Page 41 of Racing the Storm

Mari’s gaze shot up. “Alexei?”

I shook my head. “No, not him. Not as far as I know. He had a younger son.”

Her tongue dragged over her lip, then she nodded. “Ivan told me about him. He wouldn’t speak about Misha very much. I… He couldn’t live with his guilt.” Her eyes closed, and she let out a shuddering breath. “He was the only reason I survived.”

“He changed for you,” I said, only realizing it then.

She was quiet a long time, and then her words came on the edge of a breath. “He changed for Arturo. That’s where his love for me came.”

I jolted, not quite sure how to feel about it. “When…”

“Years ago. Years before Kasher came for me. It was why Kasher knew where to look for us. He never had the evidence. Ivan never told him the truth, but he suspected.” She shrugged. “I think he always knew what his father was doing was wrong, but he wasn’t brave enough to stand up to him for a long time.”

Bitterness rose in the back of my throat, and I wanted to scream and rail against it because a human shouldn’t have to love a Wolf in order to stop killing them. And yet, I also knew sometimes that’s what it had to take. “I wonder if he survived.”

“He was promised,” she said. “My brother sent a message to me that Ivan would be spared, and Kasher would be delivered to some of the Wolves. I’m not sure Arturo will ever forgive him for what he did, but…” She trailed off and stared down at the face of her baby. “I think he may have come close to earning his second chance.”

Mari let out a short breath that started to even out, and it wasn’t long before she was asleep with the baby lying on her chest. Delilah, I remembered suddenly. Mari had told me she wanted to name the baby Delilah.

I watched her for a while, searching for signs of Kor in her. Maybe Kasher was wrong. Maybe he’d lied, but then again, maybe he hadn’t. After all, this baby had presented as a Wolf with her flaring blue eyes. And the man was a sadist enough that he wouldn’t have needed to invent ways to force my cooperation. He knew I would have done it to save her, regardless of who the baby belonged to.

I started to drift myself, but I snapped back to attention when I heard footsteps enter the cave, and I was almost on my feet when I recognized Mikael’s scent. He was cleaner than before, covered in the earthy mineral smell of the spring, and I wanted to bury myself in it.

It had been too long since I’d had anything close to comfort, and as much as I hated Mikael for the way he’d fucked me and left me on the edge of my dying heat, my body still craved him.

He met my gaze across the distance, then he shuffled over to the supplies, returning with a small pack full of food. Most of it was fresh, and my stomach gave a low rumble, making him grin as he collapsed into a pile of strong, lanky limbs.

“When was the last time you ate?” he asked, pitching his voice low so he didn’t wake Mari or the baby.

I shrugged. It had been a while—the last dinner with Ivan, I thought. After feeding Yasin, food became my last priority. “It doesn’t matter. I can go a lot longer than this.”

He scoffed and pulled out a small plastic bag holding croissants, and a pear that was ripe enough that I could see his fingers sinking into the skin. “I don’t know how long the fresh food will last with four of us here. Kor hadn’t planned for this many people.”

I blinked in surprise. “He set this up?”

“I was tasked with extracting you and holing up here until it was safe enough for someone to retrieve us,” Mikael said. He deposited the food on my lap, then pulled out a pear for himself. He took a huge bite with a hint of fang, and I watched the juice run down his chin, hating what it did to me.

I swallowed thickly, then pulled some of the bread from the bag and tore the end off. It was stale, but maybe some of the best food I had ever eaten. “We’re not going to last long with a newborn,” I told him. “Even if Arturo manages to get enough supplies to last a few days, eventually someone will hear her cry.”

Mikael stared down at his empty hand, then curled it into a fist. He had washed, but without soap, he hadn’t gotten much of the grime from his skin. I thought about what it might be like to sink into a hot bath with him, and in spite of our situation, my cock twitched.

There was no doubt he could smell it, but he was gracious enough not to look over at me.

“I thought he was human,” Mikael said after a beat. “They have no scent. They’re strong, but…”

“I know,” I told him, my voice barely a whisper. “They have genetic anomalies, and I didn’t think she was human, but they’re not like us.”

Mikael’s gaze darted over to her, then to the baby on her chest. “What’s Kor going to do?”

I laughed softly and finished the rest of my croissant before I spoke again. “Tear the world to pieces until he gets his hands on his daughter.”

“Do you think she’ll run?” Mikael asked for the second time in as many hours. I wondered if he just needed reassurance or if the shock kept him from remembering.

“I don’t think it’ll matter,” I said this time. “The moment Kor knows she’s alive, he won’t stop.”

“They’ve hidden from us all this time.” Mikael swiped his hands on his jeans, then leaned back with his arm pressed up against my thigh. The warmth of it was comforting, and I hated myself a little for leaning in, but he was my touchstone now. He was my link to my past, and to my home, and for that, I needed him.

“This time we know about them,” I said after a beat, then leaned farther against the wall and felt my exhaustion tugging at me. “This time, we know where to look.”

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