by Pam Godwin
Beside me, Jesse stood tall and alert, his attention fixed on Michio, brows pulled together and hands balled at his sides. My heart constricted at the grief reflected in his eyes, but I was also thankful. In the wake of Elaine’s torture and the loss of my mother, my fathers always had one another.
Salem’s fingers wove around mine and squeezed, and I was grateful for that, too.
Roark whispered words I couldn’t hear as he dragged a hand down the front of Michio’s black coat and thumped a fist over Michio’s heart. Whatever Roark told him softened Michio’s expression and loosened his shoulders. Michio closed his lips, shielding his fangs. By the time he met my eyes, I was already moving.
When I reached him, his steady fingers framed my face, tilting my head to press our foreheads together. We stood like that through a tranquil rhythm of breaths before he said, “I missed you a little too much.”
“Missed you, too, Dad.” I gripped his hands where they held my face. “And not just because I desperately need you to help me figure things out.” I flashed my fangs with a smile.
“It’s happening.” He regarded my teeth with an amalgam of emotions burning in his eyes.
“Something is happening.” In the form of fangs and glowy veins, the latter of which I hadn’t disclosed yet.
He held my cheek against his chest and kissed the top of my head. I wrapped my arms around his waist, and Roark moved in, enfolding us. Footfalls approached, and Jesse appeared on my other side, closing the circle.
Across the room, the wood floor creaked with movement. The fire crackled and popped, and I assumed Salem was tending it, giving us privacy.
“Evie would be so proud of the woman you’ve become.” Michio splayed a hand against the back of my head, holding me tighter. “You took out the last breeding facility in North America.”
“And ye endured captivity,” Roark said, his accent thick with pride.
“And survived the brutal Yukon terrain.” Jesse wrapped his fingers around my nape.
Michio pulled back and cupped my jaw, his eyes honey warm. “Our fierce, beautiful girl.”
I needed their approval like I needed air, and my lungs stretched to capacity as I breathed in their words. Here, in the protective embrace of their love, my world clicked back together.
“How did you find her in that blizzard?” Michio looked from Roark to Jesse.
“We followed her breadcrumbs.” Jesse smiled at me.
“Actually…” I stepped back, breaking the circle. “I didn’t leave the trail.”
Crouched by the fire, Salem glanced up from the cup of pine needle tea he was preparing. His gaze subtly roamed over my body, and I longed for his intimacy with a physical ache in my chest.
Clutching the neckline of my borrowed sweater, I stretched it to my nose and inhaled his masculine scent. “Do you want to tell them what happened?”
He rose and prowled toward me, one hand resting in the pocket of his leather pants, the other holding out the tin cup of tea.
“Thank you.” I accepted it and took a sip, relishing the citrusy flavor.
“We got caught in the blizzard.” His shoulders pulled back, and the orange glow of the fire bounced off his defined chest. “She lasted hours out there, plowing around snowbanks taller than her before hypothermia set in.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “She’s stubborn.”
“Den’ we know it.” Roark folded his arms across his chest. “Just like Evie.”
I shook my head. “I was fine.”
“Until your blood pressure crashed, and you lost consciousness.” Salem scowled at me.
I closed my eyes as the beat of my heart rushed through my ears. Beats I wouldn’t have if he hadn’t been there.
“You removed her wet clothes,” Michio said.
When I opened my eyes, I followed his gaze to the clothes drying on the table.
Yep. Clothes were removed because of hypothermia. Not because we were having sex right before they showed up. My cheeks inflamed.
“Yes.” Salem hooked a thumb in his pocket. “I gave her warm tea when she woke. Kept her as warm and dry as possible.”
My mind immediately snagged on dry. He’d fucked me, and I was soooo not dry. Our eyes connected, and his lips twitched, making my lips twitch, and holy shit, my fathers were watching. Salem cleared his throat, and I quickly spoke over the sound.
“He bent the branches.” I peeked at my fathers’ hard expressions. “While he carried me fifty miles to this cabin.”
“I needed the exercise.” Salem grinned.
“Yeah, as much as I need more overprotective guardians in my life.” I smiled over the rim of the cup.
Michio approached Salem, his movements seemingly casual, but I knew every step was measured and deliberate. He slid off his coat, setting it on the table he passed, his narrowed gaze never leaving Salem.
“Thank you.” He paused within arm’s reach of Salem, hands folded behind his back. “For keeping her safe.”
“Don’t thank me.” Salem regarded him with undaunted intensity. “I did it for myself.”
I straightened, confused by his response.
He and Michio bandied stares like predator and prey, only they both had fangs and neither were capable of cowering.
“Explain what you mean.” Michio held still, not a twitch in the loose garments that draped his tall frame.
“I’m not letting her go.” Salem mirrored Michio’s stance, clasping his hands behind his back.
“Wha’ do ye want with her?” Roark circled.
Jesse silently stalked from the other side.
“Don’t gang up on him.” I stepped between Salem and Michio. “Let’s sit down. I have more to tell you.”
“Answer the question, lad.” Roark stood behind Salem, arms crossed.
“You don’t have to answer,” I said under my breath.
That earned me scolding looks from all four men.
“I enjoy her company.” Salem gripped my hand. “Her laughter. Her ferocity and tenderness. My interest is simple. I care about your daughter, and I want every opportunity to show her how much.”
I squeezed his fingers as my heart ricocheted off my ribs.
Michio zoomed in on our laced fingers and returned to Salem’s face, squinting with enough scrutiny to make a normal man squirm. “The epithelium in your eyes doesn’t have pigment. And there’s no melanin in the stroma.” His dark brows pinched. “The result should be albinism—red eyes. Or Tyndall scattering—blue irises. But you have neither. It’s as if the layers of your eyes have been altered? Or damaged?”
Salem had mentioned his worst exposure to the sun was when he looked at a sunrise. Was that the cause of his spectral eyes?
“They were brown when I was a child.” Salem rubbed the back of his neck.
My jaw dropped. “Really?”
“Like your mother’s.” Michio’s voice was flat, his expression blank.
“Yeah, I, uh…I have a reaction to the sun.” Salem cast me a sidelong glance and shoved a hand through his hair. “Dawn’s right. I think we should sit. It’s a long story.”
Two cups of tea later, I lay on the rug with my head on Salem’s thigh, struggling to keep my eyes open.
“No more tea.” He moved the cup out of my reach and stroked my hair. “You’re going to overdose on vitamin C.”
Roark and Jesse reclined against the wall, shoulder to shoulder and eyes closed, but I knew they were listening to every word.
Michio sat across from us, bent over a leather-bound notebook from his bag, the pages scribbled with notes about Salem. The moment he’d pulled out his graphite pencil, my concerned father disappeared and Dr. Nealy took over.
The scientist listened with rapt attention as Salem walked through the past twenty years. The sun’s lethal effect on his body. His abusive childhood and murder of his mother. His curiosity about me that led him to tracking me and getting captured. My ability to hear and see whatever was slithering through his veins. Then he demonstr
ated my connection to him by stepping outside. My fangs retracted the moment I couldn’t see him and reemerged when he returned a few minutes later.
“How old were you when you tried to look at the sun?” Michio looked up from his notebook, the pencil paused mid-scribble.
“Fifteen.” Salem’s fingers tightened in my hair.
What? I’d assumed Elaine forced him look at the sun, but he was twelve when he killed her.
“Why did you do it?” I asked. “Knowing what it would do to you?”
“Stupidity.” He scowled at the floor. “I wanted to see it.”
My heart broke. I reached for his hand and tucked it between my cheek and his thigh with my head on his lap.
“When your eyes healed, they lost the structural coloration?” Michio asked.
“Why are you so focused on his eyes?” I lifted my head.
“Aphids and nymphs had all-white eyes.” Michio scratched a note on the paper. “That was a different cause and effect, but I wanted to eliminate a connection.”
“My eyes looked like this when they healed.” Salem nudged my head down, guiding my cheek back to his thigh. “My eyesight is normal. Human. I don’t have night vision.” He tugged on a lock of my hair. “Or x-ray vision.”
I pinched his leg. “I can only see your creepy veins.”
“Have you bitten him?” Michio’s cautious voice drew my attention to his stern gaze.
“No.” I rolled to my back and spoke to the rafters. “There have been a few times when I…well, I would’ve bitten him if he hadn’t stopped me.”
“During sex?” Michio asked, without a hint of emotion in his voice.
Roark and Jesse tensed in my periphery.
“Yes.” My face heated.
Michio set the paper and pencil aside and leaned forward, clasping his hands in front of him. “There are circumstances we’ll never be able to explain. Like the way Evie sensed things, felt things deep inside her. Maybe it was intuition or the work of some external force, but whatever it was led her to the cabin…” His eyes shifted to Salem. “Where she found your mother. It led her to Jesse and called her across the ocean to Roark and me.”
“What are you saying?” I sat up and brushed the hair from my face.
“I’ll run tests and examine your teeth when we return to camp, but I already know that the one thing we’re searching for won’t be found under a microscope.” He looked at Salem and back to me. “What does your gut tell you when you see his veins?”
“To bite him.” I picked at a hole in the matted fur rug. “To go after those silver things in his blood. To…extract them?”
“Extract them or destroy them?” Salem tilted his head to study my face.
“I don’t know.” I rubbed my gritty eyes. “I’ll pay better attention next time.” My entire body felt heavy and lethargic, no doubt working in overdrive as I recovered from hypothermia.
“Have you bitten or been bitten by a hybrid?” Michio asked Salem.
“Both.”
“What happens?”
“Aside from blood loss?” Salem cocked his head. “Nothing.”
“Tell me about your relationship with the hybrids you live with.” Michio picked up his notebook.
“They have varied personalities like humans.” Salem sighed. “But all hybrids have the same nature. They’re very passive until they scent a human…”
His voice faded in and out. My eyelids grew heavy, my head nodding. As I moved to curl up on the floor, Salem’s arms came around me. He pulled me across his lap and tucked my head against the warm skin on his chest. It didn’t take long for the vibration of his timbre to lull me to sleep.
When I woke, I was in the same position. The fire had dwindled to a low-burning flame, and Salem and Michio were still talking. As I started to drift back to sleep, my attention snagged on the table, now overflowing with wet coats and packs.
I perked up. “Is Eddie—?”
“He’s back.” Michio nodded at the space behind me. “Sleeping.”
I turned in Salem’s arms and spotted Eddie, Link, and Hunter stretched out on bedrolls by the door. On the other side of the room, Jesse and Roark hadn’t moved. Their eyes were closed. Roark’s head lay at an angle on Jesse’s shoulder, his hand resting over Jesse’s on his lap.
Warmth spread through my chest. I didn’t know until now how much I’d always wanted that for myself. A shoulder to sleep on. A hand to hold. A man to give my heart to.
I relaxed against Salem’s chest and mumbled, “What’s the plan?”
“The sun sets in two hours.” Salem pressed his lips against my forehead. “Then we head to your camp.”
We. A happy hum resonated deep in my gut.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Three weeks later, I sat beside Eddie on a concrete rooftop and lifted my face to the pinkish-orange sky as the sun sank behind Yukon’s Volcano Mountain. Sleeping with Salem during the short daylight hours had filled me with longing for this, the emotional warmth of sunshine breathing life into a cold dead world. So I’d left him asleep, exchanging the comfort of his arms for a stolen moment of UV rays.
“Is it weird to have your teeth come and go like that?” Eddie stared at my mouth and passed the hot cup of acorn brew we were sharing.
“A little, I guess.” I slid my tongue along straight human teeth and shrugged. “I’m getting used to it.”
“At least Salem can’t sneak up on you.”
“True.” I sipped the bitter coffee-like beverage and flexed my legs where they dangled over the edge of the roof.
We perched on the corner of a three-story L-shaped building. It’d been a hospital in the old world. Now it served as the western bulwark of our temporary camp. Behind me, a hodgepodge of rock and wood walls encircled what was left of a rural Canadian town. The fencing was weak in areas, and the exterior barricades between the crumbling stone buildings could be climbed given enough time and determination. My soldiers had been toiling for weeks, cutting down trees, and reinforcing the perimeter.
Thirty-six human men and four women resided here before we showed up. Our group of two dozen soldiers and twenty female survivors more than doubled the population. But once the border around the settlement was secured, we would head back to Hoover Dam and leave the pregnant women here.
Eddie raised a pair of binoculars and scanned the shadows that started to form across the frozen tundra. “Michio wants to bring Salem home with us.”
“I know.” I set the cup aside and shivered against the rapidly declining temperature.
My hooded tailcoat was made from patches of sweaters in an assortment of earthy colors. The sleeves hung past my hands and the layered wool flared around my knees. Since my return to the camp, I’d acquired a badass wardrobe. Two of the survivors from the breeding facility were seamstresses, and they’d discovered a stockpile of fabrics in one of the old buildings. Surrounded by wool, flax, alpaca, and leather, they’d fashioned numerous pieces for me, tailored to fit every dip and curve of my body.
Today I wore a brown leather corset over a flowing white blouse and fitted trousers. My favorite accessories were the chunky utility belts that draped around my waist, each customized to carry things like a compass, my mother’s dagger, and rope. The first time Salem saw me in this outfit, he removed it piece by agonizing piece and fucked me against the wall of our makeshift bedroom.
My thighs clenched at the memory of the predatory hunger in his eyes, and I felt a sudden urge to race back to the room and wake him with my mouth around his cock. He hadn’t let me pleasure him like that since my fangs appeared. I didn’t blame him, but dammit, I loved to feel him against the back of my throat. I needed to figure out a way to suck him without biting.
“Michio seems to like him.” Eddie lowered the binoculars, his brown eyes narrowing as if he could read my thoughts.
“Yeah, Michio likes him the way a scientist is fascinated by a bug under a magnifying glass.” My exhale escaped in a white cloud of steam. “Sale
m’s reached his limit with Michio’s probing and pricking. He wants to go home. His home.”
After a battery of blood tests and medical exams, Salem and Michio had arrived at an inconclusive debate. The strange silver things in Salem’s blood didn’t show up under a microscope or trigger any known medical causes in Michio’s tests. Salem believed it was me, that my genetic makeup allowed me to see something that didn’t medically exist. Michio wanted to marshal more figures, data, and facts.
He asked Salem to come home with us, where he could study us with better equipment and analyze to his heart’s content. When Salem politely refused, Michio concurred with, “You’re right. The answer isn’t in a lab.”
The line between science and faith was one that Michio struggled with since the day he met my mother.
But not all of Michio’s exams were inconclusive. He found venom glands in my fangs, but no venom in my body. No baby either. The pregnancy tests were negative. As it turned out, those tests weren’t needed. Salem’s fertility test confirmed that fangs and inhuman speed weren’t the only traits he shared with my fathers. He was also infertile.
When Salem heard the results, he’d said, “Good. One less thing to worry about.” But I’d recognized the disappointment in his eyes and felt it carve out a hollow place inside me.
“If he returns to Alberta…” Eddie rubbed his neatly trimmed goatee, his chocolate eyes soft and calming. “Where does that leave you, Red?”
“I don’t know.” I stared at the darkening sky. “We haven’t discussed it.”
Salem would be awake soon. I glanced over my shoulder at the camp below. Armed with crossbows, guards patrolled the exterior walls. A quick scan confirmed every sentry was appropriately positioned. A few men smoked cigarillos. Others stole peeks at the women who strolled along the broken street that ran down the center of the camp.
“He’s going to take you from me.” Eddie hooked an arm around my back.
I relaxed against his broad chest. Eddie was leaner than Salem, but powerful and dominant in his own right. Other than my fathers, he was the only man who ever stood up to me. Until Salem.
“Don’t be a drama queen.” I rested my hand on his where he balanced the binoculars on his thigh. “We haven’t even talked about the future.”
