Their pride in her and her ability to survive knew no bounds. That baby that had stared at him so imploringly in those first days of her life, so weak and ill, in pain and looking to him to fix it, would have to fault him now for the horrors she’d faced. They had accepted the news that she had died. They had taken a lifeless babe whose face had been covered with a likeness of their own baby, and buried it as their own. They hadn’t questioned it. They had trusted their doctors, trusted their own senses when their baby supposedly died in their arms.
“We love her anyway, Helena.” He knew they did, they always would, no matter what she felt for them. The grief would be unbearable. The weight of it would be crushing, but they loved her, no matter what she might think of them.
“She’s suffered so much,” Helena said then, once again, not for the first time. “We didn’t protect her. She would have to blame us for not protecting her.” The sob that escaped her and the tears that fell down her face broke her heart.
“Helena, all we can do is love her,” he repeated his answer, just as he had for the past week. “She’s still our daughter, a part of us, and we love her more for her incredible strength and will to love. She has every right to blame me, protecting her was my responsibility, not yours. A daughter always loves her mother though. She’ll love you, sweetheart. She won’t be able to help herself.” He kept his tone encouraging and confident, filled with that inner strength he knew she responded to. This woman was his rock, she always had been. Without her, he would be completely lost within the world.
How Catarina would feel about him, he wasn’t so certain. She had every right to hate him, to blame him for not seeing the truth. There had to have been signs. Something he had missed that he should have seen, simply because she was she was his and Helena’s child, a part of his heart and soul. When they had lost her a light that could never be replaced in their lives had been extinguished.
“Oh, Ken.” Helena turned to his chest, one arm circling his waist to hold him closer. “None of this was your fault, and no one has the right to blame you. It’s just been so long, and she doesn’t know either of us, she believed she had no parents at all. And now she’s so strong, a part of history in a way. I think I fear she won’t see us worthy somehow. Won’t see me worthy.”
She was the most worthy person he knew besides their daughter.
“She’s our daughter,” he said softly. “With your compassion and pureness of heart, and I’m sure a bit of my pure bullheaded stubbornness. And she needs a mother, Helena. Every girl, no matter her age, needs her mother.”
“And her father.” The voice had them jumping to their feet and turning to the door, the pure sweetness of it, so reminiscent of her mother’s, shocking them both.
“Catarina,” Helena whispered, awed, so filled with hope and love.
“What of a father?” Catarina asked again as he held to the hand of the Breed that had arranged the meeting. “Don’t they need their fathers as well?”
His throat was tight was joy, with tears, fury against the forces that took her and amazement that she stood before them now.
He cleared his throat, fighting to make it work.
“I don’t know,” he said, his tone hoarse, sounding almost broken. “But fathers need their little girls, no matter their age. No matter the years that separate them. We need our daughter,” he affirmed then. “They took the light when they stole you. We need it back, baby.” His voice broke, choked, and a single tear slipped past his control. “We need you back.”
? ? ?
They needed her. Not wanted her. Not just accepted her.
They needed her.
She took the first step toward them and they rushed to her. The scent and feel of their love surrounded her, behind her the awareness of her mate and their bond strengthened her.
She had always belonged, she just hadn’t realized it. And now she belonged as she’d never imagined possible.
Catarina Graymore, Breed, mate, daughter.
Loved . . .
And complete.
? ? ?
Beyond the meeting room Cullen Maverick stood behind the open door, propped against the wall, arms crossed, his gaze on the abstract pattern of the composite cement floor.
He was a Bengal Breed, but he couldn’t smell the emotions and bonds, connections and fears that he knew would be drifting from the room. He couldn’t touch the earth and connect to it, feel its warnings and sense it moods as other Breeds. He was in the dark where the gifts and talents of his race were concerned. He hadn’t even been able to mate the woman he’d loved to save her from the illness that decimated her body.
As a Breed, he was a failure. Recessed where the Breeds inner gifts were concerned.
He was as strong as any Breed, as intelligent, though in different areas, as Gideon, or Graeme, he reminded himself. Dr. Foster hadn’t expected twins from the embryo he’d mutated with animal genetics and select human DNA. He’d definitely not expected a defective Breed. He was probably lucky they hadn’t killed him at birth as they did others.