, heart, soul or intelligence. I don't want you to ever leave me. I don't want you to die!" she cried, diving back into his embrace, pressing her face so tightly to the side of his neck that he wondered if she could even breathe.
He was overwhelmed by her impassioned words. His chest was tight, not with panic now, but with emotion that swelled larger and larger until he felt the sting at his eyelids as tears formed. He blinked furiously, inhaling sharply as he sought to control the swell of love for her that threatened to completely overtake him.
"I will never leave you, baby," he vowed, barely able to choke out the words through the constriction in his throat.
He kissed her temple and ran his fingers through her tangled hair, wanting her to not just hear his words of love and his vow never to leave her. He wanted her to feel them. Wanted her to feel how awed and off balance he felt over the power of her declaration and what it meant to him. What she meant to him.
She lifted her face, which was raw and hid nothing of what she thought or felt. She scrubbed away at her tears as if annoyed that she'd allowed herself that momentary weakness. Yet he was in awe that she'd been able to keep it together so well for so long from the very beginning. Quite simply, he was in awe of everything she was and the unbreakable inner strength she retained even after twenty years of daily subjugation.
"I believe that you don't want to ever leave me," she said. "What I fear is that choice being taken from both of us and you being killed because of me. I could never live, knowing you sacrificed your life for me. I would have nothing to live for."
"Don't talk like that," he said fiercely, her sincere words nearly stopping his heart on the spot. "Never say that, Jenna. No matter what happens, I want you to promise me that you'll never stop fighting, that you'll never give up and that you'll go on, free and able to make your own choices about your life and do anything you've ever dreamed of doing. You have to swear it, baby, or I won't even be able to function. I'll think of nothing else but the overwhelming fear of you giving up if something ever happened to me."
He gripped her shoulders and melded his lips to hers, taking her mouth hungrily, desperation beating at him, an incessant, unrelenting force.
Her eyes glistened with tears, but slowly she nodded and in a halting voice, hoarse from the strain of holding back so much emotion, she said, "I promise, Isaac. But only if you promise me the same."
His eyes narrowed as rage consumed him all over again. In no way, in no version of his life, would there ever not be a Jenna, but he'd forced the vow from her, even seeing the agony it caused her, so he could do no less than utter the same promise-even if he didn't mean a damn word of it. A life without Jenna was unthinkable. He'd be a mere shadow of his former self, a shell going about the motions like a robot programmed to perform specific functions, but his heart, and his soul, would forever be wherever she was.