Kara released a breath she didn’t even know she’d been holding.
“So, it’s a new chick?”
Drayden nodded. “Looks that way, Nick.”
Kara ground her teeth. “Whoever it is, we have to get her out.” There was no way she would leave a healer in the hands of a vampire, especially the damn vampire king.
“Dillon and a group of our allies managed to capture a vampire. They’ve been working on getting information that could help us figure out where Cain is and all of his plans.” The alpha let out a grunt, rotating his neck from side to side, seemingly in an attempt to relax the tenseness in his muscles. Kara knew exactly how he felt. Every muscle in her body was suddenly tense, itching to explode into action.
“You won’t be exploding into anything,” Nick said into her mind. “You’re carrying our child. You’ll be staying far away from danger.”
“Cool your tits, biker boy,” she grumbled. “I didn’t say I was going to go running headlong into a vampire lair.”
“Cool my tits?” She felt his amusement, and it was a welcome emotion compared to the anger.
She shrugged. “If the bra fits.”
Drayden glanced between them. “Do I even want to know what you two are talking about?”
“Tits and cooling them,” Kara offered.
“Shite.” Nick huffed. “I’d say we could blame her coarseness on the pregnancy, but she was this way before she was carrying my kid.”
Kara grinned. “And you love it.”
“Okay.” Drayden waved his hand. “I’m not touching cooling tits with a ten-foot pole.”
“That’s probably a good thing.” Kara smirked. “Touching my tits, even with a ten-foot pole, would probably set my man off into a fit of epic proportion.”
Nick rubbed his forehead. “Could you stop saying tits, especially regarding yours?”
“Maybe.” She shrugged. “Maybe not. It might be the word of the day. Jen has those. It’s good practice for teaching our kid the alphabet.”
Drayden shook his head. “Wow.”
Nick shot her an incredulous look. “We’re not using vulgar words to teach our daughter the alphabet.”
Kara patted his leg. “Whatever you say, babe.” She’d managed to cool his ire over other things, which had been her plan. That he was annoyed over something she obviously would never do was simply a bonus.
Drayden rolled his eyes. “I swear, conversations with you healers can never be normal. Anyway, Fane also mentioned that a wolf held captive in Cain’s compound reached out to him via the alpha bond. The wolf’s name is Finn St. James—a rogue. He told Fane who he was and that the vamp king has also captured Finn’s mate. She is a dormant. The rogue told Fane that Cain has been experimenting on dormants, attempting to create a hybrid army. The vamp injected Finn’s mate with vampire blood and gypsy healer blood. Apparently, the experiment worked.”
“Seriously?” Nick’s voice was deep with his wolf. “That shouldn’t be possible. Not with our genetics.”
“I’m not supposed to be possible either,” Kara reminded him. “A wheeler? No one knew that was a thing. Not until me and my homegirls came along. Of course, it took some messed-up crap to create us. And it sounds exactly like that’s what Cain is doing—a bunch of messed-up crap.” She looked back and forth between Nick and Drayden. “There’s an exception to every rule. You old people should know that by now.”
“As far as Finn knows, his mate is the first one.”
Nick pursed his lips. “You said the mate was a dormant. So we probably have no idea who she is or whether she could be special somehow. What would make him use her as his first experiment?”
Drayden shrugged. “Lizzy Fairchild is her name. But no, none of us have heard of her. And Finn doesn’t know if his mate is going to live through the experiment. If Finn’s story is to be believed, the process wasn’t an easy one.”
Kara’s breath left her body. The name Drayden spoke was like a bucket of ice water thrown over head, freezing Kara’s heart in her chest. “Wh-what did you just say?” She tilted her head at Drayden. Maybe she had heard the alpha wrong. Or maybe Lizzy Fairchild was a different person. Lots of people have the same name. Heck, there must be a ton of Kara Jones’s walking around out there. Though her last name was no longer Jones since mating with Nick. There probably weren’t very many Kara Cyprus’s out there.
Drayden frowned at her. “The rogue’s mate is named Lizzy Fairchild, and she might not live through the experiment.”
Nick took hold of her hand. “You said she died.” He’d picked up on her thoughts. Considering her emotions were suddenly a chaotic mess, she was probably broadcasting them loud and clear. No doubt she wouldn’t have been able to conceal her thoughts if she’d tried.
“Um, I thought she did.” Kara looked at him, her eyes wide. Goose bumps jumped out all over her skin. “What if I was wrong? What if I just thought she was dead? I mean, I had just beaten a man to death with a baseball bat. I was freaking out. I certainly wasn’t thinking rationally enough to accurately determine if she had a pulse.”
