Authors: Celeste Anwar
He was very unhappy about his situation. Small
wonder when he’d been sleeping peacefully and then found himself jostled awake
and thoroughly drenched. Erin bounced him a little frantically, stroking his
back and uttering soothing noises to try to quiet him, but he continued to
fret.
She glanced at Jesse a little helplessly as he
surged upward and rolled into the dingy with them. “Lay down in the bottom of
the boat,” Jesse whispered harshly.
It was filled with water by now, but Erin didn’t
argue, knowing Jesse wouldn’t have ordered her to do it if he hadn’t had good
reason to do so. She’d scarcely landed when she heard the report of a gun
across the water. Something hit the water within a yard of the boat.
“Fuck!” Jesse growled, diving forward and nearly
crushing Erin and the baby beneath him. She heard a meaty thud. Jesse
grunted, his body jerking. Two more thuds followed in rapid succession and
then seemed to move past them, slapping into the water around them.
It dawned on Erin after moments of shocked
disbelief that Jesse had shielded her and the baby with his own body. After a
moment, he levered himself up and looked around. Apparently deciding they were
out of range, he rolled out of the boat and began towing it.
Panic set her heart to racing harder than ever
before. “Jesse! Get out the water! You’re bleeding.”
“If I don’t put some distance between us and the
island, I’ll have more holes in me,” he growled.
“The blood will draw sharks!” Erin cried.
“Quiet!”
Erin bit her lip, but as fearful as she was for
Jesse, she didn’t want to draw the Feds to them. Noticing the baby had grown
quiet, she peered down at him. Apparently, he didn’t mind being in the water,
he just didn’t like being wet and exposed to the wind. Shifting to the edge of
the raft, she began stroking the water with one arm, steadying the baby with
her other hand.
The shooting stopped. She could hear shouts
wafting across the water.
The sound of a motor, and then two different
motors filled the air and grew louder. Erin glanced behind them. She saw
nothing, but she heard the boat. The Feds were after them and it wasn’t going
to take them long to catch up.
She paddled faster, trying to ignore the sense of
hopelessness that gnawed at her.
Abruptly, gunfire erupted again. She dove into
the bottom of the boat, covering Joshua with her body. The sounds grew louder,
revving engines and splashing water vying with the report of gunfire.
They were sitting ducks in the dingy. Erin was
just contemplating whether they would be better off in the water when she
realized the gunfire and the sound of engines were coming from two different
directions. Lifting up slightly, she saw the Juliette heading straight for
them.
Joy and relief filled her until she looked behind
them and saw the Federal boat closing in on them.
It was hard to say which was closer, but she
began to wonder if they were going to be run down by both boats.
Abruptly, an explosion rent the air and a ball of
fire and smoke flashed, lighting the sea around them like daylight.
* * * *
The moment Erin’s feet settled on the deck of the
Juliette, she clutched the squalling baby tightly and headed for the stairs.
He’d been screaming almost nonstop since the Lycans had blown the Federal boat
out the water and she was terrified that he’d somehow been hit by a piece of
flying debris. When she reached the cabin she shared with Jesse, she settled
the baby on the bed and quickly stripped his wet clothing off.
She collapsed, weak with relief when she saw no
sign of an injury.
The explosion had simply terrified the baby. As
far as that went, it had terrified her. She’d been certain, at first, that it
was the Juliette that had gone up, their last hope of rescue. She could hardly
believe they’d managed to pull it off.
Erin soothed the baby. His crying began to
subside almost as soon as she’d removed the wet clothing.
Standing shakily, she struggled out of her own
wet clothes and left the baby long enough to grab something to dry off with.
She’d just tucked the towel around her when the door to the cabin was flung
open with a force that cracked the wall behind it when it slammed into it.
Jesse stood in the doorway, swaying slightly.
He’d shifted into his man form for the first time since they’d fled the panther
clan’s compound and didn’t have so much as a stitch of clothing to cover him.
Blood coated him liberally, dripping from the fingers of one hand and running
down one thigh.
“Is he alright?”
“I think the explosion scared him.”
Jesse nodded and shame filled Erin as she stared
at him. He was bleeding all over from the bullets he’d taken to protect her
and Joshua and she’d scarcely given him a thought as she raced down with the
baby.
Even now it was hard to ignore the call of
motherhood and leave the baby crying to see after Jesse, but she resolutely
dismissed the baby and surged toward Jesse, wrapping her arms around his
waist. “Let me see to your wounds.”
He shook his head. “They’ll close. I just need
to rest.”
His words were slurring and he leaned more
heavily against her with each step. She barely managed to stagger across the
room with him before he collapsed like a felled tree face down on the bed.
Joshua let out a yelp when the impact bounced
him, his little arms flailing frantically. Erin made a dive for him as he came
down again, gathering him close, but the incident had scared him all over
again. She walked the floor with him until she’d calmed him and then settled
him carefully on the bed beside Jesse.
He was still far from happy, but she thought he
would be alright while she examined Jesse. Regardless, Joshua’s distress wore
on her as she examined Jesse’s wounds, distracting her. Gritting her teeth,
she tried to block out the fussing and ignore the urge to coddle him, knowing
Jesse had lost so much blood he needed her attention far more at the moment.
If he’d been human, she doubted he would ever
have made it as far as he had without collapsing. She found two deep wounds
and three superficial wounds that were nevertheless bleeding profusely.
Leaping to her feet, she rushed from the room to
search for medicine and bandages. The cabinet in the bathroom was well stocked
with just about everything. Grabbing a cloth and some disinfectant, she headed
back into the bedroom to bathe Jesse’s wounds so that she could see them
better.
He was Lycan, she reminded herself, trying to
dismiss the anxiety eating at her. His body healed itself rapidly--unless the
bullets they’d used had been silver and she doubted that had been regular issue
even considering the purpose of the island facility.
They’d gone to assault what they’d expected to be
a Lycan stronghold though.
She gnawed her lip worriedly, but she knew she
couldn’t take the chance that the bullets
were
silver and would slowly
poison him, draining the strength he needed to heal himself.
Leaving the bed again, Erin pulled a drawer out
of the chest across the room, grabbed a pillow off of the bed to use as a
mattress and finally settled the baby in the makeshift crib.
When he seemed quieted, she left him and went
back into the bathroom to search for something she could use to dig the bullets
out. Unfortunately, Juliette hadn’t left a tray of medical instruments. She
had to make do with tweezers.
After sterilizing them the best she could, she
bent to her task, focusing on the glint of metal she could see imbedded in his
flesh rather the flesh itself. She was shaking all over and sick to her
stomach by the time she’d dug the slugs out, but a sense of relief filled her,
too. The bullets
had
been silver.
Almost as soon as she removed the slugs the blood
began to slow and finally stopped oozing altogether.
She discovered when she looked at his face that
his eyes were open and he was watching her. “You should see about the baby.”
She shook her head, smiling wryly. “Poor little
fellow gave up on getting fed again and fell asleep.”
Almost before the words were out of her mouth,
the baby made a liar out of her, letting out a cry so filled with hurt Erin
rushed to see if he’d somehow injured himself. He hadn’t, she saw, relieved,
but it was obvious his feelings were hurt that he’d been abandoned. Lifting
him from his makeshift crib, she looked around the cabin and finally moved to
sit on the edge of the bed, loosening the towel and settling him to her breast.
Snuffling like a baby puppy, he found her nipple
and latched onto it, suckling hungrily, his tiny hands balled into fists under
his chin.
Jesse chuckled and Erin glanced around to
discover he had levered himself up on one elbow to look over her shoulder.
Shaking her head at him, she shifted so that she could lie down, holding the
baby beside her.
From out of no where the urge to cry settled over
her as she watched him. She’d missed so much. He hardly looked like the baby
she remembered. “He’s changed so much since I saw him last,” she murmured
unhappily, fighting the fear that it wasn’t Joshua at all.
As if he sensed the fear that had arisen in her
mind, Jesse spoke. “He’s mine,” he said quietly, stroking one hand soothingly
along her arm.
Erin glanced at him, but she realized immediately
that he was in touch with senses that had long since failed humans. He would
know his young by his scent. That was how he’d found Joshua so easily. She
should have realized that before.
Relief flooded her.
It was short lived. It sank into her as she
studied Jesse that he hadn’t said ‘ours’ and new fears immediately raised their
ugly heads, but she didn’t want to think about that now. Joshua needed her.
Jesse must realize that or he wouldn’t have brought her. “Thank you,” she said
shakily. “Thank you so much for helping me find him.”
He stared at her hard for several moments and
finally sank back against the pillows, staring up at the ceiling. “My son
needs his mother.”
A hard knot of misery tightened in her throat and
uneasiness formed a taut coil in the pit of her stomach, but she pushed the
thoughts away. She didn’t want to think about her tenuous situation now. She
would think about it later, when she had to.
Nodding, she transferred her attention to the
baby, stroking his soft cheek. He opened his eyes at her touch, looking up at
her. A frown drew his brows together and she smiled at his expression--so like
his father’s--feeling relief that she saw the resemblance that assured her he
was hers.
The first weeks of his life had been stolen from
her. They hadn’t really had a chance to form more than a tenuous bond before
they were separated. Now, she thought she had some chance of it. For at least
as long as Jesse felt his son needed her, she had that much security to cling
to. He would guard them from the others, and he would not harm her.
A sense of peace settled inside of her despite
the doubts that still teased at the fringes of her consciousness. She had
Joshua safe from those demented scientists. That was all that really mattered
at the moment.
As she had known would almost inevitably be the
case, the baby so consumed her time on the trip back home that she had little
opportunity to explore what had seemed to be a promising beginning between her
and Jesse. As delighted as she was to have Joshua again, and as much as she
enjoyed the time she spent getting to know her son, the adjustment wasn’t easy
for either one of them and tending him was so exhausting that she hardly knew
where she was half the time.
Jesse seemed distant. It took her a while to
notice it though, and even when she did she wasn’t certain what, if anything,
she could or should try to do about it. She wasn’t even certain why he seemed
to have withdrawn.
Maybe motherhood was a turn off to him? Or maybe
he was just having trouble coming to grips with the new responsibility?
Struggling to unravel the puzzle, it occurred to
her after a while that he seemed to have been very withdrawn after they’d
returned from the island, more specifically after she’d removed the bullets.
Had it bothered him that he’d needed her help?
Was he embarrassed, maybe, because he thought he’d seemed weak?
That sounded like something a man would worry
about, but somehow she didn’t think that was it. He’d actually seemed fine
until she’d thanked him for rescuing the baby.