Contained (Evolution Series Book 5) (17 page)

Sighing, I transported back to Aiden.

Aiden glanced up at me. He still wore a sullen look on his face but his eyes warmed at the sight of me. I was his rock and he was mine. I had planned on leaving with him as soon as I arrived. I wasn’t sure if it was all the extra hormones my body was producing or if it was just the way I was built, but either way, I wanted nothing more than to crawl into his lap and show him how much I appreciated everything he’d done for me. And so I did. Aiden had already sacrificed so much, and I wanted him to know just how much it meant to me. Guilty, yes, but appreciative none the less.

He didn’t need me to spell it out for him. Aiden had so much built up anger, hurt, and frustration that he needed to release, and I was going to be his release.

“Thank you,” I whispered into his ear then kissed the side of his neck.

Aiden slipped his hands under my shirt. “What for?”

“For choosing me.”

He leaned his forehead against mine. “There was never a choice,” he said then pressed his lips against mine.

I could almost hear my mother tisk for making them wait, but I didn’t care. I pushed the thought to the back of my mind and gave Aiden the attention we deserved.

***

Not wanting to leave the sanctuary of the bed, I once again cursed Nathan for screwing up our lives. “Mum’s organised for us to see Nathan.”

Aiden’s body stilled beside me. “When?”

“Now.”

He sat up, a million thoughts running through his head. It was time for us to find out what Nathan had done and finally get some answers. What the answers would bring, we both knew, wasn’t going to be good. Nothing Nathan did was good. He was an evil man who got off on manipulating the lives around him. He deserved to be in a psych ward, and I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t excited to see him suffering for his crimes. I was hoping he’d lost his mind by now, but I knew that even though he was no longer a next gen, because of the drugs, his mind was still far superior to any normal.

Without saying a word we both got out of bed and changed back into what we were wearing before.

“You ready?” I asked.

He sauntered over to me. “Are you ready?”

I nodded. “For once in my life, yes.”

Aiden chuckled.

“I need to know what’s going on with me; if I have any chance of stopping myself.”

He pulled me closer and curled his arms around my waist. “I just want you to know that whatever we find out, we’ll get through it together.”

I smiled and pressed a kiss on his lips. I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect boyfriend. And I prayed his motto of ‘us against the world’ extended to include a baby. “Let’s do this, then.”

He ran his hands down to mine and entwined our fingers. “Let’s do this.”

We transported to my mother and found her waiting, not so patiently, for our arrival. We were standing in a hotel room with the curtains drawn, giving us no clue to what hemisphere we were in. Mum was standing with her back against the wall and Kai was sitting in a tub chair with a laptop balanced on his lap.

“Finally,” she said. “I honestly didn’t think you needed that long to get ready.”

Aiden glanced down at me.
“They were waiting for us since you came back to me?”

“Yep. But something better came up.”

He chuckled internally.

I turned my back to Aiden. “Sorry,” I said to Mum but we both knew I didn’t mean it. She was right about me. Aiden always came first. And I was happy for her to think that, because it was exactly what I wanted to believe I was capable of.

“Had fun?” Kai said with a smirk on his face.

I pulled Aiden’s hands around to the front of my waist. “The best.”

“Oh, God,” Mum said running her hand through her hair. “Can we focus here, please?”

“Sure,” I said.

Kai put the laptop down on the nearby table then stood and came over to us. “It’s after hours at the ward now, which means their running on skeleton staff. So you won’t need to worry about missing someone when you erase their memories.”

“And you’re going to make a glitch in their system,” I said.

He grinned. “Pretty soon they’ll think they need to upgrade their systems. But we both know that won’t fix the problem.”

I sighed. “Well, hopefully this will be the one and only time I need to see him.”

“How long do you think you’ll need?” Mum asked.

I shrugged. “I guess as long as it takes to find out exactly what he’s done to me.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” she asked.

I shook my head. “We’ll be alright.”

Mum studied my face as she considered forcing me to bring her along but she concluded that I couldn’t be forced to do anything.

Aiden squeezed my hand. “We’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” Mum said, still not happy with sending me in alone—even if I did have Aiden. She still felt as if it was all her fault and she should be the one to face him.

“We all sorted?” Kai asked.

“Yep,” I replied.

“Good.” He went back to his computer. “So, I’m going to get you to transport directly to Nathan. He’s already been given his meds for tonight so he shouldn’t cause any fuss that could attract staff to his room.”

“How doped up will he be?” Aiden asked.

Kai grinned. “Well, he is being held in a maximum security room that has padded walls.”

“Which means, he’s also on the strongest sedatives there are, without knocking him out,” Mum said.

I couldn’t help but smile. Nathan deserved everything he was going through and I couldn’t wait to see him.

Mum clasped her hands together. “I suppose we should get this over with.”

I could barely contain my excitement at seeing Nathan face to face again. And if he wasn’t such a psychotic person I would’ve feared that was a sign of me becoming like him.

Aiden kissed the top of my head. “Let’s go, then.”

Biting down on my grin, I waved to Mum then transported Aiden and me to Nathan.

Chills ran down my spine the moment I laid eyes on Nathan sleeping on a bed that had been screwed to the floor. He was no longer wearing the straightjacket, but that was because he was so heavily medicated he physically wasn’t able to harm himself or anyone else.

His brain activity picked up and a second later he opened his eyes.

Speechless, Aiden and I watched as he tried to sit up. After two failed attempts, he finally made it into a sitting position enabling his gaze to fall on me. “Yuuu.” He closed his eyes trying to contain his anger because his body no longer was under his command, thanks to the drugs.

“It sucks, doesn’t it,” I said, walking closer. “Not being in control of your life.”

His eyes snapped open and I had to force myself not to jump back. Nathan was harmless in his current state, but that didn’t make me any less on edge.

I…I…,
Nathan thought, knowing I’d be able to hear him and his brain was working better than his voice.
I’m… gonna…
His head flopped to the side for a second before he righted himself.
Kill you.

I laughed. “Hear that, Aiden? Nathan’s going to kill me.”

Aiden wasn’t as amused as I was. He walked over to the bed and looked down at Nathan. “Never going to happen.”

Fu… Fuck… you
Nathan thought.

“No. You’re the one who’s fucked.” Aiden sat down beside him. “I think you’ve forgotten just what you created.” He glanced up at me and smiled. “She is far superior to us than you’ll ever be.”

“And one other thing,” I said putting one hand on Aiden’s shoulder and the other on my tummy. “
You
are never getting out of here.”

Nathan noticed my hand over my stomach, glanced between Aiden and me and leered making my heart stop.

My whole world felt as if it was crumbling down around me. How I had missed such a monumental piece of the puzzle the last time I was in his mind was beyond me. Aiden was my perfect other. Nathan had made us for a purpose. One that changed the way I viewed everything that had ever happened since his games began. The fact was, Nathan’s games had started much earlier. I was never the perfect prodigy. Nathan’s prodigy was sleeping inside of me. He had wanted my baby.

I clutched both hands over my stomach. My heart hammered inside my chest as I waited for the news to sink in to Aiden. That had not been the way I wanted to tell him but I couldn’t hide it any longer. Nathan had taken that away from me as well.

“You’re pregnant?” Aiden asked, his tone a little higher than normal.

Slowly, I turned to him. “I…”

He didn’t need me to confirm. Aiden knew I’d been hiding something from him. “How long have you known?”

I paced over to the wall. “It’s not what you’re thinking.”

“So, you’re not pregnant?”

“Ye—” I cut myself off when I noticed the camera watching us. Crap. Both my mum and Kai would already know and that was the last thing I wanted. Without thinking it through, I transported to them.

“Your pregnant!” Mum said.

“Holy shit,” Kai said with a laugh. “The little prodigies are having a prodigy of their own.” He shook his head as he imagined what surprises Aiden and my baby would bring.

The last thing I needed was to answer all their questions and boy did my mum have more than a few. What I needed was time and I needed to talk with Aiden.

I pushed inside their minds and removed all memory of what they’d heard. I was going to tell them the right way, at the right time. And this was definitely not the time.

Kai had already brought down the surveillance system so there was no evidence of what I’d said.

I removed all memory of me coming back to the room and made them think they were still waiting for Aiden and me to arrive to go see Nathan. Lastly, I made Kai close his laptop and both of them to focus on something else as I disappeared.

Landing back in the hotel room Aiden and I had just been in, I quickly brought him to me. My stomach sank as I realised I’d done it again to him. Aiden was practically going out of his mind with worry but a sense of peace washed over him the moment he realised I was back.

“Where did you go?”

“Mum and Kai can’t know just yet.”

He glanced down at my tummy. “You’re pregnant aren’t you?”

Biting my lip, I nodded. “I only found out an hour ago.”

“And you didn’t think you should tell me?”

“I was going to. It’s just I wanted to wait for the right time.”

“The right time would’ve been as soon as you found out.”

My eyes welled up with tears. “I didn’t want to tell you the same day that all that stuff happened with your parents.”

“Why not?” he asked. “I think that would’ve been the perfect time. I had chosen you over them because I thought we…”

Tears slipped from my eyes, melting his heart. No matter how upset he was with me for keeping the baby a secret, Aiden didn’t have it in him to blame me.

“I’m sorry.” He phased out, reappeared in front of me and put his hands on my hips. “I’m so sorry.”

The floodgates opened and my tears spilled down my cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

Aiden pulled me into his embrace and kissed the top of my head, feeling shitty as ever for making his pregnant girlfriend cry. “We’re really having a baby?”

I nodded into his chest. “I’m ten weeks.”

Aiden sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled me onto his lap. “How come you didn’t tell me you thought you might be pregnant?” he asked. “I could’ve been there while you did the test.”

“I never suspected I was. Apparently Harry found something in my blood that had spiked and he was trying to find out why.”

“Harry knows?”

I smiled sadly. “He’s not going to tell anyone.”

Aiden hated knowing that a friend knew before he did but he accepted that if anyone was going to know those things it was going to be Harry.

“I saw it. I mean the baby. I saw the baby.”

I could feel his energy stirring beside me. There was nothing like the pride of a male. Not wanting to let his annoyance grow any more, I sent him an image of the baby I’d seen on the scan.

Aiden’s breath was knocked out of him. It was one thing to tell him that he was going to be a dad, and it was a whole other to show him. His hand instinctively went to my tummy as he watched my memory in awe.

I smiled. “Amazing, crazy, huh?”

He was speechless. All his concerns about becoming teenage parents were squashed down as our tiny baby’s image was ingrained into his memory. “How did this happen?”

“Um, you do know the story of the birds and the bees?” I asked, not wanting to think about the truth.

He sighed.

I tried to swallow the lump in my throat but the damn thing wouldn’t go away. “I think it was Nathan’s plan all along.”

“But he tried to kill you.”

I drew my eyebrows together. “I have no idea why. Maybe he thought that he could try to replicate his experiment with someone else. Or maybe he figured this baby wasn’t worth his demise.”

“I guess,” he said. “Let’s just hope the baby’s okay and he hasn’t made us create some mutated creature.” He chuckled nervously.

My body stilled as I wondered what that Taser might have done to our baby’s development. I looked up at him. “That’s what Harry was doing tests on. He’s trying to find out if the electrical surge did any damage to the baby.”

“Shit,” he said. Any doubts of becoming parents so young slipped away in an instant as his protective nature expanded to include our little one. And there was nothing that we could do but wait for the results.

I put my hand on his chest. “Don’t ask me how I know this but I just do. The baby is fine. I think she’s better than fine.”

Aiden’s eyes widened. “It’s a girl?”

I shook my head. “I think so. Don’t ask me how I know, I just know.

Aiden smiled. For the first time since I’d told him, he was thinking about the baby growing up and what she would look like.

I pressed a kiss to his cheek. “As much as I’d love to sit here and talk about our future, we kind of have something else to do.”

“Nathan.”

I nodded.

He sighed. “One day it’ll just be us.”

“One day it will be the three of us.”

Aiden smiled again then cupped my face in his hands and kissed me. “I love you.”

Grinning from ear to ear, I said, “I love you, too.” I brushed my lips over his then quickly pulled back. “I don’t want to tell anyone about this just yet.”

“Probably a good idea until we know everything is alright.”

“My thoughts exactly.” The fact that I feared his family might try to save their son and precious grandchild from me—that was never part of that decision—yeah, right.

Aiden stood, dropping me to my feet. He turned me around and smiled as he took me in, seeing me in a whole new light. I was no longer the girl he loved more than life itself. I was also the woman who had become his whole world. And I knew, in that moment, nothing and no one would come between us. It was Aiden and me—forever.

He leaned down and kissed me again, hating that we had to leave our sanctuary so soon and pretend that our lives hadn’t just been changed.

“The sooner we go, the sooner we can get back,” I said.

Aiden nodded. “Let’s go before I change my mind and keep you pre-occupied in here until the baby’s born.”

I chuckled. “Don’t tempt me.”

He laughed, then, for the second time in less than an hour, we transported to my mother and Kai and pretended we hadn’t just been through what was going to happen on our visit to see Nathan.