Now, it was eight minutes after nine and still no sign of Rune.
Nor had he answered her call or message.
“He’s got about two more minutes to get here,” her father said, his deep voice clipped with irritation. “I’ve got orders from Lucan to deal with, plus a hundred other things I’ve put off for this meeting tonight. I can’t afford to waste any more time waiting for this male to make his appearance.”
“He’ll be here,” Carys insisted. Come on, Rune. Please, don’t do this to me.
Her mother glanced over in sympathy, and lovingly squeezed Carys’s hand. “Maybe it would be best if we did this another time instead?”
Carys saw slim chance of that in her father’s flinty eyes. His disapproval of Rune was deepening with every second that ticked by. After a moment, he exhaled a curse and stood up.
“I think we’ve all waited long enough now,” he said. He walked over to Carys and rested his palm on her shoulder. “I know you’re disappointed, sweetheart. I didn’t want to be proven right about him. But I can’t pretend I’m surprised, either.”
Embarrassment flooded her cheeks. Regret put a dull ache in her chest. Rune and her father meant the world to her, and she could hardly bear the idea that the wedge between them had just widened tonight. She could only imagine how her brother would react when he found out she’d been stood up. Aric would likely have to be chained down to keep from going off to confront Rune and defend her honor.
“This isn’t like Rune,” Carys murmured, hearing the desperation in her voice. “He said he would be here, and he will. I know he will . . .”
But even as she said it, doubts crowded in like dark clouds.
And rising concern too.
Something wasn’t right. Rune hadn’t exactly been excited about meeting her parents, but nothing would have kept him from making good on his promise to her to be there.
She felt it in her bones now. In her blood.
Something was terribly wrong.
As her parents quietly left the room, Carys tried calling Rune again. He didn’t pick up.
His number rang, and rang, and rang . . ..
CHAPTER 24
Dread clawed at Carys’s stomach when she reached La Notte’s front entrance at street level and found the heavy chain lock hanging loose. The fact that the tall, arched double doors were slightly ajar made the fine hairs on her nape rise in alarm.
She hadn’t been sure what to hope for when she’d slipped away from the Darkhaven to come to the club and look for Rune. After he’d failed to pick up her repeated calls or return her urgent messages, she only knew she couldn’t stay there wondering.
And as humiliated and hurt as she’d felt, sitting in her family’s living room, waiting for him to finally show up, the concern she’d felt had overruled it. Now, that concern chilled over into bone-deep worry.
No sounds flowed out to the street. The club was dark. Quiet.
Eerily so.
Her feeling of foreboding deepened, and instead of entering through the unsecured front door, she went around to the staff entrance at the back of the old church building.
Before she even stepped inside, the scent of spilled blood and death blasted her senses. Her gums twitched in response as alarm turned to ice in her veins.
“Rune?” Her voice vanished into the silence of the place as she entered the cavernous, underground arena and bar area. “Rune, are you here?”
He didn’t answer, but there he was. Standing inside with a group of six large, menacing Breed males, all heavily armed with semiautomatic pistols trained on Rune. Signs of a struggle were everywhere. The broken mirror behind the bar. Toppled chairs. Shattered glass littering the floor like diamond shards in a sea of pooled liquor.
And blood.
So much blood. On the wall and the floor. All over Rune.
“Oh, my God! Rune, what hap—”
When she stepped forward, his stark gaze halted her. There was a warning in his eyes that made her fall silent. Made her quell the spark of her Breed instincts.
One of the vampires moved beside him now, clamping his hand onto Rune’s shoulder. “Well, well . . . who have we here?”
The male’s angular face had a dangerous edge to it. Under his short dark hair, his piercing gray eyes glimmered with interest. And unmistakable cruelty.
Rune cleared his throat. “Club’s not going to open tonight,” he said, directing the statement at her. “You and the other girls can take the weekend off.”
Carys wasn’t sure how to respond. The Breed male standing next to Rune like he owned him didn’t give her the chance.
“Not so fast now, boyo. Don’t be rude.” His mouth split into a leering smile. “Why don’t you introduce us first? Didn’t expect this dump to employ such a fine piece of ass.” His gaze ran over her like an unwanted caress, narrowing when he saw the mark on the side of her neck. “Breedmate, besides, I see.”
Rune didn’t correct the mistake, nor did Carys. Although everything Breed in her flared with the urge to attack, she held herself in check. Rune’s miserable gaze seemed to command her compliance. He was clearly reigning in his own fury too.
“Go on home. Do it now,” he said tightly, his eyes pleading for her to obey.
And then she saw the reason for his gravity. Riding on the back of the hand that still gripped his shoulder was a distinctive tattoo. A black scarab. The other men had the same marks.
Holy shit.
These were Riordan’s men.
And Rune . . .?
His eyes took on an even grimmer expression when he realized she’d spotted the tattoo. His mouth went slack at the corners as he stared at her in terrible silence. Almost indiscernibly, he slowly shook his head at her in warning. In abject fear—not for himself, but for her.
Do not say anything, his dire gaze implored her. Do not cross them.
Beside him, his dangerous companion continued to leer in Carys’s direction. “Come on, girl. Step forward and let me have a closer look at you. Let us see what Aedan here is trying to keep all to himself.” The Riordan thug sucked in an exaggerated breath and swung a smirk at Rune. “Oh. Sorry, boyo. Would you rather I call you Rune?”
“What’s he talking about?” Carys frowned. “Who’s Aedan?”
The leader of the pack of thugs chuckled. “The better question is, who’s Rune?”
They all laughed at the apparent joke. All but Rune.
“For shame, Aedan. It’s obvious you’ve been fucking this poor girl, but lying to her too?” The Breed male clicked his tongue. “That’s no way to treat a lady.”
It felt as if a cold vacuum had suddenly opened up in the center of her chest. Everything Rune had told her started to make sense in a different way now. His past, his shame about where he’d come from, who he was.
All the things he hadn’t told her.
The walls he refused to let her breach.
How much was he still hiding from her?
Rune’s eyes were shooting hot sparks now. Carys could read the murder in his gaze. But he was keeping it under control. Taking the taunts and obvious threats from these men because she was there now. Because he was trying to give her a chance to get away.
“This isn’t about her,” he muttered low under his breath. His fangs glinted with every syllable. “You came for me. You’ve got me. Let her leave.”
The dark-haired male seemed to consider for a long moment, then he clapped his palm ungently on Rune’s shoulder and gave a careless shrug. “The bitch can go.”
“Get out,” Rune growled at Carys.
She couldn’t move. Her feet were rooted to the floor. Even though he’d deceived her, even though she’d just been struck with the fact that possibly everything she thought she knew about Rune had been a lie, her fear for him was greater than her own pain or confusion.
Her veins hammered with the urge to fight, to fly at these bastards with the full fury of her Breed genetics. Every fiber of her being was firing up with the de
sire to shed blood, to kill.
She felt her fangs start to erupt from her gums. Beneath her blouse, her glyphs prickled with the coming surge of her transformation.
Rune saw the slight change begin to come over her. He shook his head and snarled a vicious curse.
“Go,” he commanded her. “Goddamn it, get the fuck out of here, now!”
She’d never seen him so enraged. Nor more afraid. It shook her as surely as a physical blow. She backed up so fast, she nearly stumbled. She wheeled around and ran, her heart throbbing in her chest, cold and leaden. Her tears were hot on her cheeks as she pushed out the door and fled into the night, fumbling to pull her phone from her pocket.
She hit the number for her father’s private line. He picked up on the first ring.
“Daddy!” Her breath hitched on a broken sob. “Oh, God, it’s Rune . . . Please, I need your help.”
~ ~ ~
Rune didn’t let out his breath until he heard the staff door slam shut behind Carys.
She was gone.
He told himself he was glad. He felt relief, for sure. Seeing her in the same room with men loyal to Fineas Riordan had been the worst kind of terror he’d ever known.
Her confusion and mistrust when they’d called him by his given name had wracked him. When she’d spied the black scarab tattoos on the men, there had been recognition in her keen gaze. She knew the mark, knew what it meant. Who it belonged to.
Which meant the Order knew it too.
Bad enough he had wounded her by standing her up at the Chase Darkhaven. Tonight, he’d lost her for sure. And if the Order found him first, her father would no doubt want to be the one to kill him personally.
Rune had never felt dread like he had when Carys had stood primed to strike tonight—for him. She never would have survived it. Her Breed genetics were powerful, but not even the purest of their kind was bulletproof.
Together, he and Carys might have taken out a few of Riordan’s men, but not without risking their own lives. Rune could hardly be troubled to worry about his own hide now, but there was nothing he wouldn’t do to keep Carys safe. Sending her away was the only choice.
If they had realized who—and what—she was . . .
If they had made any move to touch her tonight . . .
He couldn’t finish the thoughts. The mere idea raked his veins with icy talons. Let them do whatever they would to him, but he couldn’t bear the thought of how she might suffer at their hands.
Or at the hands of the bigger monster back in Dublin.
“How long has he known where I am?”
“A couple of weeks.” Ennis Riordan, the Breed male leading the pack of jackals, grinned at Rune. “Ever since one of the scouts he sent to Boston to keep tabs on the Order followed a team of warriors down to this hellhole and saw them talking with you and the Breedmate who came here tonight.”
Jesus Christ.
The ice in Rune’s blood turned even colder. They’d known that long, which meant they could have made their move on him at any time. Any one of the nights when Carys was in the club with him . . . or in his bed.
“Why wait so long to make your appearance? If bringing me back to Dublin is so damn important to him, why not do it as soon as he knew I was here?”
“The Order’s been keeping us busy, trying to fuck up our plans. Forcing us to sacrifice pawns along the way to stay ahead of them while we focus on important work.” He shrugged. “Finding you in Boston after all this time was a surprise, Aedan. I can’t tell you what it means to your father to know you’ll be home again soon. Back in the family fold where you belong. He has great plans for you, boyo.”
Rune forced himself to keep his fists at his sides, struggled to keep his fangs concealed behind his curling lip as he listened to his uncle speak. He had to maintain his patience. He had to wait for his chance to strike.
Because he hadn’t realized until that moment that he had plans of his own too.
He was going back to Dublin willingly. Eagerly, in fact.
He would return to his father’s hellish domain . . . and when the moment was right, he was going to kill the bastard and burn his house to the ground.
CHAPTER 25
In his thousands of years of living, Zael had seen vast and astonishing libraries belonging to pharaohs, emperors and kings. Yet as he stood in the archive room of the Order’s Washington, D.C., headquarters, he could hardly keep his jaw from dropping in amazement.
The floor-to-ceiling walls of leather-bound journals were beyond impressive. The fact that they represented two decades of handwritten work—of painstakingly recorded memories—from one woman made the collection even more remarkable.
Then again, Zael had never seen anything quite like the woman herself, either.
He’d been told she was human, but the dermaglyphs covering her body told another story. The skin markings tracked along her neck and onto her scalp beneath her short brown hair. More glyphs ran along the top of her chest, disappearing beneath the collar of her shirt, only to reemerge below the short sleeves, the intricate pattern continuing on her arms and the backs of her hands.
She seemed more Ancient than Homo sapiens, and Zael’s Atlantean senses were piqued in response to the close proximity of enemy DNA. But her smile was warm and welcoming, her hazel eyes bright with pride as she watched Zael take in the scope and breadth of her work.
“Feel free to look at anything you like,” she told him, standing beside her mate, Brock.
While Lucan had left to greet arriving warrior commanders he’d summoned to headquarters that evening, Brock had opted to remain protectively at his mate’s side after her introduction to Zael.
Not that Zael could blame him.
Jenna was a beautiful woman, even more so because of her unusual appearance.
And it was obvious that the big warrior adored her, from the way he had responded to questions about her in the meeting room earlier, as well as the way he looked at her now. The way his fingers traced idly on her shoulder as he held her under the shelter of his strong arm.
Zael studied the couple and their unmistakable bond. “Was it difficult going through all of the changes from human to . . .”
“Alien cyborg?” Jenna finished for him when he wasn’t sure how to describe her. She laughed and shared a private look with her mate. “It would’ve been a lot harder, if I didn’t have Brock there with me every step of the way. He got me through the initial attack by the Ancient, then afterward, he held my hand through all of the nightmares that followed.”
Brock caressed her arm. “Nowhere else I’d want to be, babe.”
Zael acknowledged the couple’s devotion with a nod. “The Breed are certainly a better, more caring species than their Ancient fathers.” He strolled along the first tall case of journals. “I don’t think many of my people realize that about you.”
“The Ancients were bred to be conquerors,” Jenna said. “Their entire race thrived on violence and domination. There’s so much I’ve come to understand about them in the past twenty years that I’ve been journaling their history through my dreams and memories.”
Zael browsed the volumes on the shelf in front of him, eventually selecting one off the shelf. “Do you mind if I look?”
Jenna gestured to indicate the whole room. “Of course not.”
He flipped to a random entry. It recounted an Ancient hunting party in pursuit of Atlantean warriors on foot. The killing of one of Zael’s comrades was described in such vivid detail that there was no mistaking the source of the account had actually been there. Had been the one wielding the weapon that took the Atlantean’s head.
Zael closed the journal and soberly replaced it on the shelf.
He browsed a different one, reading of the Ancients’ sacking of a small village in Eastern Europe. No life was spared, not even the animals in their pens.
On a low curse, he slid the leather-bound volume back into its place between the others. He strolled on, to a case shelving later chr
onicles. Flipping through the pages of handwritten notes, he paused at a mention of Lucan Thorne.
This record documented a period in time, hundreds of years ago, when the tables had finally turned on the Ancients, making them the hunted. Led by Lucan, a small army of Breed warriors had waged war on their alien fathers, doing what neither mankind nor the Atlanteans ever could have. They had neutralized the biggest threat to all life on the planet simply because it was the right thing to do.
“That volume covers the founding of the Order,” Jenna said as he read the full account in awed silence. “Lucan, Tegan and several others who were first to join the Order eventually chased down and destroyed all of the Ancients. All but one, as it turned out. The one who did this to me before the Order finally finished him too.”
“The Order won’t allow anyone to terrorize or harm innocents,” Brock added, his deep voice grim with resolve. “Whether that’s Opus Nostrum or the Atlantean queen.”
No, they wouldn’t. And Zael could find nothing but respect for Lucan and the Order.
“When I came here today, I was skeptical of what I’d find, and of how I’d be received.” He turned to face Jenna and her warrior mate. “This has been a day of many surprises. This archive is another surprise, one that will be a treasure to many Breed generations to come.”
Jenna beamed with pride. She tilted her head and studied him in open curiosity. “Are you mated, Zael?”
He shook his head. “No. I spent my youth serving Selene as one of her legion. Back then, I was devoted to my post and little else. After the fall of the realm and things grew more and more unstable in the court over time, I escaped to travel the world. Once I had a taste of the outside, the only thing I was devoted to was pleasure.”
“And now?” Jenna asked. “Haven’t you ever wanted to find a mate?”
He shrugged. “Life is a feast to be sampled and savored. Why would I want to restrict myself to a single course forever?”