Shadow Revealed (The Enlightened Species Book Two) (36 page)

Chapter Thirty

Eight months later

Herme looked into the concerned faces of the parents to be. “They are so busy, sometimes I can’t hear myself think, and they speak their own language. It’s like having surround-sound, only everything’s playing on a different station,” Umbrae confessed in her raspy, damaged, soft voice. Her fear for her babies’ health was apparent on her face. When she’d come in for her third prenatal appointment last month, he’d heard two heartbeats and had informed Enlil and Umbrae they were having twins.

The fact that the babies were already communicating enough for Umbrae to pick up on it, let alone be disturbed by it, was pretty phenomenal. Most mothers didn’t pick up on their infants’ telepathic abilities until late in the third trimester. “Well, let’s see what the little rascals are up to, shall we?”

Umbrae nodded nervously, lying flat on the table. He lifted her gown and placed the fetal stethoscope to her expanding waist. There was no precedence for her prenatal care. Enlil and Ninlil’s mother had died in childbirth with no care during her pregnancy. That was the way things had been seven thousand years ago. Locating the first heartbeat immediately, he heard the echo of the second. It didn’t sound right; the back echo was too rapid. Was he hearing a heart defect or …?

Keeping his expression neutral, he casually pulled over the ultrasound equipment. “Ready for your first picture of your babies?” he asked, trying not to give away his growing suspicion. Umbrae gripped her mate’s hand in hers and they both nodded. Herme placed a hand-held ultrasound unit to her stomach, rolling across. He saw first one heart, then two, then a third, and finally a fourth.

Enlil leaned over to get a closer look at the four still photos Herme had taken of each heart, which were lined up along the bottom of the screen. “What the …?” His voice trailed off with dawning realization and his complexion paled.

Umbrae hadn’t quite gotten the full implication the way her mate had. “What? What are you two seeing? What’s wrong with the babies?”

Since it looked like Enlil was going to faint at any second, Herme answered the soon-to-be mother. “Remember when you asked me if you were barren and I told you hardly? Well, the proof of your fertility is staring at us from the monitor. You’re having quadruplets; there are four of them swimming around.”

Herme checked the babies thoroughly with the machine before clicking it off with a sigh. He could well imagine how noisy that much condensed psychic energy was for Umbrae. Enlil’s color was better, though he still seemed slightly panicked. Not that Herme blamed the male for his reaction. Better to just let them have all the information at this point. “I’d say you have two separate sets of twins growing. Two Elven female twins. One of each sex on the Hulven set.” Ovulating during estrus, that was one for the books.

Enlil paled again. “Three daughters?”

Umbrae snapped her head around. “And a son.” She had taken the news far better than her mate. Of course, she was the one hearing them jabber constantly. If anything, the news that there were four of them seemed to calm her fears. Herme grinned; this was going to be an adventure.

Epilogue

Ten strolled through the campus after his class.
“Killing you will be a pleasure. How dare you betray your blood?”
Shifting his path, he headed toward the swimming pond. The natural pools and falls sometimes muffled his father’s voice in is head. “Y
ou think you’re safe? There is nowhere safe for you. You think your new friends will protect you? They will be glad when you’re dead. You burden them, boy. They can never trust you fully, not the way I did. They see how you betrayed that trust. You are alone; you will remain alone. They merely humor you when they treat you like an equal. You have done too much that is abhorrent to them; you will never be able to amend those things.”
Osiris was in rare form, showing a persistence he’d rarely displayed after the first six months. Maybe he had just been too busy in the last couple of months dealing with the fall-out of the SOSC hot on his trail, thanks in part to Ten’s help. Today the male was hitting on every one of Ten’s insecurities.

The voice faded when he neared the pool. He dropped to his knees at the edge, his face in his hands. It had taken two months of full sedation with daily blood transfusions and dialysis to remove enough of his fathers tainted bond to function somewhat. That was followed by the psychic healers he still worked with twice a day. His cousin Victor had taken him on as a protégé, and both Eros and Umbrae worked with him on fortifying his mental shields against his father. Most days, he maintained fairly well. Today, not so much. He was lonely and emotionally tired. It was possible Osiris sensed his weakness, which would explain the renewed voracity in assaulting his mind.

Within a few hours after he’d told everything to the two commandants and the SOSC representatives that sat in on the interview, his father had attacked him. Before then, he had no idea of the subliminal compulsions his father had ingrained into his psyche. He constantly worried that there was more unleashed evil inside his mind. .

It had been to his horror when the first compulsion had overwhelmed him. After the interview, Commandant Gilgamesh had offered him a place to stay, a job on campus, and the opportunity to train for human integration. He had been overcome with gratitude. The energy shield around the island had been beefed up, and for him it would be the safest place in the world, or so he’d thought. One minute he’d been happy and hopeful, the next he was trying to kill Commandant Shane Einar. Aware of his actions, he was incapable of controlling them. Unbelievably, Shane hadn’t killed him in self-defense; even though Ten was shadowed, there was no question Shane could have done it. His motives had been to kill indiscriminately and without care for his life.

It was Shane’s mate Jess who took control of the battle. Within seconds his limbs had become so heavy he couldn’t lift them, his mind slow and sluggish. Still held by the compulsion, he’d tried to turn on the young female siphoning him. Too weakened to maintain the shadow, his body had come into view of the remaining people in the room, most unaware of what was happening. They turned in time to see him crumple at Jess’s feet, finally free of the urge to kill.

He uttered two words to her before giving into the lethargy: “Help me.” Her compassionate nod was the last thing he saw.

They had kept him sedated for several days while they diluted the bond. When they woke him to assess his state, another compulsion had possessed him. This one had him battling against his own mind to retain his energy in his body. The compulsion had been for suicide, a struggle he would have lost if the healers attending to him had not knocked him out again before he could fully release his energy. Not all Hulven had the ability to release their living energy. Apparently he was one of the ones that could. Times like this, he almost wished he had died then. If he released his energy now, it would hurt the people who had spent so much time trying to help him.

His mind quieted with the gentle lapping of the pool and the roar of the distant falls, an auditory balm to his frazzled nerves. A discord of the water on the bank caught his attention. Scanning the pond’s surface he saw the movement of a tail just under the water line, cluing him to the presence of the Aquatie. He’d never seen one in this pool before. He’d heard them discussing it, calling it too calm and uneventful; they seemed to prefer the ocean or some of the other lakes that had underwater caves. The reason for the Aquatie’s choice became apparent when, a few feet from where he sat, the ebony hair of a Tellus broke the surface. The female laughed, drawing deep breaths of air into her cells. The coral-colored hair of her companion rose beside her.

“That was a hundred feet, nicely done.” The melodic voice of the Aquatie floated over the distance.

“It felt like it took a year.” The sultry, deeper voice of the Tellus held self-directed humor. “I would be an embarrassment to seals everywhere.” Since the tellus had revealed their shape-shifting abilities many of them were now trying to learn to swim in the form of aquatic mammals, and some were even trying to learn to fly in a bird form with the Volaticus. Bats had been the most successful flying style for them; feather care was not an ability that the Volaticus could help them with. Since Tellus didn’t obtain the instincts of the mammal’s shapes they took on, they’d had a difficult learning curve full of injuries. Their dedication to continuing was a tribute to their species. Tellus had solid, densely celled bodies, nearly impossible to crush, which also made them lack buoyancy and lift. Their cells were specialized to store and hold tremendous amounts of oxygen, enabling them to live deep beneath the earth’s surface surrounded by toxic gases, heat, and immeasurable pressure.

He’d found them fascinating. Before Meshy Hell, his contact had been limited to trapping, containing, and transferring them to whatever horrible destination Osiris had instructed him. The faces of his victims still haunted him constantly. Their bodies were designed to absorb impact over large areas; a small point penetration or a thin sharp edge was deadly to them. Their skin was ultimately quite delicate and sensitive. He’d seen many of them dissected alive in Osiris’s quest for research. The megalomaniac, so sure he was destined to rule the world and everything in it.

Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t notice the females swimming toward the shore right in front of him. His first instinct was to shadow, but they were both looking directly at him with warm, friendly smiles. Shadowing would probably scare them at this point, so he gave them what he hoped was a smile in return, trying to push the dark memories into the recesses of his mind.

“You’re Mick Tenor, right? You’re in my human sexuality course.” The Tellus female addressed him with the name he had decided to keep for his own. He didn’t know her name, but he knew her face. The female was beautiful; he had debated talking to her a few times but had never found the courage. Looking at her now, all he could do was nod to her.

The Aquatie stood, wading toward him just before the Tellus female touched the bottom. “I don’t think we’ve met, this is my first week here. I’m Talia.” The Aquatie’s melodic voice was friendly, her hand extended in greeting, as she stepped free of the bank onto the grass in front of him. She was fully naked, a fashion style the Aquatie were highly comfortable with, and she was tall; her opalescent skin shimmered in the sunlight. Her coral-colored hair hung in long waves down her back to the middle of her thighs; her eyes were a shade darker than coral pink. He’d seen her a few days earlier across the campus, but because he rarely spoke, most people considered him shy and left him alone. He wasn’t a part of the social sects he’d seen hovering around her.

Rather than making the females aware of his body’s reaction to them, he elected to remain seated, lifting his hand to shake hers. She plopped down to sit next to him, “Are you staying in there all day, Mattie?” she asked the stunningly beautiful Tellus who’d remained in the water.
Mattie.
The name fit her.

With her mocha skin and deep-brown, shoulder-length hair, and her large, amber eyes surrounded by thick, long black lashes that glistened with droplets of water clinging to them, she was a vision. He studied her face in the water; she was by far the most exotically beautiful creature he’d ever seen. The answer to Talia’s question sunk into him slowly, and Mattie’s softly flushed cheeks confirmed what should have dawned on him immediately. Tellus were a modest bunch, unlike the Aquatie. They shifted without clothing, usually trying to do it discretely; here he was drooling over her like a stick of candy, giving no thought to how uncomfortable he was probably making her.

He quickly dropped his gaze. “Oh, hell, I am an ass, please forgive me. I will leave you to your privacy.” Ten could feel his cheeks heating. Fates, he sucked with females; he wasn’t very great with anyone, honestly. He rose, berating himself for his rudeness.

Mattie surprised him with her sharp response. “No, don’t go.” He stopped and looked at her, the adamancy of her words leaving him confused and curious. “I mean, I’d really like a chance to talk to you, if you wouldn’t mind just turning your back. My clothes are right there.” She pointed to a rock draped with a bright-orange, Hawaiian-printed sarong a few feet down the shore.

He quickly gave her his back, realizing too late that his position left him looking right at Talia lying on her back naked in the sun. If he moved, it might make Mattie think he was trying to sneak a peek at her.

And then he realized he could see Mattie after all as her shadow stretched across the sand near him. He was captivated by the shadow of her curves as the sun behind her honored them. The curve of her full breasts was lovingly displayed, and he snapped his mouth closed to hide the eruption of his dentes. He tried to be discrete as he adjusted his erection behind his zipper. Talia’s chuckle was humiliating—he’d completely forgotten she was there. Could he get any more pathetic? He was fully aroused by a shadow on the ground.

“She likes you. She’s talked nonstop about how much she wishes you would notice her. Good to see you have.” Talia spoke in a low frequency that his highly developed hearing barely picked up. Tellus didn’t have great hearing; the female’s words wouldn’t carry to her friend. His, however, would, so he remained silent; inside he was filled with wonderment. Mattie liked
him?

Mattie’s shadow darkened as she approached from behind him. As she passed him, he could smell her, a tangy citrus. She sat next to Talia, looking up at him with a beautiful smile. The orange material tied above her breasts left her soft mocha shoulders bare. “Thank you. Sorry about that.” She shrugged. Her cheeks took an apricot shade when she blushed. He felt like he was falling into the amber depths of her eyes. He sat down where he stood, facing the girls, the pool behind him.

Talia started to rise; Mattie reached out, grabbing her arm to keep her near. Ten couldn’t help but grin. “Do I make you nervous, Mattie?” He said her name out loud for the first time, lisping slightly from his partially retracted dentes.