Harmony's Way by Lora Leigh Page B

slowly. “There’s no cure. The hormonal therapy merely eases the worst of the symptoms and prevents conception.”
    She turned back to Lance.
    “I can’t conceive.” The thought of it was horrifying. No child of hers would ever survive those who sought to take her, to kill her. “You don’t know who I am, Lance. You don’t know what I am.” Fear rushed through her mind, tore through her soul.
    She felt the emotion, so unknown until now, explode inside her being until she knew nothing but the horrifying realization of what would happen to any child of hers.
    “Jonas. He has to stop this.” She jumped to her feet, stumbling before she managed to right herself and rush for the door.
    “Harmony, wait. You can’t go after him.” Lance grabbed her around the waist, pulling her to a stop as she struggled against him, rough growls falling from her lips. “Harmony, dammit. He’s gone. You know he’s gone.”
    “No!” she screamed, striking back at him as she tore loose from him. “No. He can’t be gone. He has to fix this.”
    He stared back at her, his gaze rife with pain as his chest rose and fell with his breaths. She was breaking apart inside. She could feel it. In all her life she had never known a pain so intense, so blinding as the one whipping through her mind now. A child. She couldn’t have a child, because she could never keep it safe.
    “You don’t know what I am, Lance.” Shudders whipped through her body as she stared back at him in horror.
    She would be damned. Jonas had finally found a way to destroy her. Slowly. Painfully. She should have killed him when she had the chance ten years before.
    He was her brother. Her blood brother. They shared the mother she had killed. And now he would see her child destroyed. A child she was never meant to have.
    “I can’t do this,” she whispered miserably. “Let me go, Lance. I’ll leave. I don’t care what he does…”
    “He’ll have her killed, Lance.”
    “Shut up!” She turned on Braden, instantly noticing that he had placed himself against the door. No escape there.
    “If you destroy yourself, you destroy your mate, Harmony,” Braden snapped, his golden eyes narrowed on her. “I saw your need to stand between him and Jonas. You feared for him. You were determined to protect him. Run from him and you’ll condemn him to the same agony you’ll suffer as well. You’re not in this alone.”
    “I am always alone,” she snarled back at him. “They call me Death for a reason…”
    “And if you’ve already conceived?” Lance asked quietly then. “Would you deny me the right to help protect my child? And trust me, Harmony, I can and will protect both my mate and my child.”
    He honestly believed he could. Harmony felt the hard sob that clenched her chest as hopelessness filled her.
    “No force on this earth can protect a child of mine,” she sneered. “You don’t understand. You don’t know the lives I’ve taken, the blood I’ve spilled or the monsters that would attack. There’s no way to save either of us now.”
    Lance watched the pain-ridden features staring up at him. Fear filled the eyes of a woman whose file stated she knew no fear. No, it wasn’t fear, it was complete terror, and it was destroying his soul.
    The air was heavy with her pain, wailing at his ear like a distant scream rife with torment. Harmony was tormented. He could see it in her expression, in her tears. In her confusion as she wiped at the dampness.
    The need to protect her, to reassure her, rose inside him like a tidal wave. It was more than just a need; it was an impulse, an instinctive response to the pain tearing her apart.
    The thought of a child, and a woman that completed him, couldn’t distress him. And protecting that woman and child would be his main focus.
    “Braden, can you contact Ely without Jonas knowing?” Lance kept his eyes on Harmony as he spoke.
    “That would be easy enough,” Braden answered.
    “Get her out here for the tests