Chapter 28: The Shock of Paternity

Kaelen's POV

The cold wind rushed through the broken entrance of the cottage. All the muscles in my body were locked down, holding me in a state where time had ceased to have any meaning.

The voice of my mother, coming through the radio in the mud below, echoed in the damp night air—treat him as a hostile asset— it sounded far away, muffled by the loud, irregular thumping of my own heartbeat.

I took a slow and heavy step backwards; my boot creaked on a fragment of splintered oak, abrupt and painful in the quiet room.

Four years.

Four years, three months, and twelve days.

The mathematical calculation struck my brain with terrifying, unyielding accuracy as an automated trade execution. It was the night of the gala in St. Kilda; the rain was soaking through the windows of the penthouse suite. The desperate, breathless promises we made to each other right before the storm hit, before the dummy file was uploaded and Victoria's lawyers descended on our lives like vultures.

She was pregnant already when she left.

When she Falconed that rusted falcon into the dark, signed that forged confession under the threat of her sister's life support, she wasn't just with her broken heart; she was carrying my blood, my son.

I took a half-step backwards, my spine knocking against the cold doorframe soaked in rain. I stretched out my hand, my fingers pressing through the rough wood to keep me from falling completely. The overwhelming, suffocating sense of the truth weighed down on my chest.

I wasn't there.

The thought of it tore through my mind like a serrated blade, shredding four years of cold, self-righteous anger and reducing it to nothing. I wasn't there when her body changed, when she felt his first kick in the middle of a freezing coastal night, when she went into labour in this isolated fishing village, clenching onto Hamish Croft's hands since the man she loved had believed a lie and let her walk away.

"Kaelen."

My gaze was drawn back to the middle of the room by the sound of my name.

Valkyrie moved with a fierce and terrifying speed. She pushed Lachlan behind her hip, her thin body assuming a stiff, protective curve. Her dark hair wild, stuck to her temples by sweat and rain, and her eyes—dark, stormy, filled with tears—stared at me with a deadly, defensive terror that was more damaging than any bullet could be.

She didn't see me as the man who held her in the dark. She saw me as a predator coming to destroy her world.

“Do not step an inch closer to him,” she whispered. Her voice, steady, low, and raspy, filled with a mother's determination to kill or die for her child. “Don't look at him."

"Valkyrie… “ my voice broke, falling apart in my throat. I raised both hands, palms open, trembling violently in the dim moonlight. “Val, please… look at me. Look at my eyes.”

"I see your eyes!" she snarled, stepping backwards as I shifted my weight, pulling Lachlan with her, putting every part of his little body behind her dark cardigan. "I've stared into those eyes every single morning for the past four years! Each time he looks up at me, each time he smiles. I see the man who allowed his mother to destroy us! I see the family that tried to bury my sister!"

"I didn't know!" I shouted, the pain exploding from my chest in a harsh, dreadful scream that shook the living room. "I didn't know you were carrying him! If only I had known—if I had for a single moment suspected that you were pregnant when you left Melbourne, I would have set my mother's empire ablaze before letting you go through that door!"

"What difference would it have made, Kaelen?" Valkyrie shouted, her tears running down her cheeks, flowing over the ash on her skin. "Your mother had the hospital! She had the doctors! If I hadn't fled, Chloe would have been dead before the morning sun appeared! You couldn't save us back then and you can't save us now!"

"Mommy," Lachlan's voice came from behind her skirt. He gently pulled at her sweater, his clear silver eyes peering around her waist, looking at me with that calm and strangely eerie composure. "Is the man crying?"

Valkyrie choked on a sob, fell to her knees, placed both arms firmly around the boy, and pressed his face into the curve of her neck, hiding him completely from view.

"Shh, sweetheart," she whispered in his dark hair, her body shaking violently beside him. "Don't look, Lachlan. Don't look at him."

Across the room, Croft lifted himself from the position in which he had been supporting Chloe against the wall. His face was pale, his eyes dark with a bitter, defeated anger as he aimed his sidearm and placed his shaking wrist against the doorframe for support.

"You heard her, Vance," said Croft, his breath drawing painfully in his chest. "You've caused enough damage. The federal marshals are five minutes' drive away. If you don't leave at once, they'll arrest Valkyrie on your mother's warrant and the child will be placed in state custody."

"State custody,” the word resounded in the small room like the signal of death.

My chest heaved, my eyes settled on Valkyrie's trembling shoulders as she held our son on the floor. The struggle within me was nothing short of a fierce and raging inferno—on one hand, the intense, instinctive desire to take both of them into my arms at this very moment, and on the other hand, the horrifying truth of the trap my mother had set around this cottage.

Before I had time to speak, a high-pitched, mechanical tone screeched out from the rear bedroom.

The auxiliary heart monitor attached to Chloe flatlined and began to emit a continuous, sharp scream.

Valkyrie sucked in her breath, turning her head sharply in the direction of the dark hallway.

Through the back door, Victoria's lead enforcer stepped into the hallway, his suit dripping with mud from where he had been guarding the second relay, holding up a glowing blue transmitter unit with a cold, triumphant sneer.

“The federal transport just crossed the perimeter, Mr. Vance," the enforcer said coldly. " And your mother just sent the remote override. Chloe's primary pump has thirty seconds before the voltage cuts to zero.”