You already are a Brother, she thought to herself.

She kept that to herself because the yearning in his face broke her heart—and made her angry at the Brotherhood. Why couldn’t those males just do the right thing? And not, like, fifty years from now or some shit. John was a helluva fighter. He deserved the recognition and the honor.

“Come on, let’s head to the safe house,” she said. “It’s cold out here.”

As Kraiten’s SUV slowed and the commando behind the wheel turned them in to a driveway, Sarah frowned out of the side window in back. They were about an hour outside of Ithaca, to the north, and the fact that she hadn’t been in the area before wasn’t a news flash. It wasn’t like she and Gerry had traveled a lot upstate.

Scratch the driveway part. This was more like a lane, the curving, plowed passage winding its way through snow-draped evergreens that crowded up close.

Some two or three hundred yards in, the definition of cozy made its postcard’d appearance, the brick house and its smoke-curled chimneys like someone had made a model for a Christmas ad.

Sarah looked down into her lap as the SUV stopped at the front walkway. The boy had tucked in and fallen asleep, his head a warm weight on her leg, his arms crossed, his hands folded under his chin. She had been tempted to offer him the hazmat suit as a blanket, but the heat was up high, and he’d been out like a light almost as soon as they’d hit the highway.

The fact that she was sublimely uncomfortable because her backpack was still on under the protective gear and the leg he was using as a pillow had gone numb didn’t matter in the slightest. All she cared about was that the child got some rest.

She was worried he had a fever. His skin felt hot.

“He’s sleeping hard,” the commando said softly.

She glanced at the driver. He had twisted around and was staring down at the child with a sadness that made her worry about what he was going to have to tell the boy. She wanted to ask if the mother was indeed dead, but she already knew the answer, and she didn’t want that conversation to be what woke the boy up.

“We need to get him to a doctor,” she whispered.

“We have people we use.”

“When are they coming?” She thought of those scans. “He’s been … experimented on.”

God, how had it all happened? Her brain just could not get wrapped around any of it. Had they abducted him? Or … had he been sold like a commodity? Born in the lab?

“And I need to use a phone. A landline.”

“Are you calling your mate?” the commando asked.

“Mate?” She shook her head. “Oh, sorry. No, I have no one I need to get in touch with for myself. But I have things the FBI needs to see.”

Except she wasn’t sure the boy was on that list. He had been through so much, and she wasn’t convinced that tossing him into the foster care system was a great plan if the father wasn’t an appropriate custodian. But maybe he had relatives. Nice, normal relatives, like an aunt or uncle, who had a house just like this one.

“Come on,” the commando said as he disembarked, “let’s get you both inside.”

The boy stirred when the man opened their door and cold air burst in. And then Sarah was reluctantly handing her precious load over to the commando because there was no way she could carry him up to that front door with her leg as numb as it was. And then she worried about him catching pneumonia from the cold—

He’d already had pneumonia, she reminded herself grimly. Two years ago.

Cursing to herself, she shuffled out and nearly fell when she put weight on her left foot. Before she could catch herself, the commando threw out a hand and grabbed her arm.

His strength was … astonishing. Even with the boy in his arms, he kept her from hitting the snowpack like she weighed nothing at all, his body not even registering the load she represented. He was like a damn oak tree.

She thought of him kicking that steel door in like the thing was part of a dollhouse—as opposed to a reinforced metal panel locked into a jamb with a dead bolt.

Sarah pulled at the collar of the hazmat suit as a flush of warmth went through her. She had only ever dated fellow geeks, her three or four boyfriends conscientious, serious, and arguably ever so slightly on the scrawny side—hey, Mensa members could be hot, okay. But this man? With that … body?

Unfamiliar territory.

That had a topography which made her wonder if he were this powerful on the vertical, what the hell could he do to a woman on the horiz—

“Hello?” he demanded urgently. “Hello?”

As if he had been trying to get her attention.

Sarah shook her head. “Sorry, I’m …”

Wondering if you’re good in bed, she finished to herself.

The commando’s eyes peeled wide and he recoiled.

“Oh … dear God,” she breathed as she winced. “Please tell me I didn’t just say that out loud. Actually—don’t answer that. Forget you know me—you don’t know me, actually. You don’t know my name—I don’t know my name at this point—hey, it’s a party!”

She muttered all of that as she stepped around him and hit the shoveled path like she’d hammered two pints of beer and the only bathroom on the planet was up ahead.

“The door should be unlocked,” the commando said behind her.

“Fantastic, because I’m unhinged.” She pivoted around. “I’m Sarah, by the way. Dr. Sarah Watkins.”

Well, crap. The slow smile that hit that handsome face was more sexual than the best orgasm she’d ever had.

“Should I call you Sarah or Dr. Watkins.”

Call me anytime, she thought.

“Sarah’s fine. Good. I mean, yes. Please.”

Fuck.

Sarah jumped up onto the quaint front porch, and as she tested the door and discovered he was right, the glow from inside the house, the warmth, the homeyness … was pretty much the last way she’d expected her night to end.

Not that it was ending here.

It wasn’t like she was staying with the man and his hard-ass friends—although props for decorating, she thought as she looked around. Instead of a bunker for war, the place was kitted out in early Americana: woven rugs on the floor, hanging quilts as wallpaper, and a stuffed sofa that was totally book-nook material.

“Is this your house?” she said as she held the door open.

“No. It’s a friend of mine’s.”

Okay, that made sense, she thought. He would live in a bunker—so was this his girlfriend’s? Wife’s? No, wait, mother’s.

Had to be Mom’s. She could practically smell the apple pie in the oven. And the idea that he liked his momma enough to bring two fugitives home? Well, didn’t that just melt the cockles of the heart.

Certain she was losing it, Sarah closed them in as the man put the child on that sofa and covered him with a blanket. The fact that the boy didn’t stir at all made her paranoid that he was dead—but no, that painfully thin chest was going up and down.

Too much color on those cheeks, she thought as she reached out and put her hand on his forehead.

Sarah shook her head as she straightened. “We really need to take him to a hospital. He’s got a temperature.”

“I’ll call someone in.”

On cue, the couple that had been with him at the lab came down from upstairs. The man and woman had just showered, going by their wet hair, and they wore clothes either the same or identical to what they’d had on before.

They both still sported guns at their waists, too.

“I’ll text Jane,” the woman said. “She’ll come right away.”

“Is she a fully trained doctor?” Sarah asked sharply. “An internist?”

The woman nodded. “She treats all of us. She’s a surgeon, actually.”

“Look, this child has been deliberately infected with—”

“I know,” came the terse reply. “They did the same thing to me.”

Sarah blanched and glanced at the boy. Then she stared at the woman in alarm. But there was no eye contact to be had there. The female commando was stepping away into the kitchen, and her boyfriend/husband/partner went with her.

“You’re awake.”

She refocused on the child as the man spoke. Those eyes were opening slowly, the boy’s thin limbs stirring under the blanket.

“Where’s my mahmen?”

The man looked over at Sarah. “Can you give me a minute with him?”

A powerful impulse to stay right where she was—or, even better, take the poor child into her lap again—hit her like a message from God. But something in the way the pair of them stared at her suggested they had a history.

“Are you his family?” she asked the commando.

“Yes,” he said. “In all the ways that matter right now.”

Sarah nodded and backed her way into the hall. She went all the way down to the archway of the kitchen, and then could go no further. Leaning against the wall, she crossed her arms over her chest and felt like her heart was breaking as she watched the two of them from afar.

She couldn’t hear anything that was said as the man rubbed his face, cracked his knuckles … and then sat down on the sofa to look the child right in the eye.

The man’s mouth moved again, and the expression on the boy’s face tightened into a mask. The boy asked something. The man answered.

There was another question.

Another answer.

The boy looked down at the quilt that had been pulled over his little body. As he began to cry, the man seemed exactly as heartbroken as Sarah felt.

The commando took the child into his strong arms and held him.

As those oddly glowing eyes lifted to Sarah over the boy’s dark head, she put her hand over her mouth. And wondered exactly how much more anyone that young could take.

Hell, most adults couldn’t handle half of what he’d lived through already. It was so unfair for anything to be added to his burdens.

“—about to go through the change. So we need to get a Chosen here before day breaks just in case.”