Darker After Midnight: A Midnight Breed Novel

by Lara Adrian

  Astonished, she smoothed a hand over her chest, where the dull ache of his hunger now burned with the bitter tang of his regret.

  He nodded, a grim acknowledgment. “That’s right. If I feel something strongly enough, whether it’s pain or pleasure or grief or joy, you’ll feel it too. The blood bond will draw you to me. You’ll feel it like an echo in your veins.”

  She held his troubled stare. “For how long?”

  “Until one of us dies.”

  Tavia swallowed, her eyes widening as she attempted to absorb what it might mean to always feel his presence as a part of her own being. The dark throb of his emotions was a powerful force, intense, but not exactly pleasant.

  Watching her reaction, Chase scoffed quietly. “I should’ve made sure you understood what you were doing—what it would cost you—before you bit me.”

  “I don’t know that you could have stopped me,” she said, recalling all too vividly how ravenous she’d been that day in his keeping. In the moments after her fever had broken and Dr. Lewis’s medications had worn off, a savage creature had torn loose for the first time. “I’d never felt hunger like that before. It owned me. If you think I blame you—”

  “You should,” he grated harshly. “It was up to me to be the one in control. There were any number of ways I could’ve kept the situation from getting so far out of hand. Regardless of how good it felt to have your pretty fangs sunk deep in my throat.” His eyes scorched her. A bolt of desire shot through her—his or hers, she wasn’t even sure in that moment. He reached for her, his fingers light on her chin, his thumb stroking her lips with tenderness. “You feel so fucking good. The sweetest thing I’ve ever known.”

  “But you regret it.”

  He gave a faint nod. “I’d take it all back in a second. The blood bond is sacred. It’s unbreakable, and it’s meant to be shared with someone you love, Tavia. With your mate.”

  And obviously, he wasn’t volunteering for that role. That wounded pang she felt in response should have been relief. The way her life was going right now, getting involved with a semipsychotic, blood-starved vampire was the last thing she needed to be dealing with.

  Except she was involved. Whether either of them chose it or not, they were very much involved now. Especially if she was going to be linked to him by some kind of inextricable psychic bond.

  A one-sided bond, she realized, watching the remorse play across his harsh, handsome face.

  “Have you ever been bonded to someone, Chase?”

  “No.”

  “But you wanted to be,” she said softly. “The woman in the photograph I found at your old house …”

  “Elise?” He blew out a curse and shook his head.

  Tavia thought back on how he’d told her that woman was his dead brother’s mate. Just the mention of her at the time had made Chase very defensive about what he might have felt for her. “You said you weren’t in love with her, but that’s not quite the truth, is it?”

  He let out a long sigh and leaned back on the carved wood of the headboard, quietly contemplative. She waited to feel his emotional walls climb higher. She knew so little about him, but it wasn’t hard to imagine that her prying would only make him slam the door in her face that much harder.

  She cleared her throat and started to sit up, suddenly wanting a little space herself. “Never mind. You don’t have to tell—”

  “I did want her,” he blurted. The words were rough, self-condemning. “She belonged to Quentin, had always belonged to him … but there was a part of me that wanted her anyway.”

  Tavia stilled beside him, pivoting around to face him. “Did you seduce her?”

  “In my thoughts, many times. That was bad enough.” He gave a vague shake of his head. “Elise was only part of my problem, but it took a while for me to realize that. I wanted everything my brother had. I wanted to be like him, everything he was. All the things that seemed to fit him so well. Things that came so easy to him yet were never within my reach. I tried to be the man I saw in him, even after I realized I was only pretending I could even come close.”

  There was such torment on his face, it made her chest squeeze. His eyes were haunted, filled with guilt and shame and a secret, inwardly directed contempt she could hardly fathom. Good lord, how long had he lived with this intense hatred for himself?

  “Did your brother know how you felt?”

  “No. God, no. Nor would he have suspected.” He pursed his lips, eyes downcast. “We were both Chases, after all. It would have been beneath Quent to think I envied him, even a little. We’d been groomed to be morally pristine, nothing less than perfect in every way. Our venerable father would’ve accepted no less.” His voice had taken on a brittle, caustic edge. “There were certain expectations that came with being born one of August Chase’s sons. Quent had no problem exceeding our father’s exacting standards.”

  “And you?” Tavia asked gently.

  His mouth twisted sardonically. “Top of my class in every contest. Influential, respected. Well connected in my profession and among my social peers. The path ahead of me was golden, spread out before me as far as I wanted to take it.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” she replied. “But that’s not what I was asking. I meant—”

  “My father,” he finished for her, no inflection in his tone. “The problem with having a brother like Quentin ahead of you is that he tends to cast a very long shadow. It’s easy to get swallowed up by it, to become invisible.” He shrugged. “I gave up trying to compete with my brother when I was still a boy and he was already a decade in the Agency, making good on the Chase family’s centuries-long legacy of service.”

  “Then what happened?”

  He grunted, nonchalant. “A lot of years of going through the motions. Decades of following every rule, doing whatever was expected of me and then some. Pointless time spent collecting Agency accolades and admiration from people who called themselves my friends only as long as it served their interests or their whims.”

  “But not your father.” Tavia understood now.

  “He already had the son he wanted. I was … redundant.” He exhaled sharply, shaking his head. “You’ve told me how alone and empty you feel, after realizing your past was built on lies and that no one you knew ever really cared about you.” At her nod, he went on. “Sometimes you can feel that way even when you’re surrounded by family.”

  She reached over and unfolded the fist that rested at his side, twined her fingers with his. For some time, he remained silent, staring at their linked hands. When he spoke, there was an odd vulnerability to his deep voice. As if he were letting her peek inside one of the dark chambers of the heart he seemed so sure he didn’t possess.

  “My brother died six years ago. He was killed on duty for the Agency, by a Rogue who’d been brought in for rehabilitation.”

  “A Rogue?” She shook her head, uncertain.

  “If a member of the Breed lets his hunger overtake him, addiction isn’t far behind. It’s called Bloodlust, and there’s no turning back once it takes hold. You go Rogue—the worst kind of insanity. You thirst, and you hunt, and you kill. You destroy, until someone either takes you out or you do the world a favor and let the sun ash you.”

  She wasn’t sure what sounded more terrible: the affliction itself, or the grim finality of its cure. “But the Agency is able to rehabilitate some?”

  His mirthless chuckle didn’t give her much hope. “For a long time, the Enforcement Agency has operated under the notion that there was reason to think so. Of course, the Agency is also in charge of the facilities that house these diseased members of the race all across Europe and the United States. Many empire builders within the Agency’s upper tiers would try to convince you that the system does have its successes.”

  “You don’t think so.”

  “Not that I’ve ever seen or heard. If you ask me, those facilities are nothing more than cold storage for a population of locusts just waiting for the chance to swarm and devo
ur everything in their path.”

  Tavia shuddered at the horrific image he painted. “Nothing can stop a Rogue?”

  “Only a bullet or blade forged of titanium. The metal acts like poison on a Rogue’s diseased blood system. Failing that, a long, hot sunbath will also do the job.”

  She studied him, seeing the anguish written in the tense lines of his face. “It must’ve been awful, losing your brother to one of those monsters.”

  “Yeah. It was.” He nodded grimly, his expression distant and pensive, a thousand miles away. It seemed to take a moment for his focus to return. “I hardly remember the days and nights that followed. I had so much rage and grief inside me … it’s all I knew for a long time afterward.”

  Shadows filled his eyes as he spoke, and Tavia sensed that he was holding something back, a secret he wasn’t ready to share with her. Maybe not with anyone. And it was clear that the things he’d done at that time still haunted him now, despite his claims that he’d left the memories behind.

  “It was unthinkable that Quent could be taken down so suddenly. Elise was destroyed, of course. So was their son, Camden. The boy was barely a teen. He’d already been making plans to attend private, specially arranged night classes at Harvard, the same as Quentin and I both did, and our father before us. Cam had been so excited. The whole world was ahead of him.”

  The photograph of Chase and Elise and the smiling boy came back to her in full detail. Even without her genetic gift of flawless memory, Tavia would have recalled the covetous look in Chase’s eyes in that candid shot. “What happened to Elise and her son after your brother was killed?”

  Chase’s expression clouded again, shadows filling his eyes. “They lived under my care for a while. My father had been killed on patrol before Quent died, so that left me as the leader of my kin’s Darkhaven. Elise and Cam moved in to my Back Bay brownstone immediately after Quent’s death. To be honest, I thought I could just step in and pick up the pieces Quent’s death had left behind. I thought maybe I could finally know what it was like to be him—just once. But I could still feel the chill of his shadow, even after he was gone.”

  “What about Elise?” Tavia asked, wishing she could deny the twinge of dread that was needling her already, expecting to hear that he might still feel something for the woman beyond familial bonds. “How was it for you, suddenly having her in your house, under your protection?”

  “It was like living with two ghosts—my brother’s and hers. She withdrew from everyone after Quent died. No one but Camden mattered to her.” His exhaled sigh was deep, edged with a thick kind of remorse. “None of us could’ve known that soon he would be dead too, gone Rogue himself and shot to death in front of her like a rabid dog.”

  Tavia’s hand came up to her mouth. She could feel the grief tearing through him like a fresh wound. “My God, Chase. That’s awful.”

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding in sober agreement. His silence stretched, cold and heavy. “She may never forgive me for pulling that trigger.”

  Tavia couldn’t help it—she gaped at him, stricken speechless at his confession. But before she could ask him what could have brought him to do such a terrible thing, the sound of muffled voices carried up from the floor below.

  Male voices, deep and rolling, filling the mansion’s foyer. A female was down there too. Tavia heard Mathias Rowan greet them all like old friends.

  “What’s going on? Who is that downstairs?”

  Beside her on the bed, Chase had gone tense and still. “The Order has arrived.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHASE CLOSED Tavia’s bedroom door behind him without making a sound. He’d gotten dressed as soon as he heard the warriors’ voices, reassuring Tavia there was no cause for alarm and that she should wait upstairs until he or Rowan came to fetch her.

  To his amazement, she didn’t try to debate it with him. No doubt she had enough on her mind already, after he’d unloaded his whole inglorious past on her. Or most of it, that is. He hadn’t gone so far as to divulge the worst of his shame. If he could help it, she’d never know how dubious his honor truly was.

  Not that he let that stand in the way of seducing her here tonight, despite his good intentions.

  He knew too well where good intentions usually led him, but damn if he could describe making love to Tavia as anything close to hell.

  His pulse simmered at the thought of her, and it didn’t help matters that he could still smell her on his skin and taste her on his tongue. He could still feel the heat of her body clenched around him. His cock responded with an eager twinge, already on notice and up to a repeat performance.

  Ah, shit.

  Maybe this was hell after all.

  Chase tugged his dark shirt over the growing bulge in his black jeans and headed out to face his former brothers in arms. Downstairs in the Darkhaven’s foyer entryway, Tegan’s voice rumbled with its typical menacing cool.

  “Appreciate the call, Mathias, and the interception of both the female and Chase. Wish we’d gotten here sooner to provide some backup tonight. I would’ve liked to get a look at those clinic records myself.”

  “That’s right.” Nikolai was down there with Tegan too. Chase knew the Siberian-born vampire by his quicksilver chuckle and his airless, icy growl. “Personally, I would’ve liked nothing more than to help you smoke a couple of brain-rotted Minions and one of Dragos’s Terminator freaks of nature.”

  Chase walked the length of the second-floor hallway and paused at the top of the stairs. Down below, Niko had cocked a sidelong grin at the third warrior accompanying them on this retrieval mission to Boston. “No offense intended by the freak-of-nature crack, Hunter.”

  The former assassin didn’t even blink. “None taken.”

  Standing with Rowan and the three members of the Order was Niko’s Breedmate, Renata. The dark-haired beauty in head-to-toe black leather glanced up as Chase arrived. Pale jade-green eyes skewered him. “Guys,” she murmured, alerting them to his presence with a subtle lift of her chin.

  Chase started down the stairs without any acknowledgment.

  Tegan was first to break the tense silence. “Speak of the devil. Gotta say, I’m surprised to find you waiting here for us, Harvard. Figured you for a quick cut and run. That’s more your style these days.”

  Chase smirked, gave a sardonic grunt. “Now that you mention it, I was actually just on my way out.”

  He took a few more steps toward the crowded foyer and the Darkhaven door that stood just behind Tegan and the others. Only a few scant yards to freedom. Yet his gait slowed until he was practically standing still.

  As much as he wanted to avoid this clash with Tegan, Niko, and the others, he could hardly stand the idea of abandoning Tavia without a word of explanation. Especially now. It would have been easier before, if he’d gone like he’d intended earlier tonight. Before he’d ended up back in her arms. Back inside her sweet, wet heat.

  Fuck.

  Who was he kidding?

  Nothing about walking away from that female would be easy, now or before.

  What would Tavia’s reaction be when she found out these three warriors and the take-no-prisoners female who could debilitate even the most powerful of the Breed with a single zap of her mind-blasting power were there to take her into Order custody?

  He should have explained a few things to her, but he’d been too busy undressing her and making sure her exquisite body would never forget him. Yeah, he should’ve done a lot of things differently where Tavia was concerned. Losing even more freedom, even more sense of control wasn’t going to sit well with her. She was going to be pissed off and confused—pretty much status quo since she’d had the misfortune of crossing paths with him.

  As for Chase, facing the disapproving gazes of his brethren was bad enough. He didn’t want to see disappointment in Tavia’s eyes too.

  He took another step down and felt the tension in the warriors below ratchet up a notch. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?�
�� Tegan asked, that deep voice even more lethal in its calm.

  The feral part of Chase flared in response to the recognized threat. His blood scraped through his veins, raw and cold. “Don’t let me interrupt important Order business,” he snarled, more venom in his tone than he’d intended. But it was the affliction speaking for him now, sparking hot like a match to dry tinder and itching for a fight. One he didn’t want to start with any of these people.

  He’d left the Order on bad enough terms; it would kill him to bring any more disgrace or disappointment to the one group of individuals who’d ever truly known him and appreciated him. And the thought of raising a fist or weapon to any one of them now was enough to make him recoil with shame.

  Hands clenched at his sides, he stepped off the last stair. “I’ve overstayed my welcome already. I’m outta here.”

  “I don’t think so, Harvard.” Tegan moved into his path. “You’ve made yourself Public Enemy Number One with the humans. Lucan wants you off the streets.”

  “So, what, then? You’re here to conduct some kind of intervention?” Chase scoffed, aggression seething in him now. “Well, you can fucking spare me. I didn’t ask for it.”

  “No, you didn’t.” The huge warrior glowered, tawny head tilted down like a bull preparing for the charge. His eyes pierced Chase, merciless in their assessment. There was never any hiding when it came to the Order’s second-longest-standing member. Even less of a chance for Chase, when all it would take was one touch of Tegan’s emotion-reading hands for him to understand just how close Chase teetered at the edge of disaster. “Maybe you’re not comprehending what I’m trying to tell you, Harvard. You’re coming back with us. You and the female both.”

  The feral part of Chase bristled, pulling his lips back from his teeth and fangs in a sneer. “Last I knew, Lucan and the rest of you had written me off. Didn’t need to be any clearer to me that I wasn’t welcome anymore.”

  Ever the peacemaker, Rowan cleared his throat. “Chase, for God’s sake. Dial it down.”