by Lara Adrian
She drifted toward him, her lips still curved in a warm smile, her eyes still locked on his. God, she was so lovely. So petite and delicate looking. How could he entertain the idea that she was anything but the sensitive innocent that had so captivated his heart?
His eyes saw an angel, even though his blood was still hammering as though he were facing a demon.
“I got lost trying to find you after I woke up a few minutes ago,” she said, telling him the precise thing he wanted to hear.
He relaxed as she said it, his heart desperate to believe her. She came closer, until there was hardly scant inches between them. The more she held him in her steady, earnest gaze, the less he could keep hold of a single doubt.
Yet when he glanced over her petite shoulder to the crates of UV now wired for detonation, his vision wobbled. It felt as if he were looking through oil-smeared glass. And the warrior in him could not ignore the danger licking at his conscience.
“What were you doing with that shit?” he pressed in the moment his logic managed to penetrate the haze of his affection for her. “Why were you messing with it?”
“I found the crates in the elevator,” she rushed to explain. “Someone must be trying to move them out of the command center.”
She tried to lead him away now, her hand looped around his arm. Rafe’s feet refused to budge. He shook his head, pushing against the thick mud that seemed to entrench his sense of reason.
“No, Siobhan. You put those inside this car. The wires on the crates, the detonator box. You did all of this?” The accusation sounded like a question, one his mind still couldn’t seem to fully grasp.
She reached up to touch his cheek but he drew away--barely. It was hard to resist her. It was as if this female held him under a spell.
“Holy hell.”
Just like that, he saw through it. Only for the briefest second, but it was enough.
Rafe set her away from him on a snarl. “What have you done to me?”
With effort, he shook off the strange veil that seemed to cover him, obscuring his vision--his true sight. The power of his mind was struggling against whatever power she held over him, giving him little glimpses of sanity.
And the incredible depth of her deception.
“What the fuck have you been doing to me, Siobhan?”
“Me?” She tilted her head, her gaze reaching for his, working to draw him back under. “I haven’t done anything, Rafe.”
“Yes. You have. You’ve been lying to me. You’ve . . . Jesus, how are you doing this? You’re mesmerizing me somehow, trying to make me believe you. Trying to make me love you.”
Her expression fell into a pretty pout. “That hurts me, Rafe. How can you doubt me? I love you--”
“No!” He shook himself, tasting her lie like bitter acid. Poison she’d been feeding him for days. Christ, ever since that night he and Aric rescued her after the attack she’d barely survived.
He took hold of her delicate shoulders. “I can feel you in my head now, Siobhan. You’re trying to weave some kind of spell.”
“No,” she murmured softly. “No, Rafe, that’s not true.”
“It is, damn it.” He could feel her attempting it again. The surge of tender feelings she coaxed inside him, her false love pushing at his mind, at his heart. He growled, denying her access. Now that he could see the allure for what it was--a trick--it was losing most of its power. “Tell me what the fuck you’ve done to me, Siobhan!”
He shook her violently, dangerously close to wanting to kill her with his bare hands.
Her face turned sour, twisted. Then she laughed, an empty, awful sound. “Finally, you’ve pierced my thrall. Took you long enough.”
Anger lashed him. Humiliation too. “This is your Breedmate talent? Seduction? Enthralling a man into thinking he loves you, blinding him to the fact that you’re really a hideous gorgon underneath your pretty face and innocent words. This has all been a game to you, Siobhan? One big fucking lie.”
A sadistic sneer pulled her lips flat. “You saw what you wanted to see. That is the power of my ability. And you can stop calling me that name. I’m beyond tired of hearing it.”
Rafe frowned at this new revelation. “If you’re not Siobhan O’Shea, then who are you? Tell me everything, you deceptive bitch.”
Then it hit him. “Ah, fuck. Iona Lynch didn’t die in that flat outside Dublin. Siobhan O’Shea did.”
“I knew the Order had me in their crosshairs after they killed Reginald Crowe. It was only a matter of time before they closed in on me. I was preparing to leave when you and Aric Chase showed up at the flat I shared with Siobhan. I had already killed her to ensure her silence, but you arrived too soon. I had no hope of getting away fast enough, so I decided to hide in plain sight.”
“You’re sick,” Rafe seethed.
“No,” she said, unfazed. “I’m a soldier, just like you. And I’m very good at what I do.”
He grunted, despising her now. “Why not break loose as soon as we got you to London? You had ample opportunity. The Order treated you with nothing but trust and kindness. You could’ve bolted to freedom anytime you wanted.”
“I thought about it,” she admitted, no emotion in her voice at all. “I expected to be deposited somewhere in that city and then disappear. Instead, the Order informed me they intended to bring me to their headquarters in Washington, D.C. So, I decided to use that unexpected advantage to finish the work Opus Nostrum failed at before. Killing the Order’s leader, Lucan Thorne.”
Rafe’s curse was airless with his shock. “You never would’ve gotten close enough to him to try.”
“Maybe not. The last thing I wanted was this detour away from my goal. But then imagine my surprise when I learned that Lucan and nearly all of the Order would be coming here instead.”
“You’re the mole.” Rafe nearly spat the words. “I was so sure it would be Kaya, but it was you leaking intel to Opus.” He glanced once more to the crates of wired ultraviolet ammunition and his veins iced over. “Now you’re planning to kill us all.”
She smiled. “You’ve all made it so easy. How can I resist when you’ve brought me the very weapon I need to take out most of the Order in one fell swoop?”
Pretty, evil eyes looked up at him sweetly. “But now you have to die first.”
Pain seared him, a sudden sharp jolt to his gut. He didn’t realize she held a weapon concealed somewhere on her person. Perhaps whatever power she’d been wielding over him when he found her here a few minutes ago had obscured the threat from his notice.
She stabbed him again, driving the blade into the center of his chest. Directly into his heart.
His fangs erupted from his gums on the roar that ripped out of his throat. She darted back, out of his reach as he sagged to his knees, astonished by the accuracy of her strike.
Blood poured through his fingers, too much of it and the wound far too grievous. His ability to mend wounds with his hands only worked on others. As for his Breed capacity to self-heal, he hadn’t taken a blood Host for nearly a week, starving for the Breedmate who had denied him her vein only to smile as she now stood before him and took his life.
His vision fading, Rafe collapsed to the floor, a growing pool of blood gathering all around him.
Iona Lynch watched him suffer for a moment, then she turned and went back to her work.
CHAPTER 28
Aric reached the command center so fast it was as though his feet had wings. Kaya had insisted she and Leah would be fine making their way back in the car, leaving him only one crushing concern. The life of his best friend and comrade.
Siobhan O’Shea--or, rather, Iona Lynch--was only a diminutive female but the depth of her treachery knew no bounds. And Rafe was more than halfway mad in love with her, which Aric feared might prove to be an obstacle all of its own.
Rafe needed to be warned of the woman’s deception, but to his marrow, Aric dreaded it might already be too late.
He thought back to the excuse
s Iona had made for missing the ceremony earlier today. Excuses that had left Reginald Crowe’s bitch alone for hours while everyone in the command center was preoccupied with the ritual and celebration that followed. And the fact that there was a sizable cache of ultraviolet arms and ammunition at her disposal didn’t exactly ease any of the bone-deep dread that strangled Aric with every rapid beat of his heart.
He decided to check that hunch first, speeding directly to the lowest floor of the command center where the evidence from Scrully’s estate was stored. The scent of spilled blood was a punch to his system. The sight of his immense, practically immortal friend lying unmoving in the center of that dark, sticky lake was even more of a shock.
Crouched inside the open car of the stalled elevator was Iona Lynch. She held an electronic device in her hand, working frantically in front of several crates of UV now wired to blow.
“You fucking bitch.”
His seething growl brought her strawberry-blonde head up with a start. She squeaked at the sight of his transformed face and growing fangs.
Aric grabbed her in savage hands and threw her against the wall. She hit with a hard thump, bones cracking. Stunned, momentarily rendered immobile, she dropped in a petite heap on the floor.
While she was disabled, Aric went to Rafe’s side. He’d been stabbed in the abdomen and in the chest--a direct blow to his heart, from the catastrophic look of it. And the blood. So much fucking blood.
“I didn’t mean to do it.” Iona’s voice sounded small and tear-choked behind him. “Rafe gave me no choice, Aric.”
He glanced behind him, not because he cared what the duplicitous slut had to say but because he didn’t want to end up with a blade in his back.
“He was crazy, Aric. I think he intended to use this UV to kill himself and all the other Breed males under this roof.”
As she spoke in that quiet, desperate voice, Iona’s hazel eyes seemed huge in her pretty face. She was a beauty, even he had to admit that. And she was looking at him with a kind of helpless desperation--a trembling innocence--that would have been hard for any man to resist.
Except for him.
“You can drop the damsel in distress act. It’s not going to work on me.”
Her mouth twisted. “No. Your friend was much easier to read. I only had to show him what he wanted to see and he fell right into my hands. And between my legs.”
Aric cursed, hating that his animus for this heartless witch had to take him away from trying to help his wounded friend. Iona’s gaze widened as he stood up and faced her fully.
“I’ve never been with a daywalker,” she murmured, turning from coy waif to sultry siren in an instant. “It’s a pity. I’ll bet you and I would burn up the sheets, warrior.”
Aric snorted. “Even if my heart didn’t already belong to Kaya, I’d never dirty my hands on Reginald Crowe’s leavings.”
She laughed at that. “You think he was my lover? Reginald Crowe was my father.”
Aric sneered. “In that case, the Order’s going to have a good time wringing you dry for information on Opus Nostrum and the Atlantean queen he served.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t think so.”
Without another word or warning, she hit the timer device in her hand and threw it into the elevator before closing the doors and sending the packed car upward to the mansion.
Then she brought her knife up to her throat and sliced it all the way across.
“No!” Aric cursed as the Order’s best source of Opus intel dropped to the floor.
But even worse than that loss--exponentially worse--was the ultraviolet bomb now making its way into the heart of the command center.
He put all of his concentration into halting the car with his mind. Then he stalled the timer on Iona Lynch’s detonator. He would deal with the rest of that problem later.
Suddenly, Aric was no longer alone in the room. All of the Breed males in the place had been alerted to the overwhelming scent of so much spilled blood. Dante went directly to his fallen son on a roar that shook the concrete walls. His bellow was followed by Tess’s anguished cry. She fell to her son’s side, her healing hands covering the blood-soaked area of his pierced heart.
“He’s alive,” she gasped. “Oh, thank God. Rafe’s still alive.”
Aric did his best to explain what he’d walked in on, and the reason he’d known the Breedmate lying dead nearby was the betrayer the Order had been looking for.
The Order elders crowded in around him, a hundred questions issued at the same time while Tess and Dante and several of the other Breedmates moved in to carry Rafe away for treatment of his wounds.
Kaya now raced down to the room as well. Aric had never seen a more welcome sight. She went to his side on a soft exhalation, wrapping herself around him in front of everyone in the room. He held her close, never intending to let her go.
CHAPTER 29
Kaya stood within the circle of Aric’s strong arms, the warm water of the shower having washed away all of the blood and grime and stress of the day’s ordeals.
They had just made love beneath the soothing spray, an unrushed mating they’d both seemed to need with equal desperation. They held each other close, neither of them seeming to be able to stand more than an inch of separation after all of the loss and anguish that surrounded them.
But there was hope too.
Rafe was recovering in the infirmary. Aric had reached him in the nick of time, and now Tess was doing everything in her power to ensure her son’s healing was complete. His body would bear no scars from today, nor would his punctured heart. His flesh and organs were restored, but no one seemed confident that the angry, vengeful male who had awoken from the betrayal he suffered would ever be the same on the inside.
“I still can’t believe how thoroughly Iona Lynch deceived us all,” Kaya murmured as she and Aric caressed each other with slick, soapy hands. “None of us suspected a thing.”
Aric grunted. “Only Tess had an inkling that something wasn’t right.”
“She did?”
He nodded. “More or less, at any rate. A few weeks ago, when Mira and Kellan needed Tess’s healing help, she accidentally gazed into Mira’s eyes.”
Kaya drew back, looking up at him in surprise. “Do you mean Tess saw a vision?”
Without the lavender contact lenses Mira wore, her eyes were mirrors that reflected the future to anyone who stared into her naked gaze. Aric acknowledged with a sober expression.
“What did Tess see?”
“Rafe and his blood-bonded mate. Tess saw him happy with a family of his own, and the woman he was with was not Siobhan O’Shea. Or Iona Lynch, as the case may be.”
“Then who?”
Aric shook his head. “No one Tess has seen before. She says she was surprised to see Rafe so smitten with someone who didn’t fulfill the prediction, but she never dreamed the meek little waif could be a danger to her son or anyone else.”
Kaya considered for a moment. “No wonder she seemed oddly quiet at the ceremony when Rafe was talking about how captivated he was with Siobhan. Er, Iona. Let’s just call her Reginald Crowe’s daughter.”
Aric exhaled a sharp breath. “I still can’t believe that part of her secret. All this time the Order assumed Crowe was spending so much time in Ireland with a mistress. I guess nothing should surprise us anymore.” His embrace tightened around her, strong muscles flexing as he drew her against his hard, wet body. “You have been the only good surprise to come out of all this.”
She warmed at his praise, and at the evident sincerity of his affection for her. She couldn’t hold back her small moan of pleasure as he moved his hips against her, his arousal thick and enticing where it jutted between her thighs. “I can’t imagine not being with you, Aric. When I think about how close I came to losing you because of the things I was too afraid to say, all the things I was ashamed to admit to you . . . I’m just so relieved that you and the rest of the Order have forgiven me.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Kaya. Not until you stayed silent instead of trusting me and the other people who love you.”
She glanced up at him in hopeful silence. “What did you just say?”
“That I love you, Kaya Laurent.” He stroked her cheek, his eyes smoldering and full of something far deeper than desire. “I love you with everything I am. If memory serves--and we both know it does--you also said you love me.”
“Yes.” A smile broke over her to hear him say the words that had been living inside her from the beginning. “Yes, Aric, I do love you. I’ve been trying to convince myself that it’s impossible that I fell in love with you practically from the time we met, but it’s true. I love you.”
He grinned. “You’ve had me under your spell from our first meeting too.”
“My spell?” She frowned and smacked his muscled chest. “Promise never to joke about that again.”
He smirked and bent his head to kiss her. “Okay, I promise. But I am going to say this. I don’t want to know what it feels like to live a day, or a night, without you at my side. This detour was only supposed to be temporary. I never dreamed I’d find forever here.”
She swallowed, realizing just now that there was still one obstacle that they would have to navigate around. “But the Order is going back to D.C. as soon as Rafe is fully recovered. Won’t you be going with them?”
He nodded. “Yes. For a short while. Then I’ll be going wherever the Order needs me the most. The threat from Opus looms larger than ever before, now that both UV and Red Dragon are in play.”
Kaya knew what he said was true. Using the data they’d collected from Lars Scrully’s computers, Gideon had found a link between Stephan Mercier’s lucrative deal with the Opus member and the manufacture and proliferation of the Breed-targeted narcotic. And Mercier wasn’t the only one who’d been tapped to launder money and play the mule for Opus Nostrum. There were others in the chain, and now the Order needed to be ready to go after the organization with every advantage and weapon they had.
