Break the Day

by Adrian, Lara

  “You need blood, Rafe.”

  She glanced out the windows, seeing nothing but deserted roadway and construction around them. Not a single human anywhere to be found, and no time to race around searching for a blood Host for him. Not that she wanted to see him feed from someone else. Not even under these circumstances.

  Especially not then.

  Human blood was an inferior solution, anyway. His body would need something far more powerful to boost its recovery.

  Her blood.

  There was hardly anything purer.

  There was nothing in this world that would heal him faster.

  But if she gave it to him, she could never take it back. The bond would remain long after he healed. It would be unbreakable. If she fed him even one sip, he would be fused to her forever through that bond—a gift he might view as a curse.

  She didn’t take that understanding lightly.

  He might come to hate her for it, but at least he would be alive.

  Devony brought her wrist to her mouth and bit into the veins that pulsed there. Blood dripped onto Rafe’s scorched skin and into his beard as she lowered her hand to his parted, blistered lips.

  He moaned at the first drop that slid onto his tongue. His big body twitched as the steady patter continued to flow. He licked at it, then his mouth fastened over the punctures and he drew deep from her. As he swallowed, a low rumble built in his chest.

  Abruptly, his eyes peeled open. Fire blazed in the tormented pools of aquamarine.

  “Devony.” Her name was a threatening snarl.

  “Drink,” she whispered.

  And he did.

  CHAPTER 18

  He was burning up.

  Lightning in his veins. In his muscles and bones.

  In every depleted, thirsting cell in his body.

  And he couldn’t get enough.

  The full-body, overwhelming agony that had dropped him on the floor of the warehouse and nearly scorched the life out of him now gave way to something infinitely more humbling.

  Devony Winters.

  Her essence rushed into him with every hungry gulp he took from her veins. Bold, intense, sweet . . . intoxicating. Unforgettable.

  Life-altering.

  She had been all of those things to him even before this moment, but now she lived inside him through his link to her. He felt her strength and power feeding his ravaged body, restoring the damage that surely would have killed him if she hadn’t defied his instructions and come looking for him tonight.

  His extraordinary partner.

  He owed her his life.

  God, he owed Devony so much more than that.

  And he still owed her the truth.

  He lifted his eyelids and found her watching him with tender relief as he fed from her. “It’s working, Rafe. Keep drinking. Your skin is healing. The burns . . . they’re starting to fade.”

  He groaned against her wrist, feeling like the worst kind of bastard as all of her emotions flooded into him at once. Her fear over the gravity of his injuries fading now, replaced by a bright, rising joy over seeing him on the mend.

  The astonishing depth of her care for him.

  It was too much. He had taken too much from her, not just at her wrist tonight, but from the moment he first met her.

  Now this. The connection he would have to her for as long as either of them lived.

  Fuck.

  Angrily, he forced himself to release her, sweeping his tongue over the twin punctures and sealing them closed.

  He sat up, taking a quick inventory of himself. Beneath the healing light of Devony’s blood, he still hurt like hell. His skin still felt as if it were being stripped off him with a hot knife, but he was breathing. He was alive.

  Thanks to Devony, he was alive.

  Remorse clawed at him. Not because he didn’t want her gift, but because of the regret she would bear once she realized he didn’t deserve it.

  Scowling, he glanced at her. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  Her expression faltered a bit. Some of the bright intensity of her emotions dimmed in the face of his stony response.

  He couldn’t help it. Guilt sank its talons into him as she stared at him in the silence of the vehicle.

  The best way he knew how to ensure her gift wasn’t wasted on him was to do everything in his power to see her family avenged and Opus Nostrum destroyed. He wasn’t going to rest until it was done.

  “Slide over,” he said, already opening the passenger door. “I’ll drive now.”

  He hoofed it around to the other side and climbed in. They were a few miles out from the center of Boston. Rafe sped back toward the drop location.

  He was all but certain the few minutes’ detour while he came back online had probably given Cruz ample time to transfer the crates to LaSalle or whoever was actually at the other end of the supply-and-demand chain. So, he couldn’t have been more pleased to see the delivery truck still parked at Atlantic Wharf.

  Except . . . something wasn’t right.

  “Rafe,” Devony murmured from beside him.

  “Yeah. I know.” There was no activity near the truck. When he saw the massive hole punched through the windshield, he arched a brow at Devony.

  She gave him a flat look. “I should’ve killed Cruz while I had his throat in my fist.”

  Rafe parked the sedan in front of the other vehicle. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay here.”

  “Like hell I will.”

  She jumped out with him and together they approached the truck. They both smelled blood long before they saw the bodies of Cruz, Fish, and Ocho. All three had been shot execution-style.

  The corpses were cold. Whoever had done the killings had been gone for some time.

  And all of the crates of liquid UV were missing.

  “Oh, my God,” Devony murmured. “Do you think LaSalle double-crossed them?”

  Rafe shook his head. “I don’t know. Fish said the crates belonged to an arms dealer. Apparently, LaSalle’s contact needed someone to play middleman.”

  “Expendables,” Devony guessed.

  Rafe nodded. “Yeah, but this seems more professional than payback from a local gun runner. I’ve seen this kind of carnage before. A few months ago in Montreal, after an Opus death squad took out a pharmaceutical tycoon and his entire estate.”

  “There’s LaSalle’s yacht,” she said, pointing toward the marina. Light glowed from the windows of the massive white vessel docked at the end of a long pier. “He’s still here.”

  Rafe didn’t like the look of it. Or the smell. If the area around the truck reeked of death, LaSalle’s yacht carried the stench of a slaughterhouse.

  “Opus’s assassins have been here too,” he muttered.

  He didn’t like the idea of Devony approaching the yacht alongside him, but she’d already demonstrated that she wasn’t the type of partner to take a backseat when faced with danger.

  And thank God for that earlier tonight.

  His skin still felt like hell, but it didn’t slow him down as they crept up on LaSalle’s vessel and cautiously boarded it.

  The place was silent except for the chatter of a sports telecast blaring from somewhere in the main cabin. Armed bodyguards had been shot at point-blank range in the head. Crew members had suffered similar fates, some with their throats slashed. Rafe moved quickly through the cabin, his ear trained to the faint rasp of fading breaths and the slowing tick of a dying heart.

  “It’s LaSalle,” Devony said.

  The man lay in the main salon of the yacht with several other of his crew. Blood painted everything, including the large-screen TV on the other side of the luxurious living space.

  Rafe hunkered down next to Judah LaSalle. “Tell me who you’re working for.”

  All he got was a wet wheeze in reply. The human was too far gone to talk. He had seconds left, maybe less.

  “What’s wrong, LaSalle? Opus decide you outlived your usefulness?” Rafe demanded. He grabbe
d hold of LaSalle, giving him a jolt of healing—just enough to extract a little sound from his drowning lungs. “Goddamn it, tell me who your contact is.”

  “I don’t . . . don’t know.” Blood bubbled in the corners of the dying man’s mouth. “I don’t have . . . don’t have a contact. I just . . . just do what they ask me. Then money shows up in my . . . in my bank account.”

  “Do you think he’s telling the truth?”

  Rafe glanced up at Devony. “There’s one way to find out.”

  Placing his palm over the human’s clammy brow, he tranced him and asked the question again. LaSalle told him the same thing. He never had direct contact with anyone—at least, until tonight.

  “Who was it that did this?” Rafe asked.

  LaSalle weakly shook his head. “I swear . . . don’t know. They said I . . . said I fucked up. They said . . . said you and the girl . . . said you both had to go.”

  Rafe swung a look at Devony. “We need to get out of here.”

  She wasn’t paying attention to him anymore. Her gaze was riveted to the blood-splattered TV screen. Rafe felt her shock in his own bloodstream, as cold as ice water.

  The game had been pre-empted by a local news bulletin—a report of a massive explosion in a residential area of Back Bay. In the background behind the reporter, an inferno roared, ash and smoke billowing into the night sky as firefighters struggled to contain it.

  Rafe let go of LaSalle. The man’s last breath rattled out of him as his body slumped to the floor again.

  Rafe moved next to Devony. “Holy shit.”

  She slowly turned her head toward him now. “That’s my block, Rafe. That building . . . that’s my house.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Devony sat beside him in silence in the warehouse guards’ stolen sedan as he drove.

  Rafe glanced at her shell-shocked face, illuminated by the dim light of the dashboard. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded once, but it was merely a reflex response. She didn’t look at him. She’d hardly said two words since they left all the carnage behind at the marina.

  She was a strong, courageous woman, but not even a seasoned Order warrior would be expected to witness that kind of slaughter and come out of it unaffected. And now, according to LaSalle, Opus’s death squad had orders to come for the two of them.

  Rafe wasn’t overly concerned that he was in their crosshairs. Just being associated with Lucan Thorne and the Order had put an Opus Nostrum target on his back. He lived with that truth every day. For Devony, the threat was new.

  And tonight it had become starkly, dangerously, real.

  “They firebombed my home, Rafe.”

  “Yeah.” He winced inwardly at her wooden tone and reached over to her, placing his hand over her cool fingers. “But you’re okay. You’re safe. That’s all that matters.”

  She mutely shook her head. “But everything else . . . All my work, my father’s research and notes. We’ve lost all of it now. We’re going to have to start all over, Rafe.”

  He clamped his jaw closed, struggling to hold the secret that he had passed nearly every piece of intel she had over to the Order. Gideon had probably data mined every photo and note a dozen times each by now.

  The Order hadn’t lost anything tonight, but he couldn’t divulge that to Devony without clearing it with his commanders.

  Rafe’s answering curse came out brittle. “I’m sorry you’ve gotten mixed up in any of this. I’m just damn glad you weren’t anywhere near your Darkhaven when those Opus killers got there.”

  Now, it wouldn’t be safe for her anywhere else in the city, either.

  With the exception of one location.

  There was only one place he knew of where he could rest confidently knowing neither Opus nor anyone loyal to them could touch her.

  He headed there now, despite the understanding that his arrival could blow everything up in his face. His covert mission. His commanders’ faith in him. Hell, his entire future as a warrior could be lost by bringing an unauthorized civilian—one with JUSTIS ties and a price on her head—into the Order’s domain.

  But all of those things paled compared to the possibility of losing Devony’s trust at the same time.

  The fact that he hadn’t told her about any of that—the fact that he couldn’t tell her without breaching his duty to the Order—ate at him as the highly secured command center and surrounding grounds came into view up ahead.

  When he turned in to the property, Devony finally snapped out of her daze. “Where are we?”

  “The only place we can go right now.”

  He touched the security panel, holding his palm in front of the reader as he waited for a response. It didn’t take long.

  “The fuck are you doing here?” Elijah’s low drawl over the speaker was anything but welcoming. With only a couple of hours left before daybreak, the patrol team must have only just reported back to base.

  “I need to see the commander.”

  “So call and make an appointment.” His comrade’s attitude was to be expected, especially considering their last conversation at Asylum.

  “It’s urgent, Eli. I’m not leaving until I talk to Chase.”

  The warrior snorted. “Then it’ll be your funeral, man.”

  When the gate opened, Rafe drove inside. He felt Devony’s apprehension as they approached the sprawling mansion. According to the elder warriors, the Order’s original compound in this city had been impressive. This newer one was a fortress, constructed twenty years ago, after the first was compromised by an enemy and had to be destroyed.

  Devony turned a worried glance at him. “Rafe, are you sure about this?”

  “It’ll be all right.” He killed the engine and faced her. He couldn’t resist reaching out to stroke the side of her wary face. “You’ll be safe here, I promise.”

  To his surprise, as they walked from the vehicle to the front door of the imposing mansion, Devony slipped her hand in his. He didn’t know if the gesture was meant to reassure him or herself. Nor did he care.

  After the night they had just endured, he was glad to hold on to her. He was more than glad to feel her at his side; he was proud.

  He wouldn’t even be standing there if not for the life-saving gift of her blood.

  Through his bond to her, he felt the knot of worry tighten inside her as the door swung open and Eli stood in front of them. He was flanked by Jax, both warriors still in patrol gear, right down to the weapons that bristled at the ready in their hands.

  “I’ll be damned,” Jax muttered to Eli. “I thought you had to be joking when you said he was waiting outside.”

  For what wasn’t the first time, Rafe wished his teammates understood the truth. That he wasn’t the turncoat loser he still had to pretend he was. Their suspicion burned, even though he had worked hard for the past few weeks to make sure he’d earned it.

  Seeing that mistrust leveled on Devony, too, put a sharper edge to his voice. “I need to talk to the commander.”

  Neither one of them moved out of the way.

  Elijah’s gaze narrowed on Devony for a moment before sliding back to Rafe. He let out a caustic laugh. “Who’s the stray? Didn’t I see her hanging with that gang of losers when we ran into you at Asylum the other night?”

  Rafe lowered his head on a warning growl. “She’s mine. That’s all you need to know.”

  The protective, possessive part of him rose to Devony’s defense. His response would be the same no matter if he were staring down a friend or a bona fide enemy.

  To his credit, Eli stood down. Just a little.

  Jax crossed his arms, still in battle stance at the threshold. “You’ve got some kind of balls, man. The commander’s not going to like this. Neither will Nathan, once he finds out you’re here and you brought her with you.”

  Rafe didn’t have the patience for reprimands or questions, especially when he couldn’t tell his teammates a damn thing. And not while he was standing outside with Devony knowing O
pus’s death squad was likely combing the city for her.

  “I’m not here to talk to either of you, damn it.” He took a step forward, ready to forcibly enter the mansion if he had to. “I’m only going to talk to Chase.”

  “Let him in.”

  From behind the pair of hulking warriors, Commander Sterling Chase appeared. Eli and Jax parted, making way for the immense Breed male. Chase was always an imposing figure with his broad shoulders, muscled bulk, and piercing blue eyes beneath his crown of golden hair. Tonight, there was a gravity to his demeanor that Rafe had rarely seen.

  His displeased gaze moved from Rafe to Devony, lingering for a moment on their joined hands. He turned away from them without comment. “Come inside, both of you. Rafe, my office.”

  Rafe stepped forward, leading Devony. On Chase’s dismissal, Eli and Jax went back to whatever they’d been doing before Rafe’s arrival. And from within another room on the main floor of the mansion, Chase’s mate, Tavia, appeared along with Carys and her mate, Rune.

  Carys gaped, a hopeful smile spreading over her beautiful face. “Rafe? Oh, my God!”

  When she would have run to him in greeting, the dark-haired behemoth who was her blood-bonded mate held her back, his thick arm wrapped firmly, yet tenderly, around her midsection.

  Although Carys was as unaware as anyone that his exile wasn’t permanent, it felt good to see she hadn’t lost faith in him. He only hoped her brother Aric and the rest of the warriors would be equally forgiving if and when he was able to return to the fold.

  Of those in the room now, only Commander Chase and his mate Tavia were privy to the truth. Tavia strode up to Devony and him.

  “Hello, Rafe.” Her soft gaze lit on Devony. “Hi. I’m Tavia Chase.”

  “This is Devony Winters,” Rafe said when she seemed incapable of words. “Her parents and brother both worked for JUSTIS in London, at the headquarters.”

  “Oh, I see,” Tavia said, a look of tender sympathy in her eyes.

  “Devony’s Breed,” Rafe added. “She’s a daywalker.”

  Carys’s eyes went wide. “Are you serious? That means we’re related.”

  Tavia seemed less surprised, which indicated that Lucan had shared the information Rafe provided in his last report. Chase had obviously made his mate aware of the half-sister she had lost in the JUSTIS bombing, and the niece who had unexpectedly ended up in the middle of Rafe’s mission.