having since been removed from the
meeting to accompany some of the
Order’s women in the living room of the
headquarters’ elegant mansion while the
warriors continued their discussion in
private.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like
something to drink or eat, Melena?”
Lucan
Thorne’s
auburn-haired
Breedmate, Gabrielle, offered a warm
smile as she indicated a side table laid
out with plates of finger sandwiches and
tea cakes. Aromatic Darjeeling and
chamomile steeped in their pots next to
an elegant white china service.
Although her appetite wasn’t there,
everything
looked
and
smelled
delicious, and Melena was reluctant to
reject the woman’s kindness. “Thank
you, I think I will have a little
something.”
She walked over from the sofa,
joined by Gabrielle and two other
women of the Order.
All of the Breedmates present
tonight at the headquarters had been
nothing but kind and welcoming. They
were a family. That much was clear.
And in the short time she’d been sitting
with them, they’d each done their best to
make Melena feel at home among friends
as well.
Melena had been exhausted from
her session with Lucan and the other
warriors, to say nothing of the dread she
felt every time she looked at Lazaro.
Being around other women had helped
dissolve some of that anxiety, even if it
might only be for a little while.
She couldn’t help watching the
hallway outside, waiting for some
indication that the meeting had broken so
she and Lazaro could finally go
somewhere to speak privately. So she
could get rid of the awful feeling she had
that he was somehow already gone.
Gabrielle handed her a small plate,
collecting Melena from her dark
thoughts. “If you’d like something more
substantial, Savannah made a big pot of
jambalaya earlier today. You really
can’t go wrong with any of her amazing
cooking.”
“I do have my numerous and varied
talents,” Savannah said, her doe-brown
eyes dancing at the compliment. The
beautiful, mocha-skinned
Breedmate
was bonded to Gideon, another of the
warriors present tonight. Where her big
blond-haired mate had an intense,
slightly mad genius quality about him,
Savannah exuded tranquility and smooth
confidence.
As Melena put a few cucumber
sandwiches and peach tarts on her plate,
she found it next to impossible to keep
from staring at the third woman in the
room with them—the one mated to the
warrior named Brock. Jenna looked like
neither of her Breedmate companions. In
fact, Melena didn’t think she was a
Breedmate at all, though she definitely
wasn’t fully human either.
Tall and athletic, Jenna wore her
brown hair cropped close to her scalp.
She was pretty, yet formidable in some
indefinable way, and when she leaned
across the sideboard to pour a cup of
tea, Melena noticed an intricate pattern
of skin markings at her nape. Skin
markings
that
looked
remarkably,
impossibly, similar to...
“Are those tribal tattoos, or—”
“Not tattoos.” Jenna’s hazel eyes
were smiling, but there was a note of
seriousness in her voice. She turned to
provide a better look. The array fanned
out to cover the back of Jenna’s neck,
disappearing beneath the collar of her
shirt. The arcs and swirls tracked
upward too, well into her hairline and
up the back of her skull. From the looks
of it, they continued down Jenna’s spine
“ T he y’ r e dermaglyphs.” Melena
frowned, astonished and confused.
Females born Breed had been unheard of
for millennia. They might never have
come into existence if not for the genetic
experimentations conducted in Dragos’s
labs in the decades before he was killed
by the Order. Even then, there were only
a handful of women known to bear the
glyphs and blood appetites of the Breed.
Melena found herself staring harder
now, watching Jenna pile her plate with
a healthy assortment of sweets and
sandwiches. “You can eat all of that?”
Jenna grinned. “I’ll probably come
back for seconds.”
“I’m
sorry,”
Melena
blurted,
immediately feeling stupid and rude for
letting her curiosity overrule her
manners. “I just thought...”
“You thought I was Breed?” Jenna
popped a tiny pastry in her mouth and
gave a shake of her head. “Not quite. But
I haven’t been fully human for a long
time either. I guess as long as Brock
loves me, it doesn’t matter where I end
up. Together we can handle anything—
and we have.”
Her
two
friends
nodded
in
agreement, and Melena smiled even
though the sentiment was bittersweet for
her. She’d believed she and Lazaro were
heading toward something special like
that too. Her father’s death was still a
raw ache in her heart, and would be for
a very long time. The attack she’d
narrowly survived still held her in a
cold grasp. But Lazaro had helped her
through.
He’d been her rock, her comfort,
whether he wanted to accept that role or
not. And ever since they’d left Rome,
she felt that support slipping away. No,
she felt pretty damned certain that he
wasn’t slipping—he was running away.
Cutting her off with his forbidding
silence and maddening stoicism.
When she finally heard his deep
voice approaching with Lucan and the
others, Melena’s heart started pounding
in a heavy, expectant tempo. She didn’t
know whether to be relieved or terrified
when he strode to the threshold of the
drawing room and those penetrating dark
blue eyes found her, locking on with the
intensity that would probably always
kindle an instant heat in her blood.
“Melena. May I have a word with
you.” Not a question, not an invitation. A
sober demand.
She rose and walked to meet him as
the rest of the group fell into easy
conversation behind them. Lazaro led
her down the h
all to another formal
parlor. He carefully closed the door,
keeping his back to her for longer than
she would have liked.
Melena didn’t have to see his
impassive face to know he was about to
crush her heart when he finally turned
around to look at her. His aura was a
dark cloud, the shuttered gunmetal gray
from before.
Before the first time he’d touched
her, kissed her.
Before he’d shown her such
incredible passion and tenderness when
he made love to her. And when he bit
her vein and took her blood into his
body, into his soul.
All of those moments seemed to
evaporate as she looked at him now.
They became nothing under the regretful
look in his ageless eyes.
But the moments they had weren’t
nothing. He’d felt everything she had. He
wanted her. He cared for her. He cared
maybe even as much as she did for him.
She could see that diamond-bright truth
breaking through the muddy resistance of
his aura.
Everything they’d shared in Rome
had meant something powerful and
extraordinary to him too. But it wasn’t
enough.
“Why?” she murmured, her throat
dry as ash.
He didn’t pretend not to understand.
“I told you from the beginning, Melena. I
wasn’t looking for this. I don’t have a
place for this in my life.”
“ F or this,” she said. “You mean,
for me. For us.”
He gave a somber nod. “For
everything you deserve. For everything I
can’t give you.”
“I don’t recall asking you for
anything, Lazaro. I didn’t even ask for
your heart.”
“No, but you have it,” he admitted
quietly. “I think you owned a piece of
my heart from the night I first dragged
you out of that frozen pond in Boston.”
“Then why?” Damn him, but those
gentle words hurt all the more when she
knew she was about to lose him. “Why
are you pulling away from me now?
Why are you acting as if I don’t mean
anything to you?”
He held her gaze, his own haunted
and filled with remorse. “Because it
isn’t fair to you, letting you think I could
ever be any kind of mate worthy of you.”
She couldn’t help herself. She
scoffed brittly. “A shame you didn’t
arrive at that realization before you
drank my blood.”
“I told you I wasn’t looking for a
bond, Melena.” His tone was tender but
firm. As resolute as his aura. “I knew I
couldn’t give you that promise.”
“No. Because you prefer simple
arrangements. No entanglements or
complications. No one to tempt you into
throwing away twenty years of resolve
on a couple of days of passion. Isn’t that
what you said?”
He said nothing for a long moment,
staring at her grimly. “I’d resisted the
temptation for a very long time, Melena.
And it was easy. Until I found you.”
Maybe she should have been
moved by the confession. Maybe, if he
hadn’t been standing there giving her all
of his reasons for why he was intent on
breaking her heart. Instead, she thought
back on everything they’d said to each
other in heated anger and passion last
night.
It was true, he had tried to resist
her. He’d tried to push her away before
he lost his damnable restraint. She
hadn’t helped, but she wasn’t the one
pretending she could walk away from
what they had—from what they might be
able to build together as a couple.
Lazaro had tried to warn her that he
wasn’t a hero come to save the day.
He tried to warn her that she might
not be safe in his arms.
And she’d ignored him every time.
Yet for all his rigid honor and long-
lived control, he hadn’t been able to stop
himself from claiming her.
He’d pierced her vein, swallowed
her blood...created a bond that no other
woman would ever be able to break for
as long as Melena drew breath.
And wasn’t that a convenient
benefit of his colossal slip of self-
discipline?
“Did you use me, Lazaro?”
His ebony brows crashed together.
“Use you? Christ, no. Melena, you can’t
possibly think that—”
“Two decades of denial gone after
just two days,” she reminded him. “And
now, with my blood living inside you,
you’ll never be tempted by another
Breedmate. You have no ability to bond
with anyone else as long as I live, so
when you walk away from me now,
you’re free. Free as you’ve never been
all this time. Congratulations. I’m so
pleased I could permanently scratch that
annoying itch for you.”
He moved so fast she couldn’t track
him. One moment he was several feet
away at the closed door of the room, the
next he was crowding her with his big
body, his hands clamped around her
biceps. His eyes flashed with furious
amber.
“You are not an itch I needed to
scratch.” His voice rumbled, low and
deep and hard with outrage. “Damn it,
Melena. Don’t say that. Don’t ever
believe that.”
“Then what are we doing? You’ve
been shutting me out since we left Rome.
If you care for me—and I know you do, I
can see it, I can feel it—then why are
you pulling away?”
“Because I can’t do this again. You
know loss, Melena, but you don’t know
what it is to lose a mate. I don’t ever
want to know that pain again. And with
you—” He blew out a harsh curse. “I’ve
seen you nearly die twice. I don’t want
to know what that would feel like now
that your blood lives inside me. And I
don’t want to be the reason you’re not
safe. My life is committed to the Order
now. It’s a dangerous life. I won’t put
you in the crossfire.”
“Don’t you think that’s something I
should decide for myself?”
He stared at her for a long time,
silent but unswaying. “I’ll see you home
safely to Baltimore tonight. Your brother
should already be there as well.”
“You’ve talked to Derek? When?”
Despite the fact that her heart was
breaking, it perked at the mention of her
brother. “Where is he? How is he? Does
he know I’m okay?”
Lazaro shook his head soberly.
“There was no time to contact him
before we arrived. Trygg found him on a
flight coming in from London tonight.”
“I need to see him,” she murmured.
“Derek needs to know that I’m alive.”
“Yes,” Lazaro agreed. “We can
leave as soon as you’re ready.”
“Then what?” she asked cautiously.
“What about you?”
“Then I’ll be returning to Rome.”
“When?” she asked, although her
dread already knew that answer.
“I leave tonight. Arrangements have
already been made. The Order’s jet is
refueling and waiting for me to return a
few hours from now.”
“So soon.” She exhaled sharply. “I
imagine you must be eager to unload
your burden and get on with your life.”
“Don’t think this is easy for me,” he
said, frowning as he brought his hand up
to stroke her cheek. “It would be easier
to stay, or to bring you back with me to
the command center in Rome. It would
be the easiest thing in the world to fall in
love with you, Melena.”
She swallowed hard, trapped in his
bleak, tormented eyes. Afraid to believe
he might love her already. Afraid he
never would.
He let his hand fall away. “It’s
become far too easy to imagine you at
my side, as my mate. But those are things
I can’t give you. I can’t ask you to risk your life by coming into my world.
People die around me. I can’t allow
myself to be responsible for anyone
else’s life—your life. Don’t you
understand?”
“Yes, I think I finally do.” The
realization settled on her with clarity
now, and not a little rage. “You’re not
doing this out of concern for me at all.
You’re doing it because you’re afraid. I
thought you were being noble by denying
yourself another blood bond all this
time. I thought it was honor that made
you refuse to let another woman into
your heart—and I think I loved you even
more because of that. But I was wrong,
wasn’t I? You’re pushing me away now
because you’re scared. You’re running
away
from
something
that
could
probably be pretty fucking amazing
because you’re terrified of feeling any
kind of pain again. The only person
you’re concerned about taking care of is
yourself.”
He didn’t deny it. He didn’t try to
defend or justify anything she said. He
let out a slow exhalation. His jaw was
set and rigid, his aura uncompromising.
“Whenever you’re ready, I’ll take you
home to your family’s Darkhaven.”
“No, don’t bother. You’re not