I tossed the dead man’s body aside like trash, forgotten as I turned to my mate.
“Lindsey. Are you unhurt?”
She stood still, shocked for a heartbeat of time that was an agony for me. I needed her, needed to touch her, kiss her, feel her alive and well in my arms.
When I was about to go mad, the spell broke and she cried out, leaping at me, trusting me to catch her.
Her arms were around me, her lips on mine, crushing me with a desperation I felt keenly.
“Kiel!” She tore her lips from mine and I settled her on her feet, my arms around her waist, unwilling to let her go.
“Did he hurt you?”
She shook her head and the tight coil within me began to unwind.
A small hand tugged on my arm and I looked down into a pair of wide blue eyes the same shape as his mother’s. “Hey. Who are you?”
Holding onto Lindsey with one hand, I bent down and lifted Wyatt up with the other, holding them both to me as I looked into the eyes of my son and told him the truth. “I am your father now, Wyatt. I love your mommy and I’m going to take care of both of you from now on.”
The boy looked at me, then his mother who was crying and clinging to me like I was her world, her everything, as I would be.
“Mommy?”
“What baby?”
“Is he my new daddy?”
Lindsey’s smile was so full of love when she looked at her son I felt tears gather in my eyes. By the gods, what I wouldn’t give to see her look at me like that, with complete and total unconditional love. “Yes. Is that okay?”
The small man looked at me, raised his hands to my face and turned my head from side to side, exploring, watching, testing me. I noticed the mark of an Everian on his palm, knew he would one day grow strong, perhaps become a Hunter. He looked deeply into my eyes and I saw a soul much older than his young body, knew he had suffered just as his mother had.
I vowed he would suffer no more.
I waited. This moment, how he would react to me, feel about me, was Wyatt’s choice. But he would come with me no matter what. He was part of Lindsey and I loved him already, his courage, his obvious love for his mother. But I would not force this. I would give him all the time he needed to trust me.
Wyatt looked into my eyes. “Will you teach me how to protect mommy so no more bad guys will come?”
His question made my blood boil, and Lindsey gasp, but I gave him my most solemn vow. “Yes, Wyatt. I will teach you how to be a warrior and protect the people you love.”
Wyatt nodded slowly, deliberately before laying his sweet head on my shoulder to look at his mother. “Okay. I want to call you Daddy.”
Lindsey’s shoulders shook and I looked up to see Lindsey’s mother watching from the doorway. Tears streaked down her face and I nodded to her in respect and gratitude for giving my mate to me. “Mother.”
“Welcome to the family, Kiel.” She wiped at her cheeks and lifted her eyes to me. “I hope you know, wherever you take my daughter, I’ll be going, too.”
I recognized that determined glint in her eye, it was a look I’d seen more than once on Lindsey’s face. “Of course.”
“All right then.” She turned to the parking lot as we both heard a woman’s yell. Carrying my mate and son to the doorway so I could see, I found Warden Egara in the parking lot with a weapon pointed at the other female who’d exited the room. She had the gun pressed to the woman’s side and was taking the ReGen wand from her outstretched hand.
“I’ll take that, Doctor Graves.”
“I’m sorry, Katherine.” The red haired woman’s shoulders slumped in defeat as the warden waved her toward the car, fury evident in her gaze.
“Save it for your lawyer.”
* * *
Kiel, Personal Quarters, The Colony
It was only when I had Lindsey in my quarters, the almost silent whoosh of the door closing behind us that I breathed again. Every tense line of my body eased. My mark was warm and alive once more. My heart didn’t ache.
“Kiel,” she said. Just my name, nothing more, but I heard the worry in her tone.
Fuck. I didn’t want her to worry ever again.
I’d held her hand ever since we left that hovel of doors where I’d found her. I didn’t plan to stop touching her anytime soon. I’d held Wyatt securely in one arm, my other slung around Lindsey’s shoulders as we transported. Lindsey’s mom, Carla, held her daughter’s hand, surprisingly calm since she had never transported before and was leaving her planet behind for good. Both of them had been fitted with new NPU’s, courtesy of Warden Egara, who’d given us both a tight hug and told us to get the hell off the planet before anything else went wrong.