Blood Instinct (27 page)

S
ophia’s eyes
darted over his as she awaited his confirmation – or maybe his denial. His only relief was that the real her was shining through now that the shock was easing.

‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘You would have said already if it wasn’t. I can see it in your eyes. How long have you known?’

‘I only found out after you’d been with Kane.’

‘But I didn’t think it was possible… I… I assumed…’

Jask glanced to the floor of the dark, dank room he had led her to, out of earshot, leaving Corbin to sort everything else as instructed. In many ways the abandoned building was no better than the cold, damp alley they’d been standing in, but at least in there they could sit. They could talk. In private.

‘I caught you early,’ he said, meeting her gaze again. ‘We didn’t exactly waste much time, did we?’

She exhaled brusquely off the back of a laugh. Her eyes flared in shock when he didn’t laugh back.

‘
You
?’ Her hand instantly fell to her abdomen. ‘This is
yours
?’

Of all the statements she could make, that wasn’t one he’d expected. He frowned. ‘Whose else would it be?’

‘I assumed it was Dan’s. I mean we were careful, from what I could remember, but… But Jake said he heard a heartbeat. Even I know that takes a few weeks.’

Dan, who she’d casually shared her bed with when they’d both worked for The Alliance; who was still being held under lock and key by his pack. Of course her assumption made sense.

‘Not with lycan young,’ he clarified. ‘Not with the third species.’

Her jaw dropped. Silence lingered between them, her gaze fixed on his.

‘Me and you?
Pregnant
?’ Beneath the eroding disbelief, a smile like one he had never seen illuminated her eyes. ‘A family?
Us
? A mini Jask?’ She cupped her hand over her mouth, tears filling her eyes. ‘Or a mini me? Fuck. Who’d want a mini
me
?’

His heart fractured with guilt at letting her linger in the prospect whilst he built up the courage to tear it all away from her. Because now he had to. There was no alternative left.

It didn’t take long for her to realise he wasn’t celebrating. She frowned at his hesitancy, panic in her eyes as her smile simultaneously subsided. There was a tremor in her lower lip as they sustained their exchange in silence, Sophia sensing that something was horribly wrong. ‘Oh, shit. You’re disappointed. You’re regretting it. You didn’t want this. Not with me.’

She clutched her hand to her chest as if she was struggling to breathe.

‘I know I fucked up, Jask. I know I fucked up telling Kane what I did and escaping out here, and now Jake. And I know I’m not one of your pack… I know I’m probably not your vision of mother material, but I can do this. I swear. For you, I can do this. I promise I’ll do my best and I’ll make you proud and I
will
be a better person.’ She grabbed his hand and squeezed, hers cold and trembling. ‘And I’ll love him or her, Jask, with all my heart like no one else can. Because they’re a part of you and… And I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything more.’

It was the final confirmation that he couldn’t let her linger in her hopes and possibilities a second longer. He couldn’t let her linger in a fairy tale that was never going to be.

‘You can’t carry our young full term, Phia. Our baby can’t make it.’ He brushed a tear from his cheek. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so,
so
sorry.’

Her gaze searched his for what felt like a lifetime as if she was trying to excavate some sense of hope, tears forming in her own eyes as she realised he believed there was none.

She stood up abruptly.

‘No,’ she declared firmly. ‘Bullshit. That’s fucking bullshit! This
cannot
happen to you twice. I’m
not
having this. Fuck whatever that curse is of yours. Fuck whatever the medical journals say. Things happen. Things work out. Anomalies occur all the time, and if anyone deserves an anomaly right now, it’s you.’

‘Phia,’ he said gently as he stood, as he reached out to catch her hand.

But Sophia stepped back. ‘No, Jask. I won’t let this happen. Not to you. Not again. I’m stronger than you think. I’ll look after myself. I’ll do all the right things. I can do this. I promise you I can. I promise us.’ She clutched her abdomen. ‘This is ours, Jask.
Ours
. A little you. A little me. A little
us
.’

‘Phia,’ he said, finally managing to get a grip on her trembling hand. ‘It’s hard enough for a normal human body to cope with the shorter gestation period. Our young is growing quicker than your human body is designed to handle. This will put a massive strain on your system.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean “hard enough for a
normal
human body”?’

His sigh shuddered, the words catching in his throat knowing what they would do to her. ‘The serryn in you will kill the baby even sooner than that.’

Sophia recoiled, her eyes flaring in horror.

‘I’m sorry, Phia, but your serrynity is an added complication to an already overcomplicated process.’ And he knew she needed the truth – the whole truth in order to start to get her head around it. ‘Right now, the serryn is treating our young as the enemy. It’s trying to abort it. If your body keeps fighting, it could kill you.’

Horror flooded her eyes and she took a few steps backwards. ‘Like Quinn. That’s why you went to Caleb. That’s why you went to him to get those things. Jake told me.’

‘I was trying to save you.’

‘
Trying
? It didn’t work?’

He didn’t know how to tell her; he didn’t know how to tell her that killing Jake had blown any chance they had. But he couldn’t lie.

‘He was willing to have Leila do it there.’ He paused, not knowing how to word it without burdening her with any more guilt. ‘But now that Jake is dead…’

Her jaw fell slack, the realisation clearly hitting her as if she’d been wrong-footed at the top of a precipice.

He lowered his gaze for a moment, the very prospect of saying it tearing his heart in two.

‘You can’t continue the pregnancy,’ he said, garnering enough courage to look her in the eyes. ‘Or you could be dead within days. I can’t let that happen. I won’t let that happen…’

As tears filled her eyes, she closed the gap between them again. She grabbed his hand and placed it over her abdomen. ‘But this is
yours
, Jask.
Ours
. It’s
our
chance. Maybe our
only
chance. I might never get another; let alone a chance to have yours.’

‘And if there was any alternative…’

‘We’ll find one.’

‘If there was one, I would have found it already,’ he said, annoyed with himself at the frustration leaking into his tone from his own sense of helplessness. ‘I want this more than anything too, Phia. A little you. A little me.’ He didn’t bother to hide his tears. ‘But Caleb’s not going to help us. Not now. And that means I can’t keep you both. I’ve been here before. I can’t go through it again.’

Her eyes flitted around the room as if desperately searching for the answer in one of the dark recesses. An answer that wasn’t there.

‘Would it be different?’ she asked after a few silent seconds. ‘For the baby, I mean. If I wasn’t a serryn, could we have both made it?’

‘Don’t torture yourself with what might have been, Phia.’

‘Tell me!’ she pleaded.

‘If you hadn’t been a serryn, you wouldn’t even be alive.’

‘But if I had backed down sooner, if I had agreed to this spell, we might have been okay.’

He stumbled over his words. ‘Maybe.’

And as she curled in on herself, as she sobbed, his heart shattered.

He closed the gap between them. He pulled her close. He held her as tight as he could, as if his arms alone could make it better. He fisted her hair at the nape of her neck, his tears clogging in her hair as her own choked her, as she let the sadness, the despair, the anger flood out against his chest.

‘I’ve fucked it up well and truly, haven’t I?’ she said. ‘I’ve ruined it all. I’ve ruined everything.’

S
ophia could hear
nothing but her own feet padding down the corridor, despite Jask walking alongside her. Somewhere in the distance voices mumbled as if someone had left a TV on.

As she stepped into the communal area, she could feel herself being watched, but it was as if she was amongst them, looking in on herself. Behind her, she could hear witnesses being ushered out without fuss, leaving as few in there as possible.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ Jask said quietly to her. ‘I can talk to her.’

Sophia shook her head. ‘She needs to hear it from me. I’m not going to hide from this, Jask.’

She stopped in her tracks. Leila was sitting with Alisha, her fingers steepled to her mouth, her eyes raw with recent tears.

Her big sister spotted her instantly, her face etched with hours of worry; the same worry she’d spent months inflicting on her after disappearing almost a year before – running off to join The Alliance on a quest to nowhere.

Alisha was right behind her, both ready to welcome her back, both on the verge of crying with relief.

It felt like the first time they’d been reunited, back in the alley after they’d all broken her sisters out of the TSCD; back before they had become fragmented again, arguing over the Dehains like squabbling teenagers.

And now she was about to fragment them forever.

Leila reached out to grab her first, pulling her close. But it took her only a second to notice the bite marks. She stared up into Sophia’s eyes, but Sophia wasn’t looking at Leila – she was staring squarely into the eyes of her little sister.

Sophia’s lips parted. She’d rehearsed it all the way there. But when it came to it she didn’t have the strength to let it leave her lips. Mouth dry, she couldn’t say anything but, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Sophie?’ Leila said, her expression displaying the same bewilderment as Alisha’s.

The tears instantly leaked down her cheeks. ‘I killed him,’ Sophia mouthed off the back of an almost soundless whisper.

Leila’s frown deepened. Alisha took a step forward.

When Sophia looked back up at Alisha, the words fell straight out from the pain in her chest at the implications for them all. ‘I killed him. I killed Jake.’

She could have sworn Leila stopped breathing. The look in her big sister’s eyes said it all: the fallout was going to be horrific. It had all been for nothing.

The silence that descended only added to the high-pitched whistling in her ears. Alisha came from nowhere, lunging at her with her eyes blazing.

Jask was quick, wrapping his arms around Sophia and pulling her away, just as Alisha slapped her clean across the face, scratching her in the process before attempting to lay into her as Leila pulled her back. Her little sister’s punches and kicks were weakened only by grief. By shock.

Sophia dropped to her knees, shielding her head as she curled in on herself. There was a time when she would have fought back. A time when she would have shoved and yelled. When there would have been an all out fight between the two of them.

Instead, Sophia looked through Jask’s embrace towards Leila; tears flooded her big sister’s eyes as she comforted Alisha, holding her close and rocking her amidst their little sister’s curses, cries and yells.

There was nothing more Leila could say – Sophia knew that.

There was nothing any of them could say.

‘Come on,’ Jask said gently in Sophia’s ear, his arms her only comfort. ‘It’s done. You’ve done it. It’s over.’

C
aleb’s face
drained of colour, his complexion matching that of his dead brother, laid out supine on the concrete floor of the outhouse. There was an uncharacteristic tremor in his hand as it gripped the doorframe, before he used the latter as a springboard to get to the last place he wanted to go.

Feinith stayed at the threshold as Caleb fell to his knees at Jake’s side.

The barrel store had, indeed, been the perfect place for the discovery. She’d made sure she’d been with Caleb at the time. Just as she’d made sure she’d been as visible as possible in the lead-up.

His back to her, Caleb gently cradled Jake’s face, his neck, before bowing over him, pulling him against his chest. He didn’t make a single sound, and that was the most terrifying thing of all. Absolutely nothing escaped his lips as he held his limp brother in his arms.

But despite Caleb’s stillness, despite his silence, she knew it would already be building inside. She knew the recollections it would bring – of finding Seth the same way all those decades before.

All she had to do was wait for the lid to erupt, unleashing the darkness inside. And it would come. That was the one and only predictability with Caleb: the darkness would always,
always
win.

Feinith rested her hand against the doorway, her thumb mindlessly rubbing the old, chipped gloss paint as she stifled a yawn, the chill of the breeze irritatingly noticeable. But she had to stay there. For however long it took, she needed to watch the whole thing play out.

She
wanted
to watch the whole thing play out.

She raked her gaze over Caleb’s honed back up to the flexion in his powerful shoulders, down his defined biceps. And she couldn’t wait to be back in those arms – arms that would soon be wrapped around her as he sought comfort.

Because he had nothing. He had nothing left but his sidekick Hade – for now – and her.

Caleb lowered his brother back to the ground and sat back on his haunches. In the shadow of the room, he could have been mistaken for a living statue until he turned side-on to his brother and slammed his hands to the ground with a fury that made even Feinith flinch.

Caleb raked his nails against concrete as he curled his hands into fists, the muscles in his neck, his arms, his shoulders rippling with an intensity that had Feinith letting out a slow and steady sigh of appreciation as she pulled herself upright. And her sigh evolved into one of triumphant satisfaction when he eased back on his haunches to look up towards the roof, his cheeks damp with tears.

Because it was there in his eyes – eyes that were lost and distant but dangerously resolute, his breathing rapid, his jaw clenched. Caleb was already on the cusp.

Bowing his head again, he lifted one knee and rested his arms across it, as if even standing was too much effort.

Feinith crossed the threshold, stepping in front of him. She left him there a moment longer, enjoying his submissive pose at her feet, as if her dark warrior was awaiting his knighthood, his anointment, at her hand.

She crouched in front of him and placed her hand on his cheek, offering him her comfort, reminding him that it was she who was there for him – who would always be there for him. Now more than ever.

‘Caleb, I’m sorry. I’m so very, very sorry.’

Finally his green eyes snapped to hers, his lowered brows exacerbating their darkness in the shadows.

The rage was simmering. She could see it. She could feel it.

‘We will avenge this,’ she said, running her hand gently along his jaw. ‘I promise you. She’ll pay, Caleb. She’ll pay for this.’

Her back hit the concrete with lightning speed, by some miracle her head not cracking with the force. Dazed, she was aware only of her bodyguards closing in, of a hand restricting her breathing. But she held up her own to warn her bodyguards off, to keep them back.

‘Caleb,’ she gasped, her hand clutching his wrist, feeling the tension exuding down to her vulnerable throat.

‘If this is anything to do with you…’ he said, his voice dangerously low, his glower intensifying. ‘
Any
thing.’

She stared up into his eyes as they blazed down into hers, his jaw clenched. For the first time ever, a pang of fear struck her chest in his presence, giving her an unfamiliar sense of delirium that may have had just as much to do with the lack of oxygen reaching her brain.

‘
Me
? Caleb, I wouldn’t do this…’ She gasped for another breath. ‘Why would I do this? I wouldn’t have let her get away. We need her.’ She tightened her grip on his powerful wrist, her survival instincts willing him away as her windpipe felt seconds away from being crushed. ‘We need her for the prophecy…’

He leaned closer. ‘If I find out you’re lying, if I find out you are involved in
any
way, and I
will
…’

His grip loosened. She rolled over and braced herself on one arm, her other hand clasping her throat. The room swayed as she looked up to see him exiting, Caleb having found the strength to carry his brother out alone.