The Change (Unbounded) (46 page)

My mind felt battered, exhausted, and my emotions were careening all over the place. I barely noticed our arrival at the hotel. When I was slow to get out of the car, Ritter helped me stand. “Come on.” His thoughts were still dark, but his voice was gentle.

I turned into his arms and let him guide me to the elevator. He took me not to the room where Chris waited but to another where we were all alone. Scooping me up at the door, he led me to the large bed that dominated the room, peeled back the covers, and set me inside.

“Rest. We’ll have a few hours before our flight. I’ll wake you when it’s time.”

My entire body had come to life at his closeness, the soft ache I’d felt in the car becoming a roar. I wanted to lose myself in his arms, to blot out last night’s loneliness, my grief over my father, and the uncertainty of the future. “Don’t leave,” I whispered.

Ritter made a choked noise in his throat as he settled beside me, his arms drawing me to him until my back nestled in his chest. His lips rested briefly on my neck below my ear, sending fire through my veins. Fire that almost hurt with its intensity. All the images of death and fighting of the past days fled from my mind.

“You’re exhausted,” he said. “Ava told me what you did, calling to Eric like that. You weren’t ready. She can’t even project that far to an unsensing mind. Sleep now.”

Sleep was the last thing my body wanted, but already my mind was starting to shut down without my approval. The sensations of fire faded, though Ritter’s body still fit against mine as if it belonged. It was no promise for the future, I knew. Or a guarantee that what was between us this instant would exist tomorrow.

I didn’t care. For once I was content not to think about tomorrow or any repercussions I might face for falling in love with a man who might never be able to love me back.

Besides, the steady thump of Ritter’s heart against my back had given me an idea. A hope. There might be a way I could save my father after all.

I let sleep take me.

H
OME TO
K
ANSAS
C
ITY WE
went, though it wasn’t really home anymore. Or some of us went. Cort and Gaven flew to Oregon to supervise set up operations, while Ava, Ritter, and Stella accompanied Chris and me to the private clinic where my father had slipped into a coma and lay dying. My mother sat unwavering by his side.

Dimitri was there, too, and I felt shy seeing him again with the knowledge that he was my biological father. Did that explain how kind he’d been to me? No, I believed that was part of his personality, and he would have acted kindly toward me regardless. With Laurence gone, no one except Ava, Dimitri, and me knew what had happened at the fertility clinic the day I’d been conceived, but now wasn’t the time to confront them.

I sat by the bed and touched my father’s limp hand. “Isn’t there anything you can do?” I whispered.

“He’s dying,” Dimitri said matter-of-factly. “I don’t dare leave him for more than a few minutes. I don’t know how much longer he’ll last. He needs a new heart.”

“Then let’s give it to him.”

Dimitri shook his head. “There isn’t one.”

“There’s mine.” I said it viciously, as though daring him or anyone to contradict me.

“What are you saying, Erin?” My mother’s haggard face was frightened.

“I can grow a new one.”

“No.” Ritter spoke from the doorway. “You have no idea what you’re saying.” His hand went to his heart and I had the odd sensation that if Cort were present, he’d tease Ritter about vampire hunters.

“It has to be possible.” I looked at Dimitri. “Isn’t it? I’m the same blood type, just like my mother and the rest of my family. My father’s not a big man. Why wouldn’t it work? At least it could hold him over until you found something better.” With all the dead Hunters in our wake, you’d think hearts shouldn’t be that hard to find.

“It’s not exactly that simple,” Dimitri said. “Though I admit my research indicates an Unbounded organ might actually adjust itself to a recipient’s body.”

“Then it’s worth a try. How long would it take me to grow a new one?”

“With a lot of curequick, about three days.” Dimitri’s jaw twitched in exactly the same way mine did when I was forced to confront something I wanted to reject. In fact, now that I studied him, the wide oval shape of his eyes was mine, too.

“I want to do this for him. What’s three days compared to his life?” I waited for Dimitri to tell me the man on the bed wasn’t my real father, for anyone to say it. To say that I had come from stolen sperm or to admit the truth about Dimitri. No one did.

I answered anyway. “Please. He’s my dad. He was the first person to hold me after I was born. He took me for my first ice cream. He was at all of my soccer games when I was five, and even when I kept tripping over my own feet or sat down at the goal to wait for the ball, he acted like I was the best player on the team.” Tears slid down my face, made my vision blur. “He bought me my first book. He taught me about law. I can’t stand here and watch him die if I have the means to save him.”

Dimitri showed no emotion. “It might not work.”

“But it could.”

“He can have mine.” This from Ritter.

We all turned toward him, surprised. I didn’t like that idea at all, though if asked I wouldn’t be able to say why.

“I’m bigger, and my heart’s in excellent shape.”

“Not a good idea,” Dimitri said. “Or I’d have already figured out how to give him mine. We don’t know enough about the procedure. It may adjust to him well enough, but for all we know once the Unbounded genes are no longer in an Unbounded body, it could very well degrade quickly to its natural age. That would kill him.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” Ritter said. “The genes are in the heart, too. Maybe it would outlast all his other organs.”

“The point is that there has been almost no research into Unbounded transplants in mortals, except for my own limited testing. We’ve been too busy patching up our people all these years so they can fight the Emporium to do much of anything else. If your heart failed, Grant wouldn’t survive two surgeries close together. He has only one chance.”

“My heart’s the only option then,” I said. “It wouldn’t degenerate.”

“No, Erin.” My mother spoke with a fierceness born from years of protecting me. I never admired her more than at that moment for being willing to put me before my father, whom I knew she loved more than her own life.

I took her hand. “I really want to do this, Mom. It’s his only chance.”

“I don’t want to lose you.”

“You’re not going to lose me.”

“You’ll just be in a hell of a lot of pain,” Ritter muttered.

Ignoring him, I looked at Dimitri? “It will work, won’t it?”

He nodded. “I believe it will.”

“Will you do it?”

The hint of wistful smile touched his lips. “We’ll give it a try.”

My mother was crying in her chair by the bed, and I bent over and hugged her. “Everything’s going to be okay. I promise.” I hoped I was telling the truth.

“I can have things ready in an hour,” Dimitri said.

Nodding, I walked out into the hall feeling both frightened and determined. Chris sat on a bench outside the door near his children, who were occupying themselves with activity books. Chris’s eyes were focused down the hall to where Stella sat with Bronson.

I studied the pair as well. They were talking earnestly, Bronson looking every one of his seventy years and then some. In fact, he seemed to have shrunk in the few days we’d been gone. He held Stella’s face in his gnarled hands and wiped tears from her cheeks before pulling her into a hug. No kiss. They had learned to be careful in public.

I wondered how Bronson felt at learning he was to become a father to a child he would never raise. Maybe never even meet. Not that I would try to find out. Under no circumstances was I even going to walk past them. Some emotions were better left private.

Chris apparently felt the same, because he’d looked away and was softly stroking Kathy’s hair. She smiled up at him and said something. He laughed, though his face was still strained. It might take time, but I knew they would eventually be okay, even without Lorrie.

I waved at them and walked down the hall, heading toward Jace’s room, where he was lying in a bed healing at the normal slow human rate. I wished my Unbounded blood could make a difference for either him or my father, but Dimitri had assured me it wouldn’t.

Ritter came after me. “Erin,” he said in a low voice.

I turned to him. “You can’t talk me out of it.”

“You’re so new to being Unbounded. How do we know you’ll heal?”

I blinked in amazement. “I burned to death and healed from two gunshot wounds practically overnight. I can absorb nutrients from the air. I can sometimes sense what people are feeling. I’m Unbounded every bit as much as you are, Ritter, and I’m not going to stand back and lose another person I love until I absolutely have to, which is going to happen soon enough. I’m going to lose them all eventually. Tell me, if you could go back, wouldn’t you do anything you could to save your family?”

His angular face was ashen, his body tense, but he nodded.

“The real question is,” I said, “will you be here when I wake up?”

His jaw worked silently, but before he could respond, a commotion down the hall caught our attention. “Please, sir,” a nurse was saying to a patient, “you must go back to your room and lie down. You’ll rip your stitches!”

The patient avoided her with a dexterous move that would have given credit to a skilled martial artist. “I’m fine. That’s what I’m telling you!” Irritation dripped from his words. “And I’ve also been telling you for the past two hours that I need to see my doctor. Since no one will contact him, I’m going to find him myself. I know he’s here somewhere with my father.”

I knew that voice. “Jace!” I ran to him.

“It’s okay,” I told the nurse. “He’s my brother. I’ll take care of him.” Her forehead knotted with concern, but she left him to me, shaking her head as she walked down the hall.

Jace looked drunk and happy. He pulled open the robe he wore over a pair of gray pajama pants. Bandages hung loosely from his chest and stomach. “I’m fine!” he said in a low, urgent voice. “Dimitri told me not to mess with the bandages, but they were itching, so I lifted them up, and my wounds are fifty percent better than yesterday. My insides still hurt, but look, I can walk! I think Dimitri suspected all along, the old fart. Maybe he didn’t want to get my hopes up. This is the best day of my life! I’m like you, Erin. I’m like you!”

Ritter and I stared at each other and at Jace. I began to laugh and cry at the same time. The rest of my family might age and leave me, but I would always have Jace. I hugged him tightly. He wavered a little under the pressure, and I knew he was still far from well, but he’d definitely begun emitting a hint of the same odd feeling I’d sensed around Tom. A Changing.

Jace backed away from me and began tearing off his bandages.

“Shut that robe!” I ordered, noticing the stares of several nurses and visitors farther down the hall.

Jace laughed and hugged me again. “Oh, boy. I think I’m going to faint.”

Ritter caught him as he fell and carried him to several nearby chairs where we could lay him down. “We’d better get some curequick from my bag. Actually, we’d better ask Dimitri about it first. He’s probably been giving it to him already if he suspects Jace is Changing.”

Changing!

“I’ll ask him.” I wanted to skip down the hall like a joyful child.

Before I could leave, Ritter’s hand closed over mine. His skin felt warm. In that instant, his mind was open. I felt his happiness over Jace and worry at my pending operation. And more.

The more made me shiver with anticipation.

The next minute he was pushing me into a room behind us, kissing me, his hands pressing me against the hardness of his body. His mouth opened. He tasted of heat, of desire, or maybe that came from our minds. His hands made my skin tingle. I wanted to be a part of him, to feel him become a part of me. I didn’t care that it was a terrible idea. I wanted to—

“Um, do you two mind?” came a quavering voice behind us.

We sprang apart to find a wrinkled old woman staring at us from her hospital bed. “Sorry,” I muttered as Ritter groaned.

“Much better than what’s on TV, mind you, but I have to be careful of my heart.” She gave us a sly grin. “I have a pacemaker, you know.”

I turned toward the door, but Ritter stopped me. “On the beach you said, you wanted . . .” He stopped and took a breath before rushing on, his voice nearly a growl. “You are in my every waking thought—and most of my sleeping ones, too. I don’t know what that means exactly, but I’ll be here when you wake up, Erin.”

It was enough.

I leaned forward and whispered against his lips. “I know.”

Together we opened the door and went to find Dimitri.

T
HE
E
ND

N
OTE FROM
T
EYLA
B
RANTON
: Thank you for downloading this book and for spending a little time with me in my world! If you enjoyed
The Change
, will you consider leaving a review on
Amazon
and
Goodreads
? The more positive reviews I receive, the less time I'll spend trying to sell random people my book and the more time I can spend writing sequels. Yes, there are multiple sequels in store, so thank you for any help you can give me in spreading the word. I promise to make it up to you! In fact, for your enjoyment, I have included the first chapter of
The Cure,
the second novel in the
Unbounded
series beginning on the next page. You can also learn more about me and my books on my
website
or in the About the Author section following the sample chapter. THANKS!