Lucan’s world by the tiny mark on her neck, and yet, it was
also the very thing preventing her from being with him.
Maybe she was a complication he didn’t want or need,
but it wasn’t like meeting him had made life a bowl of
cherries for her, either.
Thanks to Lucan, she was involved in a bloody under-
world war that made the worst inner city gangbangers look
like playground bullies. She had all but abandoned one of
the sweetest condos in Beacon Hill and would lose it alto-
gether if she didn’t get back and get to work so she could
pay her bills. Her friends had no idea where she was, and
telling them now would probably only put them in danger
of losing their lives.
To top it all off, she was half in love with the darkest,
deadliest, most emotionally closed-off man she’d ever
known.
Who just so happened to also be a bloodsucking
vampire.
And, what the hell, since she was being honest, she
wasn’t half in love with Lucan. She was full-on, flat-out,
head-over-heels, never-going-to-get-over-this-one, in love
with him.
“Way to go,” she told her miserable reflection. “Just
frigging brilliant.”
Yet even after everything he’d said to her, she still
wanted nothing more than to go to him wherever he was
in the compound and wrap herself in his arms, the only
place she’d ever found any kind of comfort.
Yeah, like she really needed to add public humiliation to
the very personal one she was still trying to deal with. Lucan
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had made it pretty clear: whatever they had together—if
they’d ever truly had anything beyond the physical—was
over.
Gabrielle walked back into his bedroom and retrieved
her clothes and shoes. She dressed quickly, wanting to be
out of his personal quarters before he came back and she
did something really stupid. Well, she amended, glancing
at the mussed bedsheets still in disarray from their love-
making, something even more stupid.
With the idea that she would look for Savannah and
maybe try to find a phone line out of the compound, since
Lucan hadn’t seen fit to return her cell, Gabrielle ducked
out of his bedroom. The corridor was confusing, no doubt
by design, and she had taken several wrong turns before
she finally recognized her surroundings. She was near the
training facility, judging by the sharp staccato crack of
rounds hitting targets.
She cleared a corner and was stopped abruptly by an
unyielding wall of leather and weapons standing in her
path.
Gabrielle looked up, and up some more, and met with
a chilling blast of menace coming at her from a narrowed
green gaze. Those cool and calculating eyes locked onto
her through a careless fall of tawny hair, like a jungle cat
lurking behind golden reeds as it sized up its prey. She
swallowed hard. A palpable danger radiated from the
vampire’s large body and from within the depths of his un-
blinking predator’s eyes.
Tegan.
Her mind supplied the name of the unfamiliar male, the
only one of the compound’s six warriors she hadn’t yet met.
The one with whom Lucan apparently shared a barely
concealed contempt.
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The vampire warrior didn’t move out of her way. He
hardly reacted at all to her crashing into him, except for
the slight quirk of his mouth as he stared down to where
her breasts were mashed against the plane of hard muscle
just below his chest. He was wearing about a dozen
weapons, the threat reinforced by no less than two-
hundred pounds of hard-hewn muscle.
She backed up, then sidestepped him just to be safe.
“Sorry. I didn’t see you there.”
He didn’t say a word, but she felt as if everything going
on inside of her had been laid bare by him in an instant—
in that split-second brush of contact when her body had
collided with his. He stared down at her with a chilling,
emotionless gaze, like he could see her from the inside out.
Although he said nothing, expressed nothing, Gabrielle felt
dissected.
She felt . . . invaded.
“Excuse me,” she whispered.
When she moved to step by him, Tegan’s voice stopped
her.
“Hey.” His voice was softer than she expected, a deep,
dark rasp. It was a peculiar contrast to the starkness of his
gaze, which hadn’t moved even a fraction. “Do yourself a
favor and don’t get too attached to Lucan. Odds are real
good that vampire’s not gonna live much longer.”
He said it without a speck of emotion in his voice, just a
flat statement of fact. The warrior walked past her, stirring
the air of the corridor with an apathy that seeped, cold
and disturbing, into Gabrielle’s bones.
When she turned to look after him, Tegan and his un-
settling prediction were gone.
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Lucan tested the heft of a sleek black 9mm in his hand,
then raised the weapon and squeezed off a series of
rounds into the target at the far end of the firing range.
Although it felt good to be back on familiar ground
around the tools of his trade, his blood seething and ready
for a decent fight, part of him kept straying back to his
encounter with Gabrielle. Damn, but the woman had
his head in knots. Despite everything he had said to push
her away from him, he had to admit that he was in deep
with her.
How long did he think he could carry on with her with-
out falling? More to the point, how did he ever think he
was going to handle the thought of letting her go? Of
sending her away with the idea that she would be paired
with someone else?
Things were getting too goddamned complicated.
He hissed a curse. Fired off another bunch of rounds,
relishing the blast of hot metal and acrid smoke as his tar-
get’s chest exploded from the impact.
“What do you think?” Nikolai asked, his crisp wintry
eyes glittering. “Sweet little piece, isn’t it? Responsive as
hell, too.”
“Yeah. Feels good. I like it.” Lucan flipped on the safety
and gave the new handgun another look. “Beretta 92FS
converted to full auto with a drop-in unit? Nice work, man.
Real nice.”
Niko grinned. “I haven’t even told you about the cus-
tom rounds that bad boy’s carrying. I tricked out some hol-
lowpoint polycarbonate-tipped bullets. Took the shot out
of the poly tips, added titanium powder in its place.”
<
br /> “That ought to make a nasty mess when it hits a suck-
head’s blood system,” Dante added from where he sat
sharpening his blades on the edge of a weapons cabinet.
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No doubt, the vampire was right about that. In the Old
Times, the cleanest way to kill a Rogue was by separating
its head from its body. That worked fine while swords were
the weapon of choice, but modern technology brought
new challenges for both sides.
It wasn’t until the early 1900s that the Breed discovered
the uniquely corrosive effect of titanium on the overactive
blood systems of Rogue vampires. Thanks to an allergy
that was amplified by cellular mutations in their blood,
Rogues reacted to titanium the way Alka-Seltzer reacted to
water.
Niko took the weapon back from Lucan and pet it like
a prize. “What you got here is one kickass Rogue blaster.”
“When can we test it out?” Rio asked.
“How about tonight?” Tegan strode in without making
a sound, but his voice cut through the room like the growl
of a coming storm.
“You talking about that location you scouted down by
the harbor?” Dante asked.
Tegan nodded. “Probable lair, housing maybe a dozen
individuals, give or take. I’m guessing they’re still green,
just turned Rogue. Be no big thing to take them out.”
“Been a while since we cleaned house on a raid,” Rio
drawled, his smile broad and eager. “Sounds like a party
to me.”
Lucan passed the weapon back to Niko and gave the
others a scowl. “Why the hell am I just hearing about
this?”
Tegan slid a flat stare his direction. “You need to do a
little catch-up, man. While you were holed up with your fe-
male all night, the rest of us were topside doing our jobs.”
“That’s a low blow,” Rio said. “Even for you, Tegan.”
Lucan considered the slam in measured silence. “No,
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he’s right. I should have been up there taking care of busi-
ness. I had some things to handle back here. And now
they’re handled. It’s not going to be an issue anymore.”
Tegan smirked. “Is that right? Because I gotta tell you,
when I saw the Breedmate in the hall a few minutes ago,
she was looking pretty upset. Felt like someone had torn
the poor girl’s heart out. Felt to me like she needed some-
one to make things better for her.”
Lucan roared up on the vampire in a furious, black
rage. “What did you say to her? Did you touch her? So
help me, if you did anything to her—”
Tegan chuckled, genuinely amused. “Easy, man. No
need to come off your chain about it. Your female’s none
of my concern.”
“You remember that,” Lucan said. He whirled around
to meet the curious gazes of the other warriors. “She’s no
concern for any of you, are we clear? Gabrielle Maxwell is
under my personal protection while she is in this com-
pound. Once she leaves for the Darkhavens, she’ll no
longer be my concern, either.”
It took him a minute to simmer down and not give in to
the urge to go head-to-head with Tegan. One day, it was
probably going to come to that. And Lucan couldn’t totally
blame the male for holding a grudge. If Tegan was a
mean-ass soulless bastard, Lucan was the one who helped
make him that way.
“Can we get back to business now?” he snarled, daring
someone to stoke him further. “I need to hear facts about
this harbor location.”
Tegan launched into a description of what he’d ob-
served about the likely Rogue lair, and offered his sugges-
tions for how the group of them could go about raiding it.
Although the source of this information bothered Lucan
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somewhat, he couldn’t think of a better way to cap off his
black mood than with an offensive strike on their enemies.
God knew, if he ended up anywhere near Gabrielle
again, all his tough talk about duty and doing what was
right by her would be scattered like dust. It had been a
couple of hours since he’d left her in his bedroom, and she
was still foremost in his mind. Need for her still tore
through him when he thought about her soft, warm skin.
And thinking about how he’d hurt her made a space
like a cold pit open up in his chest. She had proven herself
a true ally in covering for him with the other warriors. She
had held him through his own bit of personal hell last
night, standing by him, as tender and loving as any male
could ever want in a cherished mate.
Dangerous thinking, no matter how he chose to look
at it.
He let the discussion about the raid continue, agreeing
that they needed to start hitting the Rogues where they
lived, rather than picking them off individually as they ran
across them in the street. “We’ll meet back in here at sun-
down to suit up and head out.”
The group of warriors began conversing amongst
themselves as they dispersed, Tegan sauntering along at
the rear.
Lucan considered the stoic loner, who took such
damnable pride in the fact that he didn’t need anyone.
Tegan willfully kept himself detached, isolated. But he
hadn’t always been like that. Once, he’d been a golden boy,
a born leader. He could have been great—had been, in
fact. But all of that changed in the course of one terrible
night. From there, a steep downward spiral began. Tegan
hit bottom and had never recovered.
And although he had never admitted it to the warrior,
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Lucan would never forgive himself for the role he had
played in that fall.
“Tegan. Hold up.”
The vampire paused with obvious reluctance. He
didn’t turn around, just stood there in silence, his back held
at an arrogant angle as the other warriors filed out of the
training facility and into the corridor. When they were
alone, Lucan cleared his throat and spoke to his Gen One
brethren.
“You and I have a problem, Tegan.”
He exhaled sharply. “I’ll go alert the media.”
“This issue between us isn’t going to go away. It’s been
too long, too much water over the dam. If you need to set-
tle the score with me—”
“Forget it. It’s ancient history.”
“Not if we can’t bury it.”
Tegan scoffed, turning to look at him at last. “You got a
point here, Lucan?”
&nb
sp; “I just want to say that I think I’m starting to under-
stand what it cost you. What I cost you.” Lucan slowly
shook his head, ran a hand over his scalp. “T, you have to
know that if there had been any other way . . . If things
could’ve gone down differently . . .”
“Jesus Christ. Are you trying to apologize to me?”
Tegan’s green eyes were hard enough to cut glass. “Spare
me the concern, man. You’re about five-hundred years too
late. And sorry doesn’t change a fucking thing, does it?”
Lucan clamped his jaws together, stunned to feel true
anger rolling off the big male, instead of the usual cool
apathy.
Tegan hadn’t forgiven him. Not even close.
After all this time, he didn’t think it likely that he ever
would.
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“No, T. You’re right. Sorry doesn’t change anything.”
Tegan stared at him for a long moment, then turned
away and stalked out of the room.
Live music screamed out of refrigerator-sized amplifiers at
the front of the private underground nightclub—although
“music” was a generous description of the band’s pathetic
caterwauling and discordant guitar riffs. The group moved
robotically on the stage, slurring their words and dropping
far more beats than they hit. In a word, they sucked.
But then, who could expect the humans to perform
with any sort of expertise when they were playing before a
crowd of bloodthirsty, feeding vampires?
From behind his concealing shades, the leader of the
Rogues narrowed his eyes and scowled. He had a thrash-
ing headache when he’d arrived a short while ago; now his
temples felt as if they were about to explode. He leaned
back against the cushions of his private booth, bored with
the gory festivities. A slight lift of his hand brought one of
his sentries jogging over. He waved dismissively toward the
stage.
“Someone put them out of their misery. Not to men-
tion mine.”
The guard nodded, then hissed in reply. He curled back
his lips to reveal huge fangs protruding from a mouth that
was already watering at the mere mention of more car-
nage. The Rogue loped off to carry out his orders.
“Good dog,” murmured his powerful Master.
He was glad for the sudden trill of his cell phone, and a
reason to get up for some air. A new racket had begun on-
stage, now, as the band came under the sudden assault of a
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