Nicole studied his face, mapped the curve of his jaw, the color of his eyes, and even the shape of his lips.
He’d inherited it all from his mother.
Riker was still staring, shell-shocked and maybe a little apprehensive and lost. Nicole had to pull herself together to help him. To help them both.
She squeezed the boy’s hand. “What’s your name?”
“Subject One.”
“That’s what they call you?”
He nodded.
Nicole’s gut crash-landed in her feet, and she was very glad when Riker swore, several nasty, choice words that perfectly expressed her feelings right now.
“Riker?” She moderated her voice, going for calm and quiet, knowing her next question was a sensitive one, and it could go over very, very badly. “What was Terese going to name the baby?”
“I wanted Sebastien,” he croaked. “Bastien, after my brother.” Riker stood still as a blade, his eyes closed. As the breeze picked up and ruffled his hair and the leaves overhead, he lifted his lids and gave Nicole the briefest nod of permission.
Memories of Terese swirled in Nicole’s head. She remembered Terese’s gentleness, her warm embraces, her soft voice. She remembered a woman who had made more of an impact on Nicole’s life than her own mother had. The pain of losing Terese had stayed with
Nicole, but now it was as if a piece of her was back. No matter how horribly wrong today had gone, something good had come out of it.
Nicole’s eyes stung as she took both of the boy’s hands in hers and smiled. “From now on, you’ll be known as Bastien. Is that okay?”
He tested the name on his tongue, saying it over and over until finally giving her a fragile smile. “I think it’s okay.”
Chapter 23
Shit. Of all the millions of words that could be running through Riker’s head right now, shit was the one that kept repeating itself over and over. Somehow he’d kept the presence of mind to take Nicole and Bastien— holy shit, Bastien—straight to the clan’s lab to have them checked out before he lost his shit.
Yeah, there was a whole lot of shit going on.
So while Nicole and Bastien— unfuckingbelievable—were getting a medical once-over, Riker was jogging down the hallway leading to Hunter’s chambers as if his feet were on fi re. He’d needed to get away from
Bastien, to outrun his own feelings.
His own guilt.
Already he regretted the way he’d treated Bastien.
He’d yelled at the poor kid, then stared at him, speechless. He’d been immobilized by shock, rendered helpless by his own disbelief. He’d let Nicole comfort the boy while Riker tried to untie himself from the knot of emotions that had been strangling him.
Had Bastien even understood what Nicole and Riker had been talking about? Did Bastien know that he was, for all intents and purposes, Riker’s son?
Shit. The next conversation with the boy was going to be fun. Hi, I’m your father. Well, sort of. An insane monster is really who sired you. And the humans lied when they told you your mother was killed by a vampire. She killed herself because she hated you. And then I left you to be raised in a lab like a rat in a cage. Good talk, son. We’ll toss around a ball or something later.
Riker stumbled as emotion overcame him. He should have been there. He shouldn’t have just assumed the baby died with Terese. He’d missed what should have been twenty happy years with Bastien. Missed his first steps. His first words. The boy could have grown up safe and wanted, with a father who loved him. Instead, he’d grown up inside a box in a sterile, cold laboratory.
Footsteps rang out in the distance. Riker pulled himself together before someone saw him in the middle of a breakdown and jogged the rest of the way to Hunter’s chamber. He burst through the heavy double doors and wasn’t surprised to see the chief standing in the middle of the room, hands clasped behind his back and an expectant look on his face.
Behind him, a Mario Bros. game had been paused on the Nintendo.
“From the look on your face, I’m guessing things didn’t go well,” he said, his deep voice echoing off the walls.
“Neriya is dead.”
Hunter’s jaw clenched. “Shit.”
“Word of the day,” Riker muttered.
“What about the human?” Hunter’s nonuse of Nicole’s name was intentional, Riker was sure, but he didn’t take the bait.
“She’s with Grant. She grabbed some files from the Daedalus lab before we burned the building down.”
One dark eyebrow cocked. “And she allowed you to do that?”
“It was her idea.” God, she’d been magnificent.
Calm and efficient. She was a warrior, as full of heart as any vampire Riker had fought side-by-side with in battle. Which brought him to the next subject. “But there’s a complication.”