Page 70 of Heart of Dawn
“Let go of me!” he cried, desperately trying to fight me off. “Get out of her! Get out of her!”
Dawn moaned, Cate’s possessed hands cradling her stomach. “Wolf with a baby. Two in one body.”
James froze. “W-What did…” he couldn’t finish, the shock turning his limbs to jelly. I stopped him from falling.
“It’s all right,” I told him. “It’s all right.”
Like hell was it alright. Dawn was inside a pregnant Cate, and the news had come to James in the worst possible way.
“Get. Out. Of. Her.” My beta found his strength again, shrugging me off. “You won’t have my wife or my child.”
“Damn right,” I added, moving to his side.
Dawn guffawed. “I?—”
Cate gagged and hunched over, puking up black goo. It splattered on the floor as it drained from her body, forcing her to her knees.
James darted for her, cradling her through the violent vomiting until she was spent.
Dawn still hadn’t mastered taking over supernaturals, it seemed. But it would at some point.
Not on my watch.
A partially rotted skull on the reception desk I hadn’t notice before came to life under Dawn’s touch.
The mouth moved, the pink eyes exuding anger. “I will have you all. If I cannot have your bodies in life, I will have them in death. I will feed and feed and eat and eat and evolve and become and you will?—”
Trev picked up the skull and smashed it on the ground, stomping his big troll feet on it for good measure.
“Nice work,” Arlo said.
Trev wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Can’t take any more of its shit.”
My hands still shook from my breakdown, but I managed to remain steady, the worst of it over.
James and Cate held each other in silence. Everyone else kept their heads turned to give them a semblance of privacy. Fuck Dawn for taking Cate’s news away from her. She wanted to tell James at the right time, not when some entity blurted out.
This was another responsibility for me to take on. Not in the parental sense, but in giving the child and their parents a future. One I really wanted them all to have.
So, this was it. This had to end today.
Hissing sounded outside. The boarded-up doors rattled, the wood splintering under the force of the speedie horde.
Damn it.
“Time to go,” Andrew said.
“Follow me.” Paige took the lead, hurrying back the way we came, our survival modes activated.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
ORION
“Who are you?” Anya demanded.
The prince straightened, his focus on the spider.
“I mean no harm,” he answered, his voice much deeper than his twin brother’s. “I’m Prince Dorian.”
