by Diana Seere
“I didn’t do anything to her,” Zach said, willing his voice not to shake. “I swear it.”
Asher moved closer, his bulging muscles—quite impressive, actually; did he lift?—flexed to impose punishment.
On Zach.
“He’s good. He’s good.”
It was Molly, speaking in a faint voice from Edward’s protective embrace on the floor.
“We can see he’s in fine health,” Asher said, his tone suggesting that condition wouldn’t last much longer. “It’s your well-being that concerns us, Molly.”
“And Lilah’s,” Gavin growled. He held her arm and was trying to lead her to the door. “She’s too close to her time to be subjected to this.”
Zach turned his newly acute gaze on Lilah and saw again just how close to the birth she really was. If Gavin could sense what Zach could, he’d be shouting for the doctor.
“Wherever you planned on having your baby,” Zach told Lilah, “I think you should get there as soon as possible.” Zach had always wanted what Gavin Stanton appeared to have—a loving wife, children, a home. Money be damned.
It was family that mattered. And Zach had none. The fiercely protective streak in him didn’t come as a surprise, though the timing left much to be desired.
“Don’t concern yourself with my wife,” Gavin snapped.
“No, he’s right,” Molly said, sitting up, her voice stronger. “I see it too. Lilah, it’s time.”
“Don’t worry,” Lilah said. “Women in my family have long, long labors. My mother had contractions for days. She went to the hospital four times with Jess, and each time they sent her back, saying it was too soon.”
“Nevertheless, we’re calling the doctor,” Gavin said. “And you’re getting in bed.”
“I’m fine, really. My grandmother, my aunt, two of my cousins—long labors. Days. A week. People always think we’re exaggerating, and then the hours and days go on and on.”
“Lilah, my darling,” Gavin said, “you are no longer the same as your mother, grandmother, aunts, or cousins. We must be careful. Please, take pity on your adoring husband and return to our cabin.”
Flushing—all over her body, Zach noticed before averting his eyes—Lilah smiled at Gavin, took his hand with a nod, and let him escort her to the doorway, where Ariana waited with a fleece robe. Gavin helped her into it, quickly dressed himself with another set of clothes Ariana offered, and they departed.
Zach wondered if their “cabin” was as huge as Sophia’s. He’d only seen the foyer of hers and was curious to see the rest of her private retreat, explore the rooms and corners of a building that must reflect the deeper, softer, private parts of her psyche.
No. He couldn’t think about Sophia Stanton too deeply. Her attentions to him had been for the sake of her family and her own kind—to protect their world. To train him. To restrain him.
He was still a prisoner here, and she one of the jailers. A beautiful, passionate jailer who stirred his soul but no more than that.
He had to protect his own interests. One thing he’d told learned during those agonizing months in the clinic: trust nobody.
The only one he could rely on was himself.
When Gavin and Lilah were visible through the great room windows, walking away together on the path outside, Asher strode to his leather armchair and sat down. Although nude, he bore himself with the assurance and indifference of a king.
At that moment a trio of wordless servants appeared with armfuls of clothing for the shifters in the room. Like the costumers of a play, they handed out fresh sets of clothing and immediately disappeared again.
“Molly, I pray you’re feeling better?” Asher asked after dressing himself.
She had risen to her feet and was now leaning on Edward’s arm. “I’m fine, totally fine, it’s nothing.”
“I suspect it must’ve been something,” Asher said. “You were regarding Zachary Hayden—excuse me, Dr. Zachary Hayden—when you seemed to become overwhelmed. Did he… Can you be certain he didn’t touch your… mind in some way?”
While Zach appreciated the formal nod to his PhD, the acid tone made him want to strangle Asher.
Edward turned a shocked face to his eldest brother. “Are you suggesting they shared the Beat, Asher?” he asked, his voice dangerously low.
“He doesn’t believe in the old legend,” Sophia said. Her beautiful body was now covered by a tight black T-shirt and skinny dark jeans that drew Zach’s attention to every delicious curve.
“And you do, sister?” Asher snapped.
While Sophia paused, Zach felt the world freeze on its axis. At that moment, he would’ve died for her to look at him the way she had in the forest, open her body and her mind for him, and say yes. Yes, I know it. I feel it.
A heartbeat not his own pounded in his ears.
But all Sophia said was, “Molly has the sight. She saw Zach.”
“And fainted in terror.” Asher squeezed the arms of the chair.
Molly shook her head. “I fainted because I haven’t eaten and I’m not used to… to the sight, as Sophia calls it. I haven’t learned how to control it. If I go too deep, I feel like I’m drowning and… No, it’s more like suffocating. No… I don’t know. I’m learning. It certainly isn’t Zach’s fault. All I saw in him was goodness. Protectiveness for the babies. Love. Nothing like Webb.” Molly shuddered and turned into Edward’s embrace.
Zach would analyze her claim of special powers at a later time. Right now he had to get solid, concrete facts. “Who is Webb? You mentioned him before.”
Asher regarded Zach for a long moment, weighing and measuring, calculating, manipulating. Finally he said, “A businessman, a human, in league with Tomas Nagy, our cousin, to steal the serum at LupiNex and use it for his own ends. Webb took the serum and became a monster. We fought him and won.”
“Where is he now?”
Asher frowned slightly in surprise. “Dead, of course.”
Zach spasmed with an involuntary shiver. Of course. What they’d do to him if he wasn’t careful.
He had a faint memory of hearing the name Webb before, perhaps on the LupiNex business page, but he was fairly sure he’d never met the man. “And Tomas is in Rome. Why didn’t you kill him?”
“He escaped,” Sophia said. “We know he has some of the serum and the knowledge to do things with it. Asher had him tracked down in Eastern Europe, now Rome.”
“You know where he is. So why haven’t you killed him, if he’s so dangerous?” Zach asked.
“Are you so bloodthirsty then?” Asher asked. “Perhaps Molly was too quick with her judgments. Perhaps she lost consciousness before she got to the bottom of the well of your so-called heart.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Molly interjected, throwing Zach a compassionate glance. “Zach’s good. He risked his life to save Lilah, who he thought needed his help. And her babies. He was worried about the babies. He’s good and that’s final.”
A faint smile flickered at Asher’s lips. “Perhaps I should attempt to believe you, Molly. After all, your talents were able to heal those I care for.”
Sophia touched Zach’s arm. “Webb nearly killed Edward. Tore him apart. Molly and Jess were able to save him.” She glanced at her eldest brother. “As well as Asher himself.”
Zach nodded at Molly, but his thoughts were racing with the implications of what he was hearing, piecing it together as best he could. Webb, a human like Zach, had taken the serum the Stantons had created at LupiNex, turned into a monster, and nearly killed Edward, Asher, and possibly others. In response, the Stantons had killed him. The man responsible, a shifter, had been allowed to live.
Why should Zach believe their description of Webb as a monster? In what way was Zach, an unnaturally large wolf with immeasurable strength and uncontrollable instincts to mate and dominate, not a monster?
It slowly dawned on him that his life was in greater danger than he’d realized. Perhaps even more now than when his bones were shatter
ed, his skin stretched and torn, his organs scrambled, his altered life hanging by a thread.
More than ever, he had to learn everything he could. And learn to control himself. Absolute control. Or else he could suffer Webb’s fate.
“Why do you think Tomas is in Rome?” Zach asked. Knowledge. He needed to know everything.
“I don’t know,” Asher said. “But I’ll find out.”
At that moment, Ariana burst into the room, her professional training nowhere to be seen. Now she was a very young woman freaking out.
“Gavin sent me. Lilah’s having the babies!” she cried. “Like right now!”
Chapter 9
Sophia ran to Gavin’s cabin, her feet gripping brick and cobblestone, dirt and pebbles, muscle memory leading her to her brother’s home. The night chill didn’t touch her, motion creating a kind of wind that seemed, paradoxically, to be caused by her and to be pushing her forward as well. Why should it make sense? Nothing else did.
Lilah’s pregnancy had turned her heart into a spinning top. From the moment Gavin and Lilah had announced it, some part of Sophia had ached with agony, a yearning emerging inside her that had no form, no name, no shape. She found herself scoffing at the notion of children in public, praising her single, carefree life yet privately weeping, at a loss to explain what she lacked.
Watching Lilah’s belly grow all these months made her feel like a voyeur, a degenerate trying to take pieces of people by glimpse. As new life formed inside her sister-in-law, the swirl of emerging emotion in Sophia felt like the trimesters of human pregnancy.
First you are nauseated.
Then you are aroused.
And, finally, you will go through anything to meet your baby.
Except those weren’t her babies. They were Lilah and Gavin’s, and while she would be the best auntie those children could imagine (far better than Jess or Molly, Sophia knew), she was certain, with a finality that scared her, that she needed her own child.
Madness. The idea was madness, she thought to herself as her breasts bobbed with each step, her human form entirely inadequate for running but better than arriving as a bear with paws. The glow of Gavin’s front door light illuminated the way as leaves from trees scratched her face, tearing strands of hair from her scalp. Bursting through the door, she was greeted by the sight of her brother, eyes the size of saucers, and Lilah, squatting over an antique Persian rug, mouth open, her long, toneless grunt the sound of thousands of women throughout space and time giving birth, too.
“Get the doctor!” Gavin roared, standing up and being yanked—hard—by Lilah’s death grip on his arm. His body stretched then receded, like touching a pill bug’s stomach. Gavin curled into himself, then began panting with Lilah, breathing with her, his jaw red from Zach’s earlier punch.
“He’s not scheduled to arrive for another hour!” Edward came up from behind Sophia, then looked back on the path. “Perhaps Dr. Sam…”
“She’s a biochemist! Not a medical doctor!” Gavin shouted.
“I don’t think I can do this,” Lilah said in a weak voice. “Gavin, I can’t do this. I’m splitting in half. I’m splitting. Jess…” She moaned a sound like a wounded animal, one that made Sophia’s heart stop. Women complained during birth, and she knew full well that during transition, birthing mothers lose their confidence as their bodies take over, the pain and pressure at the peak as the baby crowns too much for many women to bear.
But Lilah’s voice was filled with a different kind of pain.
This was no normal birth.
A man’s panting breath caught her ears, and she turned to see Zach in the doorway, pushing past Edward, then Molly’s face behind him, peering in.
“You are doing it, Lilah,” Gavin said, soothing her, his fingers touching her back, her shoulders, her neck, tapping and touching as if he didn’t know what to do but needed to do something.
A strange popping sound, then a trickle of blood came from under Lilah, the stain turning the rug a terrifying shade of brown.
Lilah made a whooping sound and held her breath, her enormous belly roiling.
“Sophia! You’re a nurse! You’ve delivered babies, yes?” Edward asked in a tone that made Sophia want to run away, because if calm Edward was that panicked, this must be bad.
She shook her head. “I’ve seen them born. Held some after. I don’t know how to midwife a baby, much less twins!” Kneeling, Sophia looked under Lilah.
The sac of waters partly outside her body made it very clear that the babies would be born in minutes.
There was no time for decisions.
“Too fast,” Lilah said. “The pain, oh God, it hurts. It hurts wrong. It hurts wrong.”
Zach caught Sophia’s eye, his head shaking slightly as if to ask what Lilah meant.
I don’t know, she mouthed.
He turned away, hand on his chin, looking around the cabin as if he’d lost something.
Sam rushed into the room carrying a small medical kit, eyes assessing Lilah. Without a single whiff of fear, the woman went into motion, dropping to the floor and peering at Lilah’s underside as she squatted.
“It’s imminent. Time for the serum,” she said to Gavin, who nodded wildly and looked at Sophia with such a desperate, terrified expression that she felt her soul implode.
“Serum?” Zach snapped, giving Sophia an accusing look that made her want to cry and scream at the same time.
“A serum to make sure Lilah survives, you idiot! I already told you this. Not one that turns her into a shifter!” she shot back, pure adrenaline shoving her manners to the edges of the world. In truth, she was unraveling, feeling some deep suspicion in Zach toward her, the tether between them severed back at Asher’s office.
How? Why? Without his heartbeat, she couldn’t find her own center.
Zach backed off, brow still tight with worry as Sam injected Lilah in the hip, the laboring woman barely noticing.
“Sophia!” Sam said. “You’ll have to do. You know more than anyone about birth.”
“I’ll do my best,” she announced, shaking off her thoughts. She ran to the bathroom to scrub her hands and then took the surgical gloves Sam offered, the two women catching each other’s gaze in an unspoken sisterhood.
One of our own needs help.
“Jess,” Lilah moaned. “She’s supposed to be here! I need her unnnnnnhhhhh…” Lilah’s guttural birthing tones made Sophia feel better. That was more normal.
“Jess and Derry should be here soon,” Gavin said to her with assurance. “I called them when you had cramping this morning, darling. Just in case. But Asher had already spoken to them yesterday. They’ll be here any minute, my love.”
Lilah closed her eyes in relief, then winced as another powerful contraction took over.
Zach started to speak to Sam, touching her shoulder gently. “I—”
“Keep your tone low, to help with the muscles. Good job, Lilah. You’re doing a wonderful job for your babies. They will be here soon. So soon. Not much more left, sweetie,” Sophia heard herself say, borrowing words from memories of midwife-attended births she’d witnessed back in England. Why hadn’t she paid more attention?
And how much of those purely human births even applied to this situation?
“Where in the bloody hell is the doctor?” snapped Asher, who stood in the door suddenly, gaze averted, unable to look at Lilah. Sophia noticed how pale he was—almost gray—with eyes that looked at her from under the haunted caves of his brow, his skin tight on his face, his jaw set with pure mourning.
My God, she thought to herself. He thinks Lilah and the babies are dying.
“Sam, I think I can help,” Zach said, trying to get Sam’s attention, making Sophia inexplicably angry in the heat of the moment. This would all be so much easier if she could be angry. Furious. Rageful. Instead, she was helpless, all her emotions outside her body on leashes that snapped, one by one, as she lost control.
“Lilah!” A woman’s voice outside, a wisp
of sound on the wind, made Edward and Molly go outside as Lilah let out a deep groan, Gavin rubbing her back, whispering something to her, Lilah shaking her head back and forth, hair wet with exertion.
A teakettle whistled like a factory at shift change.
“The boiling water!” Gavin bellowed, looking to the kitchen.
“Got it,” Zach snapped, leaping over a sofa as if it were nothing, lifting the kettle off the burner and yanking open drawers, pulling items out with a precision that made Sophia frown to herself.
Scuffling motions at the door split Sophia’s attention between Zach, Lilah, and the entrance to the cabin.
And then Jess and Derry appeared, Jess’s long blonde hair a wild mess, her face so calm it was almost blank. Sophia almost wept to see them. Her sister-in-law, her brother. Thank God Asher had called them in time.
“How close is she?” Jess asked, looking at Sam.
“The contractions are almost inseparable,” she answered.
“So close,” Jess muttered.
Just as Jessica bent down to touch Lilah’s brow and get her attention, Zach knelt next to her, holding a tall, deep bowl inside a few layers of kitchen towels, a set of tongs, a giant slotted spoon, and scissors in the piping hot water.
“What are you doing?” Gavin said, incredulous.
“I was a paramedic before I got my doctorate in biochemistry. Spent years on emergency calls. I’ve delivered twelve babies who came too fast for the hospital. I’m the best option you’ve got here,” Zach announced, his tone firm with authority.
Lilah’s entire body tensed as she held her breath, her cheeks turning impossibly purple before she groaned, her body shaking.
Gavin looked over his wife’s head and caught Sophia’s attention, his eyes bleak but sharp. His eyebrows lifted, the question clear.
“Trust him,” she said, finding her words echoed from behind her, Molly and Edward speaking the same thought.
“My God,” Asher said from behind, his voice faint with anguish.
As Gavin nodded, Zach and Jess took control, Jess gloving up and reaching down to touch Lilah, supporting the baby gently as it eased closer.
