Midnight Breed - Book - 01
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nearly a year, he refused to accept the fact that his
Breedmate’s mind was lost forever. He kept feeding her
from his vein, unwilling to see her corruption. He fed to
feed her. He didn’t care that he was steadily sliding into
Bloodlust. For that entire year, he defied Breed law, and
would not put her out of her misery. As for Tegan himself,
he was slowly, but surely, going Rogue. Something had to
be done. . . .”
When he let the statement hang, unfinished, Gabrielle
spoke for him. “And as leader, it fell to you to take action.”
Lucan gave a grim nod. “I put Tegan in a thick stone
cell, and then I put his Breedmate to the sword.”
Gabrielle closed her eyes, sensing his regret. “Oh,
Lucan . . .”
“Tegan wasn’t freed until his body had withdrawn from
its Bloodlust addiction. It took many months of near star-
vation and absolute agony for him to be able to walk out of
that cell on his own legs. When he realized what I’d done, I
thought he would try to kill me. But he didn’t. The Tegan
I knew didn’t come out of that cell at all. Something colder
did. He’s never said the words, but I know he’s hated me
ever since.”
“Not as much as you hate yourself.”
His jaw was clenched hard, drawing the lean skin
tighter across his cheekbones. “I’m used to making difficult
choices. I’m not afraid to take on the hard tasks, or to be
the target of anger, even hatred, because of the decisions I
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make for the betterment of the Breed. I don’t give a damn
about any of that.”
“No, you don’t,” she said gently. “But you had to hurt a
friend, and that has weighed heavily on you for a long, long
time.”
The look he gave her begged to argue, but maybe he
didn’t have the strength. After all that he had been
through, he was tired, bone tired, although she doubted he
would be willing to admit that, even to her.
“You’re a good man, Lucan. You’ve got a very noble
heart underneath all that heavy armor.”
He grunted, dismissive and sardonic. “Only someone
who’s known me less than a few weeks would make the
mistake of presuming that.”
“Really? I can think of a few people here who would
tell you the same thing. Including Conlan, if he were
alive.”
His brows went low, like a thundercloud. “What can
you possibly know about that?”
“Danika told me what you did for him. The funeral
rite. Bringing him topside as the sun came up. To honor
him, you let yourself burn.”
“Jesus Christ,” he snapped, shooting to his feet. He
started to pace in an agitated, halting track near the bed.
His voice was coarse, a barely contained roar. “Honor had
nothing to do with it. You want to know why I did that? It
was guilt. The night of the bombing in the train station, I
was supposed to be running that mission with Niko, not
Conlan. But I couldn’t get you out of my mind. I thought
maybe if I had you—if I finally got inside you—it might
satisfy my itch and I could move on, forget about you. So,
that night I put Conlan on the job in my place. It would
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have been me in that tunnel, not Conlan. It should have
been me.”
“My God, Lucan. You’re unbelievable, you know
that?” She slammed her palms down on the table and let
out a sharp, furious laugh. “Why can’t you cut yourself
some fucking slack?”
The uncontrolled outburst got his attention when noth-
ing else had. He stopped pacing and stared at her. “You
know why,” he said, his tone level now. “You know, better
than anyone else.” He shook his head, mouth twisted with
self-contempt. “Turns out Eva knew something about
it, too.”
Gabrielle thought back to the shocking exchange in the
infirmary. Everyone had been appalled at Eva’s actions,
and stunned by her crazed accusations against Lucan. All
except him. “Lucan, the things that she said . . .”
“All true, as you have seen for yourself. But you still de-
fended me. That’s twice you’ve kept my weakness from be-
ing exposed.” He scowled, turning his head away from her.
“I won’t ever ask you to do that again. My problems are
my own.”
“And you need to address them.”
“What I need is to get some clothes on and go take a
look at those pictures Gideon is uploading. If they give us
enough info on the asylum’s layout, we can hit the place
tonight.”
“What do you mean, hit it tonight?”
“Take it out. Shut it down. Blow the fucking thing sky-
high.”
“You can’t be serious. You said yourself it’s probably
full of Rogues. Do you honestly think that you and three
other guys will survive going up against unknown num-
bers?”
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“We’ve done it before. And there will be five of us,” he
said, as if that should make a difference. “Gideon has said
he wants in on whatever we do. He’ll be taking Rio’s
place.”
Gabrielle scoffed, disbelieving. “And what about you?
You’re barely on your feet.”
“I’m walking. I’m well enough. They won’t be expect-
ing a retaliation so soon, which makes it the best time for us
to strike.”
“You must be out of your mind. You need rest, Lucan.
You can’t do anything until you get your strength back.
You need to heal.” She watched a muscle work in his jaw, a
tendon ticking beneath the sallow, drawn slope of his
cheek. His features were harder than normal, too lean.
“You can’t go out there the way you are.”
“I said, I’m fine.”
The words rushed out of him, a coarse rasp in his
throat. When he looked at her again, his silver irises were
shot with bright amber flecks of color, like fire licking
through ice.
“You’re not. Not by a long shot. You need nourish-
ment. Your body’s been through too much recently. You
need to feed.”
She felt a surge of coldness sweep the room and knew it
came from him. She was provoking his anger. She’d seen
him at his worst before and lived to tell of it, but maybe she
was pushing too hard right now. She could sense he’d been
itchy and uptight, his temper on a short leash ever since
he’d brought her to the compound. Now he was danger-
ously on edge; did she really want to be the one to shove
him past his threshold of control?
Screw it. Maybe that was just what was
needed.
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“Your body is beaten down, Lucan, not just from your
injuries. You’re weak. And you’re afraid.”
“Afraid.” He swung an icy look at her, sneered with arc-
tic sarcasm. “Of what?”
“Yourself, for starters. But I think you’re even more
afraid of me.”
She waited for an instant rebuttal, something cold and
nasty to match the wintry rage that was rolling off of him
like frost. But he didn’t say anything. He glared at her for a
long moment, then turned away and strode, a bit stiffly,
toward a tall bureau on the other side of the room.
Gabrielle sat there on the floor, watching as he yanked
open drawers, pulled out clothing and tossed it onto the
bed.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t have time to debate this with you. It’s point-
less.”
A cabinet of weapons opened before he reached it, the
doors swinging on their hinges with an invisible, violent
jerk. He stalked over and pulled out a retractable shelf. At
least a dozen daggers and other lethal-looking blades lay in
orderly rows on the shelf ’s velvet liner. With a careless
grab, Lucan swiped two large knives in black leather
sheaths. He slid open another shelf and selected a big,
brushed stainless steel handgun that looked like something
out of an action movie nightmare.
“You don’t like what I’m saying, so you’re going to run
away from me instead?” He didn’t look at her, or even
curse in reply. No, he completely ignored her, and that
really pissed her off. “Go ahead, then. Pretend you’re in-
vincible, that you’re not scared to death of letting someone
care for you. Run away from me, Lucan. You’re only prov-
ing my point.”
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Gabrielle felt a keen sense of hopelessness as Lucan re-
trieved an ammunition clip from the cabinet and shoved it
into the pistol’s hollow grip. Nothing she said would stop
him. She felt helpless, like she was trying to wrap her arms
around a storm.
She glanced away from him, her eyes straying back to
the table where she sat, at the plates and silverware in front
of her. She saw the unused knife lying there, the polished
blade gleaming.
She couldn’t hold him back with words, but there was
something else. . . .
She pushed back the long sleeve of her robe. Very
calmly, with the same fearless resolve that had served her a
hundred times before, Gabrielle picked up the knife and
pressed the edge of it to the fleshy part of her forearm. A
small pressure, the barest slice of the blade through her
skin.
She didn’t know which of Lucan’s senses responded
first, but the roar he let loose when his head came up and
he saw what she had done rattled every piece of furniture
in the room.
“Goddamn it—Gabrielle!”
The blade flew out of her grasp and across the length
of the bedroom, embedding to the hilt in the far wall.
Lucan moved so fast she could hardly track him. One
second he was standing several feet away at the foot of the
bed, the next he had his large hand clamped down hard
around her fingers, hauling her up to her feet. Blood rose
from the thin line of her cut, juicy, deep crimson, trickling
down her arm. Her hand was still caught in Lucan’s crush-
ing grip.
He towered over her, a wall of dark, seething fury.
His chest was heaving, the nostrils flaring as his breath
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sawed in and out of his lungs. His handsome face was con-
torted with anguish and outrage, and his eyes burned with
the unmistakable heat of his hunger. Not a trace of gray
remained, his pupils narrowed down to the barest slivers of
black. His fangs were stretched long, their sharp white tips
gleaming behind the vicious curl of his lip.
“Now, try to tell me that you don’t need what I’m offer-
ing,” she whispered fiercely.
Sweat glistened on his brow as he stared at her fresh,
bleeding wound. He licked his lips and ground out a word
from another language.
It didn’t sound friendly.
“Why?” he demanded, accusing. “Why would you do
this to me?”
“You really don’t know?” She held his feral gaze,
weathering his anger as droplets of blood splattered a
crimson trail across the snowy white of her robe. “Because
I love you, Lucan. And this is all I have to give you.”
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Twenty-nine
Lucan thought he knew hunger. He thought he knew
fury and desperation—desire, too—but every paltry emo-
tion he’d ever felt in all his ageless life fell away like dust as
he stared into Gabrielle’s defiant brown eyes.
His senses were swamped, drowning in the sweet jas-
mine scent of her blood, its source so dangerously close to
his mouth. Glossy red, thick as honey, the crimson rivulet
pulsed from the small wound she had inflicted on herself.
“I love you, Lucan.” Her soft voice broke through the
pounding of his own heart and the driving need that now
engulfed him. “With or without blood to bind us, I love
you.”
He couldn’t speak, didn’t even know what he might
have said if his parched throat could form words. With a
vicious growl, he thrust her away from him, too weak to be
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near her when all the darkness in him urged him to make
her his in this final irrevocable way.
Gabrielle fell back onto the bed, the loosely tied robe
barely covering her nakedness. Bright stains dotted the
white sleeve and lapel. There was a red smear on her bare
thigh, vivid scarlet on peaches-and-cream skin.
God, how he wanted to put his mouth on that silky
wedge of flesh, all over her. Only her.
“No.”
The command came out of him, dry as ash. His gut
was clenched in a vise of pain, knotted and twisting. It
pulled him down. His knees collapsed beneath him when
he tried to turn away from the tempting sight of her,
sprawled and bleeding like a sacrifice laid out before him.
He dropped to the carpeted floor in a slump of bone
and muscle, fighting back a need like he had never known
before. She was killing him. This yearning for her—the
shattering in his chest when he thought of her ever being
> with another male.
And then there was his hunger.
Never more intense than when Gabrielle was near, now
that his lungs were filled with the perfume of her blood, he
was ravenous.
“Lucan . . .”
He sensed her moving off the bed. Her feet crushed
softly on the carpet and then came slowly into his view,
pink-lacquered toenails like smooth little shells. She knelt
down next to him. Gentle hands sank into his hair, then
cupped his tense jaw as she slowly brought his head up to
face her.
“Drink from me.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, but it was a weak attempt to
deny what she was saying. He didn’t have the strength to
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fight the tender, yet unrelenting pull of her arms as she
lifted him toward her.
He could smell the blood on her wrist; this close it sent
a furious rush of adrenaline coursing through him. His
mouth watered, fangs stretched longer, tearing his gums.
She coaxed him higher, bringing his torso up off the floor.
With one hand, she moved aside her long hair, baring her
neck to him.
He flinched, but she held him firmly. Guided him
closer.
“Drink, Lucan. Take what you need.”
She leaned forward until there was only a breath of
space between his slack mouth and the delicate pulse that
fluttered beneath the pale skin below her ear.
“Do it,” she whispered, and brought him to her.
Pressed his lips forcibly against her neck.
She held him there for an anguished eternity. Then
again, maybe it took only a slim fraction of a second for
the hook to set. Lucan couldn’t be sure. All he knew was
the warm crush of her skin against his tongue, the beat of
her heart, the rapid panting of her breath. All he knew was
the longing he felt for her.
No more denial.
He wanted her— all of her—and the beast was too far
gone to be merciful now.
He opened his mouth . . . and sank his fangs into the
yielding flesh of her throat.
She gasped at the sudden penetration of his bite, but
she didn’t release her hold on him, not even when he
gulped in the first greedy pull from her open vein.
Blood rushed into his mouth, hot and earthy-sweet, ex-
quisite. Beyond anything he could ever have imagined.
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