CONCEPTION (The Others) by Sarah McCarty

strong.
He could not penetrate it.
    More
emotion poured out of Eden, demanding his attention, blending into the chaos of
his own, catching on the primitive edges, dragging them higher, forcing him to
turn his mental efforts to controlling his own response rather than hers as he
absorbed the reality of what he was seeing.
    She had experienced surgery. Recently. Her abdomen was laid
open, stitches popped. Blood flowed in a sluggish seep. She was a mess. He did
not know how she still lived, yet she’d climbed the mountain with his daughter,
struggling with the snow and cold, and injuries—that will of hers carrying her
when others would have surrendered to defeat.
    “Be easy, mate,” he whispered in her ear, keeping his horror
to himself, giving her calm. “You are safe now.”
    His words had no effect. Her panic spilled over into his
anger, feeding it. Driving it higher. His fangs pushed through his gums. Red
hazed the edges of his vision. His control slipped a notch. And then another.
    In the next instant, he felt Bohdan’s touch in his mind,
controlling the spill of energy, siphoning off the excess so he was free to
isolate Edie’s emotions and his reaction to them, to bind her anger with his,
to pull it back into himself to be sorted through another time. She twisted
against him, hands curled into claws, her mind for a brief second unguarded. He
pushed into the small opening, and with a thought sent her to sleep. She
slumped against him, all that desperation blessedly smothered under a forced
veil of unconsciousness.

Chapter Five

 
    “I cannot heal her.” Pale and drawn, Bohdan sat back on his
heels, and slowly withdrew his hands from Eden’s stomach. Of all the things
Deuce had expected his brother to say, that was not it. Bohdan had perfected
his skills over centuries of existence for precisely a moment like this. He
could not fail now. Not with Eden. He above all others, knew how important Edie
was to him, to their people. But one look into his brother’s eyes confirmed the
words he would not accept.
    “I do not understand.” The wound on her stomach was closed and
the wound on her thigh likewise, but they were not gone like they would be had
the healing been complete.
    Bohdan frowned. With an elegant gesture he indicated Edie’s
wound. “Whatever was done to her was done without regard to harmony.”
    “And?”
    There was infinite sadness in Bohdan’s eyes. “It is killing
her, and I cannot stop it.”
    Deuce rejected the comforting brush of his mind with a hard
shove. He lifted Edie up against his chest so her breath brushed his skin in a
rhythmic proof of life. He kept his emotions as contained as his tone. “That is
unacceptable.”
    “I know.” Bohdan leaned back and shook his head. “I have
never seen anything like it. Her chemistry is unbalanced. Her organs mutated
into something I do not recognize and are badly damaged. Attempting to fix
anything only causes greater problems elsewhere. “
    A sick, unfamiliar knot gathered low in Deuce’s stomach.
“She cannot die.”
    Bohdan cut him a glance. “I know her importance.”
    “Then she will live.” He could accept nothing less.
    “She cannot live as she is.”
    Deuce scooped Edie fully into his arms draping her across
his knee, baring her throat to his bite. “Then I will bind her.”
    Bohdan’s hand on his arm stopped him with his teeth a
hairsbreadth from her jugular. “Binding will kill her.”
    Logic battled with instinct. “I will not lose her.” The knot
grew, spreading its cold through his stomach and chest. Whatever it took, she
would live.
    “I bought us time.” Bohdan ran his hand through his hair,
letting it drop to his hip as he looked at the sleeping baby and then at Eden.
“For now, I have slowed the breakdown of her organs, but how long that will
last, I do not know. “
    “How much time?”
    Bohdan did not answer, just folded his arms across his chest
and shook his head.
    “How long, brother?”
    “Do not