“You are,” she finally whispered. “This baby is yours.”

This baby is yours.

Jesus. Luc fell back, nearly tumbling off the edge of the pallet. Son of a bitch! He’d been so careful in his life, had always chosen bedmates that weren’t even close to their season. And if his partner was of a species that didn’t have “seasons,” he could still sense fertility, could tell when any female was ripe for breeding. But for some reason he hadn’t known Kar had been fertile when they’d f**ked like animals for that half hour.

“How?” he asked, his voice shot all to hell. “I would have sensed your fertility.”

“My periods stopped when I was turned. I thought I was infertile. It wasn’t until after I became pregnant that my Feast buddies told me fertility and pregnancy are random.”

“Random.” He laughed humorlessly. “That’s just great.”

“Fuck you.” Kar scrambled to her feet, taking the blanket to wrap around herself. “It’s not like I did this on purpose.” No, she probably hadn’t. And he knew he was being an ass, but she’d blindsided him with this news, and really, he’d never been anything but an ass. He stood, and she shrank away from him, as though she was afraid he was going to strike her, and he realized how insanely furious he must appear. He carefully schooled his expression and concentrated on keeping his voice level.

“The baby is why you’re really here, isn’t it? It has nothing to do with the epidemic.” “No, I’m here because of SF. I’m afraid for my child, and you do work at Underworld General.” She took a ragged breath, and he realized she looked paler than she should. “And after The Aegis found out about me, I needed help, and you were my best hope.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Is that why you didn’t attack me when you shifted?” He’d thought her behavior was odd, but now it was making sense.

“I think so. Pregnant females don’t usually try to rip apart their cubs’ father.”

Father. Turning away, he jammed his hands through his hair, over and over. “Fuck,” he breathed. “Just… f**k.” “That’s what got me into this mess in the first place.” She tightened the blanket around her even more, as if the flimsy thing could protect her. “Look, I didn’t mean to cause you trouble. If you’ll let me stay for the next two nights of the new moon, I’ll leave after that. I just can’t be out roaming around or I’ll kill wargs.”

Leave? Man, he might not have wanted this to be happening, but it was, and no way was she taking off with his kid.

Yeah, because he was great father material. He grabbed his jeans off the floor where he’d left them when he’d stripped down. He’d known she’d wake up with postshift lust, and truth be told, her desire had affected him, too. In the basement’s cramped space, he’d been overpowered by the scent of a female in need. And wasn’t he quite the gentleman for offering his services.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he said, stepping into his pants.

“Excuse me?”

“Just what I said.” He threw on his flannel shirt. “Were you planning on telling me? If The Aegis hadn’t discovered your secret, would you have hunted me down to tell me I knocked you up?” The stubborn light in her eyes was answer enough.

“You weren’t going to tell me,” he growled.

“Oh, please,” she scoffed. “Don’t play the injured party here. You blackmailed me into f**king you, and afterward, you walked away without looking back. You didn’t even ask me my name.” That was because he’d heard another Guardian say her name, so he knew it… but yeah, he had been a little on the silent side. “What, did you want my phone number? You wanted to go out on a date? Because you didn’t ask me for anything, either.”

“You didn’t give me a chance! You were dressed and gone before I even found my underwear. You certainly didn’t bother to turn around and say something like, ‘Hey, if you end up pregnant, I’d like to know.’ ”

“Well, now I know.”

“And? You going to marry me?” Venomous sarcasm laced every word. “Move me into your cabin and build a nursery?” Marriage? A nursery? What he was going to do was break out in hives. He hadn’t let himself want anything like that until Ula, and when she was killed, so was his desire for a family. He’d turned vicious that day, had never clawed his way up from the downward spiral of anger.

“Yeah,” she said bitterly. “That’s what I thought. I told you because I need help. But I don’t expect anything else from you.”

“It’s my kid,” he gritted out. “You’re not taking it anywhere.” “See,” she spat. “This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen. A child is not property. Just because it’s yours doesn’t make you a parent. My father treated me like a possession, nothing but a successor for him in The Aegis, and I will never allow my child to be raised like that. It’s better to have no father than a bad one.”

She’d spoken of her father earlier, but not with the same resentfulness, and suspicion bloomed. “He’s the reason The Aegis found out about you.”

“Yes.” She blinked, and Luc thought maybe she was trying to keep tears at bay. “I really do think he was trying to get help for me. He’d heard that the R-XR was experimenting with cures.” “But The Aegis turned on you.”

She nodded. “My cell felt betrayed. Like I’d been some sort of spy.”

Yeah, Luc could imagine that when an organization that had been hunting supernatural baddies for thousands of years learned a werewolf had been knowingly working for them, they wouldn’t take it well. “I’ll keep you safe, but that means staying with me. No running off on your own.”

A flush washed over her, and she swayed, but when he reached for her, she stepped out of his reach. “It’s just morning sickness,” she said, and then cleared her throat. “If I’m going to stay, we’ll need to talk about this.”

Luc started for the stairs. “We will.” When he could wrap his mind around it.

“Sooner is better than later. Besides the nine-month timer, there’s a plague and Aegis Guardians are after me.” “I know.”

“But?”

Christ, couldn’t a guy get a moment of peace? “But I’m not a talker.”

Suddenly, she was in front of him, eyes glinting with anger. “Well, too bad. There are some things you can’t run away from.”

Run away? He hadn’t run away from anything since he had turned. Before that, though… “I’m no coward,” he growled. “Really? Because I didn’t know that running away from every female in your life was a sign of bravery. Or am I wrong? Has there ever been anyone with whom you didn’t f**k and run to avoid emotional commitment?”

Fury lit him up, set his jaw so hard he thought he heard his molars crack. “You don’t know anything about me,” he gritted out.

“I know your kind. The Aegis is full of them. So tell me, how close am I?”

Too close. Way too close. He’d spent a lifetime avoiding emotional connections. Even as a paramedic, he didn’t have to get involved with his patients. They were his for a few moments, but he got to drop them off and never think of them again.

And even Ula, the female he’d wanted to mate with, had been more of an escape from loneliness than a love match. He’d liked her, found her challenging, but love? Not even close. “Drop it, Kar.”

She laughed. “No wonder you live out here in frozen desolation. The land is just like your heart, isn’t it?”

Ignoring her barb, Luc mounted the steps, needing to get away but knowing that what she’d said was spot on.

There were some things you couldn’t run away from.

Fifteen

They always leave, Con. Always. Sin’s last words before she drifted off to sleep stayed with Con, had him nearly shaking her awake to tell her he wouldn’t leave. But it would be a lie, because he never stuck with anything. So why in hell did he feel like saying that to her?

Because Sin had lived a waking nightmare, that’s why. As he fell asleep, he’d thought about everything she’d told him, had nightmares about it, and now, as he prowled the house in the early-morning gray light, seeking out all of the secret exits, he couldn’t stop thinking. Sin was still sleeping, but he knew she’d awakened several times during the night.

Once, she’d sat up from a dream, panting and holding her hands over her ears as though trying to block something out. Another time, she’d taken her Gargantua-bone dagger off the nightstand and held it against her chest, cradling it like a teddy bear, before falling back to sleep.

Those images haunted him as much as the things she’d told him. She wasn’t an assassin because she wanted to be. She’d been sold into it. She wasn’t master of her den because she wanted to be. She’d done it to spare her brother’s mate. And because she was who she was—tough, intense, determined—she’d made the best of the situations. Self-preservation instincts hadn’t allowed her to feel sorry for herself or to feel anything or, probably, to even think much on what she’d done or had to do.

And he’d gone and torn down the one defense she had to protect herself.

Fucking idiot.

“Hey.” He whirled around, unable to believe she’d caught him by surprise. She stood at the base of the stairs, clothed, wet hair up in the messy knot she favored, a splash of shy color on her cheeks. She didn’t look like a hard-as-brimstone, cold-blooded assassin. Probably because she wasn’t a cold-blooded assassin like he’d once thought. No, she looked like a woman who had been well loved for the first time and wasn’t sure how to deal with it.

Yeah, well, neither did he. He’d been with a lot of females. Too many couplings had been nothing but one-nighters where they didn’t even exchange names. But he’d also made love to sensual, experienced females he’d liked. He’d spent hours in bed with them, hours talking, playing, doing real “date” stuff. But with the one exception so many centuries ago that had ended in disaster, he’d always kept relationships casual.