“Hi. Do you want to get anything to eat before we talk?”

Samantha’s soft, feminine voice made Keller’s head jerk up. She was standing there in front of his table, dressed in a pair of blue, baggy scrubs and a white coat. Her hair was twisted into a messy ponytail and there were circles beneath her lovely blue eyes, as though she hadn’t been getting enough sleep.

Keller thought she had never looked more beautiful.

But he knew he couldn’t let the thought show on his face, or the emotions that went with it. Instead, he kept his voice carefully neutral as he spoke.

“Thank you, but hospital cuisine leaves a lot to be desired. Namely flavor, texture, and anything remotely resembling food.”

“It’s not that bad.” She sat down across from him and put down her tray, which held a small salad and a serving of macaroni and cheese.

Comfort food, Keller thought, and couldn’t help remembering their night together in Vegas and the dinner they’d shared at Mama Fu’s. Carrying her through down the Strip in his arms; hearing her light, beautiful laugh; smelling her sweet, feminine scent, which was so intoxicating to him, even before she’d become a Juvie . . .

Stop it, he told himself angrily. You’re here to end things, not begin them all over again. So just stop, damn it!

He’d spent the last three weeks immersed in his work, trying to forget her. But of course, since the work he was doing concerned her, it was damn near impossible. And now he had the fruits of his labor in a small, padded case in his inside pocket.

He took the case out now and slid it across the table to her. No point in prolonging the pain.

“What’s this?” She frowned, picking up the case.

“A formula I’ve been working on these past three weeks,” Keller said stiffly. “It’s a reverse-composite version of the serum you were given by that Hyena bastard.”

Thinking of the male who had attacked and hurt her still made a growl rise in his throat. A growl he couldn’t quite swallow down. Despite the fact that Samantha had made it abundantly clear she wanted nothing to do with him, his Cougar still insisted she was his mate—the female he loved and needed to protect.

Keller knew he couldn’t feel like that anymore. Especially in light of what he was offering Samantha . . . and what he was about to do.

“A reverse-composite formula? What does that mean?” She unsnapped the case and opened it to reveal a single-dose syringe filled with blue liquid.

“It will reverse the process of Rejuvenation,” Keller said, trying to keep his voice cool. “It was, as you pointed out, something your body was forced into against your will. I am giving you the chance to undo it.”

“Undo it?” Her eyebrows shot up. “You think I should undo it?”

“I think you should do what you want to with your body,” Keller emphasized. “While many outsiders would only look at the fact that you have suddenly become twenty years younger, there are drawbacks to becoming a full-fledged Shifter as well. Not the least of which are the need to Shift at the full moon, and the monthly cravings you’ll start to experience very soon.”

“Um . . . like a Shifter sex cycle, right?” She was still studying the liquid-filled syringe intently. “Fiona and Sadie filled me in.”

“Then you know the pain will be intense if you do not have a mate to . . . service you.” Keller coughed. “And since you and I are going our separate ways . . .” He shrugged.

“Right,” Samantha murmured. “They told me about how it has to be your mate who, uh, services you, as you put it. No other male can really satisfy the cravings like the one you’re bonded to—right?”

“Exactly.” Keller folded his hands together on the cheap hospital-cafeteria tabletop. “And since we want nothing more to do with each other—”

“Keller—I . . .” She looked up at him, her blue eyes wide and wounded somehow. “I didn’t expect . . .”

“Didn’t expect for me to offer you a way out?” He gave her a humorless grin. “Why wouldn’t I, Samantha? Do you think I want a female who doesn’t want me? I’m not a masochist you know.”

“I guess I thought . . .”

“You thought I was behind the attack on you—I know. I hope by giving you this antidote to your Rejuvenation I have proved once and for all that I had nothing to do with it,” Keller said.

“I believe you, but that wasn’t what I was going to say.” She looked down at her hands. “I thought you were going to ask about the baby.”

The baby? There’s a baby? The eager words almost came popping out of his mouth, but he clamped down on them grimly. Hadn’t he just told her he wasn’t a masochist?

“If there’s a child, you may do what you please with it,” he said, making his voice as cold as ice. “I will of course send you monetary support if you choose to keep it, but you may have the raising of it entirely.”

“You . . .” She swallowed audibly, and when Keller looked up, he was surprised to see tears in her eyes. “Fiona told me there was no such thing as a ‘deadbeat dad’ in Shifter society. So I didn’t think . . .” She shook her head, clearly unable to go on.

“Oh, did I hurt your feelings, Samantha?” he snarled, feeling his own pain rising to meet hers. The sorrow welling inside him made him savage. “Did you expect me to beg you to come back on bended knee? To be my mate—the mother of my child? So sorry to disappoint you.”

“I’m not disappointed, Keller.” She lifted her chin and dashed the tears from her eyes with two swift, angry moves. “And anyway, it doesn’t matter. There is no baby, and there’s never going to be one.”

Keller was crestfallen. He hadn’t been able to help hoping . . . but no, it had been a foolish wish. Even if she were pregnant, Samantha wouldn’t want to keep his baby any more than Rachel had. It was his fate and his failing to drive away the women he loved the most. So be it—he could live without Samantha and he could live without a child to love and to carry on his name. It wouldn’t kill him to lose her . . . even if it did feel like someone was cutting his heart out with a dull knife.

“I’m glad there’s no child to complicate things,” he said, keeping his voice cool and his face emotionless with considerable effort. “In that case, there’s nothing to keep you from taking the formula I engineered for you.”

“What if . . . what if I don’t choose to take it?” She asked in a low voice.

He shrugged. “Then you’ll have to deal with your monthly cravings yourself as best you can. I don’t favor a ‘friends with benefits’ relationship with you.”

“Of course.” She looked down at the syringe again, as though she were considering it. “And our bond? I mean, the whole feeling-you-inside-my-mind thing?”

“Is already fading,” Keller assured her. “Through continued disuse. A Shifter life-bond is like anything else—if you don’t use it, you lose it. However, I am prepared to hasten the process for both your comfort and mine.”

“Hasten the process? How?” Her eyes flew up to his.

“By blocking you.” Keller had a hard time getting the words out, but he forced himself to say them anyway.

“Blocking me? What does that even mean?” she asked, closing the padded case and pocketing the syringe.

“It’s a talent only Alphas have, and the closest thing Shifters have to a divorce,” Keller told her. “It involves raising a mental barricade around the part of me that is bonded to you. Walling it off, so to speak, until it withers completely away.”

“And this block—this wall—it works immediately?”

“It depends on how determined you are,” Keller said grimly. “And let me tell you, Samantha, I am extremely determined to forget you and move on with my life.”

“I see.” She glared at him defiantly. “Then do it. I’m tired of having you in the back of my mind all the time—it’s like having an uninvited houseguest you can’t get rid of.”

Her words stabbed him deep, but Keller was determined not to show it.

“As you wish.” Closing his eyes, he zeroed in on the part inside him that was bonded to her. It was like a dying garden that no one tended. Grimly, he pictured himself building a barrier around it—brick by brick, walling it off until he could no longer feel her warm, golden presence at the back of his mind.

It was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life. And the entire time he worked, he heard the other half of himself, his Cougar, growling in anger and anguish.

Why? Why are you pushing away our female? Our mate?

She doesn’t want us—doesn’t want me, Keller told his beast sternly. Be still.

At last it was done. When he opened his eyes and looked at Samantha, he no longer felt her presence in his mind, and he knew she didn’t feel him either.

“There,” he said, his voice dry and harsh. “You’re dead to me now. As I am to you.”

“Good.” Samantha got up abruptly, grabbing her tray in a sudden move.

“There’s no need to go,” Keller forced himself to say. “I’m leaving myself—you can stay and finish your meal.”

“I lost my appetite.” Tears were glimmering in her blue eyes, and he wanted desperately to take her in his arms and comfort her. But he couldn’t anymore, Keller reminded himself. He had relinquished his right to her, he had given up any hold or claim he had ever had on her. He had blocked her.

God, he hated himself.

“I have to go.” Samantha turned blindly away, stumbled once, and put a hand to her belly.

“Are you all right?” Keller asked sharply. Despite the fact that they were estranged, he couldn’t stop the stab of concern for her he felt.

“Fine.” She straightened up with an obvious effort. “Just a little too much comfort food, I guess.” She gestured to the mac and cheese, which looked untouched to Keller. “I’d better go check the ER—this is around the time on Friday night the MVAs start coming in.”

“Good-bye, Samantha.” They were his final words to her, and they nearly stuck in his throat. Somehow he forced them out.

Samantha had already turned away from him, holding her tray of uneaten food in one hand and her belly with the other. She didn’t look at him as she spoke.

“Have a nice life, Keller,” she said in a dead, flat voice.

Then she walked rapidly away—out of his life forever.

* * *

The minute she was sure she was out of Keller’s sight, Samantha dumped her tray blindly on an empty table and rushed to the bathroom.

This can’t be happening! It can’t be!

She found an empty stall and pulled down her scrubs, staring at her lower belly. It wasn’t as flat as Sadie’s had been—Rejuvenation had smoothed out the lumps and bumps of aging, but it hadn’t made Samantha skinny. Though she was slimmer than she had been as a forty-year-old, she still wasn’t slim enough to tell if she had a “baby bulge.”

I imagined it, she told herself. All that drama with Keller is making me crazy.

Thinking of him made her reach mentally to that place in the back of her mind where she’d felt him since the fateful night of their breeding and bonding . . . but there was nothing there. It was like poking an empty socket after a tooth has been pulled—instead of Keller’s warm, solid presence, she felt nothing but pain.

My God—he really did it. He’s really gone. How much must he hate me right now?

Almost as much as she hated herself.

I never should have let him go, Samantha thought, still staring down at her lower abdomen in a kind of daze. But he wanted to go. I was so sure he was here to ask me to come back. Instead he just wanted to be free of me.

She thought of the syringe in her pocket—he must have been working day and night to get it ready, desperate to give it to her and break their bond, desperate to forget her and their brief time together. He—

A small bulge in her belly caught her attention and wiped all other thoughts from her mind. No, surely she hadn’t seen that. It was stress . . . exhaustion. . . .

It happened again. A little bulge like the tiniest foot in the world had kicked out restlessly. It was a barely there movement, and anyone else would have missed it. Samantha might have missed it herself except that she didn’t just see it—she felt it. There was a fluttering inside her, like a hummingbird beating its wings.

The baby! My baby!

A feeling of protectiveness like nothing she had ever felt suddenly flowed over her. A fountain of love she hadn’t even known existed had been tapped—it welled up inside her, filling her completely. Her ambivalence about becoming a mother seemed to magically disappear, like a dark shadow melting in the sun. She knew it wouldn’t be easy, but she also knew she was up to it—somehow she would make it work.

Samantha gazed at her belly in awe. Was this a Shifter thing? This instant love and protectiveness? This joy? She had a sudden strong urge to go tell someone—to tell Keller.

I’m pregnant! I felt our baby move!

Instinctively, she reached for him again . . . only to find that same empty, dead spot.

Gone . . . he’s gone. I’m going to have his baby and he doesn’t even know. Doesn’t even care.

She remembered his cold words on the subject—“If there’s a child, you may do what you please with it. . . . I will of course send you monetary support if you choose to keep it, but you may have the raising of it entirely.”

Suddenly she found that instant joy and elation weren’t the only strong emotions accompanying her new knowledge. Before she could stop herself, she burst into tears. Slumping down on the cold toilet seat, she buried her face in her hands.

Keller—what have I done? I drove you away because I was too afraid to let my life change. Too afraid to accept your love or let myself love you back.

And now his love had turned to hate. He couldn’t wait to block her—to kill the bond they shared. He just wanted to be free of her, and Samantha didn’t blame him.

She sort of wished she could be free of herself.

Fiona was right. It was a gift—Keller’s love was a gift, and I threw it away with both hands. God, what an idiot I’ve been! What a—

“Dr. Samantha Becker to neonatal, STAT,” the nasal voice of the intercom said, booming into the bathroom.

Samantha, who had been sobbing so hard her shoulders shook, made an effort to pull herself together. Neonatal? Why the hell would they want her there? As a trauma surgeon, it wasn’t a department she often had to visit. In fact, she didn’t think she’d ever been paged there.

Who cares why they want you there—you’ve got a job to do. Now get up and go do it!

Grabbing a wad of tissue from the dispenser, Samantha mopped at her eyes. Pulling her scrub bottoms back up so they covered her belly, she went out to the sink and splashed cold water on her face. She was trying not to look like she’d just been bawling her eyes out, but she didn’t think the water helped. Even if she could magically get the redness and swelling to go away, the misery she felt was still written all over her face.

All right. Everything is going to be all right, she told herself sternly, trying to compose her features. Just get back to work. You can worry about the baby and everything else later.

Taking a deep breath, she blotted her wet face with paper towels and strode out the door. She headed for the neonatal unit, trying not to feel the pain that was trying to overwhelm her completely.

Trying to ignore the feeling that she’d made the biggest mistake of her life.