I pounced, tugged at the strap of the bag. “What are you doing?”
“Do I have your attention?”
“Absolutely.” She released the bag, let me take it. Sitting back down on the bench, I tucked it beside me—at my side and away from her.
I slipped my feet into the sandals and tensed, ready to fight for the bag again if necessary. No one was stealing the wand from me now. I was on Earth, with the healing wand and Wyatt was so close. Healing him was so close. The warden might look tough, but I was desperate. I’d claw her eyes out if I had to. Anything for Wyatt. Anything, including leaving Kiel behind.
“You are to take the wand, heal your son, and return it to me immediately. Do you understand? I’m breaking about a hundred rules letting you take it out of this building, rules that could cost me my job.”
Okay. Yeah. She had a point. She’d risked a lot to help me. So had Rachel, including the wrath of her two mates. Right now, she was probably taking a lot of heat for me.
“I’m sorry. I understand, and I promise I’ll bring it back as soon as I heal Wyatt’s leg. I give you my word.”
“And no one else can see it, or know it exists. This technology is forbidden on Earth. It doesn’t exist here.”
“I promise. I swear, I’ll do exactly what you said. I just need to heal Wyatt’s leg.” I reached for the handle of the purse. It was hard and round, like a curved piece of bamboo in my grip. But the warden didn’t grab for it again.
Dressed and ready to go, I dug through the contents until I found my phone. I turned it on, waiting impatiently for the operating system to reboot. The battery was still fully charged. I’d only been gone a couple of days, but God, it felt like a lifetime.
I wasn’t the same person I’d been when I left. I was stronger now. Loving Kiel had made me stronger somehow. Braver. I would heal Wyatt and dupe the assholes who sent me to the Colony. Hopefully, the warden had enough time to take care of the second half of Rachel’s plan.
“Did Rachel send you the files?” I asked.
Warden Egara nodded, her smile a bit wider this time. “Yes.”
“And? Did you have enough time?”
“I had to call in some help, but yes. We have all the files fully edited and up online. We also sent copies to the major news agencies, so they should be broadcasting any time now.”
The broken little part of me that had been withering and dying at the thought of betraying the warriors of the Colony warmed and healed. Rezzer and Marz, the governor and the others, the humans I’d talked to, would have their story told. The truth. Not some bullshit spin-doctored version of things used to stir up trouble for the warriors on the Colony.
I was done being a pawn.
The warden and Rachel wanted to use the interviews I’d done, the personal stories of the warriors to try to recruit brides who might ask to be assigned to the Colony. I didn’t know how the Interstellar Brides program worked, exactly, but the warden had insisted that if a woman actually requested a certain planet, she would not be denied.
And the Colony needed more brides. Rachel had said that often enough, but I agreed. I saw the warriors. Met them. They needed hope and life and children running around. They needed noise and chaos and a future. They needed to remember what they’d sacrificed and fought for in the first place. And it wasn’t the bleak, shadow of existence they had now. Things were improving, but not fast enough for Rachel. She wanted everyone on the Colony happy. Now.
Except for Kiel. He wouldn’t be matched. He wouldn’t have his mate at his side. I’d denied him the happiness he deserved, the kind of relationship he couldn’t find with anyone else. I’d doomed Kiel to live an empty life by choosing to save my son. By lying to him, leaving him behind. I hadn’t even said goodbye.
“They should let single mothers into the brides program,” I whispered. “Because this sucks.”
The warden nodded, a shimmer of moisture gathering in her eyes in empathy for my pain. “I agree. But that’s an Earth rule, not a Coalition rule.”
“It’s stupid.”
“Earth’s leaders don’t feel that the choice to travel to another world can be made for a minor. They can’t go until they are old enough to make their own decision.”
I knew the rules. At one time, I’d even agreed with them. But now? Now I knew that Kiel would have been a loving and protective father. Now I realized what women like me were giving up because some fat old men in Washington didn’t think that I, as a single mother, was capable of making that kind of decision for my child.
It was bullshit, but I was literally powerless to change it. At least in the next few days. After that? Well, maybe I’d start a YouTube campaign using some of the things I’d learned on the Colony. Maybe I could get some single mothers to band together and send petitions to congress. Something. There had to be something.
“One thing at a time.” I was talking to myself, but I had to focus. Wyatt needed me first. I’d worry about the rest later.
Tears burned behind my eyes but I blinked them away with the brutal efficiency of a single mother who was used to making hard choices and hiding tears that wanted to fall. Nothing was easy. Crying about it wasn’t going to make it hurt less, it was just going to show the world the chink in my armor, a weakness to exploit. The pain caused by my dead palm, no one else would ever know about. I just knew, somewhere in the universe, another palm was just as dark, just as cold and empty.
But Kiel wasn’t the only one who wanted me. Wyatt needed me. I couldn’t afford to be weak. I was a single mother. Losing my shit was simply not an option.
The warden walked me to the front doors of the processing center and waited as the car I’d summoned using a phone app arrived to take me home.
“Thank you,” I said.
She tilted her head to the side with a slight nod. “You’re welcome. Just be sure you keep our agreement.”
“I will.” The glass doors slid open and I ran for the car pulling up to the curb. The sun was just starting to set and I glanced again at my phone. Just after eight, which meant Wyatt would going to bed soon and I wanted to see him, needed to feel his sweet little arms wrap around my neck, needed him to smother me with little boy love so the empty hole where Kiel had been wouldn’t hurt quite so much. I wanted to heal him immediately, not wait another second to see the pain be taken away.
I missed both my boys right now, and the pain in my heart threatened to break me. The pain of my dead palm? I’d live with it as a constant reminder of Kiel and what we shared.
We pulled away and I looked up at the processing center in time to see the doctor who’d help send me to the Colony watching the car pull away from a second story window. I gasped.
“Shit.”
One phone call and the Senator would know I was back. They’d be knocking on my door the moment I got home. Time for Plan B.
I needed to run. I needed to get Wyatt out of that apartment as soon as possible. My fumbling fingers struggled with pulling up my mom’s number.
She answered her phone on the first ring.
“Mom.”
“Oh my god, Lindsey! You’re back! I was so afraid you wouldn’t make it.” She burst into tears and I heard my little boy yelling and whooping in the background. Mommy’s back! Mommy’s back! Mommy’s back!
“Are you packed, like I told you to?” I whispered. While the driver wasn’t paying me any attention, I didn’t want him to know anything. “Cash and passports for all three of us?”
My mother’s voice settled and she ignored Wyatt’s chanting. “The just in case, bag?”
“Yes.” I’d asked her to be ready to leave town in a hurry, leave and never come back. Just in case. It seemed, just in case time was here.
“Yes, dear. We’re ready.”
I signed. “Good. Load the bags in the car.” I leaned back in the seat, watching the streetlights float by in a blur caused by tears I refused to let fall. “Get in the car right now. Don’t wait. They know I’m back. Get in the c
ar and meet me where we talked about. Ditch your cell and use the burner phone I bought for you. If you need me, call me on my new number. I wrote the number in your wallet.”
The designated meeting place was a run down, flea-bag motel about twenty miles out of town on an old state highway. I had our route planned out. We’d cut across the wetlands to the gulf and ride the coast until we got to Texas. After that? Well, Mexico was an option. Maybe we’d hop a plane and head farther south. Costa Rica. Hell, Peru. I’d get ahold of Warden Egara and get her the magic wand, but first I had to make sure Wyatt was safe.
“All right, honey. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
“Hurry, mom. These guys don’t play around.”
I hung up and gave the driver new directions. I wasn’t one to bite my nails, but I was wound so tight I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have a single fingernail left by the time we got to the motel. Heart pounding, I settled back in the seat, pushed the button to lower the window and threw my cell phone out onto a bank of grass so it wouldn’t shatter. I hoped they would try to track my cell. Hoped someone would pick it up and start moving, preferably in the opposite direction.
Stop. Go. Drive. Stop. The seconds ticked by like hours and I would swear that damn car hit every red light between me and my baby.
Every single fucking red light. And every time we stopped moving, it felt like the shadows were stalking me. Watching. Waiting.
I breathed a sigh of relief when the driver pulled into the motel parking lot. I tipped him a twenty and asked him to forget he ever saw me, told him I was running from a psycho, abusive ex-boyfriend who beat me. The guy frowned and gave me back the twenty. Said to keep it since I might need it more than him. When he drove away, I was confident he wouldn’t talk, at least not for a while.
My old beat up sedan with Wyatt’s booster seat in the back was parked outside the fifth blue door. A flash of blond hair disappeared behind a swinging curtain seconds before the door opened. And just like that, I could breathe.
Wyatt’s smile could have lit cities as he hurried to me as fast as he could. His pace was slow and awkward, the brace on his leg keeping him from going as quickly as he wanted. I lifted him up and hugged him close as he buried his face in my neck and squeezed as hard as his little arms could squeeze.
God, he smelled so good, felt so soft, warm. Sweet.
“I missed you, Mommy.”
Those words. My heart cracked into a thousand pieces. “I missed you, too, baby.”
“Don’t ever go away again.”
I couldn’t stop the tears now. They streamed down my face like water from a faucet. “I won’t, Wyatt. I promise. Never again.”
I carried him into the hotel room where my mom was waiting, gave her a quick hug and settled Wyatt down on one of the hard beds. She looked at me with concerned eyes, although she had the relieved look of a mother who sent her child out into the world for the first time. I hadn’t really thought of how brave she was, letting me go into space. God, she’d sent her child into space!
I reached across and squeezed her hand and she gave me a watery smile in return.
“I have something special to show you.”
Wyatt clapped his hands like he was about to get a present, so I had to clarify. “You can’t keep it, but some very nice people let Mommy borrow it to heal your leg.”
My mom stepped closer, her hand coming to rest on my shoulder, eyes wide. “What? What are you talking about?”
I looked up into her confused face and smiled through my tears. “You aren’t going to believe this.” I reached into my purse and pulled out the ReGen wand. Activating it the way Rachel had taught me, I took off Wyatt’s brace and pushed Wyatt’s dinosaur pajamas up above his knee, which was foolish, because the healing would all happen below the surface, but I wanted to watch him. I needed to see.
“Don’t be afraid,” I told him. My heart was beating so hard I was sure Wyatt could hear it. This was it. I could heal my child, make him whole, with just a wave of this wand. No surgery. No pain.
The wand turned blue and Wyatt’s eyes rounded. “What is it?” he asked with his perfect little lisp.
I grinned, happier than I’d been since the accident. “A magic wand. I brought it back from outer space just for you.”
“Really?” The cowlick on the top of his head had gone a bit wild and cute little spikes of pale blond hair shot straight up off his head like sprouts of grass. “Do you know the magic word?”
“Of course, I do.” I leaned down and kissed him on the nose. That done, I lifted the wand over his leg and said, “Abracadabra.”
Wyatt’s excitement faded and he grew serious, lying back on the bed where my mother quickly moved to prop some pillows behind him. The routine was old and too familiar.
But this would be the last time. Ever.
I held the wand over him, moving it over his leg until the indicator light Rachel taught me to watch blinked at me that the ReGen wand had done its job. I hadn’t kept track of time, but it couldn’t have been more than a minute, maybe two. That was it. Two minutes and he was healed—I hoped. I ran it over the rest of him then, just to be sure. If there was anything wrong with him, anything I didn’t know about, I wanted it fixed. Cured. Healed. I wanted him perfect.
When I was finished, I looked at my son, at the sleepy, contented expression on his face.
“How does that feel, baby?”
Wyatt’s little smile brought the tears back. “It doesn’t hurt, Mommy.”
“Show me.”
He looked to me, then my mom, who nodded. He hopped down from the bed, his pajama leg sliding back in place. Yes, he hopped. No tentative step. He looked to me, eyes wide. Then he jumped. Mom put her arms out, instinctively ready to stop him.
“It’s all better!” he said, then ran across the room to the bathroom door, then back. “Mommy, it’s all better.”
My mom put her hand to her mouth, trying to cover her tears. Tears, I knew, were of joy, not sorrow. Her eyes met mine. “All better.”
I nodded as Wyatt came back and stood before me.
I ruffled his hair. “All better,” I repeated. The relief was incredible. It had worked. No matter what happened in life now, I knew Wyatt was going to be okay.
“That’s good, Wyatt. It’s time to sleep now.”
He climbed in bed easily enough. While I had no doubt he’d want to bounce around the room all night, it was late for him.
“Go to sleep,” I said, leaning down and kissing his soft forehead.
“You stay,” he insisted.
“I’ll stay. I promise.”
Wyatt drifted to sleep and my mother and I settled in hard wooden chairs facing one another across a tiny round table. The motel was old, the carpet worn threadbare in front of the door. The overhead light had several flies trapped in the dingy yellow glass and the room smelled like dust, but I didn’t care about any of it. Wyatt was healed and we were safely away from the apartment.
My mother leaned forward and crossed her arms over her chest. One eyebrow raised in a look I’d seen hundreds of times. She held out her palm and I gave her the wand.
“Tell me.”
She didn’t say more. She didn’t need to. I had three days to tell her about and ten light years of travel. With Wyatt asleep, I told her everything I dared about the journey, the fighting pits, and about Kiel. The wand. When I was done, I was wiping tears from my eyes and so was she.
“You love him.” It wasn’t a question.
I shrugged. “How could I? I only knew him for two days.”
There went the raised eyebrow again. “You love him.”
I wiped the tears from my cheeks and looked at my son. “I love Wyatt.”
“But he’s your, what? Marked mate?”
I held out my palm so she could see the mark there. The mark that, up until a few days ago, was just a weird birthmark.
“Your father had one like that. And so did his mother. I assumed it was just a weird family trai
t, like red hair or crooked teeth.”
I was stunned by those words. He’d been gone a long time and I didn’t remember the little things about him. Especially a mark on his palm. If he had a mark, did that mean my mother was his marked mate?
“You don’t have one,” I said.
She shook her head.
So my father had once had a marked mate out there somewhere in the universe and never found her? Was she still alive? Did it matter? I knew my parents’ marriage had been a happy one. That I remembered. That was all my mother knew, perhaps even my father. I hadn’t known the mark was a sign I was a descendant of Everis either. I wasn’t about to tell my mother her marriage was less because they weren’t marked mates.
“Isn’t there anything you can do? To be with him…and Wyatt?” she asked, breaking me from my thoughts.
I shook my head sadly. “He doesn’t know about Wyatt. I never told him.”
“Shame on you, Lindsey.” She chastised me and I felt like I was three years old again. “If he loves you, he’ll want Wyatt, too. I don’t understand why you can’t be together.”
“Because Earth doesn’t allow their volunteers to the Interstellar Brides Program to have children. It’s against the rules. You can volunteer to sacrifice your own life and happiness by going to another planet, but I can’t make that decision for a minor. It’s not allowed.”
“Bullshit, Lindsey.” My eyes widened. Mom never swore. “You’re not a bride. You weren’t matched.”
“I—” Holy shit. My mom was right.
“If you could take Wyatt and go live on the Colony, would you?”
A sad burst of something close to laughter erupted from my diaphragm. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell him?”
I couldn’t look her in the eye, instead stared at the threadbare carpet. “I don’t know. Everything happened so fast and I knew I couldn’t stay. It never seemed to be the right time.”
The tsking sound made me cringe. “Not every man is like Pet—“
“Don’t say his name,” I interrupted.
“Fine. Not every man is like the sperm donor. You should have told him.”
Cyborg Seduction (Interstellar Brides: The Colony Book 3) Page 12
