Chapter 16: Colt

Chapter 16: Colt

A dull ache sat in my ribcage for hours. After the girls were locked away and my father was bandaged up and treated for the bullet in his kidney by one of the dragon healers—and Muriel, who had since stopped resisting—I was left in my corner of the cavern with the nameless child. Nobody else wanted to take care of her. Nobody wanted to be responsible for letting her die and facing the consequences when Lothair returned. It was inevitable that whoever was watching over the child by the time her body failed would take the blame. After she had her first bowel movement and I figured out how to change her diaper, I swaddled her in the blanket again, bottle-feeding her like I’d seen my father do. She still wasn’t happy. Her ear-splitting cries kept everyone in the mine awake.

It was approaching sunrise when I took the baby outside, looking for some fresh air and a phone signal. The cool breeze finally calmed her down until she was cooing gently, her head nestled in the crook of my elbow while I scrolled through my phone, compiling my excuse for missing work a second day in a row. In my periphery, I glimpsed her looking back up at me with big, blue eyes that surely would change colour within the next few weeks. She was awfully cute. Enough to nearly make me smile. But there was too much on my mind, and just as quickly, I found myself looking at my phone again, calling up my office.

The conversation drained me. So did staying awake most of the night, dealing with the aftermath of Kiara’s failed rescue attempt. I paced in the tunnel, bouncing the baby in my arms until she had fallen asleep. Holding her close to my ear, the rapid fluttering of her heart reminded me of the healing she had yet to undergo. I wanted to talk to Kiara. Maybe she could help the baby since Muriel was already so drained from all the blood she’d been exposed to.

The room where the girls were kept was silent. It was the same room we kept Muriel in, but we kept them too far apart to touch each other and prevented them from speaking to one another with the presence of two guards who weren’t afraid to inflict damage should either of them raise a whisper. I walked in to find Muriel lying on the floor and Kiara as close to her mother as possible, but unable to reach her. Aislin sat with her back against the wall, leering at me with half-lidded disdain, while Billie laid miserably on her side. My heart tightened with empathy for all four of them, remembering how the last time I had seen Aislin and Billie was while Aislin’s house was burning down. We killed her father. It made my throat tight.

“Whose baby is that?” asked Aislin.

“Whose do you think?” Exactly how many pregnant women did she recall hanging out with Dalesbloom and the Inkscales?

She narrowed her eyes. “What happened to Sibyelle?”

“Did Muriel not bring you up to speed?”

Kiara lanced me with her sharp violet gaze. “She’s been out cold since using up her magic on your vile father.”

The baby turned her head, wiggling inside the blanket. I paused to watch her yawn. “Sibyelle died giving birth to her.”

This news roused Billie from the floor, sitting up to peer at me as well. She frowned softly, tucking hair behind her ear. “Why do you have her?”

“Yeah,” added Aislin, “where’s Lothair?”

“We don’t know,” I said.

While Aislin and Billie exchanged a look, Kiara staunchly avoided my eyes. My attention remained on my fated mate. “Muriel said the baby has some kind of heart defect. I was hoping you could use some healing magic on her to help her.”

“That baby can die for all I care,” hissed Kiara.

Were circumstances different, I might have felt similar, but after all the time I’d spent caring for the infant so far, I hated to admit that I had grown fond of her. She was helpless—she’d never asked to be brought into a world like this. I shared a kinship with her in that regard. “She’s done nothing wrong. I can’t just sit by and let her suffer.”

“I’m not touching that baby,” said Kiara, glaring at me.

Where I expected Aislin and Billie to speak up in defense of the child, they both remained silent. The dragons were their enemies, through and through. Apparently, that included the nameless infant.

“Fine,” I relented. Clutching the baby tighter, I gravitated toward Kiara, our fated mate bond once more imploring me to get closer. She slowly rose up to her knees, staring back at me in seething defiance. My expression remained unchanged. “Did you really think you could bust in here, steal Muriel out from under our noses, and escape without getting caught?”

“Yes.”

“Of course. Why else would you have shown up here if you didn’t think you could pull it off?” I drawled. “Unless it was just to see me again.”

Kiara’s nose screwed up in disgust. “Don’t flatter yourself, you horny chump.”

I laughed to hide the stinging pain of her rejection, leaning in and lowering my voice for her. “Yet if you caught me in a room alone, I bet you wouldn’t be able to help yourself.”

“Yeah. Help myself from wringing your fucking neck!”

I tutted, covering the baby’s ears. “Language.” Actually, I didn’t want her vitriol to wake the infant and break out another round of crying.

The girls, however, seemed immune to my coy teasing, something Aislin was already familiar with. They all glowered at me.

“How can you just stand there cracking jokes like that?” snapped Aislin. “Like our lives aren’t on the line? Did you forget how David’s minions killed my dad just a few weeks ago?”

“Or how David was going to sexually assault me?” Billie contributed with coldness she’d never wielded at me before.

“Or how David is planning to slaughter my mom and me for our horns?” added Kiara.

I immediately regretted taunting Kiara. Our physical proximity made me stupid with lust, even in front of the other girls and Muriel, holding the baby in my arms, despite everything they had all gone through because of my father’s greed. Guilt made me purse my lips and grumble, taking a step away from them all. “Fine, I get it.”

“Why don’t you just fuck off, Colt?” growled Aislin.

I opened my mouth to protest, glancing at Billie, who I thought was most likely to understand how very little I wanted to be involved in this.

She just huffed and shook her head, disappointed in me.

For a minute, I lingered wordlessly, then let my shoulders sink. I wanted badly to apologize for everything, to appeal to them and promise that I didn’t want any of this to happen. I wanted to search for a solution and help them escape. But with the two dragon shifter guards breathing down my neck, there was nothing I could do or say that wouldn’t immediately incriminate me.

So without saying anything, I turned away. They probably burned with the satisfaction of thinking they were right about me—that I was every bit as despicable as they thought. It hurt that I couldn’t prove them wrong.

Instead of seeking the comfort of solitude, my feet took me through the cavern to where my father was resting in his room on the floor in his sleeping bag. I only wanted to check in on him, compelled by duty and the desire to feel useful to someone, but his eyes were open. He was awake and staring at the stalactites in the ceiling before turning his head to me. “You’re still carrying that child everywhere.”

“I don’t want her to get cold. She’s starting to sleep more… I don’t think she’s doing well.”

David sneered, disinterested in the infant. “Perhaps you should let her die. That’ll teach Lothair not to vanish when we need him most.”

“I’m not going to just let her die.”

My father grunted as he sat up, slinging an arm over the bandages wrapped around his abdomen. “Your valiance is wasted on Lothair, you know. He’s going to be abandoning his daughter anyway when he turns Lycan.”

“And you’ll be abandoning me,” I countered.

“You’ll become the Alpha of Dalesbloom in my stead. You’re capable of ensuring your own survival. Which belabors me to remind you I’ve yet to see you prove you’re even worthy of the role. Perhaps I should give it to Garrett instead.”

I wondered if that would be the wisest choice in the long run. Then I could flee without the responsibility of a pack—and my father’s crimes—on my shoulders. I averted my eyes, unwilling to speak my thoughts.

“You can prove your loyalty to Dalesbloom and me by making a decision and acting on it,” decided David.

“What decision is that?”

“We have no use for Billie and Aislin. Much as I would like to keep Billie, given my fondness of the stupid girl, she’ll serve no purpose to me once I’m Lycan. And Aislin, that mouthy tart, annoys me just to breathe her stench. They have both become our enemies regardless of your feelings for them. You need to prove your loyalty, Colt. You’ll kill one of them and leave the other to me.”

My heart immediately sickened. I couldn’t believe what my father was asking of me. “What?”

“You heard me.”

I did, and it devastated me. To choose between having to take the life of my sister or the girl I had crushed on most of my life—like that was the only way to prove I was worthy of leading Dalesbloom—made me want to vomit. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am. Put that damned child down, Colt. You’re not some housewife. I’ll give you an hour to make your decision, understand? And if you aren’t here in this room telling me who it is you’ll slaughter for Dalesbloom, I will track you down myself for your answer, and I can assure you I will not be happy about it.” David bared his teeth at me, impressing the seriousness of his threat.

I backed away, wanting to argue with him and openly accuse him of the mounting madness I’d witnessed these past couple of months. But I knew that refusing him at that moment would reward me with the same treatment as the girls. He would reject me, tear me down, and then chain me up with them.

“Don’t disappoint me, Colt,” he warned as I left the room.

How could he expect me to kill either of them?

I retreated back to my corner of the mine, but even there, I couldn’t hide from the gravity of my newest dilemma. It seemed the only escape was to flee the mine, to run and never look back with the infant in my arms, but that would mean abandoning Billie and Aislin to certain death. It would mean betraying and abandoning my fated mate, too, and even though Kiara hated me, I still wanted her. I was realizing now how badly I wished to throw myself at their feet and ask forgiveness, to find a way to save them from the fate they had sealed for themselves.

But it wasn’t their fault. They were only trying to save Muriel. This was all my father.

So I supposed, more than anything, I wanted to save them from him.

I sat with my back against the wall, hushing the baby after she had woken, and started to cry again, frantically searching for the answer.

Then a storm once more erupted from somewhere in the tunnel. The sound of chaos was growing familiar to me—and this time, it was accompanied by masculine voices instead of feminine.

They were the war cries of two Alphas who had come searching for their mates.