then giving it to your comrades behind my back?” She shook her head. “I guess you learned a few tricks from that mole from Opus, didn’t you?”
“That’s not fair,” he said calmly. “Even if I do deserve every bit of your anger.”
She refused to be lul ed by his sincerity now. Not when he’d left her in this same room only an hour ago with the ache of his guilt carving a hol ow in her breast. He’d made a mistake with her. That’s what he told everyone in that room just now.
She had made an even bigger one by trusting him.
By fal ing in love with him.
And now he knew al of that because he could feel her strongest emotions through their bond. The bond he had regretted almost from the instant
he let her take the first sip from his vein.
“How far would you have gone to get what you wanted from me, Rafe? God, I didn’t even make you work that hard. You didn’t have to seduce me
for the information. I was al too happy to throw myself at you.”
His brow furrowed into a deep scowl. “It was never about that. Nothing we did together had anything to do with my wanting your intel. We have
nothing to do with my work for the Order. Christ, it couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“Were you ever cut loose from the Order?”
“No. That was part of my cover.” He went on without her asking for further explanation. “I began distancing myself from my teammates not long after I returned from Montreal. Then we manufactured some public displays of my insubordination, enough to get tongues wagging before Chase
and Lucan fabricated my release from the Order. Very few people knew the truth. My commanders, my parents. It had to be solid. We needed
Cruz and his associates to believe I’d been ousted so they’d give me a chance. So they’d trust me enough to let me in.”
“I needed to believe it too. Right?”
He nodded, his expression grave.
“You could’ve told me, Rafe. I would’ve kept your secret. You could have trusted me.” He had no answer for that, no reply. She knew she was
asking him to choose her over his duty to the Order, but dammit, she wanted to think he might have at least considered it. His silence was kil ing her. “When did you give the Order my files and intel?”
“The night after we made love the first time.” He exhaled a short sigh. “I didn’t do it to hurt you. If anything, I wanted to help you.”
“Help me.” She scoffed, her throat raw with emotion. “And if we had actual y gotten close to our goal together, if we’d closed in on Opus, would you have helped me destroy whoever kil ed my family?”
He said nothing for a long moment, then, final y, he shook his head. “No, Devony. I wouldn’t have let you anywhere near that kind of danger. I stil won’t.”
“You have nothing to say about that.”
“Yes, I do.” He took a step toward her, cautiously, as if she were a wild animal about to bolt. “I have something to say about it because my blood lives in you now, and yours in me.”
She groaned, desperate to get away from him now. “Don’t talk to me about our bond. I felt your regret, Rafe. I felt how badly you wished we could take it back.”
“Yes, I did,” he said, a sharpness edging his deep voice. “I wanted to take it back because I knew I hadn’t been honest with you.”
“Wel , now we have honesty,” she shot back, on the verge of tears she refused to shed in front of him. “And now we’re stuck with a blood bond
neither one of wants anymore.”
The sting of that statement crossed his features like a lash. “Goddamn it, Devony.”
He reached for her and she dodged his touch. As soon as she cleared him, she flashed out of the guestroom and through the residential wing of
the mansion.
But Rafe was Breed, too. He was faster, already standing in front of her when she slowed in the foyer and reached for the polished brass handle of the door. He blocked her way out, his eyes smoldering with amber sparks.
His sharp fangs glinted as he spoke. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like? I’m leaving.”
“Where?”
She didn’t know. She would figure it out later. Al she knew was she had to get away from him, away from this place. She couldn’t think when her heart was cracking open in her breast.
“Get out of my way, Rafe.”
He didn’t so much as flinch. “Talk to me, please.”
“We have nothing left to say.”
“Not true,” he said, giving a tight shake of his head. “I’ve got plenty to say. And I’l start by saying that I love you.”
God, why was he determined to see her fal apart? Hadn’t he already wounded her enough?
She felt his sincerity. She even felt his love, too. But it didn’t ease the pain of his betrayal.
A sob hitched in her throat. “Please move, Rafe.”
“I can’t do that.”
He wasn’t going to let her go. He reached out for her, and instead of flying into his arms the way she wanted to do so desperately, she put her hands out in front of her. She pressed her palms to the solid warmth of his chest and held them there.
She saw the moment he realized what she was doing. His gaze went wide, but it was too late. She had already established the connection.
A cry wrenched from her throat as she put everything she had into her touch. In a burst of fury, she siphoned away his power . . . and al his
strength.
With a stunned groan, he sagged to his knees on the thick rug.
She let go then, her hands shaking and her heart shattering.
He gasped her name as unconsciousness took him under.
Devony fumbled for the door’s latch, barely holding herself together as she fled into the gathering light of daybreak.
CHAPTER 24
When Rafe opened his eyes, it felt like someone stabbed heated daggers into them.
He shut his lids fast and let out a groan. Damn. Had someone strapped a vise around his rib cage while he was out cold? His throat tasted like
ashes too.
He hurt everywhere. His limbs, his torso.
Fuck, even his hair hurt.
But he was alive.
He knew he was, because for al his bodily pain, it was his heart that ached the worst. And holy hel , that was saying something.
He lifted his eyelids again, battling through the agony of the light hitting his retinas. A large, blurry shadow in front of him slowly took shape.
“Have a good nap?” Nathan loomed over him, peering down at him from the side of an infirmary bed where Rafe lay. “How are you enjoying that
ful -body migraine? The real fun doesn’t start until you try to sit up.”
“Shit.” Rafe attempted to raise his head and wave of nausea slammed into him.
Nathan’s mouth twisted. “Yeah, there it is.”
Rafe groaned as he dropped back onto the pil ow. “Devony . . .”
“She’s gone.” As amused as his team captain seemed to be about Rafe’s physical discomfort, his tone now was almost gentle. “She left the
mansion right after she drained your power and dropped you in the foyer.”
“How long?” The question scraped out of him, not only because his lungs felt constricted by the aftereffects of Devony’s powerful punch. “How long since she left?”
“Couple of hours.”
Ah, Christ. Two hours in the city by herself while Opus’s kil squad could be out looking for her? The very idea sent a flood of cold fear slicing through his veins. He knew Devony was strong and smart. Tough as hel . She was a Breed female, for fuck’s sake. He knew she was capable of
fending for herself. After al , she’d plowed through him easily enough and he was a combat-tested warrior and twice her size.
She didn’t need him to look after her, but he hated the idea that she was alone. She was also hurting and upset—al because
of him.
If his careless actions had driven her into harm’s way, he’d never be able to live with that.
Rafe heaved himself up from the thin mattress, pushing past the pain. “Need to go after her. I have to . . . find her.”
“You’re not in any shape to do that yet,” Nathan said.
And damn it, he was right. The bed spun beneath him from just that smal movement. The room wobbled in front of his face like a funhouse mirror.
“That female of yours packs a hel of a punch. Unfortunately, I speak from experience.”
Rafe leaned into the agony, pushing himself up to a sitting position. His limbs felt like jel y, far from functional. “How long does it last?”
Nathan grunted. “It took about three hours before I could feel my feet under me again. Jordana recovered more quickly, so apparently the bigger the target, the harder we fal . She’s not pissed at you, but part of me stil wants to kil you for having a role in putting my mate through that.”
“I’m sorry,” Rafe said. “And I know Devony’s sorry too. She didn’t want to hurt either of you.”
“She did it to protect you.”
Rafe nodded, a movement that made his skul throb.
He would have done the same thing for her if he was able. He’d stil do anything to protect her. And yet, he’d deceived her and broken her heart instead.
He had hurt her worse than anyone else possibly could. He’d felt that in the moments before she’d leveled him with her incredible power.
“She loves you,” Nathan said. “I saw it in her face that night at the museum.”
“Now she hates me.”
“You real y believe that?”
He shrugged. Careful y shook his pounding head. Even though she was gone, he could feel her through their bond.
She didn’t hate him. He could stil feel her love, and that gave him some smal glimmer of hope that he could fix this.
But right now, her hurt was stronger than anything else she was feeling.
If she couldn’t forgive him, he might lose her forever.
“I have to go.” He swung his deadweight legs over the side of the infirmary cot. “I have to find her and bring her back.”
A deep, sardonic voice answered from the open doorway. “Then you’re going to need wings.”
Rafe glanced around Nathan and watched Aric Chase strol into the open room. He paused next to the bed and exhaled a snort. “You look like
shit.”
Rafe chuckled, and fuck, that hurt. Only his best friend could pul a smile out of him when his body was a feeble lump and his heart was shredded in his chest. “Good to see you too. What do you know about Devony? Where is she?”
“On her way to London, evidently. Gideon just sent word that she popped up on a commercial flight to Heathrow this morning. She should be on
the ground there in about five hours.”
London. She was going home, even though she hadn’t wanted to go back there ever again after losing her family.
“I need to be there too. I need to make her listen to me.” Rafe tried to get up, but dropped right back down onto the bed. “Damn it.”
Aric gave him an assessing look. “This female real y did a number on you, eh?”
He wasn’t talking about the fact that she had knocked him on his ass today. And Rafe wasn’t going to pretend with either one of his closest friends that he wasn’t out of his head with misery over the fact that he had lost Devony’s faith today.
That he might have lost it for good.
“We’re bonded. I took her blood. Fuck, I took a hel of a lot more than that from her.” He met the sober stares of both Breed males. “Then, last night after we arrived here, I let her drink from me too. I love her, and now she thinks I played her as an asset for my mission. She thinks I used her for intel. Shit. She thinks I chose the Order over her.”
“Didn’t you?” Nathan’s logic, as usual, cut as cleanly and as coldly as a knife.
Rafe wanted to rage at his friend, but even his anger failed him.
Because what the former assassin said was true. He had chosen the Order over her.
Rafe regretted that now. He had regretted it from the beginning. And he was going to regret it for the rest of his eternal life.
Because Nathan was right. Devony was right.
He had chosen duty over her.
And there was no way for him to take that back now.
CHAPTER 25
Devony paid the taxi driver in cash as she got out at the curb in front of her family’s Darkhaven in South Kensington.
After leaving the Order’s mansion in Boston, she’d gone straight to the airport and to a smal locker there, where she had stored her passport and a few thousand dol ars in multiple currencies. She hadn’t grown up in a family of spies and law enforcement officers without picking up a few
professional tips along the way.
Using her real ID and traveling in public while Opus’s goons might be on her trail had been a risk, but she’d had little choice. Now that she was away from Boston, she al owed herself to exhale some of the paranoia that had clung to her until now.
The lovely Onslow Square stucco and brick townhouses with their black wrought-iron fences and classic, white-columned entrances had always
been a welcome, comforting sight to her. Across the street, as the sun’s last rays set over the tranquil garden square, birds sang in the tree-fil ed park she used to play in as a child.
Now, the peace was merely a facade.
The familiarity provided no solace, because even though she’d fled to the only place she had left to go, she was coming here broken, with her
heart in tatters. And with her family dead, this picture-perfect block in London would never be home for her again.
The Darkhaven had been vacant for months, everything just as her parents had left it. Their lives interrupted, al of the rooms and furnishings frozen in time.
Now that Devony was there, she wished she hadn’t come. She had regretted leaving Boston as soon as she stepped foot on the plane.
And she had been sick with herself for what she’d done to Rafe in her desperation to preserve her pride—what little she had left where he was
concerned.
It was fear that made her run when she wanted to stay.
That kind of cowardice had never been her style.
Now, Rafe was thousands of miles away, in physical agony these past few hours. She knew because she felt his pain too. Her bond to him gave
her his anguish the same way it connected her to his pleasure.
She had hardly been able to endure it for the majority of her flight to London.
Feeling the depth of his love for her had only made the thought of his pain more unbearable.
She had hurt him, not just physical y.
God, how they had hurt each other.
She’d thought Opus Nostrum had kil ed everything that mattered to her, but she had been wrong. Because Rafe Malebranche had kil ed her heart.
It didn’t matter that she’d only known him for a handful of days. He’d stormed in and now her life would never be the same.
She loved him, even though he’d hurt her. She couldn’t stop just because her heart was broken. Now, she would love him with al its shattered
pieces.
Devony walked through every room in the Darkhaven, feeling like a ghost. Her bedroom was a relic of her childhood. Stil the girly pink accents and sweet, fussy furnishings her mother had surrounded her in with the hopes that her headstrong daughter would gravitate toward a softer life
than her own.
She glanced down at her dirty, battle-worn black clothing and biker boots. How disappointed her mother must have been with her.
Devony was never going to choose the safest, softest path. She’d tried, for them. The music studies, the university classes. Although she enjoyed those pursuits, they didn’t fulfil her. She longed to make a difference in the world. She felt the need for a h
igher cal ing.
She hadn’t dared to reach for it until after losing everyone she loved. She hadn’t imagined there was a way for her to truly make a difference until she began working together with Rafe on their shared quest to destroy Opus Nostrum.
Al a lie.
They had shared that common goal, but he’d never been working with her. He had been playing her for a fool, using her information to help his true teammates in the Order.
She was on her own in her quest now, and none of her determination to avenge her family had faded since she left Boston. Let the Order have al
of her father’s notes and research, along with her reconnaissance of the past few months. She could start over. Now that she had an Opus target on her back, she would have to begin al over.
New name. New appearance. New targets and plan of attack.
New life.
One that probably wouldn’t include Rafe. That last part was the one she could hardly bear to imagine.
After a quick shower and change of clothes, Devony headed back downstairs to settle in and regroup. The spacious townhouse was cold and
After a quick shower and change of clothes, Devony headed back downstairs to settle in and regroup. The spacious townhouse was cold and dark, dust col ected on the furnishings and on the grand piano that sat in the spacious living room. In back of the house, her mother’s smal garden patio was overgrown and strewn with dried autumn leaves.
It broke something in her to see the place so forlorn and forgotten. And her piano. While music had been more her parents’ dream for her than her own, she had always found a measure of solace in the feel of the cool keys beneath her fingertips. It drew her now, too.
She drifted into the living room and sat down on the cushioned bench. Her hands left prints in the fine layer of dust on the glossy black lid of the keyboard as she lifted it.
She played a few notes, her fingers moving from memory through one of the classical compositions her parents used to love hearing her play.
She frowned when one of the keys produced an odd, muffled chord. She hit the note again and heard something dislodge inside the instrument.
“What the hel ?”
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