ineffective.”
Her chin lifted. “I’m always prepared for the worst.”
“Of course.”
“We may need to add more beds in the future,” she conceded.
“I will defer to your judgment. Order anything you think necessary.”
A muffled ring came from her pocket. She smiled an apology, leaning to the side to retrieve her cell.
The unnatural sound was like acid on his nerves. “I wish you wouldn’t carry that thing.”
“You’re so paranoid,” she teased. “Porter keeps me protected. And this
thing
has freed me from living at the clinic. The convenience far outweighs the risk.” She looked down at the incoming number and raised her eyebrows. “Porter.”
Dylan stilled, his instincts on alert. Porter never wasted words—
or
his time. If he called, there was a valid reason.
“Hello. Yes. He’s here with me.” Elen met Dylan’s stare, her eyes intense. “Okay. We’re upstairs in the study. Do you want to talk to him?” She blinked, staring down at the phone, then back to Dylan. “Porter just hung up on me.”
T hree
P ORTER BARGED INTO THE STUDY, HIS BREATHING UNEVEN . His raven-dark brows narrowed over fierce blue eyes as he glared at Dylan with obvious annoyance. A tattoo of a Celtic cross covered his bare cranium. He always kept his head shaved bald, flaunting his Irish mother’s symbol. The personal insult the Christian emblem represented to the Guardians was just an added perk.
He marched over, brandishing a cell phone. “If you will not carry your damn phone”—he took in a large gulp of air, his nostrils flaring—“I’m wondering why you bother having it.”
Dylan accepted the phone and placed it on the mantel. “What’s wrong?”
“You had a call on the main line.” Porter crossed thick arms, his chin raised. He wasn’t an overly tall man, barely six feet, if that. But what he lacked in height was more than compensated for by width. He was vicious in battle, fearless—his inability to shift irrelevant.
“And—”
“It was that woman.”
A fist wrapped around Dylan’s gut and squeezed. There was only one person Porter called
that woman
. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
Elen inhaled sharply, edging to the side of the sofa. “Sophie? Are you sure?”
Porter shot her a disgusted glare before handing Dylan a piece of paper with a number. “She gave you an hour to call.” He checked his watch. “And I wasted fifteen minutes trying to find you.” The censure in his voice eased into respect. “She was wanting me to tell you that it concerns your son.”
“A son,” Elen whispered.
Dylan stared down at the number, immobile. All thoughts of the Guardians, Cymru, his people, the gathering—
gone
. Until that moment he hadn’t known the sex of his child. He turned his back to the room, facing the fireplace, not wanting his weakness observed.
“Watch yourself,” Porter warned. “That woman has more cunning than a mother fox.”
Dylan hadn’t needed the warning. He’d underestimated Sophie once, on the night she ran. Four months pregnant and he still hadn’t been able to track her. Then she erased her life. Completely. Everything except her father’s grave. Desecration, it seemed, was where her line of betrayal ended.
Porter cleared his throat, giving his form of consolation. “You almost had her in California.”
“Four years ago,” Dylan snapped, unappeased. “And she cleared out just before we got there.”
Five times he’d almost caught Sophie, but not once had he gotten a glimpse of his child. Every time she had eluded him as if an unseen force had warned her. A ridiculous notion, he knew . . . because Sophie was only human.
Dylan felt a delicate hand on his shoulder and shrugged it off. “I want to be alone for this call.”
Elen’s footsteps retreated to Porter’s side of the room. “We’ll wait for you outside then.”
“Use the house phone,” Porter added. “I’ll be tracing the call.”
* * *
S OPHIE SAT ON A
Franzeska G. Ewart, Kelly Waldek