Opposition (Lux 5)

Anger punched through me as I flipped my long ponytail over my shoulder. “First off, I wouldn’t get eaten by a mountain lion. Second, at least I’d be trying to do something other than sitting on my ass.”

Archer sighed.

But Luc just smiled brightly up at me. “Are we going to have this argument again?” He glanced at a stone-faced Archer. “Because I like it when you two get into it. It’s like watching a mom and dad have a marital disagreement. I feel like I need to go hide in a bedroom or something to make it more authentic. Maybe slam a door shut or—”

“Shut up, Luc,” Archer growled, and then he turned his glare on me. “We’ve been down this road more times than I care to even think about. Going after them isn’t smart. There will be too many of them, and we don’t know if—”

“Daemon is not one of them!” I shouted, jumping to my feet and breathing heavily. “He hasn’t joined them. Neither would Dee or Dawson. I don’t know what’s going on.” My voice cracked, and a swell of emotion rose in my throat. “But they wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t.”

Archer leaned forward, eyes glittering. “You don’t know that. We don’t.”

“You just said they’d be back!” I fired at him.

He didn’t say anything as he cast his gaze back to the TV, and that told me what I already knew deep down. Archer didn’t expect Daemon or any of them to come back.

Clamping my lips together, I shook my head so fast my ponytail turned into a whip. I turned away, stalking toward the doorway before we did get knee-deep in this argument again.

“Where are you going?” asked Archer.

I resisted the urge to flip him off. “I’m going to have girl talk with Beth, apparently.”

“Sounds like a plan,” commented Luc.

Ignoring him, I rounded the stairs and all but stomped up them. I hated sitting around and doing nothing. I hated that every time I opened that front door, Luc or Archer was there to stop me. And what I hated most of all was the fact that they could stop me.

I might be a hybrid, mutated with all that special Luxen goodness, but they were Origins, and they could kick my butt from here to California if it came down to it.

The upstairs was quiet and dark, and I didn’t like being here. Wasn’t sure why, but the tiny hairs on the back of my neck rose every time I came up here and walked down the long, narrow hall.

Beth and Dawson had commandeered the last bedroom on the right the first night here, and that’s where Beth had holed herself up since he . . . since he left. I didn’t know the girl well, but I knew she’d been through a lot when she was under the control of Daedalus, and I also didn’t believe that she was the most stable of all hybrids out there, but that wasn’t her fault. And I hated to admit this, but sometimes, she kind of freaked me out.

Stopping in front of the door, I rapped my knuckles on it instead of busting up into the room.

“Yes?” came the thin and reedy voice.

I winced as I pushed open the door. Beth sounded terrible, and when I got an eyeful of her, she looked just as bad. Sitting up against the headboard with a mountain of blankets piled around her, she had dark circles under her eyes. Her pale, waiflike features were sharp, and her hair was an unwashed, tangled mess. I tried not to breathe too deeply, because the room smelled of vomit and sweat.

I halted at the bed, shocked to my core. “Are you sick?”

Her unfocused gaze drifted away from me, landing on the door to the adjoined bathroom. It didn’t make sense. Hybrids—we couldn’t get sick. Not the common cold or the most dangerous cancer. Like the Luxen, we were immune to everything out there in terms of disease, but Beth? Yeah, she wasn’t looking too good.

A great sense of unease blossomed in my belly, stiffening my muscles. “Beth?”

Her watery stare finally drifted back to me. “Is Dawson back yet?”

My heart turned over heavily, almost painfully. The two of them had been through so much, more than Daemon and I had, and this . . . God, this wasn’t fair. “No, he’s not back yet, but you? You look sick.”

She raised a slim, pale hand to her throat as she swallowed. “I’m not feeling very well.”

I didn’t know what level of bad this was, and I was almost afraid to find out. “What’s wrong?”

One shoulder rose, and it looked like it had taken great effort. “You shouldn’t be worried,” she said, voice low as she picked at the hem of a blanket. “It’s not a big deal. I’ll be okay once Dawson comes back.” Her gaze floated off again, and as she dropped the edge of the blanket, she reached down, put her hand over her blanket-covered belly, and said, “We’ll be okay once Dawson comes back.”

“We’ll be . . . ?” I trailed off as my eyes widened. My jaw came unhinged and dropped as I gaped at her.

I stared at where her hand was and watched in dawning horror as she rubbed her belly in slow, steady circles.

Oh no. Oh, hell to the no to the tenth power.

I started forward and then stopped. “Beth, are you . . . are you pregnant?”

She tipped her head back against the wall and squeezed her eyes shut. “We should’ve been more careful.”

My legs suddenly felt weak. The sleeping. The exhaustion. All of it made sense. Beth was pregnant, but at first, like a total idiot, I didn’t understand how. Then common sense took over, and I wanted to scream, Where were the condoms? But that was kind of a moot point.

An image appeared in my head of Micah, the little boy who’d helped us escape Daedalus. Micah, the little kid who had snapped necks and destroyed brains with a mere thought.