Excerpt of The Soldiers Baby by Megan Ziese

Chapter One

The surge in his pulse was a gut reaction to his twin’s suggestion—an uncontrollable physical reaction—but even before he identified it, Dalton felt a wave of nausea follow it.

"For fuck's sake, Dalton, I'm not exactly asking you to do that much for me!" Dakota Carlton growled angrily at his twin brother.

Dalton shook his head, uttering a sarcastic laugh of outrage and disbelief. "Are you for real, Dakota? Are you out of your fucking mind? In fact, wait! Don't even answer that. I know you are. You have to be to even fucking suggest this!"

"I'm asking you to do something for me that I wouldn’t ordinarily suggest. Yeah, I know that. It's more than a minor favor. I'm aware of that, too, but I didn't think, never imagined, it would be such a huge request. Do you think I wanted to ask this of you? If that’s what you think, then you're way the fuck off base." There was deep resentment in Dakota's voice.

"You want me to fuck your wife and get her pregnant. You think that's nothing? You think that's a normal request from your brother? What planet are you on, man?"

"Don't overreact, Dalton."

"How can I not? Come on Dakota, this is a huge deal. What am I supposed to say to... to this … proposition, for fuck's sake? You're out of your mind if you think you can get away with this shit. Either that or you're just not thinking rationally!"

"Yes, it is a huge fucking deal. What do you want me to do? Do you want me to get down on my hands and knees and beg? Do you want me to scream and shout at you? Will that help you to make up your mind up faster? There's only one way I can ask this of you and that's rationally. Because if I think about what I'm asking you to do.... If I even begin to picture it in my head, I see red. So, yeah it's a huge deal, I know that, and I don't need you to tell me how fucking crazy it is."

Lifting placating hands, Dalton frowned at his angry brother and apologized. "You just seemed to be taking it real easy, that's all I meant."

"Yeah, like I said, I don't want to ask you to do this, but I have to." Grasping his chin in the palm of his hand, Dakota sharply twisted his neck from side to side. The loud sound of a pop in his neck was like a gun shot in the otherwise silent room. It seemed to pacify his anger somewhat. "I'm asking you to step in where I can't, brother. That's not such a big deal, is it?"

"Of course, it is!" Dalton said before sighing and then shaking his head. He paused for a minute, collecting himself before he spoke again. "No. No, it's not. If you can't ask me, then who can you ask? But, don't get me wrong, I know I can't understand the shit you're going through right now, but I know you better than anyone else does, even your wife Elle. This whole situation is eating you up now, but what is it going to be like afterwards? Have you really thought about this? Have you thought about the consequences of this? Have you considered how you'll feel if she does get pregnant? You're my brother, man. I love you, and I want to help, but I won't do it because when or if that kid is born, you'll resent the fact that you're not the Daddy for the rest of your life! And you’ll resent me!"

"Dalton, I've done nothing but contemplate this. I’ve done nothing but think of the possible complications and situations that may arise from this stupid scheme of mine. It's been in my fucking head ever since I learned that I was sterile. It’s always there in the back of my mind, taunting me, needling at me to think about it. I've done nothing but wait for you to get back from assignment so that I could discuss this with you. What else can I do? What other options are open to me? How am I supposed to tell my wife that I can't give her the child she wants, that we both want? How can I do that to her? The answer is, I can't and I won't. I need your help here, Dalton."

"How the hell do you even know you're sterile?" Dalton asked.

"Well, I'm not guessing if that's what you're asking. Do you really think that I want you to fuck my wife? Because I sure as hell don't. I told my doctor on base that we were trying for a baby and we’d been at it for a while. Since nothing was happening, I asked him for a test. Elle has no problems in that area. She miscarried a few years back, but she got checked right after so we know she's fertile. I got confirmation that it was my body at fault about a month ago."

Dalton sighed and slapped his brother on the back in commiseration. "I'm so sorry, bro."

"How did the mission go?" Dakota asked, quickly changing the subject when he saw he was making no headway. Settling back against Dalton’s sofa, he took a sip from his sweating beer bottle then rubbed the excess moisture on his hand into his forearm. He was the picture of melancholy.

Sitting on the recliner that lay at a right angle to his sofa, Dalton took a look around his messy living room then gave a tired sigh and drank deeply from his bottle, too. This one room in his so-called home was an exact illustration of why he'd come to the decision he had. Shifting his thoughts back to his brother, he was happy to change the subject, if for only a minute, even if it was about something he didn't really want to talk about. "It was fucked up. We lost Liam Jamison, the new kid, plus Nick and Howard."

"Three of you . . . in one battle? Fuck, that really must have been hard on the squad. There were only six of you sent out, right? Any injuries?"

Sighing, because at last there was some interest in Dak's voice, Dalton replied edgily, "Yeah, it was hard on the squad. It halved our number right down the fucking middle and in one fell swoop, just a couple of creases. Seems incredible that three men die in one go and all I get are fucking bullet grazes and a desperate need to shower.

"I'm sick of it Dakota, sick of my friends dying, sick of playing witness to the whole process. I watched Liam die with some terrorist bastard's bullet lodged in his gut, and this kid, who was newly married with a baby already on the way, was dying in front of me. There's only so many times I'm going to return from deployment. If I was lucky enough to have nine, then this has to be my last life, and I intend to live it to the fullest. It could so easily have been me this time, Dakota. I was lucky that it wasn't me. Maybe this last deployment just took my second life because Liam was young and yeah, a bit of a hothead, but he was damn good soldier. Otherwise he wouldn't have been promoted to my squad. I was only a few steps in front of him. I felt the bullet whiz past me, and then, wham. I heard Liam crumble into that fucking mud that was everywhere. There was nothing either of us could have done. No amount of training makes you see a bullet that’s headed straight for you and dodge it in time.

I looked around. I squatted down until I was knee-deep in that shit, that wet clay-mud, covered in all that crap and my teammate's blood, and then more of the fuckers started shooting at us. Talk about fucking with your mind." Slicing his hand through the air, he hissed vehemently, "It's never going to stop, Dakota. Never. I returned fire. I managed to down the fucker that shot him. Eventually they ran off. But if you kill one of the bastards, rid the world of one of them, they just indoctrinate another. You fucking bomb the headquarters and the bastards just regroup and build another. We're fighting a losing battle. And I for one am sick and tired of it.