Page 10 of Salvation
Warm,her mind decided.Safe.
Her thoughts were reduced to single-word sentences, and three more observations hurried on the heels of the first.Sad. Betrayed. Hurt.
And then came the one that made her heart skip.Mine,her mind announced.Mine.
Chapter Three
When Todd first sat down on that park bench, he’d sat down hard.
A son. He had a son?
The air whooshed out of his lungs, and his gut folded in on itself. Even sitting there on the park bench, he couldn’t get his lungs to function properly. One breath would tangle with the next, just like the blood rushing through his veins.
He had a son, but he didn’t have a son. The baby was Soren’s now.
Jesus, the past two hours seemed so surreal. One minute, he’d been lumbering through the woods alone. The next, Soren had coaxed him out of bear form, into some clothes, and driven him into a dusty western town. Todd barely noticed the scenery, though, with his thoughts focused entirely on what he’d say to Soren when he had the chance. How the hell did you tell your cousin you accidentally slept with his mate?
As it turned out, Soren did most of the talking — aloud and into his mind at the same time — and Todd was the one who’d been swaying on his feet, unable to believe.
A year ago…East Coast… I missed Sarah so much that I couldn’t help thinking about her… I never thought the old legends were true…
It sounded a lot like an apology, which had confused the hell out of him. Why was Soren apologizing?
His cousin had still been stumbling from one breathless explanation to the next when Sarah came into the room with a baby in her arms. At first, her face brightened with joy and gratitude, but then it clouded with concern.
Nice baby,he’d said, wondering why the tension in the room was crackling as wildly as an approaching thunderstorm. Wondering what Soren was getting around to.Congratulations.
Soren looked at Sarah, and Sarah looked at the ground.
We named him Ted,Soren said, running a hand over the baby’s back in a gesture that was one hundred percent fiercely protective Papa Bear. Almost as if warning Todd off, which was crazy because Todd would never do anything to harm any child, let alone a member of his clan.He’s four months old.
Nice.
Four months,Soren repeated slowly.Born in July.
Todd had never seen his cousin looked so pained. Was something wrong with the baby?
Soren swirled a finger in the air, telling Todd to do the math. Four months old and born in July meant the baby had been conceived back in…
His mind clicked over months and landed in October of the previous year.
October.Soren nodded, looking decades older than ever before.
At first, Todd wondered why the date mattered so much, and then it hit him.
Holy shit.
Todd locked his knees before they gave out from under him. Last October, Soren had been away, and he’d given Todd the task of keeping Sarah safe. And he had. He’d given up everything — his usual routine, his friends, his working hours — to keep his promise to Soren. And while he liked Sarah, he’d never regarded her as anything but his cousin’s mate. She was totally off-limits — limits he would never dare cross and never had been interested in crossing.
Except that one night when something had gotten into Sarah, and by the time he got her away from the techno bar he’d pulled her out of, thatsomethinghad taken over him, too. One minute, he was in man-on-a-mission, bodyguard mode, and the next…
He closed his eyes, wishing he could will reality away.
The next minute, he wasn’t in charge of his body any more. He was vaguely aware of what was happening — and utterly, painfully aware of how wrong it was — but he was powerless to stop. Like a marionette, he followed the commands sent to his body by some outside force and marched straight over the invisible line he’d sworn to never, ever cross.
Afterward, he barely remembered the act, only snapping out of it and all but dying of shame.
And now, a situation that couldn’t possibly be worse had just flipped right over to…to…this. He hadn’t just screwed his cousin’s mate. He’d fathered her baby. The baby cooing so innocently in her arms.
