Regan Tam watched her husband as the small ship took them further away from Osiris. He was studying more of the messages he’d received on his secure line, reading them through half a dozen times before deleting them, wiping them from the system. He didn’t even know her eyes were on him.

She would never have believed that a time could come when she’d be running from her home, from everything she held important … from her life . Yet here she was. Just because he needed her.

Oh, it was more than that, she knew. There were her children to consider. If there was even one chance in a million that she’d be able to see them, talk to them, maybe even hug them again … It didn’t matter to her one bit that genetically they weren’t hers. As she’d said to Gabriel, she carried them both for nine months, and as far as she was concerned that made her their mother.

With an ache in her heart she remembered the last time she’d spoken to Simon. He’d been heading out somewhere, his coat pulled up around his ears, looking somewhat furtive. She hadn’t asked where he was going, hadn’t made it her business to find out. She and Gabriel were on their way to a dinner party at the Friedlichs, and she was afraid they were going to be late. All she’d said was, “See you later, dear.”

“Yes, mother.” His last two words to her.

What if she had? If she’d put her hand on his arm and stopped him, asked where he was off to. Would he have said? Explained he was going to a blackout zone to try and get information on his sister? Doubtful, she admitted to herself. Not from any false sense of keeping his parents safe, but simply because he’d got so good at hiding things beneath that impassive face of his.

And when they were called, interrupted at the dinner table, she thought she was going to die from the mortification. Her son, bound by law. Gabriel had, of course, sorted things out, paid off where he needed to, but the embarrassment still made her cheeks warm, even to this day.

Simon had been around the house