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Seth.
Alex's breath caught as the Breed male who looked so much like Kade emerged out of the shadows and the swirling chaos of the storm. He didn't seem so much identical to Kade now as he did a mirror image--reversed somehow, as though he were the wilder, more dangerous half of the Breed male she loved. Seth's huge fangs gleamed as white as bone. His eyes threw off a feral amber light that seared like lasers. Alex swallowed as he gave her a brief, sidelong glance. She thought she saw an apology written in the stark expression on his face. Perhaps some measure of remorse.
But then, with a battle cry that made her blood run cold, he surged into a powerful leap and threw himself onto the Ancient.
They were too close to the edge of the cliff.
The forward momentum was too great to be stopped.
Alex's eyes flew wide when she realized what was about to happen. She squeezed them shut an instant later, as Seth and the Ancient careened over the ledge together.
-----"Seth!"
Kade shouted his brother's name, the cotton in his head from the blow he took having cleared instantly when he saw Seth locked in battle with the Ancient. Horror choked him not a second later, as they sailed past him at the cliff's edge and plummeted into the darkness.
There was a great rumbling that seemed to come from all around him, like the roll of thunder, only he felt it in the ground beneath him. Above him, too.
Then, the violent crack of ice and hard-packed snow giving way from the rocky crag overhead. The avalanche roared off the cliff, tons of crushing snow and ice, sweeping like a tidal wave past Kade's head and down, into the mountain's steep cleft below. A blinding, choking cloud of fine, powdery crystals rose up in its wake, chilling Kade's face and forcing him to look away from the snow-filled crevasse where the Ancient and his brother had fallen. Nothing could survive the suffocating weight of that much snow.
Kade felt soft hands coming around his shoulders, the warmth of Alex's body catching him in her embrace, holding him close. And behind them on the ledge, he heard the low sounds of voices. Hunter, Tegan, and Chase, a hush of murmured disbelief for everything that had just occurred.
"Kade," Alex whispered, her tone quiet and comforting. "Oh, God ... Kade." All he wanted was to wrap his arms around her and accept the love she offered him now, but his heart cried out for his twin. The thought of losing his brother raked him; Seth's sacrifice was too difficult to process. Too terrible to be real.>It was difficult to reconcile a race of beings that could show so much humanity yet belong to the same ruthless, otherworldly line as the creature that had killed Zach and so many others in recent days. Or the blood-addicted Rogues who'd killed her mom and little brother. Or the twin Kade had been too ashamed to admit he had until Alex had seen Seth's savagery for herself.
But Kade and the other Breed males he'd introduced her to were different. They were good men, regardless of the genes that made them something other--something more--than men. They had honor.
Kade did, too. And now, as she flew him and his brethren of the Order through a patch of gusty air, toward the jagged crag of the mountain and an imminent battle with a creature not of this world, she only hoped that she and Kade would have the chance to sort out the tangled mess of what they meant to each other. She could only pray there would be some kind of future waiting for them on the other side of the danger that lay ahead right now.
"Luna's tracking the Ancient's scent up the base of the mountain," Kade said from beside her. "Ah, shit ... it's rough rock and it's damned steep. Son of a bitch is escaping up the ridge. We're gonna lose him on the mountain."
"Just tell me where Luna's heading," Alex said. "I'll worry about getting us there." She flew the plane along the dark ridge, following Kade's directions, straining to see through the windscreen as the fine flakes of snow danced and rolled in her line of vision.
"Damn it," he snarled a moment later. "The scent is gone. It just went cold. Luna's circling around on the ledge below us, but she can't pick up the Ancient's scent anymore."
"Because he leapt from that point," Hunter remarked evenly. "The Ancient is now either above the animal, or below her."
"We're close enough to pursue him on foot," Tegan said. "The Ancient can't get far now without us right on his ass. But we need to set this plane down now."
"Okay, here we go," Alex said, and peered through her window, seeing limited options for anything more than the shortest of short landings.
She aimed the little plane toward a small patch of pristine snow on the rocky tableau, and began the descent.
Kade had seen Alex in action behind the controls of her plane before, but it didn't diminish his awe for her as she brought the small plane down onto a narrow, snowy ledge on the mountain. It wasn't until they had landed that Kade noticed she'd successfully touched them down into a gentle glide that left barely a few feet of room for error on any side.
None of the warriors uttered a word as the single-engine growled into idle and the plane came to a delicate rest on the ridge.
Not even Hunter, who sat stock-straight in the cargo hold, his face imperturbably calm, even though his knuckles looked a bit white for their grip on the netting above his head. Finally, Chase muttered a ripe curse.
Tegan chuckled low under his breath. "Hell of a landing, Alex."
"Hell of a woman," Kade said, looking across the cockpit at her and taking a personal pride in her that he probably had no right to feel. But her gaze was soft on him, although brief, and it gave him a surge of hope that maybe he hadn't lost her completely.
Maybe there was a chance for them yet.
As the group climbed out of the plane and suited up with weapons and ammunition, Luna came bounding up the sloping incline and straight into Alex's open arms. For a moment, Kade selfishly held onto his telepathic connection to the wolf dog, letting himself savor the warmth of Alex's love for the animal. When he broke the link, Tegan was standing next to him, armed for war. "We're going to split up: Hunter will take the incline, Chase and I will cover the ground below," Kade gave him a grim nod. "Where do you want me?"
Tegan glanced over at Alex, who was talking in low, praising tones to Luna. "Stay here and make sure your female is safe. That's more important than anything else you can do, yeah?" Kade considered the comment, feeling duty spurring him to say that the mission was the most important thing right now. That nothing mattered more than his pledge to the Order, his brethren, and their goals. Part of him believed that. Part of him knew without the shadow of a doubt that he would give his life for any one of the warriors, just as they would lay down their lives for him. They were family, as tight as any bond he'd ever known.
But Alex was something even more.
