Edge of Dawn (Midnight Breed)

by Lara Adrian

  And now Nathan’s Hunter instincts prickled with cold realization.

  The mirror had been left behind, not tossed onto the bed and forgotten.

  Placed there deliberately.

  He walked over, picked it up. Stared at the intricately crafted design inlaid onto the polished silver back of the piece. The insignia was familiar at once, even though he hadn’t seen it in a long time—not since the near annihilation of the family to whom the bow-and-arrow emblem belonged.

  “Archer,” Nathan murmured under his breath. Then a curse that was equal parts incredulity and outrage. “Bowman.”

  How could it be possible?

  There was only one person he knew who might have this memento. One person who might possess the ability to be running under the radar of the Order, right under their damn noses.

  But that person was dead.

  Nathan had personally witnessed the explosion that killed the warrior who’d been like a brother to him. He’d seen the flames shoot into the night sky moments after Kellan Archer had gone inside—mere seconds before Nathan and Mira would have followed him into the warehouse to perish along with him.

  But what Nathan hadn’t seen, he realized now—what no one had ever sought to find in the ash and rubble left behind—was Kellan’s presumed remains.

  Son of a bitch.

  Nathan’s grip tightened around the delicate mirror bearing the Archer family emblem. He didn’t like this sense of confusion that gnawed at him now, as he tried to logically sort the pieces of a disturbing puzzle he was just seeing for the first time. Could Kellan Archer be alive? All this time, deceiving everyone he knew, living in Boston like some kind of ghost? If so, how had he ended up in this place, with a new name and a band of human rebels under his command?

  Betrayal wasn’t something Nathan’s lethal logic had trained him to combat. He’d never cared enough about something to experience any sense of unfairness when it was gone, but now the unfamiliar emotion roiled in his gut, bitter as acid.

  And what about Mira?

  As badly as he wanted to deny Kellan’s deception, the prospect of Mira being pulled into the equation made the acid churning inside him turn cold. It made the assassin in him go still and calculating, preparing to sever all emotional ties in the execution of his mission.

  Nathan considered the shattered mirror clutched tight in his fist. Either Kellan or Mira had left it, knowing—perhaps hoping—it would be discovered by someone who would recognize it. Someone from the Order. Maybe even Nathan himself.

  If it had been Mira, perhaps it was a cry for help, some kind of clue to aid in her rescue. Except Nathan knew the Breedmate warrior too well to believe that. Her love for Kellan Archer had endured eight years of absence. If she were reunited with him now, after all that time mourning him, there would be no tearing her away from his side.

  As for Kellan, Nathan knew him well too—or thought he did. Still, Nathan was certain the memento was intended to be found, not as a reckless taunt meant to incite the Order’s full wrath.

  No, Nathan understood now, it had been left behind as an invitation.

  A clue meant to lead the right person directly to where Kellan would be found.

  It was a token of surrender.

  It wasn’t so much a sound that woke Kellan but a sudden, quiet sense of expectation. He felt it in the air around him, in the moonlit darkness of the thick forest outside the Darkhaven bedroom’s French doors. Silent, stealth, lethal.

  They’d been found so soon.

  Not that he was surprised.

  No, he’d been prepared for this moment from the time he’d left the New Bedford base. Longer still, from the moment he’d found Mira gazing into her own reflection and understood in terrifying terms just how much his delay of the inevitable was costing her.

  How much it had taken from her already.

  He wanted it all to stop now. For her.

  If he wasn’t already too late.

  Carefully extricating himself from Mira’s arms as she slept naked beside him, Kellan slipped out of the bed. He pulled on his loose jeans and strode barefoot to the French doors. Opened them soundlessly and stepped outside to the cool summer night, scented by crisp northern air and dense pines.

  A shadow peeled away from the inky blackness of the woods.

  Nathan.

  Garbed in black combat fatigues and a belted array of blades and firearms circling his hips, the former Breed assassin could have killed Kellan a dozen different ways by now. But he made no move to attack as he approached from out of the cover of the woods. Said nothing as he looked upon Kellan’s face for the first time in eight years.

  Kellan sent a quick glance in the direction of the surrounding forest.

  “I came alone.” Nathan’s deep voice was quiet, barely a whisper in the stillness of their surroundings, and it held no trace of expression whatsoever. Flat and calm and unreadable. As was the look in his unblinking eyes. “No one knows where I am. I assume that’s what you wanted.”

  Kellan gave a vague nod. “Hoped, yes.”

  “She’s here with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s been safe the whole time?”

  Kellan could hardly confirm that, especially now, when he wasn’t sure if she would ever be whole again. He’d fed her his blood more than an hour ago in the hopes their completed bond would restore her eyesight. She’d fallen asleep in his arms, trusting he would make her better, but it had felt to him like yet another promise he might fail to deliver to her.

  “Mira’s inside,” he told Nathan, unwilling to lie to his old friend yet not quite ready to accept that Mira couldn’t be healed. “She’s sleeping, along with the three remaining members of my crew, who helped me bring her here.”

  Nathan grunted. “And you. Not dead, after all.”

  “I should’ve been,” Kellan replied. “Someone helped me after the explosion that night, took care of me until I had healed. I never intended to disappear the way I did—”

  Nathan cut him off, his voice cool, words clipped and efficient. “Explanations are unnecessary. At least as far as I’m concerned. I am not your judge and jury, just the Hunter come to retrieve a traitor.”

  Kellan lifted his chin, feeling the reply like a volley lobbed at him broadside. “I guess I deserve that, considering we’re friends.”

  “My friend died eight years ago. I don’t know Bowman.”

  “Yet you came alone after finding the clue that would lead to my arrest.”

  Nathan took a subtle step forward, his face grim. “Call it a kindness for the memory of my dead friend. And for the female who never stopped loving him. A female who deserves better than this, whose heart will be breaking all over again very soon, no doubt.”

  “Mira’s the reason I led you here. She and my friends are inside this Darkhaven. I needed to know they would all be safe when this moment came. Making sure it happened here, like this, was the only way I knew how.”

  Nathan’s eyes narrowed slightly under the ebony slashes of his brows. “How can you be certain of that?”

  “Because you came alone,” he replied. “And because despite your training, I know you are no killer of innocents. I’m the one you and the Order want. I mean to go with you peacefully. All I ask is that my crew goes free and Mira goes home safely, taking no blame for anything that happened to Jeremy Ackmeyer or for her time spent with me.”

  Nathan’s cool stare pierced him even deeper now. “She doesn’t know you’re surrendering.” Not a question; a cold, accurate statement of fact. “Why would you do this to her?”

  “I’ve hurt her enough. I want this—all of it—over.”

  Nathan’s brows lowered into a scowl. “You care for her, that’s obvious enough, even to me. I know she cares for you. Why not run somewhere together? After all, you’ve lived a lie this long. Why throw yourself on the sword now?”

  The irony of it made Kellan exhale a sharp breath through his nostrils. “Because I have no fucking choi
ce.”

  Nathan cocked his head, studying him. “What is this—some eleventh-hour attack of conscience? Too late for that. If it’s a sudden resurrection of your honor after such a long absence, I promise you, it’s wasted. This thing has gone too far. It’s gone too public now. There won’t be any clemency for you—for Bowman. There can’t be.”

  Kellan nodded. “I know that. This will only end one way for me. I’ve seen that for myself.”

  “You’ve seen it.” Something cold and suspicious flickered in Nathan’s steady gaze now. His voice, which had been carefully schooled and quiet, now notched a bit louder. “You mean Mira’s shown something to you. A vision?” A curse, ripe and violent, erupted from between his old friend’s lips. “You’ve used her ability, knowing what that costs her?”

  “Jesus, no. I never would’ve done that,” Kellan said. “Not intentionally—”

  “Fuck you and your intentions,” Nathan growled now. He stalked forward, dangerous in his outrage. “Did you use her? Did you use her gift for your own selfish gain?”

  “Kellan . . . ?”

  Ah, Christ.

  Mira’s worried voice sounded from behind him in the dark of the bedroom. He wasn’t ready for her to walk into his conversation with Nathan yet. He wasn’t ready for her to learn that he’d brought Nathan to them as a means of surrendering without bloodshed or casualties. Everything was happening too fast, a snowball picking up speed as it careened down the side of a mountain.

  “It’s okay,” he told her, sending the reassurance over his shoulder as he heard her start to get up. “Mira, stay. I’ll be right there and we can talk.”

  She kept moving, fabric rustling as she pulled a sheet from the bed and wrapped herself inside it. Her bare feet padded softly, carefully, on the wide pine floor as she made her way toward the open French doors. “Who are you talking to out there? Kellan, what’s going on?”

  And then a misstep. A halting, hitching movement that made Kellan’s heart sink like a stone.

  He pivoted and flashed to her side, catching her before she could fall. Her small cry of distress went through him, as sharp and unforgiving as an arrow. “Shh,” he soothed her. “Shh, I’ve got you, Mira. It’s okay now.”

  A low growl at Kellan’s back made his neck prickle with warning. “Holy hell. It’s even worse than I imagined.”

  “Nathan?” Mira asked, her pale, cloudy eyes searching in the darkness. “Kellan . . . what’s Nathan doing here? Tell me what’s happening. Kellan . . . ?”

  “You goddamn bastard.” The Hunter’s voice was pure menace, all of it locked on Kellan. “You’ve fucking blinded her.”

  22

  “NATHAN, NO!” ALTHOUGH MIRA COULDN’T SEE THE BREED warrior move, she felt the crushing impact of his body as Nathan launched himself at Kellan. In her veins, she felt the echo of each punishing blow of the fists that came down onto Kellan’s head and torso.

  But the physical pain she experienced through her blood bond was nothing compared with the agony of knowing the two men she cared for so deeply—her two best friends, who’d been as close as brothers to each other at one time—were now engaged in a brutal fight because of her.

  And fight was not the right term for what was taking place in front of her. Even though her vision was nothing but blackness and shadows, she could tell that Kellan wasn’t even attempting to strike back at Nathan. He fended off the incoming fists, dodged when he could, but threw no punches of his own. He wouldn’t fight his friend. Kellan had too much honor for that, despite what Nathan must think of him now.

  “Nathan, stop!” Hindered by blindness and the sheet wrapped around her nakedness, Mira scrabbled in frustration, finally laying her hand on the massive form hunched over Kellan on the pine plank floor of the bedroom. She grabbed a fistful of his form-fitting combat shirt and yanked, trying to pull him away. “Nathan, it wasn’t Kellan who blinded me. I did it myself. Damn it, listen to me. You have to stop this right now!”

  The pummeling slowed, then halted as Nathan’s bulk shifted beneath her hold on him. She felt the heat of his gaze on her face and knew that his eyes had to be fully transformed—blazing hot with amber light and rage. His breath was sawing out of him, rough and heavy. Realizing just how furious he was—how deadly violent—Mira understood that Nathan could have killed Kellan then and there if he’d truly meant to. He could have killed him outside a few minutes ago, before she’d even known he was there.

  “Let him up, Nathan. Kellan won’t ask mercy of you, but I will.” She searched for Nathan’s face with her free hand, an inelegant movement that made him hiss a dark curse.

  “Ah, fuck, Mira. Look what he’s done to you.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, Kellan hasn’t done anything. He tried to help me. He gave me his blood—”

  “Jesus Christ.” Nathan scoffed. His voice turned away from her then, and she knew he was looking at Kellan. “You wait all this time to come back into her life, only to ruin it by shackling her to you with the blood bond?”

  “I love her,” Kellan said. Mira heard him coming up off the floor, felt his warmth as he drew close to her. His hands came down light on her shoulders, comforting and strong. “I will always love her, no matter what fate has to say about it.” His mouth pressed against her temple, tender and sweet. “I love you, Mira. More than anything else in this world or the next.”

  She knew that. Deep down, she knew he meant every word. But here he was, shattering her heart.

  He was letting go.

  “You promised me,” she murmured, closing her eyes against the pain. “You said you wouldn’t let me go.”

  “Ah, Mouse.” Another kiss, this one landing gently on her eyelid. His voice was a rough whisper, low and intimate, thick with emotion. “Letting go of you is the last thing I ever want to do. If there was a way to turn this around, believe me, I would.”

  As Kellan soothed her with tender words of good-bye, elsewhere in the Darkhaven came the muffled sounds of infiltration and struggle. Deep, familiar voices commanding Kellan’s crew to cooperate with their arrest and no one would get hurt.

  Boots thundered heavily down the hallway toward the bedroom.

  “You lied to me,” Kellan said to Nathan. “You said you came alone.”

  Nathan grunted. “I wasn’t about to leave anything to chance. As you told me outside, this meeting you instigated tonight was about ensuring Mira’s well-being. We had to make sure she’d come out of this safely too.”

  “Mira.” Nikolai’s low growl came toward her from the bedroom’s now-open doorway.

  “Daddy?”

  She couldn’t help herself from falling into his arms as he strode inside and pulled her into him for a tight embrace. She knew the instant he looked at her face—the instant he saw her clouded eyes. His snarl was fierce and animalistic, a lethal predator about to spring on the interloper who had wounded one of his young. “Son of a bitch. Fuck the arrest, I’ll kill the bastard—”

  Before Mira could say anything, Nathan stopped Nikolai with words alone. “She’s bonded to him. Hurt Kellan, and you hurt her too.”

  “Is this true?” Niko asked her sternly. “Did you drink from him?”

  “We’re mated,” she replied, clutching the sheet tightly around her under the cold blast of Niko’s fury. “Our bond is complete.”

  The warrior’s answering curse was vicious, rolling off the surrounding walls. “Get him out of my sight before I take his head where he stands.”

  Kellan didn’t resist as movements indicated he was being taken into Order custody. Mira wished she could see his face. She needed to see him. Could not stand the idea that she might never look upon him again.

  “Come on, baby,” Nikolai said, wrapping her under the protective shelter of his arm. “Let’s find some clothes for you and get you out of here. It’s all over now. Let’s get you home.”

  But it wasn’t over.

  Mira walked with him numbly, holding on to keep from stumbling as
he slowly guided her out of the room.

  For her, nothing was over yet. She walked in silence, having no voice to tell her father that once they arrived in D.C., the worst of her ordeal would be only beginning.

  The Order’s patrol teams arrived in D.C. from the old Darkhaven in Maine just before dawn, bringing with them Mira, Kellan Archer, and the three human rebels who had, incredibly, been serving under his command for the past several years.

  Lucan had been brought up to speed on most of the situation some ten hours earlier, when Nathan called in the mission complete status from the field. Aside from the fact that the rebels were now in Order custody and Mira was recovered and on the way home, there hadn’t been much good news to report. Lucan’s head was still reeling from everything he’d heard, and after more than nine hundred years of living, it took a damn good lot to surprise him.

  Still, the weight of the facts he’d been given hadn’t quite set in for him until he stood in the mansion’s foyer and watched as Niko ushered Mira inside. He was all but carrying the Breedmate, whose useless eyes were open but fixed on nothing as she shuffled slowly alongside her father, clinging to his arm for support and guidance across the smooth white marble floor.

  The warriors’ mates—all of the Order’s women—converged on Mira en masse as soon as she entered the house. Lucan noted the rush of female concern and affection that poured onto the younger Breedmate as the women quickly escorted her away, all their focus centered on Mira’s well-being. Lucan watched them go, knowing he would have his turn to visit with Mira later. When his head was cooler, and his blood was no longer seething with the need to do severe bodily harm to the bastard responsible for her abduction a few days ago and her current physical state.

  The object of his fury entered the foyer now, shoved inside ungently by Tegan and Rio. Nathan and Rafe, along with the other two members of their team and Mira’s squad of three, stalked in behind them.

  “Chase and Hunter have the rebels outside,” Nathan reported. “One of them is hobbled by a leg injury. It’s had medical attention, but the wound is deep. She can’t walk on the limb.”