Sin Undone

“If it’s SF,” she said quietly, “then what I need to do is talk.”


Well, that sobered him right up. She wanted to keep her mind off it, and he was a big bastard if he didn’t let her. “Okay, yeah. What do you want to talk about?”

She looked at him like he was an idiot. How females could manage that even when they had exhaustion circles under their eyes and fever rashes on their cheeks, he had no idea. “Are you still singing that same tune? I can name fewer things we don’t need to talk about than what we do.” “Is this about the kid? Because I don’t see the big deal. You stay here, have it, and we raise it.” Kar buried her face in her hands and shook her head. “How long has it been since you were human?” He blinked at that. “I was twenty-four when I was bitten. That was in 1918.”

It was her turn to blink. “Wow. You’re old.”

“Thank you,” he muttered.

“How have you managed to not knock up anyone else in all that time?” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Or do you have a bunch of puppies running around?” He tossed another log onto the fire, even though it didn’t need it. “No, I don’t have any offspring.” “Do you remember what it was like to be a kid? To have parents?”

The fire crackled and hissed as though taunting him to answer Kar’s idiotic questions. He grabbed up a poker and jabbed at the logs. “It was a long time ago.”

“That’s not what I asked,” she said quietly. “The turn of the century wasn’t a good time to be the eighth son in a poor family.” Not at all. He’d been raised on a farm in the Midwest, had been introduced to backbreaking work before he was three. His parents were as good as they could have been, but when every daylight hour was taken up with work, either on the farm or in the kitchen, there wasn’t much time for play or hugs. At sixteen, he’d left home, joined the military, and never looked back.

Except… he had. The soldiers he’d fought with in France had become the tight-knit family he’d never had. At least, until they started dying in battle. A massacre had left him alone and injured, wandering through the woods in an attempt to escape the enemy. He’d been found, but not by a human foe.

A werewolf had attacked him. He’d managed to fight it off, but then he’d lain there, so mangled that when the human enemy did find him, they’d left him for dead.

He’d shifted into a werewolf that night, healing his wounds, and he’d awakened the next morning lying among the shredded remains of a dozen American soldiers.

Soldiers he’d killed. Sickened, frightened, and confused, he’d gone AWOL. He barely remembered how he’d survived after that, running only on instinct and the desire to kill the monster who’d infected him. Three years later, his sire was dead, and Luc had returned to America.

“What happened?” Kar asked. “I went to war, was bitten by a warg, and when I came home, I learned that four of my brothers and sisters, and my mother, had died of influenza. My oldest brother was killed in a farming accident. And my father was nursing what was left of his mind.”

Luc had tried to help, had chained himself in the barn on nights of the full moon, but in his third month, he’d broken free, killed livestock, and bit his youngest brother, Jeremiah. What happened next had pushed Luc over the edge and right into a solitary existence.

Jer had turned into a werewolf that next night, had killed their father and sister. When he woke up and realized what he’d done, he’d taken his own life.

Luc sank to the floor and leaned back against the couch cushions. “And because of me, because I bit my brother, I lost the rest of my family.” “Hey,” Kar said gently, as she lay her hand on his shoulder. The intimate, comforting gesture startled Luc, made his throat close up a little. She had every reason to hate him, to use him for protection and nothing else, but she was still trying to make the best out of a shitty situation.

“What?” He pulled away, twisted around so he was facing her. “I know you don’t want this. A baby wasn’t exactly on my to-do list, either.” She rubbed her belly, and a tiny smile crimped her mouth. “But I love the little tadpole now. I want it, and I’ll do anything to protect it. That means I’ll protect it from you, too.”

“You think I would harm my own kid?”

“Not intentionally. You’d be protective and fierce and possessive. But Luc, if you can’t love it, if you can’t connect with it, you will harm it.” Luc stared into the fire. The flames licked the logs, eating at the wood and putting out so much heat that surely it could melt the wall of ice inside him. Kar was right. The kid would probably be human —it needed parents who could love it.