He held her hand as the final contraction twisted through her. He shouted with joy as his son finally appeared, a tiny, pink, squirming little bundle held aloft and squalling in Savannah's expert hands. And he wept without shame as he met Tess's beautiful, elated gaze in that next moment, loving her with every particle of his being.
He leaned over and kissed his amazing Breedmate, pulling her into his embrace and sharing the euphoria of this precious moment of their lives together, particularly knowing how it had come in the midst of so much upheaval and strife.
After a few minutes, Savannah came over with the impossibly small bundle that was their newborn son. "I know you must be eager to hold him," she said, placing the baby in Tess's waiting arms. "He's beautiful, you guys. Perfect in every way."
Tess started weeping again, tenderly touching the infant's tiny cheeks and the rosebud mouth. Dante marveled at the sight of his child. He marveled at the woman who gave him such a miracle, something equally as precious to him as the incredible gift of her love. He stroked a tendril of damp blond hair away from her face. "Thank you," he told her softly. "Thank you for making my life so complete."
"I love you," she replied, bringing his hand to her lips and kissing the heart of his broad palm. "Would you like to say hello to your son?"
"Our son," he said.
Tess nodded, so proud and lovely as he took the little bundle into his arms. His hands dwarfed the tiny infant. He felt clumsy with him, awkward as he tried to find a comfortable cradle for the newborn in his too-big arms. Finally, he learned the way to hold him, taking the utmost care to get everything right. Tess smiled up at him, her joy pouring through his veins along with his own happiness.
God, his heart was so full, it felt near to exploding.
Dante stared down into the pink, squalling face of their child. "Welcome to the world, Xander Raphael."
Corinne stood next to the bed that next morning, watching Hunter sleep. He lay naked on his stomach, an immense, masculine sprawl of beautiful, glyph-covered skin and bulky muscle. He snored lightly, resting as deeply as the dead.
Their night together had been incredible, and she had never felt more content than she had resting in his arms after they'd made love. But the night had been over for a while, and except for the few hours she'd been able to close her eyes and sleep, her thoughts had centered on one thing: the urgency to find her son.
It was that need that had made her rise before daybreak, slip out from Hunter's comforting warmth, and head out back to the swamp to look for the truck he'd left there on his return from Henry Vachon's. She had gotten lucky, and found the white box truck unlocked behind Amelie's house on the river. Corinne had crawled inside and spent the better part of an hour poring through the reams of paper files and photographs she'd found stuffed inside the broken safe.
Dragos's laboratory files. Decades' worth of records.
She'd thumbed through every one, searching for anything that might bring her closer to learning the fate of her son or the other infants born inside the lab. She'd found medical charts and experiment results - thousands of pages of codes and jargon that meant nothing to her. To make matters worse, none of the files contained the names of their subjects. Like some kind of callous inventory of assets, Dragos's records contained only case numbers, control groups, and cold statistics.
Everyone he'd touched - every life he'd ruined inside the hellish madness of his laboratory - meant nothing to him.
Less than nothing.
Corinne had dug through the remaining stacks of papers in a fit of impotent outrage. She'd wanted to tear all the offending records into tiny pieces. And then, nearly to the bottom of the safe's contents, her fingers brushed across the smooth leather of a large file pouch. She'd pulled it out and dumped the files into her lap, sifting through them for even the smallest shred of hope.
The hand-recorded entries were more of the same impersonal inventories that were in the other files. Except there was something different about these dates and notations. Something that had made the fine hairs at the back of Corinne's neck prickle with suspicion ... with a certain, dreadful knowing.
She held the leather file pouch in her hands now, as she moved closer to the bed where Hunter was just starting to rouse. He must have sensed her in the shuttered quiet of the room. His head came up off the pillow, eyelids blinking open over the piercing gold of his gaze. He saw that she was dressed, that she was still breathing hard from her run back to Amelie's house, and he frowned. "What's wrong? Have you been somewhere?"
She couldn't keep the truth from him any longer. Not after what they'd shared last night. She owed him that much. She owed him her trust.
"I had to know," she said quietly. "I couldn't sleep. I couldn't sit still, lying in the comfort of your arms, knowing some of Dragos's secrets were nearby."
"You left the safe house without telling me?" Hunter sat up, moved to the edge of the bed, and swung his big bare feet to the floor. His frown had turned darker, more of a scowl. "You can't go anywhere without me there to protect you, Corinne. It's not safe for you now, not even during the day - "
"I had to know," she repeated. "I had to see if there was anything that might help me find him ..."
Something dark flickered across Hunter's hard, handsome face. It looked like dread to her, like grim expectation. His scowl still creasing his proud brow, he glanced to the large pouch she held in her hands.
When he didn't speak right away, she swallowed hard and forced the words from her dry throat. "I had to know if any of the records you took from Henry Vachon contained information that might lead me to my child. The child I gave birth to in Dragos's lab."
Hunter stared, then glanced away from her. His low curse was vivid as he ran a hand over the top of his head. "You have a son."
Even though his voice was level, devoid of anger or any other emotion, it still sounded like an accusation to her.
"Yes," she said. He wouldn't look at her now. An odd distance began to spread between them, growing colder by the moment. "I wanted to tell you, Hunter. I meant to before now, but I was scared. I didn't know who I could turn to, nor who I could trust."
The emotional distance apparently wasn't enough for him. He got up off the bed and prowled, naked and immodest, to the other side of the room, adding physical space between them.
"This child," he said, throwing a dark look at her. "He is Gen One, like me? Bred off the Ancient that Dragos kept alive for his sick experimentations?"
Corinne nodded, her throat tight. "After everything they did to me while I was kept there, the worst was when they took my baby away from me. I saw him only for a few moments, right after he was born, and then he was gone. The thought of him was all that kept me alive through the things that were done to me. I never dreamed I'd actually be freed. When I took my first breath of fresh air after the rescue, I promised myself I'd spend every breath that followed - even down to my last - working to reunite with my son."
"That's a promise you can't truly keep, Corinne. Your son is gone. He was gone the instant Dragos took him out of your arms."
She didn't want to hear this. She wouldn't accept it. "I would know if he was dead. A mother's heart beats with her child's for nine months, day in and day out. In my bones - to my very soul - I still feel my son's heart beating."
Hunter exhaled a sharp curse, not even looking at her now.
She forged on, determined to plead her case. "I tried to keep track of the years, but it was difficult to know for sure. My son will be around thirteen now, by my closest estimate. Just a little boy - "
"He will be a killer now, Corinne." Hunter's deep voice shook, startling her with an anger she neither expected nor knew what to make of. His face was taut, skin drawn tight over his sharp cheekbones and rigid jaw. "We were never boys, none of us. Do you understand? If your son lives, he will be a Hunter, like me. By thirteen, I was fully trained, already experienced in dealing death. You cannot expect that it will be any different for him."
The harsh words dug a sharp ache in the center of her. "It has to be. I have to believe that if he's out there - and I know in my heart he is - that I will find him. I will protect him, the way I wasn't able to the day he was born."
Hunter was silent as he turned away from her, slowly shaking his head in denial. Corinne set down the leather file pouch and walked over to him. She laid her hand on his shoulder. The dermaglyphs beneath her palm pulsed hot with his anger, but she couldn't help noticing how the stormy colors muted at her touch, his body responding to her even if he seemed intent on shutting her out.
Chapter Twenty-five
"I need to find my child, Hunter. I need to see him and touch him, make sure he knows that I love him. Now that I'm free, I have to find him. I have to try to give him a better life." She moved around in front of him, forcing him to meet her gaze. "Hunter, I need to remember everything about the day my son was born. Something might have been said or done by Dragos or his Minions that could lead me to my child. Something that may be tucked away in my memories. I need you to help me remember everything about that day."
Hunter's face went even tighter as he absorbed what she was proposing. He grabbed her hand and pulled it away from him on a growled curse. "You want my help? Do you know what that would mean?"
"Yes," she admitted. "And I know it's asking too much of you. But I'm asking because you're the best hope I have right now. You are very likely the only hope I have of finding my child."
He stared, disbelieving or disgusted, she couldn't tell. Heat flared in his eyes, but she wouldn't back down. She couldn't. Not when she felt closer than ever to the answers she so desperately needed.
"Hunter, please," she whispered. "I want you to drink from me."
Staring into Corinne's earnest, pleading face, Hunter felt as if he'd taken the full force of a cannon blast to his gut.
He couldn't believe what she was proposing. More than that, he realized he was furious that all this time, she'd been withholding the existence of her son - a Hunter, like him, for fuck's sake. She stood there, asking him to help her find her child, but Hunter knew all that waited for her at the end of that journey was disappointment and heartbreak.
Heartbreak he likely would be forced to deliver personally, if the teenage boy proved to be the same kind of killer Hunter himself had been at the same age. There was little hope of anything different. Hunter knew too well the kind of discipline and training - the rigid conditioning - that would have already taken place in the child's short life. Mira's vision roared up on him in that moment. Now he understood. Now he realized with grave certainty whose life Corinne had begged him to spare in that prophesied future event. And he knew at once that the name she'd cried out in the throes of her nightmare a couple nights ago was not that of a lover but of the child she'd lost to Dragos's evil.
"Help me find my baby, Hunter," she said, the soft touch of her hand against his face an entreaty he feared he wouldn't have the strength to deny. "Help me find Nathan."
He thought about the tears she would shed if he allowed Mira's vision to come true. He considered the hatred she would surely harbor for him if she actually found her son, only to have him torn away from her again - permanently - if Hunter was forced to deal that predicted fatal blow. He could not be the one to hasten that pain for her.
And there remained the fact that if he drank her blood, he would be activating a bond to her that nothing, short of death, could break. Not even her hatred would keep him away from her if he allowed himself to taste her Breedmate blood.
"Corinne," he said gently, drawing her hand away and holding it in his own. "I cannot do what you ask. Even if my ability to read blood memories extends beyond my own kind, what you're asking would have far-reaching consequences."
"I know what it means," she insisted. "Won't you even try?"
"It doesn't work on mortal humans," he pointed out, hoping to dissuade her. "I've fed from them all my life, with no psychic effect whatsoever. There is a good chance my talent is confined to Breed memories alone. If I drink from you now, where will that leave us? You are a Breedmate. Our blood bond would be inextricable. It would be forever."
Her expression muted, eyelashes shuttering her gaze. "You must think me the worst kind of low, to press you into giving me something you have every right to save for a female who will be worthy of you, more suitable as your mate."
"God, no," he murmured, hating that she'd misunderstood. "That's not it at all. Any male would be privileged to have you. Don't you realize that? I am the one who's unworthy." He lifted her chin, imploring her to see that he meant every word. "If I drink your blood and my talent works as you hope it will, I don't want to be the one to disappoint you."
"How could you?" she asked, her brow knit in confusion.
"If my talent works and we find your son, I don't want you to despise me if it turns out the boy is beyond our help."
She gave a small shake of her head. "Despise you? Do you think I could possibly hold you responsible for what's happened to Nathan? I wouldn't, Hunter. Not ever ..."
"Not even if I was forced to raise my hand against him in combat?"
Her expression turned fearful now, wary. "You wouldn't do that."
"If it comes down to a matter of protecting you, I would have no choice," he answered grimly. "If I agreed to help you find him, Corinne, I can make no promises that the outcome will be what you hope for."