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air sting her face and dry her burning eyes. There was no way in hell she was going to cry over this bullshit. She had seen the writing on the wall for some time and knew it was only a matter of time before Titus called her in to dispose of her. Expecting the rejection hadn't steeled her heart against hearing the actual words as much as she had hoped.
    “Rachel,” Marius called.
    She didn’t bother to look at him. He might have stood up for her at the end, but he wasn’t any better than the rest of the damned hybrids. They were all looking for her to be the bad guy just because of Fisher and found what they wanted. Hell, there were things she’d done in the compound that she would have never dreamed of outside the walls, but she'd become so used to doing everything she needed to treat the people that lived here, even if it meant bending her own ethical compass at times.
    The sacrifice was worth it, if she could help her patients. At least, she'd thought so before. Now, she wasn't so sure.
    Marius neared her and asked, “What are you doing?”
    She glanced over at him. He was still wearing the white button-up from before. The blood speckling the front looked so out of place from his normally neat attire.
    “I’m pretending the ground is your leader's head, so I can stomp it,” she said and stomped hard.
    She stomped a more times just for good measure. When she looked over, she could see him standing there watching her, trying very poorly to hide his amusement, and it only irritated her more.
    “What?” she snapped at him.
    Marius raised his dark brows. “Just waiting for you to finish.”
    Rachel kicked the ground hard with the front of her foot and cursed. “Now I’m finished.”
    She could hear the crunch of the gravel as he moved closer to her. As stupid as it might seem, her heart raced at his nearness, and she had to struggle to keep it in check. At the last second, she glanced up at him. He was closer than she had even guessed. The smell of his soap drifted between them, and she breathed in deeply. It was something she had come to like, living with him. It was nice having something masculine be so near. Someone masculine.
    “I think...” He sighed and ran a hand through his dark hair. “We don’t tend to spend a lot of time thinking about things around here,” he said. “When you’re raised to just react, it becomes more nature than anything.”
    Rachel stared at him as he struggled to get this out. The hybrids weren’t great at expressing things, and she was even more amazed to see him even bothering. Up until recently, he hadn’t been much different from the others.
    “We're already distrustful of doctors,” he said quietly and looked into her eyes. She was always so shocked to see the pale amber staring back at her. “When Doctor Fisher betrayed us, it was only confirmation that all doctors are bad. We pretty much expected it.”
    She turned from him. Knowing how much faith they had in her, it was going to be hard to say what she had to say next.
    “I’m not supposed to be a doctor,” she said and stared off into the distance.
    The air seemed to still between them as time flew.
    “What?” he growled.
    Rachel turned back to him and frowned. “I’m not a doctor. Not really. I'm not supposed to be.”
    Marius grabbed her roughly by the hand. “What the fuck do you mean you aren’t supposed to be a doctor? You've been treating us! We’ve put our trust in you, and you would betray us like that?”
    Lines of rage creased his face, and she frowned. She pulled on her hand. His grip was firm but didn’t hurt.
    “I'm a damned MD/PhD,” she yelled. “So, yeah, I'm a doctor, but I’m supposed to be in a lab. Fisher was supposed to be the clinician, and I was supposed to be doing experimentation.”
    Marius dropped her hand as if he had been burned. Rachel looked up to him as he stepped away from her. A look of horror was firmly planted on his face.
    “Experimentation?” he said.
    She