Blake, Abby - Soldier [Altered Destinies 5] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (5 page)

She knew that she wouldn’t gamble her girls’ safety on her own stupid pride, but she couldn’t—wouldn’t—find the words to tell him. Truth was, she needed help to find her girls, help to get them to safety, and help to keep them that way. She had no idea how she was going to support them once she found them. She just knew she had to find them.

“Jenna.” Zane called her attention as he walked back into the room. “Your girls are safe. They were rescued about six months ago from a rogue facility up north.”

“Where are they now?” she demanded, trying to sit up again.

“That’s the part Alana was trying to tell you.”

“What the fuck does that bitch have to do with anything? Why does she know where my daughters are, and why didn’t she tell me that first?”

“Princess, you practically threw her out of the room. She sat here for hours waiting for you to wake up. She was really angry when you attacked Jason, so even he’s surprised that she turned up to talk to you in person.”

Jenna wasn’t sure what to make of that. Like all of her skills, her empathic senses seemed dulled, not up to par, and she’d only sensed hostility from the other woman. Could she have missed something important?

“Jenna, Alana is your identical twin sister. We suspected as much, but Jason did a DNA test just to be sure. It came back a perfect match.”

“So we share DNA, so what? Doesn’t mean I have to like her.”

“Well,” he said as he chuckled quietly, “I suppose that’s true, but you might find what she has to say quite interesting.”

She wasn’t in the mood for twenty questions. She just wanted answers, and then she wanted out of there. “Just tell me what she wanted to say.”

“I wanted to tell you personally”—Alana’s angry voice sounded from the doorway—“that
I
have your daughters.”

“You what? How? Why? Give them back to me right this fucking instant or you will regret the day you were born.”

“Jenna, stop talking. Seriously, woman, you are going to talk yourself into the biggest hole, deeper than you can dig yourself out of.” When he had her attention, Zane held her chin and whispered. “Alana is here to introduce you to your girls, not keep them away from you.”

“She is?” It still didn’t seem possible. Why would these people want to help her? She was their enemy, wasn’t she? Her telepathic block must’ve been faulty, too, because he answered her unspoken thoughts.

“No, princess, you’re as much a victim of the Professor’s schemes as your girls are. Alana and your sisters can help you. You just have to be willing to accept it.”

“I can have my girls back?” She couldn’t deny the excitement unfurling in her chest. She’d lived without them for seven long years, had only known they were alive for less than a week, but she felt like she could take her first full breath in a very long time.

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Alana said quietly.

Jenna was about to explode, but Zane’s hand covered her mouth before the words could escape. “When Theresa rescued them, we did DNA tests, and that showed me as their mother. We knew there was a chance that you and I were identical twins, and considering the facts that we had at the time, it was more likely that they were your daughters. They were too old to have been mine. They would’ve been conceived almost a year before I was taken by them.”

“Taken? As in abducted and experimented on?”

Alana nodded, absently rubbing her wrist. “Yes, experimented on and worse. For six years, they held me against my will. Jason got me out, but not before they’d implanted me with an unknown embryo.”

“Embryo? Whose baby is it?”

“She’s my baby. It doesn’t matter who the biological parents are. I carried her. I birthed her. She’s my baby.” Jenna sensed a whole lot more to the story than what Alana was saying, but for once, she kept her mouth shut. Although that may have had something to do with the fact that Zane had left his hand over her mouth and currently caressed her lips and jawline with his slightly calloused fingers.

“I’ve been raising Kara and Hailey as if they were my own, but I always suspected that they were your children in a genetic sense. What we didn’t know was whether you carried them yourself of if they were given to a surrogate to birth.”

“They’re mine. They’re mine.” She could feel her emotions boiling close to the surface, but she couldn’t call them back. She shook as the words tumbled uncensored from her lips. “I carried them to eight months, and then the Professor said they died when they did an emergency caesarean. He told me it was better that I didn’t see the corpses. God, I thought he was being kind. I trusted him to keep me and my girls safe. Fuck, how useless am I?”

The tears did come then. All the years she’d lived in the compound, learning, training—it was all lies. Was anything she knew true?

Rick was already running his hand soothingly up and down her arm. Zane stood over her, forced her to look and him, and said very quietly, “We are here for you, princess. Whatever you need.”

“I need my girls.”

Alana moved closer to the bed. “I’ll set that up, but you need to be patient. They’re only just now beginning to adjust to their new lives. We need to be able to do this without upsetting them.”

Jenna nodded. As much as she wanted to grab her girls and run, she wouldn’t upset them. She needed to meet them, even if it was under Alana’s terms.

“Whatever it takes,” she said decisively.

Chapter Five

Rick breathed a little easier. He hadn’t felt Jenna try to influence him or Zane throughout the entire conversation. Jason was monitoring him from the next room, so he felt fairly certain that his own conclusions were accurate. Either Jenna’s skill had kicked in accidentally when she was semi-conscious or she chose not to use it at this point. Whatever the reason, Rick was really glad that the emotions he felt were his own and not some projection from Jenna.

Strange how much a part of him wanted to deny the feelings that she stirred. He was attracted to everything about this woman. Her looks, her personality, even her anger. How was that even possible? Was he a closet masochist? Did he enjoy the feeling of having his balls in danger every moment that he spent with her?

He watched in amazement as Alana moved forward, placed a soft kiss on her sister’s cheek, and whispered, “Welcome to the family.”

* * * *

Zane smiled as he watched Jenna try to hide her agitation. It had taken three long days to set this up. Three days of sitting in the hospital listening and watching some of the most spectacular tantrums he’d even seen. Once they’d removed the chlorpromazine drip, she’d been even wilder. Zane had found himself needing to physically restrain her so many times that he and Rick had taken turns lying beside her on the bed and holding her spoon-fashion. Ironically, that was when she seemed calmest and the only time she seemed to welcome anyone’s touch.

“Girls, this is my sister, Jenna,” Alana said to the two young girls as she and Jenna walked into a playroom ahead of him. The two girls, so much like their mother, looked up with identical smiles on their faces.

“Hello, Jenna. Did you come to play with us?” Jenna looked a little uncomfortable as the girls grabbed a hand each and dragged her toward the toys on the play mat. “We’ve got dolls and board games and computers and a train set but the train set is for boys and we’re not boys so we don’t usually play with it but we’ll play with it if you want to play trains because we want to play whatever you want to play.”

“Kara, honey. Maybe you should let Jenna find a seat before you overwhelm her with games.” Zane couldn’t hide his amusement. He was still trying to understand how Kara could say so many words without taking a single breath when the child in question ran and grabbed his hand also.

“Who are you? Did you come to play with us, too? Do you want to join us for a tea party? Jenna is going to have tea with us, aren’t you, Jenna? And Alana always stays for a cup of tea if she can, but sometimes she has to go look after the baby because she’s only little and needs to get her diaper changed and stuff like that.” He wasn’t used to children, had never spent much time with any of them, but this little darling sure made his head spin.

“Ah, sure,” he answered, feeling well out of his depth. Right at that moment, he would rather face down a dozen rogue agents with sub-machine guns than deal with the unknown social rules of a little girl’s tea party, but one look at the hope on this young child’s face had him caving to her demands. She continued to chatter nonstop while she set up the small table and poured imaginary tea into the smallest plastic cups he’d ever seen.

He glanced over to see Jenna sitting cross-legged on the floor just as Hailey moved shyly toward her. He didn’t hear the question that Hailey asked, but saw Jenna nod a moment before Hailey sat on Jenna’s lap and gave her a big cuddle. Jenna looked as uncomfortable as he felt, but she wrapped her arms around the little girl and held on tight.

That’s when Kara finally stopped talking. After her constant chattering, the silence was almost eerie as she walked over to Jenna, waited for Hailey to move over a little, and then squeezed onto Jenna’s lap also. Both girls seemed to listen to Jenna’s heartbeat for a moment, and then Kara looked up and said to her sister, “You’re right.”

“Right about what, Kara?” Alana asked, her voice sounding tight and strained.

“Jenna sounds like our mommy.” She said the words slowly like she was trying to figure it out in her head. “But the Professor said our mommy died when we were born.”

“Alana, why would Jenna sound like our mommy?” Hailey asked quietly, her soft voice carrying clearly to all the adults in the room.

Zane could feel Jenna’s conflicting emotions. She wanted desperately to tell them who she was, but she also wanted to avoid causing more pain. The look of anxiety and longing on her face twisted his heart, and he wanted nothing more than to hold her at that moment.

Finally Alana spoke.

“Hailey, Kara. Come here for a moment.” The girls reluctantly climbed off Jenna’s lap, and Zane moved closer to Jenna. She turned to look at him but held herself rigid. He was tired of her holding herself apart from the rest of the world and reacted before he could change his mind. He lifted her to her feet and wrapped his arms around her from behind, cradling her body against his own.
“It’s going to be okay,”
he said telepathically.

Alana sat on the ground with the girls sitting in front of her. “Girls, Jenna is your mommy. She didn’t die. The Professor lied to you.” Zane held tighter as he felt relief, excitement, and absolute terror roar through Jenna’s mind. She stood frozen in his arms as the girls reacted.

Hailey nodded with a wisdom well beyond her years, but Kara started chattering excitedly. “So she is our Mommy? Where’s she been? Does she know any good games? Can she stay here with us?”

Alana nodded happily, a big smile spreading across her face. “Maybe we should ask Jenna what she wants to do first. The Professor lied to her, too, so she only found out a few days ago that you two were okay.”

Kara was on her feet and running to Jenna before the final word left Alana’s mouth. She bounced on the spot, her enthusiasm contagious. “Can we play a game now? We’ve got cards and dolls and...” Kara cut off her barrage of words as Hailey stepped up beside her. Hailey’s expression was so serious that for a moment Zane worried that she was about to hurl accusations at her mother. Instead, her lips quivered just a little and she twisted her fingers together as she asked quietly, “Would it be okay if I call you mommy? I’ve missed you so much.”

Zane let Jenna slip from his grasp as she fell to her knees and hugged the little girl close. After a moment, she grabbed Kara as well and rocked them back and forth.

“I would really like that,” Jenna said brokenly. He could hear the tears in her voice, feel the relief as it swelled inside her, and wanted nothing more than to wrap all three in his arms and keep them safe.

* * * *

“How did it go?” Rick asked as Jenna and Zane walked through the door.