CONCEPTION (The Others) Read Free Page B

at evidence to the contrary. A prickle of
unease went down his spine.
    “What happened when Harley performed his badass biker routine?”
    Nick’s smile was full of admiration. “She shot him.”
    “What?”
    “She warned him to get out of her way, and kept on walking.”
Nick laughed.
    “What did he do?” Deuce leaned his hip against the desk and
watched the screen as the woman trudged closer.
    “Harley went full testosterone and dared her to make him.”
    “And she shot him?”
    Nick tilted his head to the side, his long brown hair
falling between Deuce and his view of the screen. “Didn’t even break stride.”
    Deuce
stepped to the side, keeping the woman in view. “Was he hurt?”
    Nick
snorted. “It’d take more than a flesh wound to the thigh to slow Harley down.”
    That
was true. Deuce studied the screen more closely. There was a familiarity in the
way the woman moved. A bone-deep determination in the way she held her body
that he recognized. He touched the screen, his fangs surging into his mouth,
fury summoning his power. “Did Harley retaliate?”
    “Hell no.” Nick fiddled with the zoom, sharpening the focus.
“But Luke and Shiva hightailed it down her back trail to make sure she wasn’t
being followed.
    “Good.” He would hate to have to kill the Pack leader. Deuce
fought back the darkness beating at his calm.
    “Said he wasn’t having any part of scaring a momma and her
baby,” Nick added with a flick of his brow.
    “What?”
    He motioned to the screen. “She’s got a baby under that
coat.”
    Anger mixed with hope. She’d betrayed him. That he could
deal with. But she’d let another touch her. That he would not be forgiving.
“Where is Harley now?”
    “Keeping an eye on her.”
    “Tell him to wait on my arrival.”
    Nick murmured into the transmitter. Deuce did not need to
wait for a reply to be relayed. Harley’s “If she falls one more time, I’m just
carrying her and to hell with the rules and that peashooter she’s packing”
reached his ears just fine.
    Nick arched a brow at him. “You get that?”
    “He will not touch her,” Deuce stated calmly, as he left the
room.
    No one but he would ever touch her for as long as it took
for his demons to exhaust themselves.

 
 
    * * * * *

 
    Deuce dropped silently to the ground beside Harley. As if
part of the increasing storm he slid between the flakes. To anyone but an
Other, he would have been invisible.
    “She’s about played out,” Harley murmured, not taking his
eyes off the slow-moving figure. Snowflakes caught on his hair, collecting on
the shelf of the deep blue bandanna he used to keep the long brown hair out of
his eyes.
    Deuce watched as Eden slogged through the heavy, knee-deep
snow with muscles long since exhausted. She slipped, went down on one knee, and
caught herself on a sapling. Her “Son of a bitch” reached them clearly on the
crisp evening air. One hand clasped her middle protectively. For the space of a
minute, she stayed bent over, slight shoulders heaving beneath the huge parka
with the effort to draw a breath.
    Deuce strained, but he could not detect her energy or that
of the baby.
    Harley smiled slightly. His canines gleamed in the purple of
twilight. “She’s got quite the colorful vocabulary when she gets going.”
    “She has a tendency to do everything well.” Including
setting him up. “You saw a baby?”
    “I can’t sense it any more than I can sense her, but yeah,
she’s packing a little one.”
    Deuce absorbed that information as Harley continued. “Got it
in one of those little chest carriers.”
    Deuce could feel the wolf’s eyes on him as he asked, “What
do you want me do with her?”
    That was a loaded question. What did he do with a ghost?
Deuce sighed and ran his hand through his hair. Every instinct in him demanded
that he protect her, shelter her from harm, while his baser self remembered all
that she’d been part of and demanded vengeance. In spades.
    “Damn