“What’s going on?” A male Gerelin Amelie knew in passing came toward them, glaring at Roan’s grip on her dangling scarf.
Roan seethed and tossed the scarf to the floor. “This woman is a liar!”
To his credit the man didn’t back down. “I think its time you left. We know exactly who Amelie is.”
“Ha! Do you? Or has she run her con so well, no one questioned it?”
“Roan, stop,” Amelie pleaded.
He waved his hand in a grandiose gesture. “Why? It’s clear you’ve been lying to all of these people. The truth needs to come out. How you hid my child from me, lied and left before I could legally challenge you for my rights. Now you’re taking advantage of the people here.”
They’d drawn a crowd. People were staring and conversation slipped into a lull. Gazes latched onto Amelie, staring, judging.
“What in the world is going on?” Scarlett came barreling over, her hand locked on Fleur’s. When she caught sight of Roan, she pushed Fleur toward Amelie and balled her fists. Gone was the diligent medic. Her voice was a hiss of outrage when she spoke. “You awful, rotten loser.”
“Scarlett, don’t!” Amelie picked up Fleur, clutching her to her chest as she shouted at Scarlett. Visions of silverware sticking from Roan’s eyes after all of her friend’s threats sent Amelie’s heart racing.
Roan raised his voice, drawing attention deliberately. “Where is he, Amelie? Where is this mythical mate so I can tell him whose child he’s really raising?”
More and more people were listening. They’d formed a loose circle around them and she could tell Roan was reveling in the attention. Of course, he was. He thought he’d won in some weird version of a contest.
“No one’s ever seen him and they’ve probably never even heard of this Sulen Czen you have listed on your resident papers,” he continued.
Amelie didn’t have time to ponder how Roan had gotten access to her personal records. Knowing him, he’d cajoled someone to release that information. On the surface, Roan’s words cast her in a negative light. Some faces she recognized in the crowd looked outrage.
The men were grumbling and Amelie expected the authorities to be called if this didn’t end soon. Tula was holding Ezra back by a hand to his arm.
Pushing down her terror, Amelie defended herself. She had to stick to the story she and Scarlett had created. Amelie wasn’t the only one who’d suffer if the truth came out. Scarlett could lose her thriving medical career as Lead Medic at one of the top medical facilities on the colony. The Gerelins loved and trusted her.
Licking her dry lips, Amelie said, “He travels. For work.”
A smirk curved Roan’s lips. “A mate would at least come home occasionally. See his daughter. Especially a Gerelin from what I’m told.”
Low murmurs filtered through the room. Heat seared Amelie’s face and sweat formed in her armpits. Scarlett looked torn between launching herself at Roan to claw his eyes out and grabbing Amelie to run away. Amelie wasn’t running. “She’s Sulen’s. Why are you doing this?”
Roan had been adamant he wanted no parts of her pregnancy or a baby. Another woman joined them and stood beside Roan. Her dark hair flowed about her shoulders and a heart-shaped face. She placed one hand on his arm and gazed at Amelie with sympathy. “I don’t know what would make a woman lie and steal a man’s child but it’s obvious you shouldn’t be in charge of her care. I promise my husband and I will give her the loving safe home she deserves.”
Amelie’s chest drew tight. “Who are you?”
“Aviana, Roan’s wife. My father’s Ambassador of Trigodor.”
Gasps worked their way around the room. Amelie fought back tears. They sounded so convincing. Yet how casually they talked of taking her child from her. Amelie backed up a step. “You’re wrong. I’m sorry about your inability to have kids, but she’s not his.”
Fury flashed in the jeweled blue gaze then gone in an instant. She was once more the demure injured party supporting her spouse. Her look was filled with pity. “Just give us the child, Amelie. We won’t press criminal charges.”
“No.”
Never. She’d never let Roan have Fleur. The thought had her clutching her baby girl tighter and Fleur whimpered.
Roan shook his head in disgust. “You’re hurting her. Isn’t it bad enough you’ve kept us apart all of these years?”
He’d created doubt and concern with the Gerelins present. Amelie could see it on their faces. They were protective of mates but children...they wouldn’t agree with a child being taken away from her father.
Clearly, Roan had learned a lot in his role as the ambassador’s assistant and obviously Aviana was just as convincing. She was a diplomat’s daughter.
Amelie was a simple person with simple needs. She worked and owned a garden center because she liked making things grow and was good at it. “Stay away from me, Roan.”
“Or what?” He laughed and glanced around, nodding to the people gathered. “What will you do?”
“My mate will be angry.”
Roan’s wounded victim façade fell and true rage burned. “Enough with the lies! You don’t have a mate and that’s my daughter you’ve kept from me for years!”
Amelie backed up again and hit a solid mass behind her. Someone blocked her from leaving the circle Roan had created with his demands and brash behavior.
Roan’s gaze lightened when he noticed she couldn’t move. He got in her face and extended his arms to snatch Fleur from Amelie.
“Touch my mate and I will rip your arms off and beat you with them.” The chest behind her rumbled with the words.
In shock, Amelie almost fell forward. Roan’s gaze moved beyond her to the man who shifted her to the side with a slight hand to the waist and stepped between them.
Roan thrust his jaw out. “Who are you?”
“Sulen Czen.”
The color leeched from Roan’s face and even Aviana looked stunned. Scarlett hurried toward her and touched Amelie’s wrist in reassurance. The stranger looked down at her with deep green eyes. His ruthlessly short black hair lay flat against his head and he was dressed in all black with visible weapons strapped to his body beneath the ankle length leather coat.
“What?” Roan choked out.
Fleur chose that moment to pop her head up from Amelie’s shoulder. She stretched her arms toward the dark-haired man. “Daddy!”
Amelie couldn’t control the leap as Fleur made to jump into the stranger’s arms. He caught her easily and swept Fleur up into a protective hold. She buried her face in his chest, her tiny hands holding tight to the folds of his shirt.
Roan and Aviana gasped. Roan spoke first, stuttering. “S-s-she’s mine.”
“No. She’s not,” Sulen said and walked away with a tight grip on Amelie’s arm, pulling her with him.
The crowd parted for them. Outside the community center, he stopped on the walkway and asked, “Where are you staying?”
Amelie swallowed. His name was familiar, of course. Scarlett had given her the name of the Gerelin she’d stolen the hormone from. Sometimes truth was better than a lie her friend had insisted when they filled out Amelie’s papers to stay permanently on the colony and later for Fleur’s birth record.
She’d just never expected to meet the man in person. Sulen Czen.
Chapter 7
As soon as the woman closed the door of her home behind her, Sulen held up the clinging child in his arms to pass over. She reflexively took her kid with a startled look in his direction.
Both mother and child stared at Sulen. The woman with her light brown hair and deep brown eyes and the little girl with her midnight tangle of hair and green eyes that were oddly familiar.
He ignored the unexpected pang of regret caused by his empty arms and got straight to the point. “Who are you?”
She flinched and cuddled the child—her child he assumed—close to her chest. “I’m Amelie Haven.”
Sulen frowned, going through his memory for some
recognition of the name. He drew a blank. The name meant nothing to him. Which left him with the unusual dilemma of figuring out why his body was adamantly declaring he claim his bond mate.
“Is your name really Sulen?” she asked with a nervous quiver.
Snorting, Sulen braced his hands on his hips and stared. He wasn’t the one accused of lying in front of several dozens of people. “Yes. Who else would I be?”
The pulse in her throat pounded against her skin, drawing his attention to the two thin scars in a diagonal slash at the base of her throat. Sulen closed the distance between them, noting the way her shoulders tensed. He brushed his thumb over the marks. Another delicate shiver coursed through her body but she didn’t pull away. “These aren’t mine.”
He hated the uncertainty in his voice. Damn it. Sulen knew he hadn’t mated this woman. Those weren’t his bonding marks and the girl wasn’t his child as she’d claimed in front of the ass who’d taken sadistic joy in bullying the woman.
Sulen had been in the back of the room when she declared without flinching in front of everyone that she was mated to him. The man cornering her had said Sulen’s name and implied he wasn’t real. How did they know his name? Caution was a large part of how he worked and he’d only been to this Gerelin colony once years ago.
No one should know him or recall that short stay.
“I can explain,” she said, taking a step back and making a wide berth around him in the living area. “I just need to set Fleur up in her room. She’s had an eventful evening. Then I’ll be back and we can talk.”
Fleur. That was the child’s name. “Fine.”
Sulen wasn’t interested in terrorizing a child. She’d clung to his shirt and shivered the entire walk here. It was better her mother took her away from their conversation. He’d get his answers one way or the other.
Amelie kept a wary eye on him as she carried the little girl into a room he could see the door to down the narrow hall. They disappeared from view and Sulen took the opportunity to observe her home.
It was small. If he had to guess, he’d say there were only five rooms. The two bedrooms down the hall, a bathing room and this living kitchen area combo. The room he stood in would be cramped if three others joined him.
Her walls teemed with framed artwork. As he investigated closer, he realized they were colorful scribbles made by a childish hand. Her daughter. She’d placed the work prominently on the walls, showing her pride to any who entered.
Sulen tried to remember if his parents had done something similar. Certainly it would have built his confidence if he’d thought he had their support in the things he wanted to do before he left home.
“Alright. She should be busy for a bit. If not, we’ll know.” The woman nervously laughed as she returned to join him, rubbing her hands together. “Fleur is not shy about making her feelings known.”
She walked with a smooth gait, her narrow hips moving in a feminine stride he could appreciate. Her blue dress was a flimsy bit of whimsy, skimming her knees and swaying about surprisingly athletic legs with trim calves. The bodice clung to her small breasts and he had a brief glimpse of nipples pressed to the material before she crossed her arms over her chest and cocked her hip to the side when she stopped in front of him.
Sulen studied her neutral expression. She’d removed the pins from her hair, letting the sheath of silk fall about her shoulders. The hollows of her collarbone tempted and he had the unnatural urge to lick and kiss the narrow slopes.
“I guess you have questions after Roan’s performance at the center today.”
“How?” The question had motivated him for four years. All of his searching had turned up nothing in his effort to discover the person on the other end of the connection forcibly created in his mind.
It was sheer luck that brought him here.
“Right. I supposed you’d want to know that.” She glanced around the room, fidgeted then seemed to gain control of herself. “Why don’t you have a seat.”
Sulen considered refusing. Anger and curiosity conflicted with his decision making ability until he finally relented and sat on the sofa she pointed out. She joined him, her knee brushing his thigh as she turned on her hip in his direction. The flash of contact ignited a slow burn Sulen ruthlessly squashed. “You’re not my bond mate.”
She flinched from his harsh accusation then rebounded with a thrust of her cute chin in the air. “I am. And I’m not.”
Blowing out a curse on an exhale, Sulen prepared to blast her with a verbal lashing but she held up a hand.
“Let me explain. I’m sure you didn’t miss Roan yelling.”
Sulen leaned back on the sofa and folded his arms over his chest. “Explain why this Roan thinks you and I are mated.”
Amelie shoved a hand through her hair but the length slid back across her forehead. “Four years ago, Roan and I were together.”
Why did the thought of her with the blond spur a grain of jealousy? Sulen didn’t get jealous. He enjoyed women whenever he could find the downtime. His sexual exploits were brief and with full understanding by both parties that it wasn’t going to be anything more. There could be no relationships due to the nature of his job.
Death waited at the door each time he went out to complete an assassination and he had no intention of leaving a partner behind to mourn his loss.
More than all of that, he did not know Amelie.
Meeting his gaze head on, she continued. “He got the position on the ambassador’s team and decided he didn’t want to be with me anymore.”
None of this mattered to Sulen. He didn’t care about her relationship with some loser. The only thing he wanted to know was how it connected to him. “Get to the point, lady.”
She huffed and rolled her eyes. “I had just learned I was pregnant. When I told him, he instantly demanded I get rid of it.”
The coldness of such a request was enough to give even Sulen pause. The idea of telling a woman he didn’t want his child, whether it was planned or not, was more than he could imagine.
“Anyway, I had no intentions of getting rid of my baby and reached out to a friend who lived here and she said this Gerelin colony was the perfect place to raise a baby.”
Garik had given Sulen all of his research. He knew everything he needed to know about this place on paper aside from the feel of the community. The rules of living here were quite clear. “You need to be related to a Gerelin to live here.”
She arched a brow at him and waited. The result wasn’t hard to understand, it was the how of it.
“You pretended you were mated to me to get approval to live here.”
It was a statement but she still answered. “Yes.”
***
The truth croaked from her dry throat and Amelie stood up. “I need something to drink. Would you like anything?”
“No.”
But he got up and followed her into her tiny kitchen area. His stare never wavered as she got a glass and filled it with water. Heart pounding, Amelie leaned on the narrow breakfast counter separating them. She felt safer having a barrier between them. He emanated a vibe that fairly hummed with an undercurrent of danger.
“How did you pretend to be mated to me?” he asked in a gruff voice that sent unwanted shivers down her spine.
She’d thought Roan was attractive but his looks were more surface boy appeal. This man contained a rougher edge, one that drew her with his black hair and green eyes. It would be so easy to pretend Fleur really was his.
The striking similarities in their looks would have had Amelie questioning Fleur’s parentage if she didn’t know for a fact she’d never met Sulen Czen before today. He was just a name on a form. A blank slate.
“Pretending a mate bond existed between us was easier than I expected.” She cleared her throat and set her glass down. “I filled in your information on my forms for residency—”
He went alert and snapped, “What information?”
Amelie startled and pulled back
a little from his aggression. After her confrontation with Roan, she didn’t have the energy to withstand another verbal attack. “Name only. Nothing else was required because you’d been here before. Your identity was already confirmed in the system as a Gerelin.”
His lips parted then closed. He turned away and drove both hands through his hair before spinning back around and pointing a finger at her. “You lied. You used my name and lied. There are laws against that.”
“I know,” Amelie snarled. Guilt was a heavy weight to carry and she did it daily. “Don’t you think I’m aware? I was confused and desperate!”
“How did you do it? How did you form the connection and link us because I feel you?” He smacked a palm to his chest. “You’re here! In me. And I want to know how you did it without my participation.”
The barrage pounded at her emotionally. Her eyes burned with tears from his accusation. Amelie blinked them back. She would face his anger and blame. “When you were injured and came here for medical treatment, some of your hormone was extracted.”
“Without my knowledge,” he added through clenched teeth.
Shame coursed through her. “Without your knowledge.”
He banged his fist on the counter, causing her glass to jump. “You did this four years ago.”
He was scaring her and Amelie hated being scared. She’d worked hard to get over the trauma from Roan attacking her while she was pregnant. “Yes. Four years and six months roughly.”
Lowering his head, he hunched his shoulders and braced his hands on the edge of her counter in a grip so tight it turned his knuckles white. Amelie wondered if he’d become violent. If so, she’d have to go around the counter, past him, grab Fleur and try to make a run for the door to escape.
She eyed his large intimidating figure. The odds weren’t in her favor.
When he finally lifted his head, his gaze burned a hole through her. Teeth clenched, he gritted out, “Do you know what you’ve done?”
Amelie ignored the sweat dampening her brow. She focused on her reasons for why she and Scarlett had done all this. “I had to protect my daughter. Nothing else mattered.”
Claiming His Unexpected Baby Page 5
