Alpha Curves (Paranormal BBW Shifter Romance): Wolf Clan Book 3 (13 page)

"Oscar's last memory from before he was discovered by Dana was an operating room."

That hooked Dana's attention immediately. "Was he hurt?"

She shook her head then drew a deep breath. "Nothing seemed to be wrong with him. There was a woman in the room...pregnant..."

Her gaze jumped to Esme, recognition slamming Iris hard in the chest. Words jumped from her before she had a chance to consider whether she should hold the information back. "Her face and eyes were an exact match for yours, but she had a wolf's form."

Esme's face went slack before her expression sharpened. "What do you mean?"

"A twin--"

Their reactions identical and simultaneous, Esme and Dana shook their head, dismissing the idea. They both spoke, their words overlapping with the same message.

"There has never been a birth of twins, let alone one wolf and the other not."

Iris shrugged. "And I'm the first wolf to cast."

Cade pushed a little closer to Iris at her admission. Warmth flooded her chest but she forced herself to ignore the sensation for the moment. She needed time to figure out what it meant to be both and what it meant for any possible future between her and Cade.

"So the woman looked like Esme and she was pregnant," Dana countered, his tongue stalling on the final word. Leaning closer to his mate, he curled his arm behind her, his hand resting on her opposite hip. He pushed his nose against her hair and then his lips pressed against her cheek.

Casting an apologetic look at the witch, Iris continued. "There were three men in the room, but one was clearly in charge. He referred to Oscar as 'my boy' and they had the same coloring with their black hair and eyes--"

"Are you saying the man was a shifter?" Cade asked.

"No," Iris answered, her gaze still on Esme. The witch seemed to take a long time processing the information, her body physically backing away from some realization she didn't want to accept.

"I think she's describing Quentin," Esme said after a few more seconds of deliberation. "I never considered--"

"No," Dana interrupted. He softened his sharp denial a second later as he nuzzled Esme's cheek once more. "Baby, Leah and I have seen that bastard just as clearly as you did. Don't you think one of us would have already noticed?"

Esme looked away from her mate, the gears in her head still chewing at the question until she finally found the answer. "Why would we notice the impossible? Quentin isn't a wolf, he couldn't father Oscar, at least not naturally."

Forgetting her earlier desire to proceed with caution, Iris decided to throw a little kerosene onto the conversation. "Is it possible that some of the Hunters are basically latents -- the source of their magic the same as female latents and capable of impregnating a female shifter? Camille is a latent, she could have gotten pregnant by a shifter, had twins and..."

All the air seemed to leave the room at what Iris was about to suggest, the tension broken only by Dana renewing his disbelief.

"We only have a cub's memory," he said. "Not even that, really, just what you thought he experienced."

"Iris has never seen Quentin," Cade reminded them.

"That's true," Iris agreed, glad that Cade was there to plug the gaps in her claims. Leaning forward, she focused her attention on Dana, her mind examining Oscar's memories for a detail that might convince the big wolf in front of her.

"When you picked Oscar up as he was shifting," Iris began, her heart starting to knock around in her chest as she realized what she was about to say could tip Dana's opinion solidly against her. "He was screaming, 'You're not my daddy' and then 'I don't want you to be my daddy.' Do you remember?"

The look on Dana's face told Iris that he would never forget those words. Misunderstood, they had stabbed him in the heart.

Softly pushing her wolf at him, she tried to ease his heartache. "Those words weren't directed at you. They were for the black-haired man in charge."

There -- she saw it, a crack in Dana's resistance. Now if she could just pry it open a little more instead of saying something that would seal that crack forever. She hesitated, thinking it through, what each detail she had seen meant and how accepting of those details Dana and Esme would be.

"Don't hold back," the witch whispered. She had remained motionless since her last question, her gaze locked on her hands as they twisted in her lap. She held herself slightly apart from her mate despite his attempts to pull her close and ease the pain from the conversation's repeated reminders that she had not yet conceived his child.

Giving a nervous lick of her lips, Iris pushed forward. "The man placed Oscar on a second operating table. Between the two tables, there was a tray loaded with scalpels and ametrine crystals, each about half as big as the tip of my thumb."

That caught Esme's attention. Blood drained from her face and she shook her head.

"I didn't see what was done with the crystals," she assured Esme and Dana. "But the man seemed to be measuring the spaces between Oscar's vertebrae and then he picked up the scalpel and turned to the woman..."

Unsure of how she could possibly tell them the last detail, Iris drew a deep breath. They had to know and she had to tell them, no matter how much the visions had made her gut clench and threaten to spew. Cade pressed against her back, his thumb gently stroking her flesh in a gesture of support. At least she hoped it was support. It felt amazing to know she wasn't alone any longer and that she hadn't permanently pushed him away.

Ignoring the urge to look away, Iris met Esme's gaze. She saw a flash of fear, but also forgiveness and friendship. Drawing strength from Cade and the witch, she pushed the words out of her mouth, praying Dana would at least turn them over in his mind before rejecting their validity.

"The last thing the man said before Oscar pulled back from the memory was that it was time for Oscar to meet his baby brother."

Chapter Thirteen

"
Le sang du bébé
..."

Esme's hands curled around the edge of the cushion beneath her. She swayed, her body remaining upright only because of her mate's quick response. Folding his arms around Esme, Dana closed his eyes as he curled his wolf protectively against her.

Across from them, Iris and Cade waited for Esme to recover and explain the term.

"It's the worst kind of magic," she whispered after a few seconds. Tears flowed freely down her rounded cheeks and her hands slid across her stomach to protectively clutch at her sides. "A sacrifice of absolute purity is needed. But the magic produced is nearly unbreakable, if it can even be detected."

"So whatever Quentin was going to do to Oscar, he needed a sacrifice." Iris said, her memory straining for any other information Oscar's mind might have imparted before the revived trauma forced his first shift into a were-state. "What about the crystals?"

Esme shook her head. "Witches have been using crystals containing silver or iron for millennia. They act as magnifiers and I think my mother may have found a way to use them almost like a radio."

"You need to examine Oscar--" Iris started.

Surprisingly, Esme objected first. "He won't let me touch him since the interview."

Thick tears spilled from the witch's eyes. The strain in her relationship with the cub had been slowly building, starting with Oscar's first encounter with Iris, when he had responded to her wolf even as she denied her nature. From that point on, he had gravitated toward the pregnant latents and she-wolves while squirming away from Esme's embrace.

"It's because of the woman on the table," Iris suggested.

"Not all of it," Esme whispered. "And I've had nine months to find something wrong with..."

Still mindful of her mate's fierce affection for the cub, she trailed off, her eyes darting to the side for a moment before she met Iris's gaze once more. "You'll need to examine him. If he'll let you. You have the best chance of detecting anything. You already smelled the magic on him and the other cubs before."

Dana moved restlessly where he sat. Iris expected him to veto the idea, but he rose after a few seconds and gestured that she should follow him. He passed through a door opposite the hall through which they had entered the living room, Iris close on his heels and Cade and Esme behind her.

A few doors later and Dana entered Oscar's bedroom. The cub was on the bed, a red fire truck centered on his lap. Two other cubs flanked the side of the mattress, each of the three boys holding one of the hands of the other so that their arms formed a loose pyramid.

Seeing Iris, Oscar slid his hands onto the fire truck, one finger absently flicking at the toy's ladder. More vehicles were scattered on the bed and the other cubs started playing with them.

Esme gestured at the visiting children. "Micah, Adam...help me make lunch."

"Up," Dana ordered when the boys didn't budge. "You can play some more after you eat."

Micah and Adam rose, their feet shuffling along the carpet in unwilling obedience. Before they could reach the door, Cade stopped them. Lifting one brow as he stared at Iris, Cade poked his chin in the smaller cub's direction.

Smiling at the boy despite the smell of dark magic on him and his playmate, Iris ran a hand against his spine as she asked, "What's your name, sweetie?"

"Adam," he mumbled. "Did you send Oscar back to the bad man?"

Guilt clouding her eyes, she shook her head. "Oscar hasn't gone anywhere, he just had a very bad dream."

She turned to the other boy and rested her palm between his shoulder blades. "You must be Micah."

A frown pulled at the corners of her mouth and she sucked a deep breath in. Glancing at Esme, she offered a discreet nod before breaking contact with Micah. "You two run along and help Esme with lunch."

She waited for them to leave before she turned to Oscar. He had climbed up into Dana's arms, his small hands clasped behind the big wolf's neck. Seeing Iris approach, he buried his face against Dana's chest.

"Honey, I just want to make sure you are okay." She placed her hand on his back, watched him arch his spine in an attempt to avoid contact. "Maybe we can talk after lunch?"

Face still buried against Dana, Oscar shook his head.

"Okay, baby." She rubbed her hand against his back, pushing a sleepy magic through her fingertips to calm him. "We'll wait until you're ready."

Iris retreated into the hall, Cade by her side. He closed the door to Oscar's room, hesitated a second then wrapped his arms around her.

"All of them?" he asked.

She nodded, the sob breaking from her throat muffled by his clothes and chest. Her arms around his waist, she squeezed hard, trying not to think about the number of cubs that might have crystals in them, the terrible but unknown "why" of it fading in importance as she tallied the number of infants Quentin might have slaughtered.

Bile rose in her throat, acidic and uncontrollable. Cade guided her into a bathroom and stood beside her, holding her hair as Iris spilled her guts into the toilet. When she finished, he filled a rinse cup with water from the sink and handed it to her. He sat on the edge of the tub, waiting until she finished before he pulled her onto his lap and held her once more.

"Shh..." he soothed. "It's done. We need to focus on stopping it from ever happening again."

She nodded, unable to stop the tears and wishing like hell she could reach through Oscar's memories and shred the black haired man.

Chapter Fourteen

"Did you notice the way the cubs were holding hands when we entered the room?" Cade asked as the adults regrouped after Dana finished comforting Oscar.

"They hold hands like that a lot," Esme answered. "We figured they were all bonding so very closely because they sensed how much their circumstances were alike."

Magic leaked from the witch, her tears tinged blue after she had verified Iris's findings on Adam and Micah once she knew what to search for. A nervous energy vibrated in the air around her, humming soft but deadly in its intensity.

"I think I know," Cade said. His chest tightened, cutting off the air he needed to explain. Meeting Dana's hard stare, he saw understanding slowly dawn in the other man's gaze.

"It's a signal boost," Dana answered, all the blood draining from his face so that the topaz eyes burned against his pale skin like the sun at high noon. "They're using the cubs to find the clan. That's why the cubs are still safe when we find them and why the Hunters never ambushed us while we retrieved the boys. They want them with us and watch over them until we arrive to take the boys away."

Iris sagged against Cade. Feeling his arm circle her shoulders and the soft nuzzle of his wolf, she closed her eyes and pressed her face against his neck.

"Can we take the crystals out?" Dana asked.

Everyone looked at Esme for the answer. Aware of the attention focused on her, she stared at the ground and slowly shook her head.

"I don't think so," she went on after a long moment. "Especially in the cubs who haven't shifted yet -- their healing isn't as accelerated. We need more healers than we have and we could paralyze them. Hit the wrong spot on their spinal cord and their body will shut down."