Page 90 of The Hunter

“You must have to be terribly strong to hit something that hard.”

The wistful note in the boy’s voice tugged at him, and Christopher looked down to see Jakub run a finger over the split in the trunk with his brows drawn into a frown.

“I am terribly strong, but you don’t have to be to do damage like that. It takes knowledge, discipline, and agility more than strength.” He walked to a shelf in the corner, reaching for a cloth with which to wrap his knuckles. Eyes snagging on his bandaged forearm, Christopher flinched at the memory of Millie’s gentle care.

“Mama could never do that,” Jakub argued. “Nor could I.”

“Nonsense.” Christopher turned back to the boy, rolling the bandage over his hand. “The martial art I practice was taught by a female monk in the East decades ago. It was said she could shatter stone with a flick of her finger.”

“That’s just a story,” Jakub scoffed.

“A story told to me by the master who taught me to fight. He was a very small man, smaller than your mother, and I saw him shatter bricks in his palm.”

The boy snorted. “Stop teasing me.”

“I’ve never teased anyone in my life.”

“Then you’re lying.”

Christopher frowned, crossing his arms over his chest. “What makes you think that?”

“You won’t look at me.”

Their eyes collided and they glared at each other for a few narrow-eyed seconds before the boy’s mouth twitched, tightened, then broke into a smile.

Grunting, Christopher broke away from that smile, from the answering amusement it produced, and went to the basin in the corner and began to wash the sweat from his skin.

“Your trousers are funny.” Jakub trailed after him. “They look like a dress.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be at breakfast?”

“Do you use those weapons on people?”

Christopher froze with the cloth half dipped into the water. Jakub’s innocence did not belong in this house. Nor did his mother’s. And, bastard that he was, Christopher had taken hers last night. But the boy’s was worth saving. His lack of guile, his big-eyed curiosity, his exuberance.

Hadn’t he been that way once? Before…

“I do.” Shit, he should have lied.

“Couldn’t you teach me?”

“No.”

“But…” The boy’s voice dropped back to the solemn note Christopher had heard before. “There are people after my mother. Bad men. I could protect her if I knew how.”

Dropping the cloth back into the water, Christopher closed his eyes against a wave of something so intense, it locked his limbs. He recognized that note in the boy’s voice. A mixture of worship and fear, of a little boy’s fierce, protective love for his mother, and the anger big enough for a grown man that ignited when that love was threatened.

It didn’t matter that Millie’s body had never carried the boy. She was his mother. Love glowed between them, a love he’d seen before. A love ripped to shreds and lost in a pool of…

“You don’t have to worry about that,” he vowed. “Iwill protect her; I’m here to protect you both.”

“But will you always be?”

The question tore the breath from his chest and Christopher had to struggle to inflate his lungs. “Get that knife over there,” he ordered. “I’ll show you a few things.”

***

“Welton.” Millie ran across the butler marching through the empty dining hall. “Have you seen my son—What on earth is that?”