Where she’d still be if she hadn’t escaped with Doug.
Just thinking of him made Adrian’s stomach knot. Traitor. Stealing their finest for himself. How he’d managed it was beyond Adrian, but he had, snuck her off into the night without a backward glance, not to be heard from again until a month ago, when Adrian saw him driving down the road. What were the odds? Really? He’d followed him to the cabin. He knew where he was, and reported back to Curtis. But not before leaving his old friend a note, hammered into the wood of his bedroom door.
I’m coming for you. Don’t make me kill you. Do the right thing.
His first act of betrayal in twenty-five long years.
Curtis had been furious with him when he shared the news. Doug was dead. Kaylie, well, he didn’t know. Alive, or dead, he was without her.
Curtis knew there was one way to draw her out. Adrian had completed the task, then headed south again, to finish what he started. Even though he disagreed with Curtis’s plan.
He felt that if Kaylie was still alive, she would have gone to the doctor. He’d found the evidence in Doug’s cabin. They’d picked this woman, this stranger, to see them to the end.
But Curtis wanted all ties to Eden eliminated instead.
He knew in his core this was a grave mistake, and told her. She threatened him with eternal damnation, and instructed him to do her bidding, then return to Eden.
And in all things, the Great Mother was to be obeyed. So he marched forward, with doubt in his heart.
Adrian wasn’t a starry-eyed seventeen-year-old anymore, seduced by the power of physical love and the honeyed words of an insane succubus. He knew exactly what Eden was, exactly who Curtis was and how the group funded itself. He’d helped with the management of those funds after Curtis realized he had a facility for numbers, and he’d grown their meager savings into a little more than ten million dollars over the years.
There was no redemption for Adrian, nor did he particularly want it. He’d done awful things on his own, and worse under Curtis’s instruction. Alone, he’d been a monster. Together, the two of them became horror incarnate, creatures more evil, more depraved, than anything he would have become on his own.
And he had reveled in their glory.
Curtis had been searching for Doug and Kaylie for years—violently upset at their betrayal, wanting retribution, but continuing laser-focused on maintaining the health and harmony of the remainder of her flock. Now there would be no rest until she was back in the arms of her great Mother. This time, Curtis must be the one to steal the blood from her veins, to take the strength of the girl into her own body.
So it was written, and so it must be done.
There was one problem. And this was Adrian’s fault, his folly, his responsibility. Before Doug died, he had exposed them, which threatened the thing most sacred to Curtis.
Lauren.
Just the thought of her made him smile.
Lauren was Curtis’s daughter, and the rightful heir to Eden. Just as Curtis had taken over from Susan, her mother, when she was no longer capable of bearing children, Lauren would inherit the flock from Curtis. Lauren was the only child who was allowed to stay in Eden. She came from Curtis’s womb, which had before then been untouched by the joy of an embryo.
Lauren was perfect in all respects, a honey-haired beauty with light, cornflower-blue eyes. The only pod that really mattered.
Lauren was meant to be a mystery to them all. Curtis had managed to become pregnant without lying with Adrian, or any other of the men.
Lauren was the Immaculate. Pure, unsullied. The chosen one. It only happened once in a generation, when the great leader fell pregnant without the sperm of a mate. They were always girl children, and they were always destined to be the heir. It had been happening this way from the beginning.
Despite his deep belief in the covenants of his religion, Adrian, well schooled in biology, knew it was impossible for a female human to become pregnant without sperm.
Though it was great sacrilege, Adrian believed Lauren was not immaculate. As the great father to many of Eden’s children, he was aware of his powers of procreation, knew how many bellies he’d caused to swell.
He knew she was his child.
He wasn’t allowed to have these thoughts, and was very careful never to give them a voice. But as Lauren grew tall and her hair became the color of wheat and her eyes took on a slightly almond shape, Adrian saw his mother in her face.
And he felt pride, for while the rest of Eden believed Curtis, believed in Lauren’s immaculate conception, he knew the truth. And with all that he was, he loved her.