Masked By Danger by Christa Wick

Chapter Eighteen

Chucklingover her wolf’s sass and strength, Iris let her rise up to greet the clan leader, barely filtered, and cloaked in all the power of her magic.

Denver’s gaze remained as hard as yellow diamonds, but she saw his wolf blink. Just a little, but it was enough. Easing back, she stopped the amusement that had continued seeping up her throat, not wanting to be overtly disrespectful.

She dipped her head then, acknowledging Denver's status as clan leader, before pointing toward the living room visible at the end of the hall.

Denver led the way, Esme behind him. With his palm intimately placed against the small of Iris's back, Cade guided her forward.

"I think that's a first for him since he fully came into his wolf," Cade whispered into her ear.

Iris pushed down a victorious whoop.

She needed to work with Denver instead of having him constantly fight her at every turn. She also wanted to remain friends with his tenderhearted mate.

Entering the front room, Iris looked at Esme first. Kindness danced in the witch's gaze and she threw Iris a discreet wink.

Relieved, Iris sank onto the couch. Cade slid next to her. Out of sight of Esme and Denver, he gave her flesh a reassuring squeeze.

"Well?" Denver prompted.

His expression didn't look like he was ready to listen. Iris mashed her lips together as she weighed how much information she should parcel out at the moment. Deciding she would have to decide detail by detail and judge by everyone's reaction on how much more to reveal, she began.

"Oscar's last memory from before he was discovered by Denver was an operating room."

That hooked Denver's attention immediately. "Was he hurt?"

She shook her head then drew a deep breath. "Nothing seemed to be wrong with him. There was a woman in the room...pregnant..."

Her gaze jumped to Esme, recognition punching Iris in the throat. Words jumped from her before she had a chance to consider whether she should hold the information back. "Her face and eyes were an exact match for yours, but she had a wolf's physique."

Esme's face went slack before her expression sharpened. "What do you mean?"

"A twin—" Iris started.

Their reactions identical and simultaneous, Esme and Denver each shook their head, dismissing the idea. They both spoke, their words overlapping with the same message.

"There has never been a birth of twins, let alone one wolf and the other not."

Iris shrugged. "And, outside of The Nakari, I'm the first wolf to cast—that anyone knows of."

Cade pushed a little closer to Iris at her admission. Warmth flooded her chest, but she forced herself to ignore the sensation for the moment. She needed time to figure out what it meant to be both and what it meant for any possible future between her and Cade.

"So the woman looked like Esme and she was pregnant," Denver countered, his tongue stalling on the final word. Leaning closer to his mate, he curled his arm behind her, his hand resting on her opposite hip. He pushed his nose against her hair and then his lips pressed against her cheek.

Casting an apologetic look at the witch, Iris continued. "There were three men in the room, but one was clearly in charge. He referred to Oscar as 'my boy' and he had the same coloring, jet black hair and eyes—"

"Are you saying the man was a shifter?" Cade asked.

"No," Iris answered, her gaze still on Esme. The witch seemed to take a long time processing the information, her body physically backing away from some realization she didn't want to accept.

"I think she's describing Quentin," Esme said after a few more seconds of deliberation. "I've recognized the physical similarities, so has Lana, but we keep telling ourselves it's coincidental, that the coloring of all the cubs is—"

"Stop," Denver interrupted. He softened his sharp denial a second later as he nuzzled Esme's cheek once more. "Baby, Seth and I saw that bastard just as clearly as you and Lana did. We both thought on this and dismissed the possibility."

Esme looked away from her mate, the gears in her head still chewing at the issue until she finally found the answer. "The discovery of the cubs has brought so much hope to the clan. Everyone immediately falls in love with them. So why would we notice the impossible when we don't want to? Quentin isn't a wolf, he couldn't father Oscar, at least not naturally."

Forgetting her earlier desire to proceed with caution, Iris decided to throw a little kerosene onto the conversation. "You've already theorized that at least some Hunters are basically latents—the source of their magic the same as female latents. Could one be capable of impregnating a female shifter? And, as a latent, Camille could have gotten pregnant by a shifter, had twins and..."

All the air seemed to leave the room at what Iris was about to suggest, the tension broken only by Denver renewing his disbelief.

"We only have a cub's memory," he said. "Not even that, really, just what you thought he experienced."

"Iris has never seen Quentin," Cade reminded them.

"That's true," Iris agreed, glad that Cade was there to plug the gaps in her claims. Leaning forward, she focused her attention on Denver, her mind examining Oscar's memories for a detail that might convince the big wolf in front of her, or at least ease his conceding to her arguments.

"When you picked Oscar up as he was shifting," Iris began, her heart starting to knock around in her chest as she realized what she was about to say could tip Denver's opinion solidly against her. "He was screaming, 'You're not my daddy' and then 'I don't want you to be my daddy.' Do you remember?"

The look on Denver's face told Iris that he would never forget those words. Misunderstood, they had stabbed him in the heart.

Softly pushing her wolf at him, she tried to ease his heartache. "Those words weren't directed at you. They were for the black-haired man in charge."

There—she saw it, a crack in Denver's resistance. Now if she could just pry it open a little more instead of saying something that would seal the crack forever. She hesitated, thinking it through, what each detail she had seen meant and how accepting of those details Denver and Esme would be.

"Don't hold back," the witch whispered.

She had remained motionless since her last question, her gaze locked on her hands as they twisted in her lap. She held herself slightly apart from her mate despite his attempts to pull her close and ease the pain from the conversation's repeated reminders that she had not yet conceived his child when so many other latents had become pregnant from the first time they joined with their mate.

Giving a nervous lick of her lips, Iris pushed forward. "The man placed Oscar on a second operating table. Between the two tables, there was a tray loaded with scalpels and ametrine crystals, each about as big as the tip of my thumb."

That caught Esme's attention. Blood drained from her face and she shook her head.

"I didn't see what was done with the crystals," she assured Esme and Denver. "But the man seemed to be measuring the spaces between Oscar's vertebrae and then he picked up the scalpel and turned to the woman..."

Unsure of how she could possibly tell them the last detail, Iris drew a deep breath. They had to know and she had to tell them, no matter how much the visions had made her gut clench and threaten to spew.

Cade pressed against her back, his thumb gently stroking her flesh in a gesture of support. At least she hoped it was support. It felt amazing to know she wasn't alone any longer and that she hadn't permanently pushed him away.

Ignoring the urge not to, Iris met Esme's gaze. She saw a flash of fear, but also forgiveness and friendship. Drawing strength from Cade and the witch, she pushed the words out, praying Denver would at least turn them over in his mind before rejecting their validity.

"The last thing the man said before Oscar pulled back from the memory was that it was time for Oscar to meet his baby brother."