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"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.
