Chapter 31

Chapter 31

Remi, we've got a serious problem with the cub's DNA panel. I've run it three times. Same result.

—Dr.Finn St. James to Remi Denier (12 hours ago)

AUDEN TUCKED HER hair behind her ears. "Will you keep the baby company while I fix myself up in case Charisma loses patience quicker than we think she might?"

"Me and the cublet have plenty of conversation to keep us busy." Remi offered Auden his arm. "Have you been on your feet yet?"

"No." She gripped his forearm hard as she settled her weight on her feet, but though she wobbled, she was able to stand.

He heard a demanding little rumble at the same time, felt his lips curve. "I'll organize food for you."

"I should be embarrassed at that, but I'm too hungry." Releasing his arm, she looked around.

He pointed to the door to the back and left. "Shower and toilet through there. If I know Hugo and Sass, both will be fully stocked with what you need."

It took her time to make it to the door, and he kept his eye on her throughout, ready to race over and catch her if he thought she might fall. Finn had told him that her weakness might linger for twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Knowing the facilities had sensors that monitored a patient's vital functions and would send out an alert if anything went astray, he didn't worry once she was inside with the door shut behind her.

"Your mama's as strong as you are," he said to the littlest member of his pack—because Remi and RainFire had taken Auden's request for sanctuary seriously. He'd already discussed it with his senior team, and not a single person had been anything but infuriated that this helpless infant might be used as a pawn by Auden's family.

That they'd protect her was a given.

Reaching inside, he stroked the baby's arm with his finger, his protectiveness in overdrive.

His leopard rumbled again, and the cub seemed to smile in her sleep.

He could swear he felt her inside him, same way he could feel every other member of his pack. He'd asked Lucas once, if that changed as the pack grew, if the bond became weaker. The alpha's answer had always stuck with him: "An alpha's heart is big enough to encompass every single member of his pack, Remi. So long as he lets that heart grow and grow until the love inside hurts—and he never flinches from that hurt."

Remi could do that. He wanted to do that.

What he did next, however, wasn't the act of an alpha, but of a man looking after a woman who was far more to him than he could permit her to guess while she was so vulnerable. Taking out his phone one-handed, he called their chef. "Fabien, can you put together a plate for Auden? She's partial to your pastries. Don't forget to use gloves and the 3D-printed serveware I made for her."

"I've got all her items in a separate spot," Fabien assured him in his French-accented English. "I'll add a glass of the nutrients we keep for the squad. Arrows say those are still the best to give Psy a jolt of energy after a big drain, and I think our new maman could use it, non ?"

"Good thinking." Tamsyn had also mentioned that Psy brains required energy of a kind the nutrients were designed to provide in a far more efficient fashion than ordinary food. "Send a couple of extra sachets that she can mix up at will."

"Will do. How is our cublet?"

Of course every single member of his pack wanted to cuddle and hold Auden's baby, but they understood why they couldn't. Little Jojo had nodded solemnly when he'd described it to her in terms a child could grasp. "I got it, Remi. The cub got borned out of her mama's belly before it was a full baby. So that's how come it's gotta stay in the 'firmary."

He'd grinned and tapped her on the nose, while Jojo snuggled in for a cuddle. "Exactly right."

Finn walked back through the door at that moment, his eyes immediately going to the empty bed. When he raised an eyebrow, Remi nudged his head toward the back. "I think she's ready for that tough conversation," he said, his gut tense as anger beat a rapid tattoo at his temple. "She's worried Wai won't wait to contact her, and I think we need to know what we're dealing with before then."

Finn rubbed a jaw as bristled as Remi's; neither of them had been in any frame of mind to think about grooming for the past two days. "She's in better mental shape than I expected, so I can't see any reason to hold back."

After checking the readings on the incubator, the healer said, "Adorable, isn't she?" He placed his hand against the plas, his own leopard rumbling.

The lights flickered in a different pattern from when it was Remi.

"Already have a favorite, do you?" Finn grumbled. "And after all I did for you. That's gratitude for you." Gruff words, but his tone held nothing but affection.

The baby, Remi knew, was soaking it all in. No, he didn't have scientific proof, but he was an alpha. He knew . He felt her happiness, her sense of contentment…and when Auden was near, a calm absolute and unbroken. "How long will she need to be in the incubator?"

"I'd say a couple of weeks," Finn said, moving to strip Auden's bed as he spoke. "Some cubs need longer, some shorter, but her lungs are well-formed, so she might graduate out of it faster."

A stir of sound as the door opened on the other side of the room, the scent of soap and body lotion hitting Remi's nose, but below all that was the scent of Auden. Just Auden. Warm, strong, enigmatic Auden.

She swayed on her feet. "Whoa."

Remi was by her side before she could topple over. "Lean on me." He supported her all the way back to the bed—which Finn had fitted with a crisp new sheet at the speed of light.

Once at the bed, he just lifted her onto it.

"How do you do that?" she muttered, while Finn settled her with a pillow behind her back.

Remi was about to stroke his hand over her cheek when he caught the scent of food. Going to the door, he took the tray from the juvenile—who was wearing gloves Fabien must've given him. "Thanks, JD."

Jojo's brother made a sign with three of his fingers that was the newest rage among his age group. "Cub awake?" His leopard in his eyes, eager and bright.

This one, Remi thought, was going to grow up to be a soldier, one of the protectors of the pack. "Cubs that small just sleep and sleep and sleep some more."

"Wow, and Mom says I'm bad." He raised a hand. "I gotta buzz. School. When can I go into full soldier training?"

"When you've graduated and decided on your other specialty." That was another thing he'd picked up from DarkRiver: to increase the pack's intellectual capacity by ensuring that each and every packmate studied a skill, trade, or profession.

Lucas, for example, had an architect, multiple engineers, builders, an accountant, and more in his pack—all of which fed directly into the pack's success when it came to their construction arm. Then there were the teachers, chefs, and even a budding chemist. And that wasn't anywhere near the full extent of the pack's basket of trades and professions.

Tamsyn was a qualified doctor as well as a healer, a path Finn had also taken. Remi hadn't made an exception for himself, either—in his final year as a driver, when the ache to set up his own pack had become overwhelming, he'd put his nose to the grindstone to do an intensive course in business management. Because being a good alpha meant learning to deal with every weapon—even the political and business ones—so that no one could take advantage of his pack.

"I'm gonna be soooooo old," Jayden groaned before limping off in an exaggerated fashion, his back bowed, and one hand pressed to his spine. "See, this is how ancient I'll be. Oh my bones! Where's my cane? Get off my lawn, you feral cubs!"

Leopard huffing at the juvenile's dramatics, he carried the tray over to Auden. She'd drunk half a glass of nutrients and had a croissant in her hand in under a minute. She ate one-handed, her other hand inside the incubator, stroking her baby.

Remi glanced at the mobile comm that Auden had told him his mother had bought specifically for him. The knowledge made him warm inside, the memory of his mother's love a bigger force than his grief. "I've got to go handle a bit of pack business. Back in twenty so we can talk." He met Finn's eyes.

The healer gave a subtle nod, while Auden continued to alternately coo at her baby and make sounds of orgasmic delight at the food that went straight to parts of his body that he needed to put the brakes on.

He almost ran out of the infirmary.

Just as well that the business he had to deal with was a comm call with a hard-ass human who thought he could underbid for RainFire's services as security specialists just because they were newer on the block. "Your loss," Remi said laconically, leaning back against the wall opposite the comm screen. "I'm sure the cut-rate guards will put their bodies in the line of fire for you just fine."

The man blustered for another few minutes before agreeing to their rates, and Remi told him the contract would be coming through. Angel, who'd been standing out of visual range of the potential client, groaned. "He's going to be a nightmare of a client."

"I know—but man is connected." It was the only reason Remi hadn't already booted him. "Just think of all the work that'll flow our way when people start to notice that his guards are top-tier and discreet."

While their mech arm was part of their long-term business strategy, RainFire had had to come up with something with which to quickly generate income the first couple of years of their existence as a pack. Because a pack that couldn't look after its people was doing those people a disservice. Better for it to dissolve and for everyone to go their own way.

They'd had a packwide meeting that included every single adult in the group, figured out the skills at their disposal—and realized they had a significant number of people with experience in security.

Angel had run security for a major racetrack.

"He also has close associates in the indi-mech industry," Remi added when Angel continued to look dubious. "Try not to strangle him."

"No promises," Angel muttered as the two of them left Remi's aerie.

Angel then took the tree road to go meet with his security team, while Remi jumped down to the forest floor, his goal the infirmary.

He heard Auden's voice before he entered the part of the structure that held her and her baby. She was touching and talking to her child, but shot him a smile. He hated that she'd smoothed her hair back into a tight knot that took all the energy out of it, but if that was what made her feel safe, that was what made her feel safe.

Her clothing was simple enough—a white shirt, below that sweatpants. Hugo and the other maternals had done a good job with the spare clothing they'd put together for her. The shirt would pass muster in any comm conference, and no one was going to see the sweatpants except for those in the infirmary.

Not wanting to wipe the soft joy off her face, he nonetheless knew it was time. "Auden, we need to discuss something."

···

AUDEN'S heart squeezed into a knot small and agonizing. Removing her hand from her baby's skin after one last touch, she faced Remi. "I know. I'm a security risk, aren't I?"

But he frowned and shook his head. "Not if you stay in this cube. I don't want to cage you, but—"

"Telepathic images for teleport locks," she interrupted. "I get that. It's smart. And with what's going on with my memory blanks and personality changes, I can't be sure about my ability to protect your pack." Never would she want to bring any harm to Remi and his pack, people who had protected her and her baby even though most of them had never even met her.

She spread her hand over the clear plas top of the incubator. "I don't want to go anywhere anyway. I want to be with her every second. I'm so afraid that I'll lose myself, that I won't know she's my baby, that I'll forget how to love her." A painful thickness in her throat, she looked at where Finn sat at the other end of the room in front of a small but impressive computer station. "Did Remi tell you?"

The healer nodded. "Yes. I'm sorry we—"

"No, you had to know." Auden kept finding herself interrupting them—because if this wasn't about security, then it had to be about her brain. She didn't want to know, didn't want to hear, a child clapping her hands over her ears.

"I could've come out of the birth in an altered state, could've hurt my baby while not myself…but I suppose any personality I inhabit is me, which means the ugliness that comes out is me, too." It was an awful thing to accept about herself.

Finn rolled his chair over from across the room, his expression solemn in a way it hadn't been since she woke. "There's another thing, Auden. The graft you said went into your head?"

Mouth dry, Auden nodded. There was nowhere left to go, nothing left to say to stave off the inevitable.

"It's still there. Encased in scar tissue, but present. I'm guessing they couldn't get it out without destroying part of your brain."

Auden blinked. She'd expected to hear of new neural damage, not old scar tissue. "Frankly I'm surprised that stopped them," she said on a roar of relief. "Do you think there's any danger of it going active?"

"In a stroke of luck, the Arrow doctor we had with us is a neurosurgeon who's worked with experimental tech, and I was troubled enough to show him the scan—don't worry, he might have an ego, but he takes medical confidentiality seriously, so he won't talk about it."

Auden nodded, her faith in Remi and this healer a thing unshakable. If they said she could trust the Arrow doctor, then she could trust the Arrow doctor.

"He says all signs are that it's dead, effectively burned out," Finn added. "And the way your brain's scarred around it, it won't migrate and cause further damage."

Auden's chest rose and fell in a deep inhale and exhale. "So, that's good news." Warmth began to flow through her blood…until she felt Remi's hand on her lower back, his eyes leopard when they looked into hers.

Heart thunder, she found herself breathing fast and shallow. "What is it?"

Remi's voice was a rumble against her. "Finn did the standard birth DNA panel on your cub to check for genetic diseases."

"It's so we can handle anything treatable straightaway," Finn said.

Auden hadn't realized she'd turned into Remi until her hand clenched hard on his T-shirt. "Did you find—"

"No." The healer held up a hand. "She's got a clean bill of health. But the thing is…she wasn't created from your egg."

Auden's mind vanished in a white haze that blurred all light and sound. She was conscious of Remi speaking, of the growl in his chest, of the way he held her close to his warmth, but she felt distant, removed from it.

Then came a flutter inside her mind, and with it a roar back to the bright colors and even brighter emotions of reality. "I don't care," she said, her voice hard. "She's my baby. I love her until I can't breathe. No one is ever going to take her away from me."

"What did I tell you?" Remi's chin on her hair, his fingers massaging the stiff tendons of her neck.

Finn rolled his eyes, his lips kicking up at the corners now that he'd delivered the news that had clearly been weighing him down. "That Auden would tear off the head of anyone who tried to say this cub wasn't hers."

Auden's chest filled with air again. She hadn't known how much she craved Remi's approval of her as a mother until she got it. Because he was changeling, a creature of family and loyalty. More, he'd had a mother he loved. He understood what it meant to be a good mother, a mother who protected and shielded.

That he saw that in her? It made her feel bigger, stronger, worthy of her child.

"No argument from us on the cub being yours." Remi's hand continued to massage the tension out of her nape, the act so luxurious that it felt decadent to indulge in it in front of Finn, but she couldn't make herself move away. "Your love for her fucking shines, Auden."