On a low growl, he pulled out and flipped Kaya onto her stomach. Then he lifted her onto her knees and thrust back into her sweet, wet heat again.
CHAPTER 24
Kaya’s body felt the delicious reverberations of Aric’s lovemaking all through the solemn ritual the Order observed to celebrate the birth of Nikolai and Renata’s child the next morning.
She sat beside him in the command center’s small candlelit sanctuary, swamped with emotion as she watched the new parents present their son to the audience of their closest friends and comrades. Yet to call the Breed males and their mates anything other than family was to diminish what they all had become to one another over the years. The Order’s members were kin in ways Kaya had not fully appreciated until this moment.
Inside a circle of eight tall white candles at the front of the gathering, Nikolai and Renata stood with Rio and Dylan, all of them garbed in long white tunics. With Mira holding her tiny brother nearby, the two couples had woven eight strips of snowy white silk into a cradle they held suspended between them for the infant who would be cherished and protected by all four of them--parents and chosen godparents--for as long as any of them lived.
“Who brings this child before us today?” Lucan asked, officiating the ritual.
“We do,” Nikolai and Renata answered as one. “He is our son, Dmitri Jack.”
It was the first time the baby’s name had been announced. Kaya couldn’t help smiling at his middle name, no doubt given in tribute for the old man who’d been so kind to her when she needed shelter, but also, as Aric had informed her, kind to Renata and Niko years before her.
Lucan nodded to Mira and she brought the naked baby to Renata, transferring him carefully to his mother’s arms. Renata held Dmitri up for all gathered to see.
“This babe is ours,” she and Niko said, reciting words Mira had once described to Kaya. Hearing them spoken in this setting, in this moment, was more powerful than she could have imagined. “With our love we have brought him into this world. With our blood and lives we sustain him, and keep him safe from harm. He is our joy and our promise, the perfect expression of our eternal bond, and we are honored to present him to you, our kin.”
As one, Kaya included, the assembly answered with the traditional reply: “You honor us well.”
Now, the baby was laid in the center of the white silk cradle, and next came the vow by Dmitri’s godparents. Lucan pivoted to Rio and Dylan. “Who pledges to protect this child with blood and bone and final breath should duty call upon it?”
The couple answered solemnly, “We do.”
And with that promise spoken, Rio sank his fangs into first his wrist, then Dylan’s. Together, the pair held their open wounds over the squirming baby, their blood spilling in droplets onto his bare skin to symbolize their vow to give their lives in order to keep him safe.
Kaya watched through vision blurred with welling tears and a throat thick with happiness for the four friends and the tiny child whose life would be immeasurably blessed by their love and protection. Little Dmitri would want for nothing, Kaya was certain. How she wished she could feel even a fraction of that confidence when it came to her sister and her unborn child.
Aric caught the tear that slid down her cheek. His solemn gaze was tender on her, even though this touch was the first he’d given her since leaving her bed in the early hours of the morning. As the ceremony concluded, they rose with everyone else seated in the pews.
It was humbling to be among the witnesses of the tradition-steeped ceremony. An honor to be welcomed as one of these people, even though there was a part of her that knew she was the outsider. An interloper who would never fully belong until she had brought all of her secrets out of the shadows of her past and into the light.
Including the secret she felt certain Aric already suspected, or was close to figuring out.
She had almost told him last night. But then he mentioned the likelihood that the Order was being betrayed by a mole who had not only warned Big Mack to evacuate, but alerted Opus to the fact the Order would be moving in on Lars Scrully last night. If she told him she’d been concealing the fact that she had gone to Angus Mackie’s bar the very day of the Order’s raid, why would Aric or anyone else ever believe that she had nothing to do with giving Opus the intel they needed to come to Scrully’s place armed with UV weapons?
All Kaya knew was that the pit she had begun digging for herself by withholding her shame about her past and the people who raised her was coming home to roost in ways she never imagined in her worst nightmares.
And in the center of all her regrets for those actions was Aric.
She owed him the truth.
The vague distance she felt from him today only fortified her resolve. He had to know why she was so terrified of her feelings for him.
Particularly after last night, when she’d been all but certain he had been just a hairbreadth from sinking his fangs into her carotid. One bite and he would know all of her secrets and shame. One sip from her vein and he would be bound to her forever.
It wasn’t fear she felt at that idea. It was a fierce longing. But she could never allow it to happen while she was betraying him with her silence.
“Kaya, would you like to meet my baby brother?” Mira beamed like a proud mama herself.
Looping her arm through Kaya’s, she excitedly tugged her forward without waiting for her reply. Aric loomed beside her, flanked by Kellan and Rafe.
“Why didn’t you bring Siobhan?” Mira asked, frowning. “I hope she didn’t feel unwelcome.”
“No.” Rafe shook his head. “She was awake most of the night again. Sometimes the nightmares of her roommate’s killing are too much. She was so exhausted this morning, I told her to stay in bed and rest.”
Mira gave him a sympathetic nod. “We’re all exhausted today, I think. Losing Bal on top of all the other setbacks we’ve had lately . . . well, at least we have Dmitri to celebrate. God knows we needed something positive to carry us through.”
