by Vyne, Amanda
“We can’t be sure of that.”
“I’m fucking sure of that.” Tag slapped his chest and paced away from his desk. The big man laced his fingers behind his neck and hung his head.
Kyeros watched silently. His agent was struggling, had been for several years now. There was a flare of power in the room before it receded and then flared again, like an erratic pulse. That struggle was getting worse, but there was one thing he had faith in. Tag Jennings’s integrity. He would do what he had to do. Sympathy would not be welcome, of that he was sure. “I want her monitored, including all outgoing or incoming communication. Pull all her communications in the past two years. I want to be notified immediately of any suspicious behavior. Anything. That’s an order.”
The man’s shoulders heaved, and he turned to level his shadowed eyes on him. A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Yes, sir.”
Kyeros watched him slam out of the office.
Honor was a bitch. In a man like Tag, it was either black or white, because he couldn’t afford to live in the gray. He was afraid to tread too close to that line. It was a quality that made Tag his most trusted employee. The man would never risk becoming like his twin, who had joined up with the Triumvirate, sentencing them both to a slow death with his treachery. Kyeros knew Tag’s background, understood his struggle. His brother’s defection had cast his entire family in shame, and he would never risk adding more, especially for a woman he could never claim.
Kyeros glanced back down at the files and leaned back in his chair with a frown. He shared Tag’s obvious suspicions. The timeline fit. As much as he didn’t like it, someone had continued the research Dr. Brit Mahoney started twenty years ago, and he couldn’t be certain it wasn’t her. He wanted to believe Incog had her loyalty, but she was difficult to read, emotionally controlled, and unequivocally brilliant in genetics. It left him in an untenable position.
He couldn’t allow this kind of research to progress in the hands of the Triumvirate, or the unstable factions of the Rebels, for that matter. If Dr. Mahoney was indeed responsible, he would lose a valuable asset to Incog and possibly make the final days of a man he both liked and respected more hellish than they had to be. If she wasn’t responsible, he ran the risk of losing her when she was the only person with the ability to combat the coming threat this research foreshadowed.
Chapter Sixteen
Fury was still a faint buzz in Raife’s body as they winged across the darkened sky in Incog’s private helicopter. Forestor had decided the entire team would be transported downstate by helicopter, and once they were over the Defoe house, Katya would shimmer Kel in. Once Kel was fixed on the location so she could shimmer in on her own, they would come back for him and Gideon. It was a safeguard. Kel would be able to get them the hell out of there if it became necessary. Katya hadn’t been thrilled with the idea, and she was well aware he’d been partly responsible for the setup. He didn’t think she was strong enough to get them there and back, and he’d told Forestor as much.
The four of them should be able to sweep through the place faster so they could get the hell out. Katya being away from the protection of the Incog building put him on edge, and no one wanted an edgy dragon.
“We’ll be coming in over Pasadena in about four minutes.” The pilot’s voice crackled through the headset he was wearing. “You’re good to go.”
Raife glanced over at Katya. She was doing her damnedest to deny his existence right now. Well, that was too damn bad. When they got back to Incog tonight, he and his little mate were going to have a talk. He’d made a mistake by not being upfront about the pregnancy, and it had left him without a decent explanation for why she needed to regularly bleed him. Now he was afraid she’d pushed herself too far. The one time she’d glanced at him, those icy blue eyes had flickered through with red. She was in a bad way right now, and her even being on this op left his gut twisted up in knots. Anything could go wrong and send them down a real shit slide of trouble.
Hell, neither of them had any business being away from Incog right now, not when the mating was this new and her control over the blood hunger so precarious. He could barely even focus on the job ahead, he was so preoccupied with her. If this night passed without something seriously fucked-up happening, he would be surprised.
“Kat.” He studied her profile. Her pale hair was pulled back at her nape, and her skin was nearly translucent in the dim interior. Like the rest of them, she was dressed completely in black. Her only acknowledgment that she heard him was a slight lift of her chin. “Get in and out in an obscure location. We can’t know for sure the house is empty.”
“Yes, sir,” Katya said curtly.
Raife nearly ground his back teeth to dust as he watched the two women unclip their safety belts and hang their headphones on the hooks overhead. Katya avoided his glare as she gripped Kel’s arm, and they both shimmered down to Defoe’s house. Kel needed to physically be in the space so she could shimmer Gideon down on her own. The seconds stretched, the heavy whip of the helicopter blades nearly deafening as he waited for them to return.
Both women reappeared, and Kel reached across to grab Gideon’s knees with both hands and a mischievous grin. Gideon hated shimmering, and his unease was palpable in the small space as Kel disappeared with him, leaving Raife and Katya alone. She sat in the seat across from him, her face pale and her luminescent blue eyes run through with crimson as she stared at him. He extended his hands to her, and after a short pause, she gripped them. A consuming wave rolled through him with the connection, blanketing his mind before he could climb above it and was engulfed in a gnawing, aching hunger that made his vision flicker to heat signatures.
His chest constricted with the effort it took to separate himself from her, the strength of her hunger and the pull of that agonizing heaviness in her nearly overwhelming him.
Raife held her gaze, fury and fear swirling in his chest. “Drink from me.”
The red flames flared in her eyes, nearly obliterating the pale blue. She swallowed hard and shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Katya. You’re a risk to yourself and the team like this.” He would force her if necessary. Nothing was as important to him as her life. The life of the child she carried.
Her denial was a wall that slammed between them, and he felt his body tingle as they shimmered.
As soon as they rematerialized, she released him and turned away. There was a fluidity and focus in her movement as she moved slowly through what was a large office space. It was almost predatory. He attempted to touch her mind and recoiled in shock. A destructive and dark chaos of emotion and instinct was carefully restrained behind pure determination and focus sharpened to a lethal point. It was a damn dangerous and volatile condition for her mind.
A newly mated Drachon pair was a veritable force of nature, but a Sanguen crossbreed resisting the call to bleed her mate in a Drachon bond had the potential to be destructive.
Especially in this situation. They just needed to get this damn sweep over and get the hell out of here. Katya was too close to the edge for both of their sakes.
“So we’re looking for some kind of books?” Kel drew his attention with that comment as she used the tip of one boot to prod the remains of a wingback chair. The entire room was in shreds. “It looks to me like whoever searched here last covered it all.”
Gideon was crouched on one knee near a dark stain on the polished wood floor and touched his gloved hand to the spot. His lip curled. “It was definitely Guardians. I can still smell the stink of their shift.”
“Whatever, Gid. My shift don’t stink.” Kel chuckled at her own joke. Gideon shook his head with a snort. That was as close to a laugh as Raife had ever seen the man get.
“All right, guys, let’s get serious and get the hell out of here.” He cast a glance at Katya where she was running her fingers along the edge of a bookshelf of legal texts behind a large desk. “We’re looking for any reason this guy would have been targeted by these Guardians.”
/> “The wife was thinking she was still in danger.” Katya’s voice was monotone as those pale eyes scanned the room, carefully avoiding him. “She was worried because the books were all still there.”
“The books were all still there,” Gideon repeated thoughtfully as he came to his feet and silently stalked to where a shelf of books had been overturned. He began to pick up each one and carefully check the spines and covers.
Kel began meticulously going through the desk. She pulled a thin laptop from the top drawer and handed it off to Katya without looking up from her search.
“I don’t think we’ll find what we need in this.” Katya set the laptop on the edge of the desk and booted it up, pulling a flash drive from a pocket of her black pants and inserting it into the side of the computer. “Otherwise they would have taken it.”
“Or in the very least chewed on it.” Kel snorted. “Maybe sniffed it. These types of Guardians are just one link shy of the chain.”
Katya’s smile was weak but genuine. “I hope they didn’t damage the circuits with their slobber.”
Raife shook his head and turned his attention to the job at hand. The office room was a disaster. If the Guardians hadn’t found what they were looking for, it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Every corner of the large room was rifled through.
“Desk is clear,” Kel muttered as she came to her feet. “And I hate to tell you, Gid, but those books are barely there. I don’t think we’re gonna find what we’re looking for in them.”
“Let’s search the rest of the house.” Gideon dropped a torn book to the floor.
“Kel, take the living room. Gideon and Kat, search the upstairs. I’ll take the kitchen.” Raife looked at Katya as she pocketed the small silver drive and replaced the laptop in the desk. He wanted to stay close to her, but she seemed to need the distance from him to maintain her control. He trusted Gideon to watch out for her.
As though reading his thoughts, she glared at him and followed the other two from the room. Raife sighed and shook his head. He turned and pushed through the door into the kitchen, drawing himself up at the threshold with a low appreciative whistle. It was a massive room. On the far side, beyond a huge kitchen table, french doors led onto a secluded patio. To his right there was a cooking island and a wall full of oak cabinets and granite countertops decorated with some high-tech kitchen gadgets.
Very nice.
To his left, bookshelves flanked either side of a floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace large enough to play in. On closer inspection, he saw they were mostly cookbooks and fiction.
All still sitting on the shelves. Untouched.
The books were all still there.
Moving to the shelves, Raife quickly worked his way through the cookbooks, careful to run his fingers over the seams in the bookshelf for any loose boards. When he moved his search to the other side of the fireplace, he found shelves of well-worn fiction books. With the overstuffed chairs positioned in front of the hearth, he could imagine it was a favorite reading spot.
Cradling a true-crime novel in his hand, he glanced around at the room behind him. It had a homier feel than the office or the living room he’d passed through. This was where the Defoes had invested the meat of their lives. If Defoe had something important to hide, this was where it would have been. In a place he could keep an eye on.
With a renewed sense of purpose, Raife pulled the novels from the shelf and stacked them on the floor. Pressing against the edges of the shelf, he felt the backboard shift beneath his fingers. He tried to pry at the edges, but his fingers were too thick.
With a knife from the butcher block on the cooking island, he worked the backboard loose and pulled it away. He almost laughed.
A damn secret compartment. Classic.
He glanced at the stack of novels on the floor and snorted. He should have guessed. The majority of the books were old mystery novels.
The hidden space yielded a wooden box. He lifted off the top and saw the thing was full of jewelry and mementos. Nothing worth dying or killing over. There was a stack of papers. Deeds, wills, titles to property. All worthless for their case.
The last thing he pulled out was a small stack of official-looking folders, many of which were stamped with the LAPD insignia. The top file was a missing persons case file. A quick look at the others proved they were all the missing persons case files with written notes on the margins. Could this be what the Guardians were looking for? What Defoe had stolen from the evidence locker?
Bending the folders, he stuffed them into the back of his pants and began replacing the books. He’d just replaced the last novel when the sound of glass shattering had him spinning on his heel. Guardians in full shift, sporting their fangs and claws, swarmed around the kitchen table.
“Find the girl,” one of them ordered.
Katya.
Raife roared and rushed at them. He barely had time to register the two loud cracks of sound as pain exploded in his chest, and he stumbled back.
“Get Katya to safety.” The mental order was a cry of fury as he smashed into the nearest Guardian and felt the satisfying crunch of bone.
GUNFIRE.
A chill rolled over Katya’s flesh where she knelt, searching through a bedside table. She jumped to her feet and turned toward the door, Raife’s mental command to get her to safety crashed into her mind. It brought pain and fury with it.
Raife was hurt.
The fire of an unbelievable hunger licked at the edges of her mind, and she’d barely been able to maintain enough control to keep her mind on their task. Now those flames poured over her entire being, incinerating her control.
She shimmered to Raife. She didn’t know how she knew where to go, but her instincts were a howling in her skull that left little room for anything, including doubt. There was only the urge to act. Her mate was in danger, and everything in her was driven to protect him.
She materialized in a room—a kitchen—and moonlight shafted over the bodies struggling on the floor. The scent of Raife’s blood slammed into her, and her fangs dropped into her mouth. An inhuman snarl rattled up through her body and slid past her lips.
“Get the hell out of here, Katya.”
Katya barely registered the sound of the rest of her team slamming through the kitchen door behind her as she turned toward the waning flow of Raife’s energy. His order was a dull roar through her mind, the words barely discernible. A Guardian had him on the ground, and there was blood – so much blood. Her nostrils flared, and her vision flickered as fury clawed through her.
Raife’s blood.
“Get the damn girl.”
Another snarl moved through her chest, and she shimmered to the Guardian who was leaning over Raife. The heat of the Guardian’s body was solid between her thighs as she rematerialized and straddled him. One of her arms locked around his head, and a frenzied roar was torn from her as she ripped his throat out with the claws of her free hand.
She could feel Raife’s energy waning. He was dying. She tossed the now dead Guardian off his body. The smell of blood was suffocating, maddening, and she struggled against the rage that tried to engulf her. The violent energy in the room sparked through her, driving spikes into her mind.
She pushed it back and reached for Raife’s.
His eyes fluttered open when she pulled him to her lap and pressed a hand over the gunshot that seeped his crimson essence over his broad chest. The loss of it sent a sense of indignation cartwheeling painfully through her. It belonged to her. He belonged to her. She wouldn’t give him up. His mind reached weakly for hers, and his heartbeat stuttered beneath the hard press of her palm.
Denial roared through her.
Behind her the fight raged between the other Guardians and the rest of the team, but she ignored them, focused on pulling Raife to her, anchoring his mind to hers.
Lifting her arm to her mouth, she used her fangs to tear open her wrist and pressed the wound to his lips, forcing her blood into him. He tried to struggle
against her, his mental whispers consumed by the inferno of her fury before she could attempt to understand them. All that mattered was Raife. She felt his energy strengthen as he finally accepted her blood. The room contracted around her, and she pressed it back.
These assholes would pay for the loss of his blood.
With theirs.
Gently setting his big body aside, she came to her feet as the thirst for revenge rolled destructively through her, feeding the flames that engulfed her mind.
It must have shown in her face as she turned to attack the other Guardians.
“Holy shit, tranq the bitch.”
Katya disappeared, instinct a deafening hum as she held herself in a state of suspended materialization. She could see the room as though she was looking through a fogged glass, but she was all but invisible to those hunting her. It left her flesh tingling.
She could see Kel and Gideon fighting, grossly outnumbered. The room was massive, but the amount of struggling bodies ate up the space, making it difficult to maneuver. The Guardians had come en masse, but Katya was the hunter this time. She studied the Guardians in the room through the narrow scope of the fury controlling her. Two were standing off to the side, holding handguns out in front of them, black eyes carefully scanning the room. Waiting for her.
They would have to go first.
Two steps had her standing next to one of her prey, and she rematerialized, pulling the closest Guardian in front of her as the other squeezed off a shot. The tranq dart protruded from his chest, and she released him to shimmer behind the shooter. Sinking the claws of her left hand into the curve of his shoulder to anchor him against her, she rammed the claws of her right hand into his side. The warmth of his blood gushing out over her hand soothed something in her. Energy snapped and sizzled over her skin, and she instinctively drew it to her, inhaled it, let it infuse her.
