“Let me guess.” Hunter paused to signal Taggart and Baddon, and the two melted into the forest for a routine patrol. The mystic-keeper, Sabre, rubbed herbs together in his hands and began to reinforce the defensive wards he would have set up around the camp.
“You wanted Nicole but couldn’t commit because of who her family is, what they did to Terese and Bastien, and because she was human. How am I doing so far?”
Right on target. “Like an arrowhead between the eyes,” Riker admitted.
“So you finally got over yourself and decided you can commit, but now that she’s a vampire and you’ve imprinted on her, if you tell her you love her, she’ll
think you only want her because she’s no longer human and because of the imprint.”
Clearly, Hunter had a better grasp on the situation than Riker did, and he nodded sullenly. “After the way I treated her before she turned, she’s not going to believe I’d have wanted her even if things hadn’t changed.”
Hunter considered that. Finally, he shrugged.
“Dude, you’re screwed.”
“Thank you, Chief,” Riker said flatly, “for stating the fucking obvious.”
Hunter shrugged. “I should have been a relationship therapist or some shit.”
Sarcasm aside, Hunter did have a point. Riker was screwed. There was no way Nicole was going to look past the imprint and think he’d want her if he wasn’t biologically linked to her. He’d kicked her out of his bedroom, for fuck’s sake.
Maybe he could beg for her forgiveness. He considered the idea but rejected it almost immediately.
Even if she forgave him for his idiocy, she would always in the back of her mind wonder if the imprint was the reason for his apology and attention.
Somehow he had to convince her that he loved her and that it had nothing to do with the fact that she was no longer human and he was imprinted.
The answer struck him like one of Hunter’s upper— cuts, leaving him stunned and a little shaken. In order to win Nicole, he was going to have to take a huge risk, and while he’d always been comfortable gambling with his life, this was different. This time, he wasn’t just putting his life on the line; he was jeopardizing his sanity and his heart.
--------------------
Nicole spent the next twenty-four hours in hell.
ShadowSpawn’s massive complex was filthy and dark, and those who lived in it were suspicious and brutish.
The males had little respect for females, and while the females didn’t appear to be abused and they certainly didn’t shrink away from confrontation, they were definitely treated like second-class citizens.
She couldn’t wait to get back to MoonBound, but first, she had to analyze the remaining fifteen pregnancy tests from the nineteen females who had taken the conception mixture she’d created.
Well, nineteen . . . plus herself.
Anxiety fluttered through her at the unlikely possibility that she could be carrying Riker’s child. So far, of the five tests she’d checked, only one popped positive. Yes, a percent success rate, especially in a race that rarely conceived, was fabulous, but it also meant that the chances that she wasn’t pregnant were pretty good.
Her hand shook as she used a clean syringe to draw blood from a vial she’d taken from a pureblooded female named White Fox and injected it just under the skin on Fane’s broad back. Daedalus had determined that the males’ bodies reacted to female pregnancy hormones, which made sense, since even before the end of the first trimester, males could taste it in the blood.
Instantly, a silvery patch bloomed in a circle around the injection site. “Positive,” she announced, and kars, lurking with some of his minions near the door, let out a grunt of satisfaction, as if he was responsible for knocking up White Fox.
With Aylin’s help, she repeated the tests over and over. Negative. Negative. Negative. Positive. Negative. Test number nineteen was the fourth positive.
Only one was left.
Stomach churning, she injected the sample into Fane’s skin. Throat so tight she could barely breathe, she waited. Had the others taken this long to reveal a positive or a negative? She was torn about what she wanted to see. A negative meant she wasn’t pregnant and that she’d failed to get the five pregnancies needed to get herself out of here. A positive meant freedom.
And a baby that would tie her to a male who clearly didn’t want to be bound to her in any way.
She’d be happy, though. She’d always wanted children, even if she hadn’t thought it would really happen. Not with her work schedule. Not when the only men she ever met were Daedalus employees.
Fane’s skin at the injection site darkened . . . and turned silver.