Savannah’s dark brown eyes were sober as she glanced at Dare. “Calling it a Darkhaven is being too generous. The same goes for calling Riordan her family. Nova didn’t have to tell us everything she suffered at her adoptive father’s hands, but it’s obvious her treatment there was nothing short of brutal.”
Nova was Mathias Rowan’s Breedmate of a few weeks now. The couple had met while the Order’s London-based commander had been investigating a string of murders in his city and a missing shipment of Russian arms.
The tattooed, blue-and-black-haired young woman—whose given name was Catriona Riordan—had been instrumental in providing the Order with most of the intel they currently had on the Breed male who’d raised her. Because of Nova, they had learned that the black scarab tattoos on the dead men had marked them as Fineas Riordan’s thugs.
But the Order had no evidence to link Riordan to Opus Nostrum until Derek Walsh’s confession about the assassinations in Italy. Derek’s boast of his plans to impress Opus’s inner circle through the shocking murders was made even more significant for the fact that he also bore the black scarab tattoo.
Lucan glanced at the sketches of the Riordan stronghold and shook his head. “We need something solid to tell us what this bastard is up to now, or what he might’ve wanted with that container of weapons his thugs tried to collect for him in London.” Lucan glanced at Gideon. “How long before we send our little drone out for a fly-by?”
“It went up a couple of hours ago.”
“And got shot down only a few seconds into its surveillance,” Darion finished, his face grim. “We didn’t get any data.”
“Jesus Christ.” Lucan swung his scowl on Gideon. “Satellite images?”
“We’re working on it.”
“Work faster. In the meantime, I’ve got to go assure the GNC and all of the other whining armchair quarterbacks at the Capitol that the attack in Italy was an isolated incident orchestrated by Walsh’s mentally unstable son. The last thing we need is word getting out that Opus was even loosely connected to those killings. All that’ll do is fan the flames of public hysteria, and we’ve got enough of that shit to deal with as it is.”
Everyone in the room nodded in agreement, but Darion’s expression still held an edge of concern. “We can handle scum like Riordan. We can even handle Opus Nostrum when the time comes. But that still leaves the Atlanteans.”
“It does,” Lucan said. “And we have to be prepared for that fight too. One thing Reginald Crowe showed us is that his kind can be living right under our noses and we won’t even know it. Just like the now-dead owner of La Notte in Boston. No one ever would’ve suspected Cassian Gray was anything other than human until his Atlantean brethren cut him down.”
Gabrielle’s hand came down gently on Lucan’s arm. “Yes, but where Crowe was evil, Cass’s only crime was trying to steal his Atlantean daughter away from his people to give her a better life. There’s nothing evil in Jordana. There was nothing evil in her father either.”
“It’s not any of them we have to contend with,” Lucan reminded his mate. “It’s their queen who wants a war. Cass lost his head on Selene’s command and Jordana will be in hiding from her royal grandmother for the rest of her life unless we find Selene first.”
Darion nodded gravely. “If what Crowe said is true, that their queen has been plotting a war to end all others, then we have no choice but to hunt the bitch down and destroy her. The rest of her legion too.”
Lucan stared at the man his son had become—the fearless champion. He didn’t want to imagine Darion on the front lines of a clash with a powerful enemy race. But the commander in him couldn’t ask for a better warrior to one day lead that charge.
“Let me know when you have something on Riordan,” he instructed them. “Every minute we let that bastard breathe gives Opus another opportunity to strike.”
CHAPTER 3
With Carys’s jean-clad legs wrapped around him and her mouth locked hard on his since they’d left the arena, Rune strode toward his quarters in the back of the club.
Heavy bass and industrial dance music throbbed all around, the din of the packed club and hundreds of voices muffled to a low drone the closer Rune and Carys got to the fighters’ quarters in La Notte’s underground level.
Not that he could hear much over the hammering of his blood through his veins.
He kicked open the door and carried her inside. He couldn’t wait to be alone with her. To be inside her. Pivoting just as they cleared the threshold, he pressed Carys’s back to the closed panel and took her lips and tongue in a fevered, primal kiss.
Twenty-five minutes of hand-to-hand combat in the cage always left him wired with adrenaline and the need to fuck and feed. His post-match ritual had long been to slake both thirsts in La Notte’s BDSM dens, but he hadn’t stepped foot in that part of the club for the past seven weeks.
Carys Chase was all he craved now.
She’d been the only woman in his bed all this time—on those few occasions they actually made it that far before tearing each other’s clothes off. Sex with Carys had ruined him for any other woman. She brought out the feral side of him like no other, made his veins light up so hot he could hardly stand it, especially when her strong, gorgeous body was clinging to him the way she was now.
Wild and uninhibited, the beautiful Breed female was a raw and powerful force of nature.
As for her blood . . .
Fuck. He couldn’t think about the temptation of her blood. Especially not when his cock was as stiff as granite and aching to be inside her.
He needed a shower to soap off the sweat and grime from the cage, but Carys didn’t seem to mind. Even though she deserved far better, she welcomed him however he came to her. And damn if that didn’t make him even harder.
With one arm looped around the back of his neck, she used her other to work the ties of his leather shorts. They peeled down his bare thighs and she grasped his freed shaft. Rune groaned as she caressed his length. Her mouth was still crushed against his, and with each sure stroke of her hand, she pushed her demanding little tongue deeper into his mouth.
Christ, she truly was his addiction.
He thrust his hips up to grind the ridge of his arousal against her core. The denim abraded his skin, but it was her body’s heat that dragged a hiss from him.
“Feel how hard you make me,” he muttered against her lips, his voice thick from the presence of his fangs. “You need to be naked. Right now.”
“I agree.” She smiled, baring the sharp tips of her own as he set her feet onto the floor.
Seeing Carys in her true Breed form still unnerved him at times. Desire made her bright blue eyes glow with amber sparks, as it did his dark ones. Like his, her pupils narrowed to catlike slits in her need.
With eager hands, they made quick work of her black blouse and body-hugging jeans, then Carys shimmied out of her silky bra and barely-there panties. He’d seen her undressed easily a dozen times already, but it didn’t keep him from staring in fascination at the dermaglyphs that swirled and arced over her shoulders, chest and torso.
The Breed skin markings were more delicate than those that tracked over his body. But her feathery flourishes and lacy patterns churned with deep colors, the same as his, indicating the height of her desire.
She had dermaglyphs and fangs, but she also bore the birthmark of a Breedmate. The small scarlet symbol—a teardrop falling into the cradle of a crescent moon—rode the left side of Carys’s neck. It was that part of her that allowed her to walk in the daylight, where Rune and the majority of the Breed were creatures of the night.
Rune reached out to touch the tiny mark, tracing the coarse pads of his fingers along her soft cheek, then down to the pretty tangle of glyphs that danced across her breasts.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he rasped, stroking the rosy buds of her nipples. He skimmed his big hand down her slender belly to the narrow patch of caramel-brown curls between her legs. She was wet for h
im, silken and hot. So damn sexy.
He wanted to slow things down, but the adrenaline spike from the cage was still riding him. As was his need for this woman.
Rune lifted her light weight in his hands and held her aloft at his waist. She wrapped her legs around his hips, seating his cock in the slick cleft of her body. Rune thrust inside, the long, hard push seating her to the hilt.
Carys moaned, rocking on him before he could even catch his breath. Fire erupted in her eyes as she held his gaze, her fangs extending even further as desire flooded her glyphs. Rune braced himself, his feet gripping the slate floor, one arm holding Carys’s weight, his other splaying against the wall at her back as he gave her everything her body demanded of him.
There was no need to hold himself in check with her. Together, their passion was explosive. Immense. As classically beautiful as she was, as delicate as she felt in his arms, Carys was every bit as powerful as any Breed male.
“Yes,” she hissed in his ear as he crashed into her. “Rune, yes . . . Fuck me harder.”
He growled, happy to obey. As he drove deeper, she cried out. Her fingernails raked his back, scoring his skin, spurring him on. Her dermaglyphs were alive and pulsing against his bare chest, her body throwing off heat in waves.
“Come on, baby,” he ground out between his clamped teeth and fangs. “This how you want it?”
“Oh, yes,” she panted. “Give me more, Rune. Don’t stop.”
He pumped into her on a thunderous roar as they both began to hurtle toward release. He couldn’t slow it down now, even if she wanted him to. He glanced between them to watch Carys’s body tense, her pretty glyphs pulsing and wild with deep indigo, wine and gold. She was close.
Fuck, so was he.
Carys’s nails dug into his shoulders as the first wave smashed into her. A scream of pleasure tore out of her, the hottest thing Rune had ever heard. As she shuddered and broke around his increasing thrusts, his own climax rose inside him.
He threw his head back on a jagged shout, hammering into the welcoming sheath of her body, feeling her tight walls milk him with each thrust. When he came, it was on a savage roar, the intensity of his release wracking him.
“Jesus, you feel good on my cock,” he rasped, bringing his head back down to look at her. “You keep fucking me like this, and I won’t be able to deny you anything, female.”
“You mean that?” There was no blue left in her eyes now, only bright amber light. And all of it fixed on his throat. She licked her lips, then glanced up at him, unapologetically Breed.
Even though he could tell she was playing with him, he sobered instantly. He stroked the side of her beautiful face. “You know our rule, love.”
She groaned, arching a slender brow. “If I followed everyone’s rules, we would never have gotten together in the first place, would we?”
Before he knew what she was doing, she dipped her head and ran her tongue across his carotid. No fangs, only softness—a swift, wet caress that arrowed through him even more potently than any jolt of electricity he’d ever taken in the cage.
Holy. Hell.
Rune snarled and grabbed her, hoisting her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She squealed, her hands smacking his back, her caramel-brown hair tickling his bare ass as he stalked with her through his quarters to the bedroom. He dropped her onto the mattress, then came down on top of her.
She was laughing, enjoying her harmless little taunt, but Rune was all seriousness now. “The blood bond is unbreakable, Carys. You know that.”
Her smile dimmed a bit. “I know.”
“What we have together is great, but look around you. Look at me.” He shook his head. “Is this really where you belong? The club? The crowd outside the cage every night? It sure as fuck isn’t the kind of life anyone wants to see you shackled to for the rest of your life. Not even me.”
“Careful, you’re sounding an awful lot like my family.”
“They’re right to disapprove. Of me. Of us, together like this.”
“I don’t care what anyone else thinks.”
No, she didn’t. And that was one of the things he respected about her. It was one of the many things he loved about her.
“First time I saw you, I knew you were going to be trouble for me.” He speared his fingers into her hair, his palm curving around her warm nape. “You and your little gang of giggling, jiggling friends. I noticed you the second you walked in, you know that?”
She grinned. “I’m sure it was hard to miss us. We were all pretty lit up that night. We’d already hit a bunch of clubs uptown before we ended up down here.”
Rune shook his head. “I saw your friends, but the only one I took notice of was you. You, striding in at the front of the group, leading the pack.” His cock stirred at the memory even now. So did his blood, pounding with the same hard need he’d felt the instant Carys had invaded his world like a blast of unstoppable light. “Every male in here that night took notice of you too, but I knew I was going to be the one to have you.”
Her brows arched. “So arrogant.”
“Aye,” he agreed. “And determined.”
“A lethal combination.” She smiled as she leaned toward him, until barely an inch separated their mouths. “I never stood a chance.”
“Not for a moment,” he said. “And when you came back the next night by yourself, neither did I.”
As he kissed her and pushed back into her heat, he couldn’t help thinking that if they were a normal couple, they’d probably already be mated or well on their way toward it.
If he was a different man . . .
Rune shook the useless thoughts away.
Forever was something he couldn’t give Carys.
Hell, he hadn’t even given her total honesty. The blood bond would open his ugly past and shameful secrets to her. It would bind her to him irrevocably, and to the darkness he’d been running from nearly all his life.
It would bind Carys to the danger that could catch up to him at any time. As it had already before.
And that was something he would never risk, even if it meant one day pushing her away from him for good.
CHAPTER 4
Seated on a living room sofa next to his mate, Tavia, Sterling Chase did his damnedest to chat with their three houseguests without staring at the clock on the opposite wall every five minutes.
Tried and failed, if the look Tavia slanted at him was any indication.
As soon as he heard the quiet beep of the command center’s security system, indicating his patrol team had returned for the night, Chase murmured his excuses and strode out to the mansion’s hallway.
The pair of warriors he wanted to see appeared at the far end of the corridor, fresh from their night’s sweep of the city. “Anything to report?”
“Just a typical Friday night in Boston,” Elijah said in his smooth Texas accent. “Which is saying a lot, based on how things have been going around here lately.”
“And my daughter?” Chase pressed.
Jax shook his head, his almond-shaped eyes solemn. “No sign of her at La Notte, sir.”
“Was the cage fighter there?” At the warriors’ nods, Chase let out a sharp curse. “Then so was she. Carys probably hid from you the instant she spotted you inside the place.”
And Chase ought to know his daughter had the skill to evade anyone she had a mind to. The fact that she could bend shadows to her bidding was an extrasensory gift she’d inherited from him, after all. Damn it.
As he considered sending the men back out for another fly-by of the illegal sport club, just to get a visual confirmation that his child was still in the city and still in one piece, he sensed a shift in the air behind him.
Tavia had come out to the hallway now.
She smiled warmly at the two warriors, who greeted their commander’s blood-bonded mate with deferential nods. “Is everything all right out here?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Eli replied.
Jax’s head bobbed in agree
ment.
“They were just reporting in on the night’s patrol,” Chase said.
“You mean, reporting in on your nightly surveillance of our daughter.”
He didn’t bother to deny it. Tavia knew how concerned he was for Carys living on her own now. Not simply because she was his only daughter, but because of the dangers lurking in Boston and around the world of late. Dangers few but the Order were fully aware of.
Tavia worried too, but she must have been made of stronger stuff than he was. In the weeks since Carys had moved out of the family Darkhaven, Tavia had reconciled with the fact that their daughter was a grown woman who should be allowed to make her own choices.
As much as Chase hated it, there was nothing he could do. She was an adult, and he had to hope that what he’d taught her in life had not only stuck, but taken root.
He glanced at the pair of warriors and cursed. “Maybe I should send them back out to pick her up and bring her home where she belongs.”
Tavia crossed her arms. “And then what? Chain her to the banister? She’d never stand for us dictating her life like that, and you know it. We’d lose her for good.”
“We still might if we don’t keep her where we can protect her.”
“From what I’ve heard about her friend, Rune—”
“Friend?” Chase scoffed. “Gutter-bred, cold-blooded killer, according to his reputation. She can do a hell of a lot better than some cage-fighting bastard looking for another conquest outside of the arena.”
“Carys seems to see something more in him than his reputation,” Tavia gently reminded him. “Nathan and Jordana have spent time with Carys and Rune. They both said he appears to care deeply for her. That he’s protective of her too. It sounds to me like he loves her, Sterling.”
Chase nearly choked on the idea. “He’d better hope nothing happens to our girl—by him or anyone else he might associate with. As for Carys, I still say she belongs with us. Especially now. I’m sure you haven’t forgotten what happened to Cassian Gray last week, or the fact that Carys was nearly swept into that whole ordeal with Jordana.”