Page 17 of Out of Peril

“Why does anyone want to collect people?” she asked.

“Touché. You're pretty smart for a kid. How old are you?”

“She's five. I'm six,” Dante proudly said.

“I'll be six next month,” Maya explained, sticking her tongue out at him.

“You guys are pretty smart for being so young.”

It broke my heart to think of all they'd been through and how quickly they'd been forced to grow up.

“Want to help me build a shelter?”

“Like a fort?” he asked hopefully.

“Exactly like a fort.”

The first thing I did was dig a pit for a fire and clean the fish while the kids organized the pile of debris as I'd instructed them to. They listened well and did exactly what I asked of them.

Soon we had a roaring fire with the fish cooking on a spit and the base of what would become our home until Lindsey was up to flying us out of here.

Lindsey. My mate.

Where the hell was she?

“Will you guys keep an eye out on the fire for me? I'm going to go check on Lindsey.”

Saying her name aloud did something to me.

“She's sleeping just up the beach,” Dante told me.

“She doesn't get to fly often. It makes her tired,” Maya explained.

“Okay, but I'm going to check on her just the same.”

I grabbed the T-shirt I'd been wearing under my suit and walked away before they could try and stop me. Neither seemed to think much of it, so I hoped that was a sign that they were already starting to trust me. The both of them seemed very protective of my mate and not at all scared of her beast. That told me a lot about her.

When I rounded the corner, I saw her sleeping in the sand. I scowled when I saw her pale skin already turning pink from the sun. But as I got closer and it dawned on me that she was so exposed and perfectly naked out here, I froze. A mix of horror and desire shot through me.

I took a moment to really look her over. I couldn't get the beast out of my head, but in her human form she was so beautiful. Blonde hair, pale skin. I knew from before that she had the prettiest blue eyes. Still, the image of the beast kept flashing through my mind, and I was struggling to reconcile the two as one.

What she'd shifted to wasn't natural.

What had happened to her?

Was she okay?

Could she really control that abomination?

I instantly grew sick to my stomach at the thought. Abomination? She wasn't an abomination. She was my mate.

I couldn't help but think of my godchildren. Shelby and Ben had adopted the triplets after Ben had first delivered them and then rescued them from a Raglan facility. Rumors were that their biological mother had been experimented on while pregnant. There were no records of what had been done to her, or her unborn children, and she'd died the day they were born.

Her Pack hadn't wanted the babies for fear they were abominations genetically altered by the Raglan. Ben and Shelby had chosen to love them anyway, and I couldn’t imagine my life without Zachary, Mary Alice, and Nathan.

What if they shifted someday into a creature much like Lindsey? Would any of us love them any less?

I knew immediately that the answer was no. I would love those kids no matter what.

---