“You’re right. I was still lying. But no more. Though I would have given anything to never have you know the whole truth about me, I owe it to you to tell you everything.”
She stumbled back, too, as if from the path of a bullet. “I’m sure you have some story you think will make me slide back into trusting you, or at least make me sympathize with your motivations and understand why you did what you did. But it’s too late for that. Too late for anything.”
The finality of her words felt like a mortal blow. How he remained standing, or even breathing, he had no idea.
“You already do understand why I did what I did. I wanted what I believed to be my birthright, and I always do whatever it takes to get what I want. As for making you sympathetic, there’s no chance for that. The story I have to tell you—all the things you sensed me hiding—will only horrify you.”
That stony distance in her eyes shredded his insides with regret. She’d once looked at him as if he was the only thing she wanted to see. Now a part of him was growing inside her, a miracle made of their essences and passion, and he was the one thing she’d rather never see again.
Exposing everything about his past—things not even his brothers knew in full—was something he’d never considered before. But he couldn’t hide anything from her again. He owed her everything. The absolute truth was just the first thing among countless others that included the heart he’d grown to love her with, and the life that now meant nothing without her.
Feeling as though he was ending his own life, he told her everything. Everything.
It could have taken hours or only minutes to relate the horrors that had happened to him at The Organization, what he’d been forced to do, to endure, what had been done to him, what he’d been guilty of since that day he’d lost his father to what he now knew had been an accident. With every word he said, absolute shock mushroomed in her eyes.
Then he had no more horrors to relate and finally exhaled a resigned breath. “So whatever you thought I was, you now realize I’m so much worse. Far worse than anything you could even imagine.”
By the time he fell silent, her body and face were shaking as if with a devastating earthquake. But it was the horror in her eyes that told him everything he’d ever feared had come to pass.
He’d scared and repelled her so completely, she’d probably risk whatever she now knew he was capable of to keep herself, and their child, away from him.
He squeezed his eyes shut on the alien feeling of defeat burning in his gut.
Knowing there was nothing to fear for or to lose anymore, he confessed what lurked in the darkest corner of his being. “I did anything I had to do to survive, and once I was free, I thought I could only remain free by destroying and conquering anyone in my path. I came here believing I’d decimate anyone who stood in the way to what I considered mine. I did intend to claim the unknown daughter of the king of Zafrana, and to use her in the same way Hassan intended to. I never considered things wouldn’t go my way. I never took into account that I’d develop any feelings for you since I believed I was unequipped to feel any. Then you...happened to me.
“Everything else but you disappeared. Only you remained in my universe, a new one I never knew could exist. You melted the steel vault I built around myself. Now I am unable to seek its refuge again. I would die of exposure without you.”
He finally opened his eyes and saw his devastation reflected in hers. “But you are right to reject me. Not because I betrayed you, since I didn’t, but because I am what I am. You have every right to deprive me of yourself, of your love. Of our child. You should, for both of your sakes. I’m a monster. And I proved it when I hurt you—the only one who ever loved me, the only one I’ll ever love.”
Jenan had felt she’d known true agony when she’d thought she’d been nothing but a pawn to Numair.