by Pam Godwin
“No.” I lowered my hand before I choked him with it. “I don’t, because you won’t explain it to me.”
A hiss pushed through his teeth, more like a snarl, and he pierced me with razor-sharp eyes. “I hoped you would be mine, that I could have you the way he does.” He slashed an arm behind him, in the direction of the animal clinic.
God, this man twisted me up, jangling my insides with both hope and confusion. I wanted to touch him, kiss him, hold him.
“I am yours. You do have me.” I reached for his face.
“The fuck I do!” He stepped back, out of arm’s length, his gaze blinding and fierce and so incredibly pissed. “You know what I really hoped, Evie? I hoped I could fuck you every night, that I would have that to look forward to. I hoped a few hard thrusts in your cunt would make this miserable, goddamned lonely existence a lot less miserable and goddamned lonely.”
He swiped a hand over his mouth and resumed his trek toward the pond.
White heat exploded through my head and seared my sinuses. I drew deep breaths and tried to calm my pounding heart. His words were deliberately insensitive, meant to push me away. Yeah, there was truth there. Roark was right. But Jesse needed more than a release. He needed affection, love, companionship, and whatever else he was too afraid to admit.
But I was done chasing him. Done begging for peeks behind the fuck-off cliff.
My hands shook, balling at my sides. “Stop running, you fucking coward.”
His gait faltered but didn’t stop.
No matter what happened, whether we embraced our bond or remained separated by his visions forever, I had to confront his fears. Because they were mine, too.
I spoke into the dark expanse between us. “What did Annie say about my child? Your child.”
He stopped dead in his tracks, maybe twenty steps away. His head angled down, his back a rigid mountain of tension. “Can’t tell you that, Evie.”
“Because it will change my fate?”
A slow nod.
Christ, I wished he would look at me. “I don’t want a child. Didn’t you hear my argument with Michio?”
Another nod.
I still didn’t understand why he wanted me to stop sleeping with Michio.
“No matter what you’re holding back, that path won’t change. Losing Annie and Aaron…” I sucked in a breath. “I won’t go through that again. If I can’t replace the IUD, I’ll find other birth control. I’ll abstain if I have to.”
Fuck me, what a wretched thought.
He slowly turned and walked back to me, refusing to meet my eyes. When he stepped into my space, he stared at my mouth, didn’t blink, didn’t move for an eternal moment.
Something stirred at the back of my mind. Or was it a shift in the air? Whatever it was roused my skin in a ripple of chills.
The pond stretched before us, the surface a sheet of black glass. There were no chirping crickets, no trilling birds, not a whisper of rustling leaves. My discomfort about this place heightened.
Or maybe it was just Jesse and his ominous secret.
With agonizing hesitancy, he dragged his gaze to mine. As we stared at each other, the atmosphere rotated, soundless and shifty. It was a breeze. It had to be. So why was I struggling to breathe?
The air shuddered as he touched my chin, lifted it. “Annie said I must give her a sister, that it was my purpose. And in doing so, you would finally join her in her world.”
I tried to fill my lungs and failed. My lip trembled. What he said, the ache in his voice… I wanted to cry. Pressure built in my head and tightened my chest, but it wouldn’t release.
I blinked dry eyes, unable to let it go. “She said you must do it?”
Not Michio or Roark? Or the last thing I wanted to consider…What if I was raped again?
“Me.” He released my chin, his tone grim. Too grim. He was still holding something back.
“Annie’s spirit”—my sweet, little girl, who didn’t know how babies were conceived—“told you how to keep me alive long enough to get me pregnant?”
“And long enough to spread the cure.” He glanced up at the moon, its gleam partially smudged by gray clouds. Then he looked down at me. “She said the creatures would evolve.”
Like it or not, that rang true. The first time I noticed their evolving behavior was the night I met Roark, when they invaded the pub, steady and deliberate, working together like a goddamned SWAT team. Were they growing smarter? Faster? Modifying and adapting to their environments? They were certainly growing in number.
I squinted at him through the dim light. “What does their evolution have to do with me?”
“She said you won’t be able to save future generations from them…”
An unspoken but hung between us.
I whispered on a ragged exhale, “But our child can?”
“Our daughter.” He closed his eyes. “Without her, there will be no human race.”
A child, our daughter, could save the future.
Waves of skepticism dripped off my exhale and clung to the dark and humid air. “What about the nymphs we’ll be saving? Those women's children wouldn’t save the human race? What will all those offspring do exactly?”
Jesse glanced at the ground then back to me, his eyes shining like copper tin. “They’ll replenish mankind if they’re not wiped out by our biggest predator.”
Emotions bubbled up inside me and spilled out in a surge of tremors. Denial, anger… raw fucking fear. I teetered to remain upright, wrestling with the conviction of Jesse’s words. “You’re saying if I had this child, I wouldn’t live long enough to raise her?”
A muscle bounced in his jaw. “Which is why I won’t touch you.” So much pain in his voice. “Do you understand now?”
Would I die from childbirth or from something else related to having a child? I supposed if someone discovered I was the mother of a superbaby, they might kill me in spite. Jesse said he didn’t know the details, only that he had to have sex with me to save mankind, and in doing so guaranteed my death, which meant he would spend his life without me.
Talk about a mood killer. No wonder he was so grouchy.
Well, I refused to accept his all-or-nothing reasoning. “I can’t get pregnant from touching or kissing.”
Or anal sex. Would he freak if I said that out loud? See, this was the kind of shit I didn’t know about him.
My greedy sexuality demanded a deeper connection, and yeah, I ached for all three of the men who protected me. “There are so many other things we can—”
“No.” He sucked a seething hiss through his teeth, and his eyes flashed away. “I can’t…” He rubbed a palm on his jeans. “Christ, I only have so much control.”
My heart slammed against my ribs. He wasn’t giving himself enough credit. Roark and I fooled around without having sex. Sure, the priest had a lifetime of practiced celibacy, and he did slip up once. And what a colossal backslide that had been. The night he lost his virginity had led to an exorbitant amount of resentment.
But the likelihood of Jesse taking it too far was slim. Wasn’t it?
Arghhh. I didn’t know because he’d given me very few hints of his sexual nature. “I’m still on birth control.”
“I don’t trust it.”
Double Arghhh! My thoughts circled round and round, and my feet twitched to move. “I need to walk.”
I strode the distance to the shoreline and slogged along the edge. He matched my strides, my persistent and vigilant shadow.
Our boots squished in the marshy soil as I pondered aloud. “Keeping your…hands to yourself to prevent a…a fatal pregnancy alters my path, something you claimed we couldn’t do.” I rubbed my temples. “But I’m preventing it already with the IUD and my refusal to have children.” I pivoted, colliding with his rigid chest. “Are you sure she said your daughter?”
“Yes, dammit.”
Okay, fine, only Jesse could father a superbaby. But I was sleeping with Michio. If left to my own devices, whi
ch is what Jesse had determined to do, I'd never have another child. Except by accident. Even knowing about Jesse's visions, that could still happen. What if the IUD was failing for some godforsaken reason?
I dared to meet his eyes. “Does that mean no one else can impregnate me?”
His hands clenched. “I don’t fucking know.”
Was that jealousy? From Jesse?
I scratched at the crusted blood on my arm, unsure how far I could push before he shut down this conversation. “Why did you tell me to not fuck Michio?”
He gripped the back of his neck. “Annie said there would be two other guardians, but she never mentioned Doc’s changing DNA. That’s a huge omission.”
What did that mean? Goosebumps skated up my arms. “You believe my path has already changed? That Michio could be a danger to me?”
His gaze skirted across the pond. “I wish I knew.”
He seemed upset with himself, his voice missing its usual bite. Crazy how quickly we’d gone from awkward distance to ripping open our chests and exposing our sorry, fearful hearts. To be honest, I couldn’t have been happier with the progress, regardless of how badly this conversation fucked with my head.
All because of an irreconcilable vision. Maybe we were both losing our minds.
I bumped his bicep with my shoulder, the simple contact comforting. “The little ghost of Annie is quite the meddler. It’s strange… I mean, she was a very bright child, but how does she know so much in the afterlife?”
“Guess we won’t know that answer until we join her.” The corner of his mouth bounced, prompting the same sad smile from mine.
I kept the gruesome memories of Annie and Aaron buried, but their animated spirits would forever live inside me. Sometimes I felt them so keenly it was as if they were still here, awakening the air with their laughter and crushing my chest with their hugs. “I miss her. I miss them both so damned much.”
“Me too.”
He’d only met the ghostly footprints of their former lives, yet they’d still managed to leave an unforgettable impact. Would they ever appear to him again? Or me? I didn’t think so. Their last visit felt painfully final.
A lifeless quiet settled around us. The pond seemed to absorb it, its depths muddied and dreary as if saddled with our impasse. We stood on the shore, breathing in unison, silent with our thoughts.
I could dispute the credibility of the visions. I could argue he fabricated all of it. Hell, I wanted to deny every hokey-ass premonition that had spewed from his mouth. I mean, come on. A divine child? From me? Would she be godlike in power? Were my fears about protecting a child not applicable to this hypothetical daughter? She’d have to be pretty damned mighty if she could save the future from evolving aphids.
It sounded ridiculous, far-fetched, and completely irrational.
But was it really?
In a few hours, there would no longer be a mutated creature in the animal clinic, and in its place a woman with human DNA. DNA that was unlocked by my blood. And I stood here now because I’d evaded multiple deaths. Miracles. Because Jesse had seen them, long before they happened.
I only had one life to give. What was it going to be? A cliff or a world-saving child? Jesse could physically catch me from a fall off a ledge, which was no doubt his plan. Just like all the times before. If I got pregnant, however, he wouldn’t be able to fix that.
But he could prevent it.
Maybe I could put this to rest with logic and sane reasoning. But I trusted my gut. That spiritual sense deep in my core had led me to my guardians. The same instinct told me to trust Jesse’s visions.
All I had to do was give birth to a savior and die in the process. Hell, might as well nail her to a cross and resurrect her three days later. How very biblical.
I touched Jesse’s hand where it curled against his thigh. “I don’t want to bring a baby into this world. Heaven knows, I’m no Virgin Mary.”
He huffed out a laugh. “No, you’re certainly not.”
“And I don’t want to die. But there’s more at stake here than me and my wants.”
He whirled on me. “What?” His brows slammed together. “What the fuck are you saying?”
“I’m scared, Jesse.” Even admitting it aloud knotted my stomach. “But this isn’t a decision we can make in a single conversation. We need to talk to Roark and Michio.”
“No.”
“Nothing good comes from circumventing group input. We’re in this together.”
“I shouldn’t have told you.” He shook his head, his jaw turning to steel. “I thought, after your confrontation with Michio, you would be sensible about this.” He trudged along the shoreline, shoving a hand through his hair. “Fuck.”
Moonlight reflected off his bow and quiver, which were strapped tightly to the sculpted contours of his back. With each stiff, decisive step he put between us, I could actually feel him rebuilding his emotional distance.
My breath slipped from my lungs, pausing at my lips, as I tried to find the right thing to say. He was angry, hurting, and I ached to console him.
“What do you want me to do?” I whispered across the ten or so yards between us.
“I want you to stay at my side.” His feet paused, his back rigid with tension. “And that’s the problem. The closer you are, the weaker I become.”
His words enveloped me in a powerful embrace. Jesse was the epitome of strength and ferocity. Not just his physique but the air that surrounded him. The world seemed to move at his will, in sync with the motion of his muscles.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked to the side, giving me his profile. “Just…don’t make decisions based on what I’ve told you.”
“Then I’ll continue to want you.” Like I had a choice. “I’ll keep pushing and kicking and pestering until I break down your damned walls.”
The skin around his mouth tightened, but I swear there was a ghost of a smile there, too.
“And what do I do when I encounter a cliff? Why did you tell me about that?”
“Because it’s ambiguous as fuck.” He angled his head back to look at me, his cheekbones casting dark shadows beneath his hard gaze. “A cliff isn’t specific like, oh I don’t know, the dungeon in Malta. There are cliffs everywhere.” He jerked his arms out, indicating the landscape, as he turned to face me. His voice rose a few notches. “You could die on any one of the ridges, ravines, or embankments we come across. I told you so I could train you how to survive the fucking fall.”
I melted a little. I wanted to hug him, kiss him, thank him the best way I knew how. But he’d never allow it, so I just nodded in understanding, though I wasn’t sure I understood at all. “When is this supposed to happen? The cliff? The pregnancy? Is there an order of things?”
“The predictions have happened in the order she recited them. The cliff is next.” He stalked toward me. “It’ll happen anytime.”
That was comforting.
His eyes fixed on the strap of my carbine, his mouth clamped and determined. When he reached me, he jerked the sling off my shoulder. Evidently, he was ready to move on with the bath.
Fingers curled around the strap, he waited for me to relinquish the weapon.
I glanced at the motionless water, the murky shapes of the surrounding trees, and the weak beam of moonlight pushing through the clouds. Swear to God, there was something in the air, a leeching kind of stagnancy. It was gathering, concentrating, somewhere out there. In the pond? Across the shore? Above the trees? Was it moving?
I couldn’t pinpoint it, which strung my nerves on tenterhooks. I strained to feel the familiar vibrations of aphids, waiting for a crunch of a twig or a splash in the water.
Nothing.
Jesse watched me, his sharp eyes so damned perceptive. “There are other ponds nearby, but this one’s the cleanest.”
The heat from his body tingled across my skin as he pulled the carbine from my grip and unbuckled the holster on my thigh.
I didn’t want to hand over
my weapons, but fighting him would only delay the inevitable. What was my problem anyway? I’d needed a bath since we left the mountains. We all did.
With a resolved exhale, I began to remove the arm sheathes, my attention on the water hole. Unarmed, on edge, in this abysmal place?
On second thought, I tightened the straps on my arms. “I’m keeping the knives.”
“Good. I’ll be…” He gestured at the woods. “On guard.”
“You can watch the perimeter from here.” I hated the pleading pitch in my voice.
He glanced at the woods and shook his head. “Not easily.” Then he took off with my guns, running away like he always did when my clothes were about to come off.
Talk about feeling vulnerable. But leaving guns on the shore for someone to use against me was out of the question. Besides, Jesse was there… Well, I couldn’t see him now, but he was near, ever protective and watchful, tormenting himself. And me.
Stripping quickly, I lit another cigarette and waded into the pond. My feet slipped over moss-covered pebbles, and the water lapped around me, warm and soothing.
Halfway across, the inky surface reached my hips. Far enough. I drew a slow drag from the cigarillo and held it in my lungs, unable to shake off the creeping dread. My first encounter with an aphid had really made me anxious about swimming. Water killed them quickly, but I would never forget the claw pulling me under. Its body bubbling with fungus-like tumors. Its eyes open and staring as it sunk to its death.
I ran a hand over my legs and ass and washed away the grime, all while making careful sweeps of the surroundings. Blackness stretched from the shore to the trees. Not a trace of Jesse’s tall frame. If he was watching, I couldn’t sense him.
“Jesse?” My voice ricocheted through the dark, louder than I intended. I might as well have screamed, I’m here. Come kill me!
The longer I waited for a response, the more I was convinced something was off. A menacing wrong-wrong-wrong coiled around me, itching my skin. My legs burned to haul ass out of the water, but it wasn’t the pond that spooked me. Whatever it was…was out there.
Stop it. I was making myself crazy. I didn’t sense aphids, couldn’t see or hear a goddamned thing. I was just impaired by tweaked-out emotions and lack of sleep.
