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"But I can handle it. I'd handle it a lot better if I wasn't strapped down to this damned bed like a criminal." He lifted his fisted hands as far as the steel manacles would allow. Which wasn't much at all.
"Not gonna happen," Dante said soberly.
Chase grunted. "Doctor's orders?"
"Lucan's orders. It took some convincing for him to even let Niko and Renata bring you inside after Mira found you. Didn't help matters that your face has been plastered all over the news as some kind of goddamn nutjob domestic terrorist." Dante exhaled a curse. "What'd you do, pose for pictures before you lost your mind and started shooting up the senator's Christmas party last night?"
"What are you talking about?"
"They've ID'd you, man. There was an eyewitness who provided your description to law enforcement and the freaking Secret Service. Whoever saw you nailed your face down to the last pore and whisker. They've been running the artist's sketch on every network and cable channel ever since."
"Shit," Chase muttered, remembering the laser-intense stare of the senator's attractive assistant when she'd spotted him up in the gallery of the ballroom. "It couldn't be helped, Dante. And it doesn't matter that I've been made. Dragos was there. He was trying to get close to the senator and the vice president. He's targeted both of them."
Dante went quiet, studying him as if he wasn't sure Chase could be believed. "You saw Dragos at the senator's party? You're sure of this?"
"Goddamn right, I'm sure. I watched the senator introduce him to the vice president in the middle of a ballroom full of humans. When I saw them walking off to a private meeting, I saw my shot and I took it."
Dante raked his hand through his dark hair. "You saw Dragos, and you didn't call it in to us? The Order should have been the ones to handle the situation. What the hell were you thinking?"
"One thing I wasn't thinking about was stopping to make a phone call," Chase argued. "I didn't know Dragos was going to be there. I didn't know I was going to be just a few yards away from him - close enough to put a bullet in the son of a bitch and take him down. All I had was a hunch, and I acted on it."
"Jesus, Harvard. This is not good news."
"Are you listening to me?" Chase shouted, anger spiking, adding fuel to the flame of his already tightening blood hunger. "I'm telling you I shot Dragos last night. I saw a bullet hit him dead-on and take him to the floor. For fuck's sake, maybe you should be thanking me instead of crucifying me for not following protocol. I'm telling you there's a damn good chance I killed the bastard."
"Dragos isn't dead," Dante replied soberly. "No one was killed last night. There were reports of a few injuries, but none of them was deemed life-threatening. If Dragos was there, if you shot him like you say you did, then he was able to get up and walk away."
Chase listened, his temples banging with rising fury. "I need to get out of here. I found him once, I can find him again. I can fix this - "
"No, Harvard, you can't. And you're not going anywhere. There's too much at stake for us right now. Lucan wants your ass planted right where it is until he says otherwise."
Chase couldn't bite back his snarl. He was pissed that Dragos had escaped and pissed that Lucan, Dante, or anyone else thought they could hold him against his will. He was getting the message loud and clear that he was no longer part of the Order, and he'd be damned if that meant they could keep him from going after Dragos on his own. He wanted Dragos taken out as much as any of the warriors.
And he had another, equally pressing reason to want to be let loose from his captivity in the compound.
"I need to feed," he murmured low under his breath. "The gunshot wound in my thigh isn't going to heal very fast if I don't get some fresh red cells in my body. I need to be free to hunt, Dante."
The warrior's gaze bore into his own like a probing searchlight, leaving no shadows for Chase's deception to hide in. "You said it yourself; your leg is in bad shape. You're in no condition to hunt, even if Lucan didn't feel it would be a mistake to turn you loose topside right now."
The thirst that had been clawing at him began to rake its talons even deeper, shredding him from the inside out. He was sweating, an icy sheen that made him shudder as his stomach twisted into a tighter knot. "Can you risk leaving me in here?" he said, his voice rough as gravel, almost unearthly. "I might end up hunting inside the compound, seeing how there's a human living here now."
Dante's face blanched a bit before his eyes fired up with sparks of bright amber. "Because you're hurting, I'm gonna pretend you didn't say that. And I'm going to do you the one-time favor of not telling Brock either, because I promise you, that male would kill you with his bare hands if you so much as breathed on Jenna, human or not. Hell, keep pushing and I might save him the effort."
The coil of agony in his gut made Chase sneer up at Dante in response. "If I wanted to break out of these restraints, I could. You know that."
"Yeah, I know." Dante edged in closer, moving so quickly Chase's sluggish senses couldn't track him. He was startled to feel the cold kiss of sharp metal pressed up hard against his throat. Dante's curved twin blades bit into his flesh, one on each side of his neck, a hairbreadth from breaking the skin. "You could try to break out of the restraints, Harvard, but now you've got two good reasons why you won't."
Chapter Thirty-three
Chase bristled at the threat, one he knew from experience that he'd better respect. "That's some tough love, especially coming from a friend."
"My friend is gone. He's been gone for longer than I want to admit," Dante said, his voice tight and controlled. Lethal, when it lacked the warrior's usual bravado. "Right now, I'm talking to the blood addict glaring up at me with bared fangs and amber-soaked eyes. He's the one who'll be eating these titanium blades if he thinks I'm wrong about him walking the thin line toward Bloodlust."
He didn't ease off with the nasty curved daggers, not even when Chase slowly retreated, letting his spine settle back onto the mattress of the infirmary bed. The sharp edges followed him down, dangerously close, testing Chase's nerve.
He didn't dare escalate the situation.
Although he wasn't yet Rogue, Dante was right. Chase could feel Bloodlust nipping at his heels. And he couldn't be sure that the titanium wouldn't act like poison to his blood. He glowered up at Dante but made no move to try him.
