CONCEPTION (The Others) by Sarah McCarty Read Free Book Online Page A

have fallen
to the floor if he hadn’t caught her. “I can’t allow you to touch me.”
    He kept his hands where they were, absorbing the tangle of
emotions spilling from her—terror, pain, need and determination. The last was
the most disturbing. Now that she had found him, she should be relaxing, not
building her resistance. “You will be healed.”
    She tugged her shirt tight around her middle. The physical
gesture seemed to bolster her composure. Her voice was almost normal as she
said, “Not if you can’t do it without touching.”
    “Touching is required.”
    “Then no.”
    “You like that word too much.”
    Her glance was wry, with the faintest hint of amusement,
giving him another glimpse of the woman he remembered. “Men always say that.”
    “Men are always right.”
    “Says the male wanting to get his way.” She scooted to the
right.
    Deuce rested his hands on her hips, keeping her there,
blending their shadows into one. “Says the male who will get his way. In
the matter of your healing, I will suffer no argument.”
    Another shadow flowed into theirs. Bohdan. “Your fears are
unfounded.”
    Eden straightened to the last fraction of her height, her
shoulders squaring as she challenged his brother. “You don’t know what I’m
afraid of.”
    “You fear the ones you ran from. You fear for the baby. And
you fear us.”
    This close, Deuce could not miss her start.
    “You’re reading my mind!”
    “It is not necessary to read your mind when logic makes it
so simple,” Bohdan murmured, coming closer, healing energy radiating from him
in soothing waves.
    “But you do read my mind.”
    “We can, yes.”
    She turned to Deuce. “Promise me you’ll stay out of my
head.”
    “I cannot block the thoughts you project when upset.”
    Her blues eyes widened. She wrapped her fingers in the shirt
and twisted. She had not known she projected. Adrenaline raced through her
system again. “Fair enough, but I want your promise you’ll stay out of my
head.”
    Her fear was greater than his arguments. He stemmed the flow
of adrenaline. It would not hurt to give her this promise now. Soon enough
nature would make it obsolete anyway. “This promise is given.”
    She looked at him askance, whether because of the formal
Chosen wording or because she was still worried about the ramifications of her
projecting, he did not know. Deuce tugged the shirt free of her fingers,
smoothing the material across her hips. He could at least address one of her
fears. He sent his own soothing energy into the waves with which Bohdan had
surrounded her. “I can and will protect you, Edie.”
    With
the hard bulge of Deuce’s biceps under her hand and the force of his
personality around her, it was hard for Eden to believe anything could defeat
him or his brother. But her grandfather had. She’d seen it with her own eyes.
And he’d used her to do it. She couldn’t go through that again. Be responsible
for that again. Risk failure again. Not with the stakes as high as they were.
She couldn’t take that chance with the baby’s life. “What makes you think
you’re strong enough?”
    The smile Deuce gave her was gentle, but the energy that
radiated from him shifted, deepened, took on a darker resonance, twisting her
resolution into a mixed message she couldn’t untangle. “I am Chosen. You are my
mate. I will not lose.”
    Oh God, could anything get more complicated? She didn’t need
him staking a claim on her. “I don’t want to be your mate.”
    “A mate is determined by birth, not choice.”
    The certainty
with which he said that made argument futile. She couldn’t do anything about
his delusion that she was his mate, but she could focus on what was important.
His ability to protect her child. Was he strong enough?
    She looked to Bohdan. The same lethal aura that surrounded
Deuce surrounded him. His eyes, as dark as Deuce’s, never wavered from hers.
“It is true.”
    She glanced at her daughter, still asleep on the