The Dark-Hunters (184 page)

There was no reprieve in Kat’s expression. “It’s right, hon. Believe me. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

Cassandra looked at her while inside she struggled to make sense of it all. It was so overwhelming. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I did and you freaked out so badly that Artemis and I decided to erase it from your memory and start over more slowly.”

Fury lanced through her. “You did what?”

Kat turned defensive. “It was for your own good. You were so angry at the prospect of being forced into pregnancy that Artemis decided you would need a father and a baby in order to cope with the reality of it. When I explained it to you, you were gung-ho to toss yourself under a bus rather than use a man and leave behind a baby to be hunted down. So it’s great now that you found Wulf, right? With his powers, the Apollites and Daimons can’t come near him without dying.”

Cassandra started for Kat only to find Wulf pulling her back so that she couldn’t reach her. “Don’t, Cassandra.”

“Oh, please,” Cassandra begged him. “I just want to choke her for a few minutes.” She raked an angry glare over the woman she had mistakenly thought of as a friend. “I trusted you and you used me and lied to me. No wonder you kept trying to set me up with guys.”

“I know and I’m sorry.” Her eyes said Kat meant that, but Cassandra had a hard time believing it at the moment. “But don’t you see how it all works out for the best? Wulf is afraid of losing his last blood link to the world. Through you he has another line that will remember him while you have someone immortal who can tell your child and grandchildren about you and your family. He can watch over them and keep them all safe. No more running, Cass. Think about it.”

Cassandra didn’t move as Kat’s words sank in. She would be remembered and her children would be safe. It was all she had wanted. It was why she’d never considered having children before now.

But dare she believe in this?

Apollites gestated their babies in a little over twenty weeks. Half the time of humans. Since they had such an abbreviated life span, there were several weird physiological differences. Apollites reached adulthood at age eleven and often married between the ages of twelve to fifteen.

Her mother had only been fourteen when she married her father, but her mother had looked like any human woman in her mid-twenties.

Cassandra looked at Wulf, whose face was unreadable. “What do you think about all this?”

“Honestly, I don’t know what to think. Yesterday my number one concern was getting Chris laid. Now it’s the fact that if Kat isn’t on drugs or delusional, you are carrying a part of me that holds in his or her hand the fate of the entire world.”

“If you doubt any of this, call Acheron,” Kat said.

Wulf narrowed his gaze on her. “He knows?”

Kat hedged a bit and appeared nervous for the first time. “I seriously doubt Artemis told him any of this particular plan to put you two together and make a baby. He tends to get rather upset at her whenever she interferes with free will, but he can easily verify everything I’ve told you about the prophecy.”

Cassandra let out a bitterly amused half-laugh upon hearing that her “friend” actually knew one of the men they had read about on the Web site. Not to mention the fact that Kat also knew Stryker and his men. “Just out of curiosity, is there anyone you don’t know?”

“No, not really,” Kat said a bit uneasily. “I’ve been with Artemis a l-o-n-g time.”

“And just how long is that?” Cassandra asked.

Kat didn’t answer. Instead, she stepped back and clapped her hands together. “You know what? I think I should give you two a few minutes to talk to each other alone. I think I’ll go scope out Cass’s room.”

Without another word, Kat bolted for the hallway that led to Cassandra’s wing. Though how she knew that was the right way to go, Cassandra couldn’t imagine. Then again, Kat wasn’t exactly human either.

Wulf didn’t move until Kat had vanished. He was still trying to come to terms with everything Kat had told them.

“I didn’t know about any of this, Wulf. I swear it.”

“I know.”

He stared at her, the mother of his child. It was incredible, and despite the confusion he felt, the one truth he knew was that a part of him wanted to shout out in delight. “Do you feel all right? Do I need to get you anything?”

She shook her head, then looked up at him. Her green eyes scorched him with need. “Actually, I don’t know about you, but I could use a hug right now.”

Mentally, he didn’t think that it would be wise to get attached to her. To open himself up to a woman who came with a short expiration date, but he found himself pulling her into his arms anyway, and he had to tense to keep himself from falling victim to the sensation of her body against his. Her breath tickled the skin on his neck as she wrapped her arms around his waist.

She felt so good here. So right. In all these centuries, he’d never known anything like this feeling of warmth. What was it about her that made him tremble? Made him hot and aching?

Closing his eyes, he held her close and let her scent of powder and roses lull him into forgetting they should be enemies.

Cassandra closed her eyes, too, and let Wulf’s warmth seep into her.

It felt so wonderful to be touched like this. This wasn’t sexual, it was the kind of touch that soothed. One that bound them a lot closer than the intimacies they had already shared.

How can I feel comforted by someone who has already told me he has no use for my people?

Yet there was no denying that she did.

Then again, feelings seldom made sense.

As she stood there, one horrible thought disturbed the peace she felt. “Will you hate my baby, Wulf, because it will be part Apollite?”

Wulf grew tense in her arms as if he hadn’t thought of that. He stepped away from her. “How Apollite will it be?”

“I don’t know. For the most part, my family has been pure-blooded. My mother broke with the custom because she thought a human father could protect us better.” Her stomach tightened as she remembered the secrets her mother had imparted to her not long before she died. “She figured he would at least outlive his children and grandchildren.”

“She used him.”

“No,” she said breathlessly, offended that he would think that for even a minute. “My mother loved him, but like you, she was doing her duty to protect us. I guess since I was so young when she died, she didn’t really have time to tell me how important my role would be if all of us died without children. Or maybe she didn’t know either. She only said that it was every Apollite’s duty to carry on our lineage.”

Wulf moved to turn off the TV, but he didn’t look at her now. He kept his attention on the mantel where an old sword rested on its side on a pedestal. “How Apollite are you? You don’t have fangs and Chris said you can walk in daylight.”

Cassandra wanted to go over and touch him again. She needed to feel close to him, but she could tell he wouldn’t welcome her.

He needed time and answers.

“I had fangs as a child,” she explained, not wanting to hold anything back from him. He deserved to know what their child might need in order to survive. “My father had them filed off when I was ten to better hide me among the humans. Like the rest of my people, I need blood to live, but it doesn’t have to be Apollite, nor do I have to drink it or have it daily.”

Cassandra paused as she thought about the necessities of her life and how much she wished she had been born human. But all in all, she had been much more fortunate than her sisters, who had tended to be more Apollite than she was. All four of them had been envious of how much easier life had been for Cassandra, who could walk in daylight.

“I usually go to the doctor for a transfusion every couple of weeks,” she continued. “Since my father has a team of research doctors who work for him, he fabricated tests to say that I have a rare disease so that I can get what I need without alerting other doctors that I’m not quite human. I only go whenever I start to feel weak. And I haven’t aged as quickly as most Apollites either. I hit my puberty just like a human female.”

“Then maybe our child will be even more human.” She couldn’t miss the hopeful note in his voice as he spoke those words, and, like him, she prayed for the same thing. It would really be a miracle to have a human baby.

Not to mention the joy she felt that Wulf referred to the baby as theirs. At least that boded well.

For the baby anyway.

“You don’t deny the baby?” she asked.

His look blistered her. “I know I was with you in our dreams and as Kat said I’m living proof of what the gods are capable of. So, no, I don’t doubt the reality of this. The baby is mine and I will be a father to it.”

“Thank you,” she breathed as tears welled in her eyes. It was so much more than she had ever dared hope for.

She cleared her throat and banished her tears. She wouldn’t cry. Not over this. Cassandra was lucky and she knew it. Unlike others of her kind, her child would have a father to keep him safe. One who could watch him grow up. “Look on the bright side, you only have to tolerate me for a couple of months and then I’m out of your hair forever.”

He gave her a look so feral that it made her step back. “Don’t ever treat death lightly.”

She remembered what he had said in his dreams about watching his loved ones die. “Believe me, I don’t. I’m very much aware of just how fragile our lives are. But maybe the baby will live longer than twenty-seven years.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

His hell would continue, only worse now because they would be his direct heirs.

His child.

His grandchildren. And he would be forced to watch them all die as young adults.

“I’m so sorry you got dragged into this.”

“So am I.” He stepped past her, and headed for a set of stairs that led downward.

“At least you will get to know the baby, Wulf,” she called after him. “He or she will remember you. I will only have a few weeks with the baby before I have to die. He’ll never know me at all.”

He stopped dead in his tracks. For a full minute he didn’t move.

Cassandra watched for any telltale emotions. His face was impassive. Without a comment, he continued on his way downstairs.

She tried to push his dismissal out of her thoughts. She had other things to focus on now, like the tiny baby that was growing inside her.

Heading for her room, she wanted to start making preparations. Time for her was all too critical and way too short.

*   *   *

Wulf entered his room and closed the door. He needed a little time alone to digest everything he’d been told.

He was going to be a father.

The child would remember him. But what if the child was more Apollite than Cassandra? Genetics was a weird science and he had lived long enough to see just how bizarre it could be. Look at Chris. No one had looked so much like Erik since Erik’s son had died more than twelve hundred years before. Yet Christopher was the very image of Wulf’s brother.

Chris even possessed Erik’s temperament and bearing. They could be the same man.

And what if his child turned Daimon one day? Could he hunt and kill his own son or daughter?

The thought made him cold inside. It terrified him.

Wulf didn’t know what to do. He needed advice. Someone who could help him sort through this. Picking up his phone, he called Talon.

No one answered.

Cursing, he only knew of one other person who might help. Acheron.

The Atlantean answered on the first ring. “What happened?”

He scoffed at Ash’s cynicism. “No ‘hi, Wulf, how’s it going’?”

“I know you, Viking. You only call whenever there’s a problem. So what’s up? You have trouble hooking up with Cassandra?”

“I’m going to be a father.”

Total silence answered him. It was nice to know the news stunned Ash as much as it had stunned him.

“Well, I guess the answer to my question is a big no, huh?” Ash asked finally. He paused again before asking. “Are you okay?”

“So you’re not surprised at the fact that I made a woman pregnant?”

“No. I knew you could.”

Wulf’s jaw went slack as rage gripped him tightly. Ash had known all this time? “You know, that information could have been vital to me, Ash. Damn you for not telling me this before now.”

“What would it have changed had I told you? You would have spent the last twelve centuries paranoid of ever touching a woman for fear of making her pregnant and then her not remembering you as the father. You’ve had enough on you as it is. I didn’t see the point in adding that too.”

Wulf was still angry. “What if I made someone else pregnant?”

“You haven’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Believe me, I do. Had you ever made anyone pregnant, I would have told you. I’m not so big an ass as to withhold something
that
important.”

Yeah, right. If Ash would withhold this, then there was no telling what other vital things the Atlantean had failed to mention. “And I’m supposed to trust you now after you’ve just admitted lying to me?”

“You know, I think you’ve been talking to Talon too much. Suddenly you two sound like the same person. Yes, Wulf, you can trust me. And I never lied to you. I just omitted a few facts.”

Wulf didn’t say anything in response. But he would love to have Ash in front of him long enough to beat the hell out of him for this.

“So how’s Cassandra dealing with her pregnancy?” Ash asked.

Wulf went cold. There were times when Ash was truly spooky. “How did you know Cassandra was the mother?”

“I know lots of things when I apply myself.”

“Then perhaps you should learn to share some of these details, especially when they involve other people’s lives.”

Ash sighed. “If it makes you feel better, I’m not happy with the way all this went down any more than you are. But sometimes things have to go wrong in order to go right.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll see one day, little brother. I promise.”

Wulf ground his teeth. “I really hate it when you play Oracle.”

“I know. All of you do. But what can I say? It’s my job to annoy you.”