Free Guardian by Loribelle Hunt Page B

advance.”  
    “You don’t think I’ve learned anything over the last three years?” He sounded…what was that? Careful? Curious? She wasn’t sure.  
    She turned around to face him. Damn, the man didn’t have a right to look so good. Didn’t have the right to make her heart race and pussy clench. “I think you can’t help it. I think you are what you are. Elect.”
    His jaw clenched. “I can’t help what I am. You’ve always known that. Since we were kids, Mallory.” He stalked closer but he didn’t touch her. “It wasn’t a problem before.”
    “Of course it wasn’t,” she hissed. “Because I let you take over. I was so—” She cut that off. She was just making it worse, giving him ammunition. Like he needed more. She was at the edge of the clearing when he spoke again.  
    “Your parents mated young, didn’t they? Your mom is hell on wheels, but was she always like that? She was sixteen when she met your dad and she’s human. I think she grew into it.”  
    “Unlike me.” She’d always wondered if that made her a tiny bit inferior in his mind.  
    “Our son,” he said softly, “was Elect.”
    He didn’t understand how that cut.  
    “But I’m not. A daughter…”
    “Don’t you dare.” He glared. She could practically see the steam from his ears. “Our child is our child, Elect or human. I don’t care about that.”
    “So why did you leave?” she asked, and even she could hear the confusion and misery in her voice. She felt small. Weak and alone.  
    “Because I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t save you, or me, that pain. And…I didn’t know how to face you.” He paused. “I failed you and our baby. I have to live with that.”
    She was stunned. “Wow. You are a dumbass, aren’t you?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “You couldn’t have done anything, Zach. You know how this goes. Human mother. Elect father.” She shook her head. “Sometimes it comes together, like with my brothers and me, and sometimes it doesn’t. Is that really why you didn’t fight for us?”
    “You’re wrong. That’s my failure,” he said quietly. “I failed you. Our child.”
    “You think you could have stopped it?” She didn’t think so.  
    “No.” He shook his head. “Intellectually, I know nothing I could have done would make a difference. Emotionally, I know I should have been paying more attention.”
    She finally realized he was still guilt-ridden. How had she not seen that before? They were a couple of idiots. “You couldn’t have done anything, Zach. Neither could I. It just…happened.”
    He nodded and took a deep breath. “I know that now, but it doesn’t change the fact I wasted a hell of a lot of years trying to save you, us, from another loss.”
    She couldn’t meet his gaze. She knew the risks. “That would likely happen again.”
    “Would it? And that brings up another question,” he said awkwardly. If she hadn’t witnessed his show of discomfort, she’d never have believed it.  
    “What?”
    “Birth control.”
    She went cold. There was just no other way to describe it. She was safe, but no protection was perfect, was it? The idea of going through that kind of loss again was terrifying. She held a hand up and backed up a step.
    “Don’t you even think about touching me,” she snapped. “I won’t go through that again. I won’t be…the weak link again. Human mothers don’t work out always, right?” she ended bitterly.
    He was silent a long time and she refused to speak. “You’re wrong, as it turns out. I’ve been studying the DNA a long time. I think I can fix it.”
    She felt like she’d taken a blow to the chest. “You think? You’d experiment with our child?”  
    “No! Do you really believe that crap?”
    “I don’t know what to believe.” She took in a long breath that hurt . “I do know that the one person I counted on, the one person I thought was on my side…wasn’t.”
     
    Her emotional pain was going to do the one thing nothing