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subjected to and give her a chance at survival.
    Isaac watched her look around the small, but decent apartment, wondering if ‘alive’ was the right word. She was different. Her eyes were changed and something was off, something he couldn’t see, but felt. What did they do to her? What more would they have done to her if Talley hadn’t found out about her when he had? And that escape? It had been much too easy.

     
    Blue eyes tinged with gray met his. “Is this your place?”
    He gave a brisk shake of his head. “No.”
    “Talley’s?”
    “ No.”
    Honor gave him a look, stopping beside a cream-colored couch. Her fingers trailed along the back of it, her head lowered. “Whose apartment is this and why are we here?”
    “My…” It was Demi’s. Demi, the woman he’d loved. Demi, the woman turned UD; Demi, the one who tried to kill him and was killed instead.
    Isaac tried to swallow and turned his back to Honor. “It’s a friend’s.”
    “August—he has my mom and sister,” she blurted.
    Isaac raised his head, the pain on her face too much to bear. “We’ll get them back.”
    “How? I don’t know where they are, if they’re okay, if they’re hurt. I don’t know anything,” she whispered brokenly.
    “ I don’t know, but we will. I mean it.”
    “ Okay.” She slowly nodded; a hint of relief in her features. “Isaac—”
    He spun around. “Nealon.”
    She looked down. “So it’s back to that, is it? Somehow, with everything that has happened between us, I’d thought maybe we’d gotten beyond the formalities.”
    “ You were wrong. And what, exactly, do you think has happened between us?”
    “ You…” Honor rubbed her forehead. “You saved me.”
    “ When? ” he bit out. Her face fell and his chest constricted. Stay in control, don’t let her see the crack in you, stay in control.
    “ What happened when I was shot?”
    The crack widened and emotions he tried so hard to keep inside seeped out. “I didn’t save you. That’s what happened. They took you.”
    Remorse slammed into him, adding a roughness to his already gruff voice. “They showed up and they snatched you away, knocking me out when I tried to intervene. I’m an outlaw to the organization, a fugitive, because I tried to stop them. I tried to save you, Honor, and I failed.”
    Her chest rose as she inhaled deeply, but no words left Honor’s mouth. Her black hair was smooth around her face, stopping just below her shoulders. Her skin seemed paler, almost shimmery. Isaac studied the eighteen-year old, seeing hints of worldliness in the way she stood and in her eyes that he didn’t remember from months ago.
    She averted her face from his probing gaze.
    What don’t you want me to see?
    “Are you hungry? Thirsty?” She shook her head. “I’ll get you some clothes. You can shower and change. We’ll stay here tonight and then we have to move. It’s not safe to stay in one place too long.”
    “ That’s the plan? Run? That doesn’t seem like you.”
    He paused on his way to Demi’s bedroom. “For right now, yes, that’s the plan. It’s not always about fighting, Honor. Sometimes it’s about survival. Right now that’s all I care about.”
    “Survival for who?” she whispered.
    “ You.”
    Isaac entered the bedroom with the cornflower blue bedspread and buttery yellow pillows, besieged with painful memories. The weightless, carefreeness of their love, the tears, the laughter, the passion—it all slammed over him in a wave of loss. Her scent was still faintly in the room; a mix of sugar and vanilla.
    Almost two years had passed since she’d been gone and he was still unable to empty the apartment, incapable to stop paying the rent, powerless to fully let her go. A piece of her was kept alive within the walls of the residence she’d once inhabited. The picture beside the bed was proof of that—it showed a couple with brown hair and eyes, grinning at one another, in love, happy, so naïve. It had been them