She gave a slight shrug. “That’s what they inferred.”
Even though it had only been a few hours since I’d left her on the Colony, it felt as if so much had happened, but my beast snarled at the idea that our seed might be contaminated. “Our baby is not contaminated.” I snarled out the words as I placed a hand between us, my palm against her flat belly. “What we did was not tainted by Hive.”
She gave me a small smile, but her eyes welled with tears. “What if it is? What if there’s something wrong with him?”
While I kept one hand on her belly, the other I lifted and cupped her jaw, swiped away her overflowing tears with my thumb. “Nothing that comes from you is bad. Our daughter, she will be perfect.”
My heart all but thrummed out of my chest in equal parts rage, at having my mate saddened by such a sacred thing, and hope at what we’d made.
“Daughter?” she asked with a watery smile. “Did the doctor’s wand tell us that?”
I shook my head. “I just know. She will have your sleek hair, black as night. And she will have me tied in knots, just like her mother.”
She leaned in, put her head on my shoulder and cried. My beast growled, the rumble of it in my chest its own way to soothe her as I stroked my hand down her back, kissed the silky hair on top of her head.
She’d been through so much. Mated an alien, traveled across the galaxy. Fucked a beast out of dormancy and then into submission. Yes, she’d made my beast submit to her control, for without her near, he was wild. And now she was pregnant with a baby, a baby that the Hive wanted as their own.
“They will not have her,” I said. “I am here because they want us both. I will protect you.”
She lifted her head, stared at me with shiny eyes. “What do you mean they want us both? I thought you’re here to save me.”
I gave her a slight smile. It wasn’t filled with love or tenderness, but with the clear focus of my beast protecting what belonged to him. “I am here to save you. But I got here by Hive transport, just like you.”
I leaned back, grabbed the transport beacon and plucked it from my shoulder. “Look familiar?”
Her mouth fell open as she stared at it. “That was what they used to transport me.”
My beast growled.
“Did they hurt you?”
She glanced at her bare shoulder, and I saw no marks. “No, but I’d never transported awake before. It was really painful.”
“Yes. While you had no idea what was happening, I did. The Hive were in the caves. They transported me as well. Not Kiel, not the others in our group. They wanted me specifically, and I knew you had been taken. I let them take me, Caroline. I had to get to you.”
“What if you were wrong? What if they’d taken you somewhere else? What are we going to do?”
I heard the fear in her words. Scary aliens were going to take her. The thought of her being alone with the triplets even for an hour or two made me furious. I’d known about the Hive my entire life, fought them for years. She’d had two weeks of information about them—Rachel and Lindsey having told me that Earth knew almost nothing about the invasive enemy—and had absolutely zero contact. Until she was transported directly into the Hive den so they could steal her baby.
No. Fucking. Way.
My beast growled, and I started to grow.
“No!” she gasped. “Don’t. Stop and think. Listen, Rezzer.” When she said my name, my beast calmed, focused. Settled. “Good. Why do they still want you? You had sex with me, put that Hive sperm of yours in me and made a baby. You’re done now. It’s my job to cook this kid and give it to them when it’s done.”
“Cook the kid?” I asked.
She rolled her eyes. “Earth slang. If you did your job—and they waved a wand over me and confirmed I’m still pregnant—then why do they need you?”
Yes, she raised an excellent question. Why did they need me? “They want my seed.”
She nodded. “That’s what they said. You did the job once, why not do it again? If they want a bunch of Hive babies, they need breeders. They plan on taking our baby, and impregnating me again. They said we were part of a breeding program.”
I growled.
She stroked a hand over my hair and my beast all but leaned into the touch. “Their words, not mine.”
“You’re saying our job will be to fuck and make Hive babies?”