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For some reason, seeing the boys get so riled up calmed me immensely and made me feel like my old self. Looking over, even Angel had a dark look and her eyes were milky. Nudge scrambled over and touched my knee. Something almost like a recoil snapped through her thin frame and she nodded.

"Yeah. They're gone. Looked like a nuclear blast," she glanced up at Fang who had stood as well and narrowed those frightening eyes on me. "Where was it? Northern Territory?" she asked me. I shrugged.

Fang moved away, pacing a little and then punched the doorframe between the kitchen and the family room in which we sat. His fist went through the wood like a bullet through flesh. Iggy sat down again and Gazzy stalked over to stare out the window. God, they'd all grown so much.

"How'd they die?" Angel asked, her voice sounding creepily detached.

"Well, they really lost interest in me after the breeding was unsuccessful and, in effect, gave me to the Erasers as a plaything. A stress-reliever of sorts." Yeah, this was going to go over well.

The doorframe got another two holes. Nudge cussed and the bay windows in front of which Gazzy was standing shattered out onto the lawn. He turned to look at Angel with a look that said 'not again.' She didn't acknowledge him.

"Anyway, to make a long story short, I killed them all." This announcement was greeted with silence. So I went on to explain. "Turns out that they put in some kind of protection thing in me and when my body gets desperate enough, I essentially go ballistic. The problem is, I can't control it. When it first happened, it only disintegrated the particular forms associated with doing me harm. As things continued, I blew up the whole base. I woke up four days later in the middle of a blast zone with a four mile radius. Then I set out to find all of you."

Fang had his hands resting on the bottom of the holes he had made and leaned his forehead against an intact bit of frame. His head swiveled so that he could look at me. The inky blackness had faded, leaving his eyes their usual color. "They're dead?" he asked in a hushed voice.

I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. "Yeah. That's something she made sure of."

Nudge scratched her arm. "She?"

"The defense mechanism," I explained. "I don't remember anything about what happens when she takes over. I usually wake up covered in blood and confused. The only way I remember what's going on is everything starts to tingle from my fingers and toes in and by the time it reaches all over, I'm out."

I hate to admit it, but the Voice had been kind of right. I did feel a teesny bit better now that I didn't have to hide most of that from them. God, I wanted ice cream right now. So, I got up and slipped into the kitchen while they mulled over all that I told them.

I found a gallon of Extra-Creamy Mocha flavor in the fridge, Fang's favorite, and didn't bother to get a bowl. It always tasted better right out of the container. I glanced back into the family room, but didn't feel like going in so I took my ice cream and a spoon and slipped into the backyard. They had a cute little picnic table on the grass and I sat on it with my feet on the bench.

Ice cream is heaven.

As I sat there shoving spoonful after spoonful of mocha-flavored frozen milk and cream into my mouth, I contemplated the reactions of my flock. Obviously, they'd developed some new talents, just as I had and they were still working as a cohesive unit. At least some of my preaching had worked.

I tried really hard not to think about how they might treat me, now that they knew most the icky things that had happened to me. Would they treat me different, knowing the things that I had been forced to do? A sudden thought nearly choked me and I lost my appetite for the ice cream. What would Fang think?

I set the now half empty tub on the table beside me and leaned over so that my head was between my knees, hoping that I wouldn't toss my cookies right there.

I totally hadn't thought of all the options. Maybe they'd hate me, even though it really hadn't been my first choice.

Don't borrow trouble.

"Shut the hell up," I snapped out loud. "Quit talking when I don't want you to. Shit! Can't I work out my problems on my own?" All the tension from the night got to me and the Voice's little bit of advice really pissed me off.

I'm only trying to…

I cut it off. "Well, don't!" I hopped off the bench and kicked it. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes and let myself fall onto the cool grass. I arched my back to open my wings and lay there with all appendages spread, glaring at the darkening sky.

"Still talking to yourself?"

I felt the familiar prickle on the back of my neck and glared harder at the drifting clouds. I didn't feel like engaging in sarcastic banter. There's a first. "Go away." I could barely hear bending of the grass under his feet as he stepped closer.

Fang placed a foot on either side of my head and looked down the line of his body at me. "Like I'm ever going to let you go again." He held out his hands. "Come on."

With a long suffering sigh, I stuck my arms straight up. He grasped my wrists and pulled me upright. And then he wrapped his arms around me from behind, bending so that his chin rested on my shoulder.

Yes, go with-

Shut up!

Fang nodded toward the ice cream. "I just bought that this morning."

I shrugged. "You can get more." I felt better standing there with him, talking as though nothing had happened. Maybe this was what I needed right now, to pretend that I wasn't damaged goods. That was a nice thought.

The wind picked up, bringing with it the sharp dusty smell of summer rain. My hair blew forward into my face and if I looked to the side, I could see Fang's long dark strands mingling with mine.

He straightened up to his full height, six five. Even at five eleven, the top of my head barely reached higher than his chin. With a gentle tug on my waist, he turned me around to face him and his hands came up to cup my jaw. "You are safe here, Max. You took care of us for so long, sacrificed everything." He kissed my forehead softly. It was almost like my dream. "Let us take care of you." His lips touched the end of my nose.

I fought the urge to giggle at the idea of Fang being so cutesy. But it was sweet all the same.

His mouth lowered until it was barely a breath away from mine. "Let me take care of you," he said so softly I could barely hear it, but I could feel the words as his lips moved, he was so close.

And then, he kissed me.

Sweet mother of God, that boy can kiss. And knowing that he knew about my past and still kissed me melted away the fear that had sat like a frozen chunk of ice the size of Greenland in my gut. He wasn't demanding as one might expect him to be. He didn't take without a care; he didn't take at all. He gave me what I had been needing since I left: acceptance and a promise that he would stand by me no matter what. I know it sounds strange, but I could feel all of that through the gentle pressure of his lips on mine. I shivered as new sensations rippled through me.

He broke contact and put some distance between our faces. One of his hands moved up to smooth my windblown hair. "You'll be okay," he told me in an echo of the conversation we had at Anne's when we were fourteen and I had asked him to kill me if I turned evil. "You're fine."

My mouth curved upward in a grin. My heart jumped to see his do the same. He hugged me tightly for a quick second and then led me back inside just as the soft summer rain began to fall.