by Mason Sabre
With jerky movements, Xander shuffled back. “I … I don’t know … what house?”
Stephen’s tall frame cast no shadow on Xander when he stepped closer, not letting the fae get away from him. “I’ll be more specific. See if this jogs your memory. What were you doing at the house earlier where you met with Lee Norton?”
“I was … I … they were just there. I didn’t know. I …”
And then he didn't get the chance to answer because Stephen lunged for him. He didn't care as he grabbed the front of Xander's shirt, lifted him off the ground, and tossed him back like he was nothing.
He charged after him, bent down. “Liar,” he ground out, his voice a half growl.
Xander put a hand up to ward Stephen off, not that it would help. Nothing would. "It's not what you think."
Stephen grabbed him again, lifted him, and threw him. Xander rolled this time, arms out trying to protect himself. Words falling from his lips like lies laden with shit that Stephen didn’t want to hear.
"Do I look like some loved-up wife who wants to believe you? You were drunk, right? Didn't know what you were doing? I saw you. At the fucking house. I saw you with them. With Lee … How Xander? How could you even do that? This … this state I am in … it is because of you?”
“You have to understand. I …”
“Understand?” Stephen arched a brow. “There is no understanding in this. What I know is that you betrayed us. Not me, them. Eden, Helena, Aiden. You sold us out to the enemy; my wife, my children. All of them.”
Xander scuttled back, trying to get up at the same time and falling as he did it. His arm gave way when he tried to catch himself, buckling at the elbow and sending him reeling back to the ground. “It’s not like you think.” He got to his feet again, this time he managed it, staggering. He put his hand out to Stephen. “Please.”
He could ask Stephen to stop all he wanted. There was no mercy now. None at all. He was lucky he could still speak. “Why, Xander? Why did you do it? For money? Was that the reason?”
“No. I …”
Without warning, Stephen charged at him again and slammed his fist into Xander’s face. His head snapped sideways from the impact, but Stephen lunged for him and grabbed him by the shirt. “Was it worth it?” Xander’s breathing came in sharp little bursts of air that went across his lips.
“No.” He pushed his hand against Stephen's chest, drove to the point that heat soaked in through his shirt. His own breaths caught in his throat, scratching, aching for release.
“You don’t have power on this side. Your fae shit doesn’t work here.” Anger was a thick cloak wrapping itself around them both until the air was so tight, if they needed to breathe, it would have been too hard. “I hope Lee paid you well. I hope it was enough for what you have done. I can’t even fathom it. Helena … she saved your life, for fuck’s sake. She helped you.”
“Please. I can explain.”
“Do you know what Lee does? If he gets my children? Do you know what they do to the kids there? Have you ever seen the cages in the back? I can’t …” He thrust Xander back, letting out a growl. The world was so many shades as he tried to hold on to himself. He didn’t even see Aiden and Joey, almost like they were fighting for Xander from different sides of the veil. Eden was crying. Joey was hanging on. “How long have you been working with Lee?”
The answer rode Xander’s face like a hooker with her legs open.
He didn’t need the answer from him, did he? God, he’d been stupid. Blind. “I’m an idiot, aren’t I? Fucking hell. An A-class idiot. Has it been right from the start? Since those letters? Nigel? Mel? Are they in on it too? Is that why they aren’t around anymore?”
That was the thing. While Lee was holding him and Helena, they had got letters to Eden and Xander. They had passed notes through Mel who had worked for Lee and through another contact, Kirsty. He'd not seen either of them yet.
“No. They moved. Nigel …” He took a breath. “They’ve got a place. It wasn’t meant to be like this. We were supposed to get you off the bus and go to them, you and Helena. I …”
He thought to ask about Kirsty, but hell, she had a family, children. He’d be best finding out for himself where they were and how they were. Later, though. It could all wait.
Everything was lies, wasn't it? Big fucking lies he couldn't handle … didn't even know how to. Everything in his head crashed all at one time and god, he couldn't hold on to it. He couldn't hold on to himself. Raw rage burned under his skin, sending shock waves to his trapt tiger. If he could let the animal out, they’d all be screwed. Every one of them. He walked away from Xander … walked to the house almost with his hands covering his face, and his breaths caught in his throat. When he was calm enough to speak … when he dared, he turned.
“You were meant to save us all,” Xander called from behind. “You were meant to fix this. You were meant to …”
“You’re saying it is my fault?”
A pause. “No. But it was meant to be you. You … you were meant to save all of us. Not get caught. Not die.”
“I was trying to. You were meant to be helping me do that.”
Xander nodded. “I know.” He sucked in a breath and then he puffed out his cheeks and let it out again, his eye wandering, but not too far. He didn’t know he was dead yet. Didn’t know he wasn’t in his body. “I don’t have any other choice.”
Those words didn’t register. He arched his brow again. “There’s always a choice. No matter what it is, even if someone has a fucking gun to your head, there is a choice.”
“Not when it’s your child. I’m sorry. I …”
“Your child?”
Xander sighed. “They have my son, Nick. They have my boy. What would you do?”
“I’d have asked me for help. I’d have told the truth.”
“But I …”
“You should have trusted me. Just like I did you.”
Chapter 32
At the mention of Xander’s son, Stephen’s gaze flicked over to Joey and Eden. Eden cradled Xander’s head in her lap. Even Helena bent over his body to examine him.
“He’s still alive,” she said, hooking the stethoscope out of her ears and then putting it around her neck. She rested a hand on Eden’s. “He’s alive, Eden.”
Blood trickled from both of Xander’s ears. It washed into his hair. “Are you sure?”
Helena offered her the stethoscope. “Listen for yourself.”
“They worry for you. Do you see that? You were meant to protect them, to help them,” Stephen said.
Xander wasn’t listening. His attention was caught by Joey who still held onto Xander’s body, even as Eden made it harder for him without realising it.
“Joey?” he took one step and stopped, then he looked back to Stephen. His face was white, so white, and his heart was thudding loudly in his chest. “Joey?” he said again. He reached out a hand, but then trembled and brought it back, holding it in front of his mouth. “Is he … did he?”
“I don’t know,” Stephen said. “He comes like this.”
Xander wiped across his eye and strode to his son … his son. He made no question when he dropped to his knees beside the boy and wrapped him up in arms so tight. His body rocked with it, rocked with every emotion he’d been holding in. “Oh, God.” He heaved in a sob, pulled back a little so he could pepper the boy’s face in kisses. “Joey.”
“Papa.”
Joey still held onto Xander's body. His little hand gripped on for dear life, but he closed his eyes and rested his face on his father's shoulder.
"Explain it all," Stephen said after a moment. "Explain it all, so I understand."
He was looking at Xander for the answers, but it was Joey who had them. Joey who grabbed his hand and sent the world dark.
The dim light of the room didn't make it as dark as Stephen needed it so he couldn't see the images before him. Not that it would have mattered. He was tiger, a predator. His night vision alone served him well and still gave him
the need to pull out his own eyeballs to erase what he could see.
A woman lay on the bed. Her belly was swollen with the promise of new life … a life that one day, Stephen would cry for. He would weep, plead, and offer to hand over his soul in exchange for this all to stop. The baby was his to protect, to love, to do anything for.
The woman clutched at his hand. Her fingers were a painful device that squeezed against even the strongest of bones to bring a whimper from him. Her screams rang out and filled the room. “Breathe,” he said, pushing the hair back from her face. “Just breathe.” He pressed his face into her shoulder and tried to will his strength into her. If he could have given every ounce of himself to her right then, he would have. “You’re doing great.” His words probably meant nothing to her, but they meant everything to him. They cleared away the helplessness that settled into his gut as he watched her, pain raking her petite young body.
Another pain rocked her, and she slammed her hand around his, grasping for it. She took in a deep breath and let it out again. It shook her down to the core, and fresh tears ran down her face as she tried to control the pain and her breathing at the same time.
They had spoken about this moment and every moment that would follow it. They had lain in bed together and shared their dreams for the growing bump of their unborn child. They'd talked of holidays, of Christmas, of things they would do together and how this time, everything would be different.
They were children themselves, young, naïve, thinking they could fight the world that had them in its grasp.
Stephen leant around to between her legs, his eyes widening and his stomach going taut as the small round shape of a head pushed out of her body. “I can see him. I can see him.”
Her cry came out filled with both joy and pain, but it was snatched away seconds later, and she took a breath and tightened her grip on his hand again as her body tensed and she threw everything she had into the push.
He was so torn between them. He held her hand. Held her and offered her comfort as she brought their son into the world, but he watched with eager fascination as the little person they had made slid from her body and into the hands of the woman waiting.
“Pat him down,” one said, and she handed the baby to another nurse. He was still attached to the cord and his mother. The nurse slapped at his skin, turning it from the grey-purple to shades of pink. "Blow on his face."
The other nurse was young. The one who had caught the baby was older, more experienced. She clamped the baby’s cord in two places and then cut between them and clamped it all down.
“Is he okay?” the girl on the bed asked. Her legs still spread, still propped up in stirrups. She strained herself to look around the nurses in the room. Stephen let go of her hand. He was trying to angle his head too, but he had been pushed back and wedged at the head of the bed when another nurse had come in and told him to stand out of the way.
“Give her the baby,” the older midwife said.
He was a pink bundle in the young nurse's arms. She had wrapped him in a blanket and wiped his face to clean him off. His eyes were open. "But I thought …"
“He needs his mother right now.”
The nurse hesitated, but she didn't ask anything else of the older one. “Okay.”
When she placed him in the girl's arms, she opened the blanket and pressed his naked flesh to her bare breasts.
Stephen put his arms around them both and leant his head against her shoulder. “He’s beautiful.” He kissed her and blinked hard. It was all he could do to stop himself from losing it in front of them all. He had to be strong. He had to fight all of this, for them. For their son.
The girl kissed him back.
These weren’t Stephen’s memories. These were Xander's.
Oh god. His stomach was a tight ball that made him gasp for breath. He didn't get time to count his fingers or toes or to compare his nose. Did he have his mother's, or his father's?
She latched him onto her breast and shook her head when the door opened. “No. Please.”
Stephen gripped them both and pulled them to him as if he might actually fight all those people and protect the two people who meant the most to him.
Two Humans wearing white coats entered the room, and they walked to the young family, clinical coldness stealing their features. “You know the deal,” one said.
"Please?" Stephen asked. It might have been a deal they'd made long ago. It seemed like long ago, but that was back before they had felt the life moving before they had even heard it before they had understood what it meant and how much they loved their son.
They were just kids … kids who thought this would have been easy and would have meant nothing to them.
“He belongs to Norton now.”
“No,” the girl said, “I changed my mind.”
He hadn't noticed the door behind him open and more Humans had come in, putting two of them on either side. He didn't see them until one grabbed his arm and yanked him back so hard that he toppled off his seat. If it hadn't been for the Human who held him, he would have crashed into the trolley and fallen to the floor.
“No.” He pulled, twisting his body, trying to yank himself free of the man who had hold of him, but the grip was firm and strong. “Let me go.”
The girl screamed and tried to roll onto her side in the bed, with the baby still clutched at her breast. She wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight so they couldn't get to him, but she was bleeding and weak.
"Don't make this any harder than it needs to be," said the older nurse. She was holding the tray with the equipment to stitch the girl up. The cut they had made to get the baby's head out bled, and it soaked into the already heavily stained sheet under the girl's bottom.
“He’s my baby.”
“Let them go,” Stephen yelled. He was lost in this memory now. He wore it like it was his own, the emotions of it ran through him the same way his own did. He reached for the girl, for his child. He thrust every ounce of energy he had into breaking free of their hold. He got loose and pushed one, sending the Human flailing back into the other and giving himself a moment to race to her.
“Take him and run,” she said. She pushed the baby into his arms. “Run, Xander, run.”
His heart tore into pieces, but he held the baby to his own chest, tucked the little head under his chin. He gripped the girl’s hand one last time. One last moment he could look at her and carve the image of her panicked face into his memory. “I love you.”
Her expression broke, her face screwed up. “I love you too.” She launched herself off the bed and swung her legs down. Blood ran down her thighs, but she put herself between the Humans and her baby.
Stephen ducked and shouldered the Humans. They might have matched him in strength and speed, but he was an air fae. He clenched his fist, pumping it into the air and with everything he had, he pushed his power out of his body, imagining it as a light that came from his chest and swept over those around him. “Choke.”
The Human closest to him grabbed his own throat, his eyes bulged, and his face turned red. An instant later, he dropped to his knees and clutched at the invisible vice that was stopping him from breathing. Stephen squeezed the air tighter.
“You will never have my son.”
He spun on his heal and slammed into the hard, thin chest of Norton. Instinctively, he grabbed the man's suit to keep his balance. Something cold and hard hit him in the head, and there was a short sting at the side of his neck. The world turned black.
When he opened his eyes, Stephen was kneeling on the ground. Tears washed down his face. His heart ached as he met the eyes of Xander … older Xander.
“They took my son.”
Chapter 33
Xander knelt on the ground in front of Stephen and Joey so he could be at eye-level with his son. Even though this was his father, Joey stayed by Stephen's side, using him almost as a safe base to greet the man whose heart he held onto in real life.
"Joey …" Xander
's voice was a whispered choke as if he was holding onto the very fabric of himself. Stephen didn't blame him for that. If he were in the same position, he'd be ripping people's throats out, and he wouldn't care who got hurt. "I can't …" His hand trembled as he reached out to touch Joey. Joey didn't back away or move, or even flinch, but in the last second, Xander took his hand back and pressed a knuckle to his lips. "I can't believe it's you. I never … I never gave up. I've never stopped trying to get you back." Xander's voice broke into a sob, and he lunged himself toward Joey and wrapped his arms around his little frame.
Joey sank into the embrace though he said nothing. Peppered kisses, an embrace so firm and hard it melded them together with desperate longing. Joey put his arms around his father too, and the tension that always marred the boy's face loosened a little.
As Stephen stood with them and stayed by Joey’s side to give him that reassurance he was still there, he couldn’t help the images of the vision. Even the smell of the hospital invaded his senses, and a room laced with fear and new life. “They’ve had him all this time, haven’t they?” Stephen asked, and pieces of this puzzle slotted into place. “In what I saw, they have had him since then?”
Xander had his hand in the gap between Joey's shoulder blades, and he only lifted his eyes to look at Stephen. "Since the day he was born."
A nod from Stephen. “He’s at the facility?”
“Yes.” Xander closed his eyes for a small piece of time and inhaled deeply; then he let go of his son so he could look at his face to study him. He was a starved man, deprived of the one true, unconditional love that was his. When he was ready, he raised his eyes to Stephen again. "They've had him since birth. They took him out of my arms, literally. They …" He shook his head as if whatever he was going to say, he got second thoughts and pushed it back. "I love you, Joey. I will never stop until I get you back."
"Tell me what you were going to say. Make me understand." Stephen knelt with them, so Xander didn't have to let go of Joey. "Let me help."