Unbreakable - Surviving the Truth (AU M/L ADULT) Ch. 19 3/14/26 p. 19

[Stefuh]

Oh, so Willa can see auras... so she definitely have powers. I just want her to be safe. I can't imagine Max and Liz's anxiety over this. I hope they'll be able to protect her, I know they'll do everything they can for their daughter.

Thanks for the update!!

[max and liz believer]

Hi!

I would have posted this sooner, but as you might have noticed, the board was down for a couple of days, which gave me plenty of time to worry about what might have happened to it. So happy that it's back!

Thank you to Stefuh as always. So grateful that you're letting me know that you are here—reading—and leaving me feedback. I hope this chapter won't rattle you too much…

And a big Thank you to Gigo. Always!


From EIGHTEEN:

As Max backed out of the parking lot and turned to drive back onto the interstate, his mind a black cloud of foreboding and introspection, I thought about all the children that were born at the same time as Willa. Whether they had started to exhibit any abilities, even though their parents were not alien. I thought of the pure energy that constituted a parim and if that alone could create abilities.

I thought about the Mayor. What his plans were. How he was planning on defeating the rebellion. Defeating us. I wondered how we would be able to protect our daughter from the war. How vital it was that no one found out that she had gifts.

What would the Mayor do if he found out that Willa had gifts? Willa, the first child born from two parims in thousands of years, with powers. It was not rocket science that this was attractive. Especially since she was a child. She could still be shaped. She could be used. For all I knew, they could brainwash her into becoming one of them.

Stop! Max cried across the connection, making me jump. Seeing my fright, his mental voice softened, Please, stop.

His dark feelings, combined with mine, draped over us like a wet blanket and a tear, the first of many, rolled down my cheek.

I’m sorry, I whispered.

He didn’t reply, his mind filled with images of our daughter. Of her as a newborn, falling asleep on my chest after a milk feed, her first smile, her first laugh, crawling, learning to eat with a spoon, taking her first steps, her first words. Every greeting when she had run into his arms when he came home after work. The tickles, the bedtime stories, the dancing in the living room.

Our daughter had recently started to develop the ability to heal, but instead of being a special milestone as the child of a hybrid, it felt as if she had been handed a death sentence. With her strong life force loud with giggles and talk behind our seats, we felt her slipping away.

Soon, the community would claim her. Soon, she would no longer be ours to decide for.

____________________________________

.

NINETEEN

Max dropped us off and basically immediately left for work when we returned home. There was a small goodbye kiss and a hug for Willa, but he was in a hurry to be out the door in more ways than one. He was breaking down. His thoughts and emotions weighed heavily on his existence.

Being a resident at the hospital was hard work. Even though he was better equipped than most—having in essence been a doctor since he was a kid—it completely occupied his mind and energy.

Which is what he wanted presently. He needed an excuse to get out of his dark mind.

Willa and I stayed at home, doing laundry, coloring, building cats with beads (she loved cats), making dinner (Willa loved to be involved in every step of the cooking process) and organizing some papers from school. All regular stuff. Willa was happy and content. Nothing seemed to linger from the meeting the day before or the talk we had in the car.

I was just sneaking out of her room, after making sure that she was fast asleep, when I heard the key in the front door. I had felt him coming closer to our home for awhile now. Like a comfortable and familiar buzz increasing in the back of my head.

I met him coming out into the hallway, the modestly lit space making him disappear somewhat in the shadows.

“Hey,” I whispered.

He stopped where the living room led out into the hallway, gently reaching his arm out to drop the keychain on the kitchen counter, waiting for me to close the distance between us. “Hi.” The dimness of the room kept me from reading his face, but the connection did not.

As soon as I walked within arms’ length, he pulled me in, put his arms tightly around me and crushed me to his front. His breath was warm—slightly too quick—against the nook of my neck as he buried his face against my skin.

I melted into his embrace, missing his touch acutely. Everyday tasks had not managed to fully empty my thoughts or my worries, even though they had been a fair distraction.

“There’s food in the fridge,” I mumbled against his warm chest.

I all but purred when he buried his hand in my hair, molding it against the back of my scalp.

“I don’t need food,” he mumbled. “I need you.”

His raw statement didn’t exactly come as a surprise. I could feel the need, the desire, the want, rolling off him in waves. His day old stubble brushed roughly along my cheek as he slowly pulled back, locking eyes with me for a second, his gaze making electricity shoot down the center of my being, before he pushed forward and captured my lips with his. I opened my mouth to his invitation, loving how his kisses always could make me fall apart at the seams. Melt in his embrace.

“I need a shower,” his voice ghosted into my mouth. “Join me?”

Outside of the desire, I had difficulty deciphering his emotional state. Did he need me close because of want, because of love, because of sadness, because of frustration…?

Silently, I nodded and let him lead me by the hand to the bathroom. I snagged the baby monitor when I walked past the kitchen counter, turning it on while Max was peppering kisses along the line of my jugular and almost dropping the miniature surveillance device down the bathroom sink as Max took on the assignment of pulling my sweatshirt over my head as soon as we entered the bathroom. His hands were everywhere, his lips following suit.

His mouth drank my moans as his hands pushed down on my sweatpants along with my panties. I struggled to keep up, the skin of his hands burning along my arms. I distractedly noticed the white light trailing along my skin, being emitted from the tips of his fingers. The sign of our connection. The sign of our bond firing up. Re-energezing. Re-vitalizing.

I was trying to keep up. Trying to get his clothes off at the same pace and failing miserably. He was pulling me along with him, while stripping off his own pants and turning on the shower with his free hand.

Before I could blink, he pushed my back up against the shower wall, the water from the shower head obscuring my vision, drenching our warm bodies.

“I need you,” he mumbled, kissing me ferociously, pressing the length of his body up against mine. I gasped at the feel of his naked body against mine. Of how hardness met softness, his body always kept in shape to be prepared to protect the people he loved, while my body had softened from the pregnancy with Willa. Softened and changed. My hips were a bit wider now, my abdomen had a little bit more skin (which was slightly being filled out now by the new baby residing on the other side of that physical barrier).

His lips scorched mine as his hands left my face to grab a firm hold of my hips, pulling me up to wrap my thighs around his hips. His mouth continued down my neck, across my collarbone, over the hill of my breast, which was swollen with pregnancy.

“How was work?” I gasped breathlessly, threading my fingers through his dark thick hair, guiding his mouth towards my nipple.

A violent tremble shot through me as the vibrations from his answer tingled over the sensitive skin, “Nothing remarkable.”

Amidst our blazing desire, we were both aware of the sucking feeling of energy from the center of our bodies. Of how the connection was fuelling and resetting us. How it was pushing us closer together, to a point where our need for each other almost became unbearable.

But we had lived with it for so many years now, it had almost become second nature to us. This was our normal. Oddly enough. Having been a part of the connection for so many years, as much as the connection was part of us, had trained us to somewhat resist it. To regain control over our bodies. At the beginning of the grasp of the connection, we were being pushed around like puppets. Now we were able to pace ourselves. Even though it took a lot of restraint.

My upper body arched into his as he brought his hand down to the apex at my thighs. The heat was building in my body, the want unyielding. The relief when he joined our bodies was like a cool comfortable blanket and our combined sigh of satisfaction was loud, mixing with the noise of the water pelting down our naked bodies.

His mouth drank in our sigh, his body pressing me up against the wall of the shower stall, our bodies flush together, moving in the most instinctive intimate dance.

“I love you,” he whispered against my neck before he fell apart against me, dragging me along with him.

We washed each other off in silence, caresses soft and fleeting over highly sensitized skin, before we silently relocated to our bedroom. While in there we took our time to love each other. Slowly. Thoroughly.

It was getting late into the night when we found ourselves on our sides, facing each other. Max slowly brushing his fingers along the lines of the side of my face, placing a strand of my hair behind my ear, before sliding down my neck, over the hill of my shoulder, down the length of my arm—my skin breaking out in pleasurable goosebumps following his touch. Then up again, up my arm, up the curve of my neck, to cradle my cheek, his eyes fixed on mine the entire time.

“I’m starting training tomorrow,” he said solemnly. “I have the morning shift at work and then I have a couple of hours off.”

I nodded. “You sure about this? You sure you want to do this alone?”

I still wasn’t sure it was the right way to go. The connection was a part of both of us and to find that power surge we most rationally needed to be two.

He looked at me thoughtfully. “I want to find the switch. I probably won’t be able to execute anything,” he threw me a wink, “without your input.”

I smiled at him, his small gesture warming me. I was worried about Willa, but I didn’t want to talk about that. I knew he was worried too and I also knew that he had closed that part of his mind off. He wanted to focus on one thing at the time. And first up was the project of gaining more control over the connection.

Neither of us knew how to deal with the Willa situation and it was enough that it was whispering through our minds. We didn’t need to voice it too.

***

Max started training the next morning, leaving me with the same thought from the night before. “I need control. If I can find the switch, we won’t be blindsided again.”

We were both acutely aware of the ramifications of again.

At the latest meeting, we had argued about moving to the Institute. About living our lives behind armed gates with rotating guards and protocols.

But Willa was four.

So we had decided upon schedules instead of soldiers.

Family instead of fortresses. We told ourselves it was enough.

Keeping up with our four-year-old’s normal life meant taking her pet cat Yoda to the veterinarian for his regular yearly checkup and vaccination.

Max was doing a long shift at the hospital and I had the afternoon off to run some errands. We weren’t being escorted. Not for something this small. Not for a vet appointment.

Yoda was communicating his displeasure at riding the car loudly and I could see Willa’s worried face in the rearview mirror. It was endearing how she would spend more time with her face up against the barred door to the transport cage than looking out the window, trying to offer her support to the cat with her soft voice and nonsensical comforting sounds.

It didn’t help though. Yoda kept on singing.

“Mommy,” Willa piped up, “Yoda’s sad.”

I looked at her through the rearview mirror and gave her an encouraging smile. “He’s not used to the movements and sounds of a car, honey. He’s a bit worried. But what you’re doing is great! Even if he keeps on meowing, you are telling him that you’re there for him.”

Willa didn’t look convinced, biting her bottom lip in worry, before wordlessly refocusing her attention on the cat. Looking in the rearview mirror from time to time, to keep check on my daughter, I started to take notice of a black car inching closer and closer.

I kept waiting for it to overtake us, but it kept on tailgating me.

What’s wrong?

I jumped as Max’s voice practically boomed through my mind. We usually couldn’t communicate like this—restrained by vast geographic distance—but I must be going into more of an emotional response and stress than I had realized, which usually enhanced our connection.

I think someone’s following me, I told him, wondering why I had declined Alex’s offer to come along to the vet. The clinic was close to home and we would be in the car most of the time. I hadn’t seen the excursion as a possible risk.

We’d agreed routines were safer than walls. Agreed soldiers would only make Willa a target.

My knuckles were turning white from my hold on the steering wheel. Were we in danger?

Take a turn somewhere and see if the car follows, Max instructed. He couldn’t really hide his distress from me, but he was doing a good job at keeping his instructions calm and level-headed.

I nodded to myself, glanced in the rearview mirror again, both to check on Willa and to see if the car was still there. Which it was. I tried to keep my control over the car cool, to not jostle Willa in the back and make her worried about what was (possibly) happening, while I turned into a side road.

The car followed.

It followed, I told Max, feeling oddly empty, filled with bereavement over being alone with Willa. I could have panicked. Give into the heavy feeling of the wet blanket wanting to creep up over my chest.

But something was clicking in my head. Survival. Maternal instinct. I needed to stay clear. To get us home.

That’s when another car came out of nowhere and slammed into the right front of our car.

Maybe it was Max. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was the connection. But before a second had passed, before the car had started spinning its half-circle into the center of the road, my body angled between the front seats to be able to direct my arm and hand in Willa’s direction, pushing the protective field towards my daughter, seeing its shimmering veil close around Willa and her cat, before my neck jerked sideways from the force, throwing my head against the glass of the driver’s door.

The pain exploded in my head, mixed with the scream from Max, before my vision dimmed and the sounds diminished, increasing and decreasing in clarity, before I blacked out and cut out both my thoughts and the movement of the car.

****

My head was without pain when I came to, blinking my eyes open fearfully.

Liz?

Even though his voice was merely telepathic, it sounded hoarse. As if he had been screaming for a very long time.

I rubbed my forehead, mumbling to myself—and Max, “I’m fine. I’m fine,” trying to orient myself. Trying to remember what had happened. My mind was surprisingly clear, but I had problems acclimatizing.

I was in my car. I squeezed my eyes closed. I felt Max searching me, checking my status. Especially since he wasn’t getting a clear verbal evaluation from me.

You were in a car crash, Max explained, panic lacing his voice, barely controlled. Is Willa okay?

Willa!

I spun around in my seat and saw the cat cage unmoved in the backseat.

Good. Yoda was there. Unharmed.

Good.

My eyes flickered to the seat next to the cage, but I was having troubles registering what I was actually seeing.

The air felt thick, its thickness muffling all the sounds around me except a consistent high frequency ringing. The thickness was plumbing me into deep water where the colors were too bright, the edges too soft, where my own hands felt foreign.

Where the details around me disappeared, leaving me with only the lonely seatbelt. With the buckle hanging haphazardly to the side of the seat.

I blinked. My lungs felt constricted around my harshly beating heart.

The buckle was open. I frowned. I had buckled her up.

Another blink. My fingers were going numb.

I stared at the metal of the buckle as it caught the reflection of sunlight. Why was the buckle open?

In the backseat, Yoda was in his cage, quiet for now, just meeting my eyes, but the seat next to the transport cage — where Willa had been…

The seat looked…

Wrong.

Crooked.

She wasn’t there.

No.

No. She had been right there. She had been right there next to Yoda. Talking to Yoda. Buckled up.

“Willa?” I whispered, her name catching on my dried lips.

I pressed myself between the front seats to look down at the floor behind the seats. Maybe she had crawled down there to hide?

My searching hand came up with nothing.

Empty. Only the black protective rubber mat on the floor.

My throat felt too tight.

My eyes fell on her stuffed pet cat which was laying on the floor behind the driver’s seat. On its side. Crooked. The ringing in my head stopped abruptly.

“She’s not here,” I said, my voice breaking. “She’s not— Oh God.”

The details sharpened painfully around me, the smell of burnt rubber and gasoline invading my senses. I pulled in a strained breath as the reality brought the connection.

Max.

His panic laced with fear slammed into me, making me physically sway in my seat. Where is she?

I turned to get out of the car, being stopped by the seat belt, which was still buckled.

I couldn’t answer him. Tears were already spilling down my cheeks, my hands clammy, my breath unable to fill up my lungs as I stumbled out of the car.

Max’s emotions were too loud, his questions interfering.

I couldn’t answer him. Not now.

My eyes distractedly scanned my surroundings. The other car. Empty. The headlights of my car was shattered. The street was empty.

Empty. The street was empty.

Willa’s carseat was empty.

No birds. No traffic sounds.

There was no one here. I was all alone.

My dry voice barely got a whisper out, “Wi—?” I swallowed. “Willa?”

I started to run around at the sight, looking underneath the car, searching bushes and behind trees.

Liz-? Please-

“Willa!”

The sound came out thin. Broken.

Wrong.

It wasn’t loud enough. She wouldn’t hear me.

I turned right, where the car had come from, and then turned left. Before turning in the other direction again. Before going back.

Liz. Breathe.

“Willa!

Louder this time.

Please answer. Please.

I stumbled, wiping at hot tears obscuring my field of vision, “Please, Willa.”

In my body, Max’s panic sharpened and his thoughts became clearer.

My calling had lured some people out of their houses and I started running up to them, asking if they had seen a little girl.

With every shake of their heads and every pitiful look, my desperation deepened, and my connection to Max grew clearer.

The moment the white-haired elderly woman shook her head in response to my question, I stopped listening, her offer at calling someone for me meeting deaf ears as I turned. Only to slam into a solid obstacle.

Hands caught me.

Warm. Steady. Solid.

Max.

He was there. Both physically and mentally.

I looked up at his face, the sheen across his tormented eyes, the hard set of his mouth. His hands gripped my upper arms. Tightly. Too tightly.

Not tight enough to hide his shaking. Or his unsteady breaths fanning my face.

A wave of relief rushed through me, immediately drowned by guilt.

“Is everything okay?” The shaky old voice of the woman standing behind me.

“No.”

I looked next to Max. At the walkway past him.

Empty. Still empty.

Looking back up at him, his grip on my arms tightened further.

“No.”

She was not with him.

I collapsed into Max’s arms and he put strong tight arms around me. There was no resentment towards me or my actions. No fuel to my guilt. There was anger, and fear, but nothing directed at me.

With his closeness, I could focus more on his thoughts, the deafening loop of self-blame being subdued, and I realized that my search for our daughter was futile.

She was gone.

“Noooo!” I screamed against the side of his neck, Max’s arms tightening further around me.

The world narrowed. The woman’s voice. I could no longer see the empty streets or the curious neighbors. I was only aware of my own wails, the trembles of Max’s strong embrace and the…

I froze.

There was something in the connection. Something in Max’s mind. Something he was trying to hide.

Something colder than panic.

In our bubble of fear, panic and desperation, ice cold tendrils stretched out through the cracks of the box he had tried to seal away from me.

But he was not in control of himself right now. He couldn’t stop me from widening the cracks.

I didn’t need a name.

Green eyes. Red hair. That smile.

The Mayor.

Eugene Bleeker.

In Max’s mind he was holding our daughter’s hand. Small fingers wrapped in his. In Max’s mind he was turning away. Taking her with him.

My knees buckled.


TBC...