by Lara Adrian
Kellan had a much more reliable tool at his disposal than ordinary intuition.
He reached out and palmed Ackmeyer’s trembling skull.
The jolt of understanding came swiftly, irrefutably.
Kellan’s Breed talent stripped through the human’s intentions, drilling straight to the core of truth hidden deep within Jeremy Ackmeyer’s soul. All Kellan found was honesty, the purest of motivations. The absence of any guilt whatsoever.
Holy hell.
Kellan drew his hand back as if burned. The realization sank in like bitter acid, corrosive and impossible to scrape off now that it had touched him.
Jeremy Ackmeyer had been telling him the truth. He had no idea his work had been used as a weapon for assassination against the Breed.
Kellan had ordered the kidnapping of an honest, innocent man.
“Anything more I should know about the situation?” Lucan Thorne’s grim face filled the flat-screen monitor on the wall of the Boston Command Center.
He hadn’t been pleased to hear Nathan’s report from the field, but where the Gen One leader of the Order had every right to swear and bellow over the simple escort mission gone so terribly wrong, he clearly struggled to accept the fact that one of the Order’s own had gone missing from an assignment. That it was Mira, a female raised by the Order from the time she was a child, made the gravity of the loss all the more difficult to deal with objectively, not only for Lucan, but for Nathan and the other pair of Order members gathered with him in the private conference room that morning.
Sterling Chase, the Breed warrior who’d helmed the Boston operation for the past two decades, sat soberly in the room beside his mate, Tavia, his big hand resting over her slender fingers on the table. Tavia accepted the tender gesture, despite that she was no delicate Darkhaven lady, sheltered from the realities of the world.
Born in the same laboratory, of the same alien DNA that had spawned Nathan and a small army of assassins bred and raised just like him, Tavia was an awe-inspiring rarity among the race: a genetically crafted, Gen One female, and a daywalker besides. Where Nathan would perish after minutes of exposure to UV light, his half sister Tavia and her offspring—a set of fraternal twins named Aric and Carys—could sunbathe all day in the tropics without breaking a sweat.
“If anything’s happened to Mira,” Tavia murmured, her leaf-green eyes sparking with flecks of amber, “if she’s harmed in any way—”
“We’ll find her,” Nathan assured them all. “I won’t rest until she and the human scientist are located.”
On the monitor, Lucan nodded his dark head. “I know we can count on you. That’s why I’m giving this whole thing to you as a solo assignment. It’s crucial that we keep this problem out of the public eye. I want a lid clamped down tight on this, and I want the bastards dealt with cleanly and permanently. Your training makes you ideal for this kind of surgical precision job, Nathan.”
He inclined his head in acknowledgment. “I will do whatever it takes.”
“I know.” Lucan’s gray gaze bore into him through the video screen. “You have my permission to remove any and all obstacles in order to meet your mission objectives. If there’s fallout afterward, I’ll take sole responsibility for the op.”
Nathan held the Gen One’s grave stare. “It will not be necessary.”
“Nikolai and Renata will need to be informed about this,” Chase said, his thumb stroking idly over the back of Tavia’s hand. “There’ll be nothing to keep them from joining the search.”
“Nothing, except the fact that Renata is pregnant and due very soon,” Tavia pointed out. “But Chase is right. They need to know, Lucan. Mira’s their daughter.”
The Order’s founder pressed his lips together in a flat line but acceded with a sober nod. “It’s not the kind of news any parent should hear,” he remarked woodenly, the lines of his face seeming more pronounced as he considered the advice. “Gabrielle and I will make the call to them together, as soon as we finish here.” To Nathan he said, “This is a kill op. I don’t want any of these rebel bastards left standing to rise again after the dust settles. Agreed?”
Nathan accepted with a downward tip of his chin. “Yes, sir.”
A few minutes later, the call was ended and Nathan left the conference room to find his team waiting outside the door. Rafe, Eli, and Jax were joined by Aric Chase, who rose as soon as Nathan came out. “What happened in there? Has Lucan assigned a team to go after these sick fucks and bring Mira back?”
The twenty-year-old son of Sterling and Tavia, Aric had trained under his father’s direction alongside his best friend, Rafe. But where Rafe had finished months earlier, Aric had not yet been inducted as a full-fledged member of the Order. In a few weeks, he would get his chance, leaving the East Coast for Seattle, to be assigned as a newly minted warrior on one of Dante’s teams in that district.
Nathan did not respond to the recruit’s rookie question, and the rest of his team knew better than to prod for answers about a private conference with Lucan Thorne. The other Breed males followed Nathan as he set off toward the corridor that would take him to the command center’s training facility.
“Damn, I wish Lucan had tasked me with escorting Ackmeyer to that summit gathering,” Aric said, falling in with the rest of them. “I would’ve made sure those Homo sapiens sons of bitches OD’d on lead and steel. Let them take on a Breed in the daytime and watch the rebel cowards piss themselves a river of please-god-save-us.”
Even Nathan had to admit the idea held some amusement. He felt grim humor tug at his mouth as the banter between his fellow warriors continued, each of them ratcheting up the fear factor on the pain and terror they’d like to deliver on the bastards who’d taken Mira.
As they cuffed one another and slung good-natured insults, Nathan held himself apart from the pack with a remoteness that came as naturally to him as breathing. He had let a friend—a brother-in-arms—into his life once, and the loss when Kellan died had been as visceral as a limb torn from his body. These other warriors were his team, his comrades, but he’d learned better than to let himself care for them beyond their role as soldiers under his command.
And now Mira was gone too.
If she didn’t come home whole and unharmed, he wasn’t sure how he would handle it.
No, he mentally corrected.
He’d been trained the first thirteen years of his life to shut out all emotion, to steel himself to caring for anything but his master’s commands. If things went badly for Mira, he would draw on the harsh lessons of his upbringing to get him through.
But first he would kill her captors. Every last one of them.
His mind was already preparing for the covert mission he would begin as soon as the sun set. So much so that it took him a moment to realize there had been a shift in the air temperature up ahead in the corridor. The source of that change appeared a moment later, in the form of Carys Chase, ducking out of a room off the long hallway. The crisp scent of morning rushed in behind her, clinging to her caramel-brown hair and the form-fitting black blouse and leg-hugging skinny jeans that disappeared into the tops of spiked ankle boots.
“Carys?” Aric stopped in his tracks in the corridor, gaping at his twin sister. “What the hell are you doing?”
Nathan and his team had paused now too, all of them staring at the beautiful young Breed female as she sauntered toward them, attempting nonchalance. Slender brows arched slyly over sparkling blue eyes fringed in long black lashes. “What does it look like I’m doing, big brother?”
Aric’s scowl deepened. “It looks like you just dragged yourself in through a back window of the estate after staying out all night doing god knows what.”
She laughed. “Good lord, Aric, you sound just like Father. Besides, since when did having fun with friends become a crime?”
“It’s not safe out there, Car. Not for a woman alone, without someone to protect her.”
Nathan shot a quelling look at Aric Chase, a subtle warni
ng not to divulge the details of what had happened to Mira and the human scientist, nor the Order’s suspicion that rebels were to blame for their disappearance. Aric caught the silencing glance and had the good sense to cool his jets.
“I told you, I wasn’t alone,” Carys insisted. “Jordana Gates and I met some other friends in the North End. It was perfectly safe.”
Aric’s jaw went tight in response, but he kept his argument to himself. “I just worry about you, that’s all. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
She gave him a warm smile. “I know that. And while I may be female, big brother, I’m also Breed, as strong as any of you males. Just because I’m not combat-trained like you, don’t think I’m incapable of taking care of myself.” Studying her brother’s disapproving expression, Carys caught her bottom lip between her teeth and looked up at him from beneath her long black lashes. “You’re not going to tell Mother and Father about this, are you?”
“I should,” Aric said. “I’m sure Father would be very interested to talk to Jordana’s parents too. I doubt the venerable Gates clan of Beacon Hill would be happy to hear their Breedmate daughter was traipsing all over the city, staying out until dawn.”
“But you won’t tell,” she said, smooth and coaxing, yet Nathan was certain he’d detected a note of worry creeping into Carys’s bright blue eyes at the mention of her Darkhaven friend. Carys moved closer to her brother and rested her palms on his chest. “You won’t tell on me, Aric. And in return, I won’t tell Mother and Father about the trio of dancers you and Rafe shared at a Chinatown sim-lounge last weekend.”
“How did you hear about that?” Aric practically choked the words out, but Raphael merely grinned, a slow curve of his mouth that showed absolutely zero repentance. “Who the hell do you hang out with that you would hear about something like that?”
“You have your little secrets,” Carys chided with a smile and an arch look, “and I have mine. Let’s agree to keep it that way, shall we?”
She rose up and gave her brother a peck on the cheek, then she was on her way, tossing a wave at Nathan and the others as she pivoted on her tall heels and strode up the corridor.
While his warrior brethren resumed their trek for the training facility, Nathan felt his instincts prickle with a vague but undeniable suspicion. He turned a curious look behind him at Carys. The retreating female glanced his way, a quick, cautious glimpse over her shoulder, before she picked up her pace and disappeared around a curve in the long hallway.
9
MIRA WOKE UP FROM AN EXHAUSTED SLEEP, THE WARM, spicy scent of Kellan all around her. At first she thought it belonged to her dreams—dark, seductive dreams, where he was not her enemy but the lover she’d yearned to touch again, the only man she’d ever wanted.
But it wasn’t a dream that filled her senses now. It was reality. Kellan’s cold and empty bed, she all alone in his locked quarters in the rebel base he commanded.
Mira sat up, pushed her tangled hair out of her eyes. The room was quiet. He hadn’t returned since he’d left her there the night before. The blanket he’d put down for himself on the floor was right where he’d dropped it, the makeshift sleeping area undisturbed.
Where was he? Since he hadn’t come back to his own quarters, where had he chosen to spend the night?
Maybe with one of the pretty human women under his command. Candice, with her easy smile and nurturing, competent hands. Or the indigo-haired sprite, Nina, with her sad eyes and pixie-cute face. A pang of jealous suspicion shot through Mira, uninvited and bitter with an acid bite.
She didn’t need to wonder who Kellan wanted to spend his nights with. He wasn’t hers to worry about. He wouldn’t be ever again.
And maybe he never truly was, if leaving her behind had come so easily to him.
Her heart wanted to deny that, but her head was still struggling to make sense of the fact that Kellan had been alive all this time—living just outside Boston in this new, lawless life he’d created for himself as someone else entirely. He’d never tried to reach her. Never cared enough to end her grief and tell her that he was safe—even if that gesture would come with the sting of learning who he’d become. He had simply walked away and never looked back.
The hurt in her chest cracked open wider, but she refused to let it break her.
And she shouldn’t give a damn who Kellan—or, rather, Bowman—decided to share a bed with, so long as it wasn’t her.
Mira swung her bare legs over the edge of the mattress and poured herself a glass of water from the tumbler Candice had left on the bedside table. Her contact lenses sat in a small dish of saline solution, also courtesy of the pretty, raven-haired woman. Mira put them in, then downed her glass of water, grateful for both kindnesses Kellan’s rebel comrade had provided her.
Mira rubbed a damp chill from her arms as she put her feet on the cold floor. She was wearing just her panties and the extra-large T-shirt Kellan had given her out of the chest at the foot of the bed. Her bra and his borrowed sweatpants were folded over a weathered wooden chair. She was about to get up and grab them when the tumbler on the locked door clicked open.
Kellan walked in, no warning or excuse.
His gaze shot to her in his bed. For a moment, she couldn’t tell if it was surprise or regret in his hazel eyes. But there was something dark in them too, something troubled and grim. He stepped inside the room and closed the door behind him.
When he spoke, his voice was coarse like gravel. “You look well rested.”
Mira scrambled out of his bed, all too aware of her state of undress and too conscious of the fact that Kellan was noticing it too. “You look like hell,” she told him, keeping the sarcasm ripe in her tone as she edged away from the rumpled mattress. “I hate to think you had to find another bed to sleep in, with your private quarters turned into my prison cell.”
He grunted as he prowled farther into the room. “Who says I slept?”
Mira watched him, wishing it wasn’t so easy to picture him warming another woman’s bed. For all her mental reassurances that she shouldn’t care what he did—or with whom—seeing him unrested and tense with menacing energy made anger spike in her veins. “Where have you been, Kellan?”
He barked out a caustic laugh. “Masterminding rebel business.” He pinned her with a dark look, showing the gleaming tips of his fangs. “That’s what I do, remember?”
Mira stared at him, taken aback by the barely restrained anger in his voice. His face was taut with aggression, the lean angles of his cheeks and goateed jaw even sharper now. Kellan was mad. Furiously mad.
She watched him stalk over to the clothing chest on the floor like he was marching to war. He stripped off his wrinkled black T-shirt with savage force, threw open the lid of the trunk. His dermaglyphs were livid with color. The swirling arcs and flourishes of the Breed skin markings that covered his chest and biceps churned and pulsed with stormy shades of red and black and midnight blue. Mira swallowed. “Something’s happened, hasn’t it? Something bad.”
He exhaled sharply. “You could say that.”
His gaze met hers, and now his irises were bright with amber sparks, skewering her where she stood. Mira could feel his fury rolling off him, could see it in his hot glare, as if he couldn’t stand the sight of her today.
“Aren’t you going to tell me what’s wrong?” she asked, refusing to be cowed. “You can talk to me, Kellan—”
“Talk to you?” he snarled. “I don’t want to talk. I need to think. This is my problem. You’re not a part of it.”
“I am a part of it, whether you like it or not,” she reminded him. “Whether either one of us likes it or not, you’ve made me a part of this.”
He slammed the chest lid down so hard, it echoed like a cannon shot. He came up out of his crouch in an instant—less than that—and was standing right in front of her before she could take her next breath. Less than a hand’s width separated them; she was close enough to feel the heat radiating from his every pore.
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The glyphs that had been pulsing with the furious hues of Kellan’s anger and frustration a few moments ago now deepened. There was still rage in them, but Mira watched the colors morph toward need and something darker as Kellan crowded her with the massive bulk of his body. His fangs seemed enormous, as sharp as daggers behind the menacing curl of his lip.
“You want me to tell you how badly I fucked up, going after Jeremy Ackmeyer?” Kellan’s eyes blazed as hot as coals as he spoke, his pupils reduced to thin slivers of black in the middle of so much amber fire. He went on, his words vicious with self-directed fury. “You want to hear how I’ve grabbed an innocent, decent man—a man who wouldn’t harm a fly, much less another person?”
Mira tried to process what he was telling her, but hearing his torment, she could hardly breathe. Dark emotion played across his face, turning his handsome features stark and fierce.
A low snarl curled up from the back of his throat. “You want me to explain how my orders will mean a certain death sentence for Candice and Doc and the rest of my crew if I don’t figure a way to straighten this shit out?”
Mira’s heart was pounding in her ears. She wanted to touch him, comfort him somehow, but she held herself in check, focusing instead on the truth of what he’d just said. “Jeremy Ackmeyer is innocent?” She searched Kellan’s face, braving the enraged heat of his glare. “I thought you traced the UV tech back to his lab.”
Kellan answered with a growl. “The tech is his. Ackmeyer didn’t release it to anyone, not for money or otherwise. Someone stole the technology from him.”
“He told you this?”
Kellan nodded. “And I read the truth of it when I touched him. He’s innocent, Mira.”
“You have to let him go,” Mira murmured. Now she did reach out to Kellan, turning his face toward her when he tried to dodge her gaze. His jaw was rigid in her palm, a tendon ticking hard against her fingertips. “You have to release him. Take him straight to the Order and tell Lucan what you’ve discovered about the UV tech and the killing of Nina’s lover.”