Wulf didn't move until Kat had vanished. He was still trying to come to terms with everything Kat had told them.
"I didn't know about any of this, Wulf. I swear it."
"I know."
He stared at her, the mother of his child. It was incredible, and despite the confusion he felt, the one truth he knew was that a part of him wanted to shout out in delight. "Do you feel all right? Do I need to get you anything?"
She shook her head, then looked up at him. Her green eyes scorched him with need. "Actually, I don't know about you, but I could use a hug right now."
Mentally, he didn't think that it would be wise to get attached to her. To open himself up to a woman who came with a short expiration date, but he found himself pulling her into his arms anyway, and he had to tense to keep himself from falling victim to the sensation of her body against his. Her breath tickled the skin on his neck as she wrapped her arms around his waist.
She felt so good here. So right. In all these centuries, he'd never known anything like this feeling of warmth.
What was it about her that made him tremble? Made him hot and aching?
Closing his eyes, he held her close and let her scent of powder and roses lull him into forgetting they should be enemies.
Cassandra closed her eyes, too, and let Wulf's warmth seep into her.
It felt so wonderful to be touched like this. This wasn't sexual, it was the kind of touch that soothed. One that bound them a lot closer than the intimacies they had already shared.
How can I feel comforted by someone who has already told me he has no use for my people ?
Yet there was no denying that she did.
Then again, feelings seldom made sense.
As she stood there, one horrible thought disturbed the peace she felt. "Will you hate my baby, Wulf, because it will be part Apollite?"
Wulf grew tense in her arms as if he hadn't thought of that. He stepped away from her. "How Apollite will it be?"
"I don't know. For the most part, my family has been pure-blooded. My mother broke with the custom because she thought a human father could protect us better." Her stomach tightened as she remembered the secrets her mother had imparted to her not long before she died. "She figured he would at least outlive his children and grandchildren."
"She used him."
"No," she said breathlessly, offended that he would think that for even a minute. "My mother loved him, but like you, she was doing her duty to protect us. I guess since I was so young when she died, she didn't really have time to tell me how important my role would be if all of us died without children. Or maybe she didn't know either. She only said that it was every Apollite's duty to carry on our lineage."
Wulf moved to turn off the TV, but he didn't look at her now. He kept his attention on the mantel where an old sword rested on its side on a pedestal. "How Apollite are you? You don't have fangs and Chris said you can walk in daylight."
Cassandra wanted to go over and touch him again. She needed to feel close to him, but she could tell he wouldn't welcome her.
He needed time and answers.
"I had fangs as a child," she explained, not wanting to hold anything back from him. He deserved to know what their child might need in order to survive. "My father had them filed off when I was ten to better hide me among the humans. Like the rest of my people, I need blood to live, but it doesn't have to be Apollite, nor do I have to drink it or have it daily."
Cassandra paused as she thought about the necessities of her life and how much she wished she had been born human. But all in all, she had been much more fortunate than her sisters, who had tended to be more Apollite than she was. All four of them had been envious of how much easier life had been for Cassandra, who could walk in daylight.
"I usually go to the doctor for a transfusion every couple of weeks," she continued. "Since my father has a team of research doctors who work for him, he fabricated tests to say that I have a rare disease so that I can get what I need without alerting other doctors that I'm not quite human. I only go whenever I start to feel weak. And I haven't aged as quickly as most Apollites either. I hit my puberty just like a human female."
"Then maybe our child will be even more human." She couldn't miss the hopeful note in his voice as he spoke those words, and, like him, she prayed for the same thing. It would really be a miracle to have a human baby.
Not to mention the joy she felt that Wulf referred to the baby as theirs. At least that boded well.
For the baby anyway.
"You don't deny the baby?" she asked.
His look blistered her. "I know I was with you in our dreams and as Kat said I'm living proof of what the gods are capable of. So, no, I don't doubt the reality of this. The baby is mine and I will be a father to it."
"Thank you," she breathed as tears welled in her eyes. It was so much more than she had ever dared hope for.
She cleared her throat and banished her tears. She wouldn't cry. Not over this. Cassandra was lucky and she knew it. Unlike others of her kind, her child would have a father to keep him safe. One who could watch him grow up. "Look on the bright side, you only have to tolerate me for a couple of months and then I'm out of your hair forever."
He gave her a look so feral that it made her step back. "Don't ever treat death lightly."
She remembered what he had said in his dreams about watching his loved ones die. "Believe me, I don't. I'm very much aware of just how fragile our lives are. But maybe the baby will live longer than twenty-seven years."
"And if it doesn't?"
His hell would continue, only worse now because they would be his direct heirs.
His child.
His grandchildren. And he would be forced to watch them all die as young adults.
"I'm so sorry you got dragged into this."
"So am I." He stepped past her, and headed for a set of stairs that led downward.
"At least you will get to know the baby, Wulf," she called after him. "He or she will remember you. I will only have a few weeks with the baby before I have to die. He'll never know me at all."
He stopped dead in his tracks. For a full minute he didn't move.
Cassandra watched for any telltale emotions. His face was impassive. Without a comment, he continued on his way downstairs.
She tried to push his dismissal out of her thoughts. She had other things to focus on now, like the tiny baby that was growing inside her.
Heading for her room, she wanted to start making preparations. Time for her was all too critical and way too short.
Wulf entered his room and closed the door. He needed a little time alone to digest everything he'd been told.
He was going to be a father.
The child would remember him. But what if the child was more Apollite than Cassandra? Genetics was a weird science and he had lived long enough to see just how bizarre it could be. Look at Chris. No one had looked so much like Erik since Erik's son had died more than twelve hundred years before. Yet Christopher was the very image of Wulf's brother.