by Lara Adrian
As much as he wanted to take some solace in that, what it meant was he had a lot of explaining to do. And a lot of making up.
He only hoped Devony would give him that chance.
First, he needed to inform his commander and Lucan that starting now, they were going to have to trust her as he did.
On his way out the door, Tavia reached out and gave his beard-grizzled cheek a reassuring caress. “I know Sterling isn’t happy with you right now, but I can’t thank you enough for looking after my niece. For loving her. The rest will fall into place as it should, you’ll see.”
He wasn’t so sure about that, but he nodded. She accompanied him as he continued to the command center’s war room.
He’d been expecting the meeting to be between Chase and him in Boston, with Lucan and Gideon on video from headquarters in D.C. That was the case, but in addition, all but two seats at the large conference table were filled. Tavia walked in and took the one immediately beside the commander.
Elijah and Jax sat with Nathan and Jordana on one side of Chase, the lone vacant chair situated between the commander and Rafe’s captain. On the other side of the table from Chase was the team commander from London, Mathias Rowan. He hadn’t brought his pregnant mate, Nova, but her brother, Rune, was seated beside his blood-bonded mate, Carys Chase.
And displayed on the large panel screens around the war room were all of the photographs, notes, and data files Rafe had collected while he was at Devony’s brownstone a few nights ago.
Considering the originals were now nothing but cinders among the rubble of her home, he probably should be grateful to see the information now. Instead the guilt he’d felt upon leaving Devony in the guestroom a few minutes ago only settled more coldly in his gut.
Every bit of intel she had shared with him in confidence felt like a betrayal to see it here now.
Sick with the feeling, he hardly noticed all of the conversations had halted now that he had arrived. Expectant, unreadable gazes watched him from all points of the room.
Chase indicated the empty chair. “Come in and have a seat, Rafe.”
He walked in, the silence around him feeling as heavy as a shroud.
As he sat down, Nathan gave him a sober, sidelong glance. Right before a rare smirk twisted his stern mouth. “You asshole. Do you have any idea how close I came to killing you the other night?”
Rafe exhaled and looked at his commander for confirmation.
“I’ve told them,” Chase said.
The war room erupted with a few chuckles and a lot of ball-busting. Rafe took it all, glad for every insult and good-natured jab they flung at him. The weight of the past few weeks—the months following his disgrace in Montreal—melted away in the space of a few seconds.
Jax and Eli got up from their seats at the table and walked up to him, both grinning and shaking their heads.
Eli punched him in the shoulder. “It’s a damn relief to know you’re not the fucked up maniac I thought you were.”
“Don’t be so sure about that,” Rafe quipped, smiling at his teammate.
Jax held his hand out to him. “Welcome back, bro. Even if I still want to kick your ass right now.”
Rafe cocked a grin. “I’d like to see you try.”
Carys and Rune came over now too. The stern former cage fighter who was her mate gave Rafe’s hand a hard pump. “Not a day’s gone by that she hasn’t worried about you.”
He glanced at Carys, who’d been like a sister to him his entire life. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t say anything to anyone.”
“I don’t care,” she said, throwing her arms around him. “You’re back where you belong now, and that’s all that matters to me.”
Mathias Rowan approached as well. The London commander had been a part of the Order’s inner circle for two decades, a stoic ally through numerous battles and catastrophes. Now, there was a sober, almost parental look in his gaze. No doubt, the father-to-be was thinking about his own son on the way, one who might eventually wish to follow in his footsteps as a warrior for the Order.
Mathias gripped Rafe’s shoulder. “Chase told me what happened in that warehouse earlier tonight. The liquid UV.” He shook his head on a low curse. “It’s damn good to see you standing here with us tonight, Rafe.”
He wouldn’t be, if not for Devony.
He didn’t have to tell Mathias that. Since Chase had told his good friend about Rafe’s injuries, he would have also explained to the London commander that it was Breed blood that had saved him.
Devony’s blood.
Her bond.
He wanted to tell everyone in the room what she meant to him, but the din of competing conversations was stilled by the buzzing of Chase’s comm unit. He answered the call, frowning as he received the report.
“That was Aric and his team,” he announced after setting the phone down on the table. He glanced at Rafe. “The warehouse at Conley Terminal had been cleaned out by the time our team arrived. No dead bodies. No crates of liquid UV. No trace of the spill, either.”
“Opus moved quickly. They knew we’d come looking to grab the rest of that cargo.”
Chase nodded. “I called the team back in. They’ll be here within the hour.”
“Any idea who owns the warehouse?” Mathias asked.
“Yeah,” Gideon said via the video feed. “About five layers of shell corporations. I’ve been hacking my way through them for the past hour.”
“One of the guys in Cruz’s gang told me the shit we were stealing belonged to some kind of arms dealer,” Rafe said. “And Cruz mentioned the cargo was arriving from overseas.”
“Great. That helps.” Gideon’s reply was punctuated by the clacking of his keyboard on the other end. “Shouldn’t take me long to find the bastard.”
“We need that lead,” Lucan said, his grim face filling another of the monitors that were linked in to the war room. “With Judah LaSalle dead, that dealer may be our next best lead. Anyone holding on to liquid UV is either in bed with Opus Nostrum or on their bad side. I don’t give a shit which camp this son of a bitch is in. I just want him in our hands—yesterday.”
“I’ll put a team on it as soon as we have your go,” Chase said.
Lucan nodded, glancing at Rafe. “Excellent work on all of this. I know it hasn’t been easy for you, living like this these past weeks. Or more recently.”
“No, sir.” Rafe cleared his throat. “Ah . . . about that.”
When he came down here with the intent to explain to his commander and the Order’s leader what Devony meant to him, he hadn’t expected an audience of his whole damn team and then some. But the words needed to be said and he couldn’t wait another moment to put them out there.
He’d screwed things up with her, not only tonight, but from the beginning. He only hoped he would have the chance to make them right.
“It’s about Devony,” he said. “I’ve made a terrible mistake with her—”
He felt her presence through their blood bond . . . even before he heard her sharp intake of breath just outside the room.
He turned around and there she was.
All the breath left his lungs on a curse.
She stared at him, but only for a second. Her wounded gaze flicked to the other members of the Order gathered around the room alongside him. His friends, obviously. Teammates he had never truly lost.
Then she glanced over at the screens that contained all the information she had opened up to him in the privacy of her Darkhaven. All of father’s meticulous notes and theories. Her months of work in her quest to avenge her slain family.
All of the secrets she had shared with Rafe in the moments before he took her virginity on the floor of her father’s study.
Christ.
He felt her stunned confusion like a blow to his chest. Her sharp feeling of betrayal pierced him.
“Devony.”
She mutely backed away.
“Devony, wait.”
She took a step into the co
rridor.
Then, in a flash of movement, she was gone.
CHAPTER 23
She was an idiot.
He told her he was dangerous. He told her she was in over her head. That they wouldn’t be friends or anything else.
She hadn’t believed him.
She still didn’t want to believe it, and yet she had just seen the evidence of his duplicity with her own eyes. She felt it. His guilt seeped into her through their blood bond, feeling as thick and black as oil.
He had betrayed her.
Lied to her.
Used her.
A choked sob caught in her throat as she moved through the Order’s mansion as a flash of motion. She hurried back into the lovely guestroom Tavia Chase had provided for her, feeling on the verge of a hideous emotional breakdown.
She couldn’t let herself fall apart. Not here. Not when Rafe and the rest of his comrades were likely down in the command center’s meeting room roaring with laughter over her naïveté. Her blind stupidity.
Her foolishness over allowing herself to fall in love with him. To bind herself to him in blood.
Oh, God.
She needed to get out of there.
She slammed the door behind her and held it shut with her mind as she hastily changed out of Carys’s borrowed clothing and back into the grime-caked black turtleneck and jeans she had arrived in. She didn’t want anything she had been offered here. Not the comfort or the clothing, not the kindness, either. Not if it had never been real.
She especially didn’t want a damn thing from Rafe.
“Devony.” He stood on the other side of the closed door.
She heard him try the latch, heard him swear when he couldn’t break through the mental hold she had on the lock.
She just wanted to get away from him.
“Leave me alone.”
“I can’t do that.” He tried the lock again. Another vivid curse. “Damn it, Devony. I need to see you. I need to talk to you, and not through this door.”
She didn’t answer. Mostly because she didn’t trust her voice. She could feel the sincerity of his plea. He was hurting too. He felt as terrible as she did. Maybe more, although how that could even be possible she didn’t know.
Good. Let him hurt too.
“Go away, Rafe. Go back to your friends. I’m leav—”
The thick wood panel burst off its hinges, exploding inward. Rafe stood in the ruined doorway, a look of pure anguish on his handsome face.
“Devony, I’m sorry.”
“For which part? Pretending we were some kind of team when you were still part of the Order? Stealing weeks of my work and my father’s, and 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 lulled 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 hollow 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 falling in love with him.
And now he knew all 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 all 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 killing 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 actually gotten close to our goal together, if we’d closed in on Opus, would you have helped me destroy whoever killed my family?”
He said nothing for a long moment, then, finally, he shook his head. “No, Devony. I wouldn’t have let you anywhere near that kind of danger. I still 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.”
“Well, 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. All 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’ll start by saying that I love you.”
God, why was he determined to see her fall 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 a
way his power . . . and all 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 all his bodily pain, it was his heart that ached the worst. And holy hell, 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 full-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 pillow. “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 kill 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 hell. She was a Breed female, for fuck’s sake. He knew she was capable of fending for herself. After all, she’d plowed through him easily enough and he was a combat-tested warrior and twice her size.