Chapter 12

"Last one's there's a rotten egg!" Little Wolf announces before kicking Khan in the heel and running quickly ahead of him.

"You're cheating!" Hawk declares.

"Little Wolf! No fair!" Hawk whines. "You got a head start!"

"You better hurry up! You're both going to lose if you don't!" Little Wolf laughs as she increases her speeds and runs towards their improvised finish line: a large oak tree.

"So, is Fox is my child as well?" Khan asks Silver Moon. The boy looked just like Khan, but Khan was trying his best to convince himself that it was merely a coincidence.

"He is." Silver Moon says. Her green eyes watch the children as they romp through the thick underbrush and jog towards the river; Little Wolf leads the pack.

Of course. Like father, like daughter, she thinks ruefully.

"Impossible." They had been together for a month. That was it. One month. How was it possible they had two children two years apart? Something wasn't adding up.

"I was pregnant with fraternal twins, Kh—John." She explains patiently. "They took one of the eggs out—Fox. Two years after Little Wolf was born, they put the zygote back inside me."

She had been one month along with Little Wolf when they had her transferred to a different facility far away from where they had Khan caged. Little Wolf was born to be an experiment and they treated her as such. They inject unknown chemicals into her blood stream just to see how she would react. Silver Moon never even got the chance to hold her outside of feeding the girl.

After Fox was born, she managed to steal a ship and escape into space as she fled back to her people and left her life of captivity behind. Two years later, Star Fleet had caught up. So, she had frozen them. When she had awoken, she had been alone—the other pod nowhere in sight. She had woken up two weeks ago; the children had been reanimated a year ago.

"That's…" Khan is at a loss for words.

"I know, but it's better now." She lays her hand on top of his for a moment.

"Did you truly think I would harm her?" Khan asks quietly and a world of pain shimmers in his raging ice blue eyes. "Did you?"

"I didn't know. I know what you did when you finally escaped: we aren't that technologically challenged. For all I knew, my daughter—"

"Our daughter." Khan corrects Silver Moon instantly and his eyes burn with a self-loathing fire.

Shouldn't he have sensed he had offspring? How could he be left in the dark like this? His senses that were so strong, so acute, were useless when it came to finding out this bit of information. In this situation, he may as well have been some ordinary man for all the help his 'superior' genes gave him.

How long had he known the child—his child? Months? How many times had he seen her smile—his smile—eclipse her face? How many times had he seen her blue eyes—his eyes—light up with glee, mischief, or curiosity? How had he missed that she was good at reading people like him? That she liked to fix things, liked to mess with people like him? That she was highly intelligent like him? How could he—Khan Noonien Singh of all people—have missed it?

"Our daughter was simply a means to an end. You'd get what you wanted and then snap her neck and leave her for dead in a field? How did I know you weren't going to kill her like you had so many countless others, John? What could she possibly have meant to you before you knew she was your own flesh and blood? She was just another loose end that would have needed to be 'taken care of' later on."

"I would never do that. Not to her. Not to Little Wolf. Not to my daughter." His voice is even, but Khan wants to yell and hit something so hard it shattered!

"But how many people did you do that to? How many hundreds? How many thousands? You can't blame me for not taking that chance."

He felt like such an idiot! And Silver Moon was right. She was correct in fearing for her daughter's life when she saw him near her. Khan was dangerous, pure and simple. If he wanted that girl dead, he wouldn't have shown her a shred of mercy even after all the help she's given him.

Screams of pure terror interrupt them.

"The children!" Sharp Quill cries out from her wagon. "Hurry!"

He may not harm Little Wolf but he was going to slaughter those who wished her and her friends harm. Khan was going to make the cowards, who dared prey upon the children, rue the very day that they were born. He was going to make them beg for mercy at his feet just for the privilege of him crushing their skulls and ending their pathetic existences. No one messes with his family and gets away with it.

No one.

…

"Little Wolf! Look out!" Hawk yelps. Little Wolf darts quickly to the side and the phaser blast sails over her shoulder, missing her by mere inches. That was definitely too close for comfort. "Hurry! To the river!" Hawk shouts over his friend's screams.

The three children race for the water but hesitate uncertainly at its slippery edge. The current roared and bared its foamy white teeth at them, daring them to step in so that it could drag them beneath and greedily steal the sweet air from their lungs. Despite Khan taking time to show them all how to swim, the monstrous current would surely drag them all to their premature graves.

"Now what?" Little Wolf asks.

"Now? Now you die." A foreign voice growls.

The children whip around just in time to see the blasts before they hit their chest. Hawk and Fawnl are thrown into the ground but Little Wolf stumbles backwards from the impact, arching her back and swinging her arms wildly to regain her balance before the river could swallow her up again, but it wasn't to be. With a scream, she falls in.

"Alright," The voice asks coolly. "Who's next?"