Compelled to at least appear to be a good hostess of sorts, Layla pushed herself up, wincing as a set of cramps froze her halfway.
As Payne cursed softly, Layla had to lie back down. In a rough voice, she said, “Forgive me, but I cannot have visitors at this time—no matter how well intended you are. Thank you for your expression of sympathy—”
“Are you aware of who my mother is,” Payne cut in.
Layla shook her head against her pillow. “Please just leave—”
“Do you know?” the female said roughly.
Abruptly, Layla wanted to cry. She just didn’t have the energy for any conversation at this point—but most certainly not about mahmens. Not when she was losing her own young.
“Please.”
“I am birthed of the Scribe Virgin.”
Layla frowned, the words registering even through the pain, mental and physical. “I’m sorry?”
Payne took a deep breath, as if the revelation were not something she rejoiced in, but rather a kind of curse. “I am of the Scribe Virgin’s very flesh, born of her long ago, and hidden from the records of the Chosen and the eyes of all third parties.”
Layla blinked in shock. The female’s appearance up above had been a mystery of sorts, but she had certainly asked no questions as it was not her place to. The one thing she was clear on was that there had never been any mention of the race’s holiest mother having e’er birthed a child.
In fact, the entire structure of the belief system was predicated upon that not having occurred.
“How is this possible?” Layla breathed.
Payne’s brilliant eyes were grave. “It was not what I would have wished. And it is not something I speak of.”
In the tense moment that followed, Layla found it impossible not to see the truth in what the female spoke. Nor the strident anger, the cause of which one could guess at.
“You are a holy one,” Layla said with awe.
“Not in the slightest, I assure you. But my lineage has provided me with a certain…how shall we say it? Ability.”
Layla stiffened. “And that would be?”
Payne’s diamond eyes never wavered. “I want to help you.”
Layla’s hand went to her lower belly. “If you mean get this over with sooner…no.”
She had her young for such a precious short time within her. No matter how long the pain went on, she was not going to sacrifice one minute of what was no doubt her one and only pregnancy.
She would never put herself through this again. In the future, when her needing hit, she would be drugged, and that was it.
Once in a lifetime was too much for the loss she was sustaining now.
“And if you believe you can stop this,” Layla tacked on, “it is not possible. There is naught that any may do.”
“I’m not so sure about that.” Payne’s eyes were rapt. “I’d like to see if I can save the pregnancy. If you’ll let me.”
At the abandoned Brownswick School for Girls campus, Mr. C had taken up res in what had once been the headmistress’s office.
The cracked sign outside in the hall told him so.
As there was no heat, the ambient air temperature was exactly that of the great outdoors, but thanks to the Omega’s blood, cold was not a problem. And thank fuck for that: Across the overgrown, snow-covered lawn, in the main dormitory on the ridge, nearly fifty lessers were sleeping the sleep of the dead.
If those bastards had required BTUs or food, he’d have been shit out of luck.
But nah, all he had to do was provide them with shelter. Their inductions took care of the rest—and the fact that they needed to unplug from consciousness every twenty-four hours was a relief.
He needed time to think.
Jesus Christ, what a mess.
Compelled by an urge to pace, he went to push his chair back, and then remembered that he was sitting on an overturned drywall bucket.
“Goddamn it.”
Looking around the decrepit room, he measured the plaster that was hanging in sheets from the ceiling rafters, the boarded-up windows, and the hole in the floorboards over in the corner. Place was just like the bank accounts he’d found.
No money anywhere. No ammo. Weapons that could be used for blunt-force trauma, and that was about it.
After his promotion, he’d been so fucking pumped, full of plans. Now he was staring at a whole lot of no cash, no resources, no nothing.
The Omega, on the other hand, was expecting all kinds of results. As had been made amply clear during their little “visit” late last night.
And that was another problem. He hated that shit.
At least he could do something about the rest of it.
Stretching his arms over his head and cracking his shoulders, he thanked God for two things: One, that the cell phones hadn’t been cut off—so he could communicate with his men in the field, and had Internet access. And two, that all those years on the street had given him an iron fist when it came to controlling dumb-ass young idiots in the drug trade.