Breaking Danger by Lisa Marie Rice

empath, and a powerful one. Each day refined her gift. She could feel people’s emotions at a touch. And if she was close to the person, she could almost read thoughts. And in Mac’s case, since she loved him, she could read his thoughts. He was an open book to her.
    And she could read clearly, as if in a book, how much he loved her and how worried he was for her. How worried he was for the baby in her belly.
    Mac had no family at all. Being without human ties had actually been a condition for joining Ghost Ops—a deniable team of elite warriors, completely off the books. They had to have no ties whatsoever, no family, no friends, no loved ones.
    At the time, that had been fine with them. Mac had never loved a woman. Had sex, yes. A lot—though he’d told her he hadn’t had sex since the group’s betrayal the year before. He thought they had been betrayed by a man he idolized and it had been nearly a mortal blow.
    She had changed all of that. She came to him with proof that he hadn’t been betrayed by his commanding officer, Lucius Ward, and it turned out she came with living proof that he could love.
    The moment she and Mac had met—even though he had suspected her of being a mole, sent in to find him and his teammates—the relationship had exploded. And now they were married and expecting a child, and it unnerved Mac completely. He hadn’t had a place in his head and his heart for love, had barely coped with the idea of falling in love with her, and now there was a new life coming, to love and to care for and—this still blew Mac’s mind—that new life would be his blood relative. His only blood relative in the world.
    Mac had no idea how to cope with all these feelings and the only thing that made sense to him was to make sure nothing harmed her or their child. He was a warrior, a protector, and that he knew how to do. And the way to do that, apparently, was to make sure that she did nothing more strenuous than sit on the couch and read a book. Maybe listen to a little music.
    While the world burned around them.
    Catherine loved Mac, and, more to the point, she understood him. Bone deep. So she cut him some slack even though he exasperated her enormously at times, like right now.
    Refugees were streaming in hourly, their resources were strained to the limits, every hand with medical training was absolutely essential. If they ever hoped to survive this plague, everyone had to pitch in.
    But fighting him would only get his back up. It was only the fact that Catherine understood deeply, bone deep, Mac’s fear of losing her, which kept her from kicking him in the backside.
    â€œMac,” she said softly, taking one of his big hands in both of her own. Under his skin she could feel the emotions skittering, something that would surprise people who thought of him as an emotionless hulk of a man, cold as ice. Her Mac wasn’t cold, just controlled. She knew, too—and this was brand-new to her—that her touch soothed him, as if she were cool water poured over a burning wound. That had been his description of what happened when she touched him while he was upset. “My darling, we’re fighting not just for our lives here, but we’re fighting so that something remains when this—this thing burns itself out. We’re bringing a child into the world, and I want there to be a world for her, or him, to grow up in. And you know that—”
    â€œ Make a hole!” Larry Vetter, one of their engineers, rushed by with a bleeding man on a gurney. Catherine and Mac pressed themselves against the wall. Larry caught Mac’s eye as he rushed past. “Bakersfield’s gone, Mac. No one left. Just got word.”
    Bakersfield gone.
    Just like that. A city of over four hundred thousand, all dead. Or worse. Infected.
    Catherine’s eyes followed the gurney. Beyond the door were over a hundred patients, tested to make sure they were uninfected,