Maya's POV
"I couldn't!" Elena's voice rose. "They were watching. Any contact with you would have put you on their radar again. So I stayed away, built this place, gathered others who'd escaped the program. I monitored you from a distance, waiting for the day I could.."
"You knew," I interrupted suddenly. "You knew about the mate bond. About the brothers. About everything that happened to me."
Elena's silence was answer enough.
"You KNEW," I repeated, my voice rising. "You knew what they were doing to me, and you did nothing!"
"I couldn't interfere without exposing you!" Elena shouted back. "Don't you understand? The mate bond.."
"Was fake," I finished, my voice dead. "That's what you're going to say, isn't it? The mate bond with the Blackwood brothers was artificially created."
Ele
