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"Tomorrow?" Alex glanced over in question. "Does that mean Brock and Jenna are on their way back from Alaska now?"
"They're still delayed by the snowstorms," Gabrielle replied. "But Hunter has volunteered to escort Corinne to Detroit in Brock's place."
In the lengthening silence that seemed to fall over the women of the Order, Corinne relived the moment that the immense, eerily unreadable warrior had blurted his offer to take her home. She hadn't expected it from him, certainly. He hadn't seemed the charitable sort, not even on the night of her rescue, when he and a few other warriors from the Order had driven Dragos's freed captives to the Darkhaven in Rhode Island.
Hunter had been hard to miss that night. With his chiseled, forbidding features and sixand-a-half-foot frame of bulky muscle, he was the kind of male who dominated any room he entered without even trying. While the hours after the rescue had been ripe with emotion for everyone involved, Hunter had been the quiet one, the one who kept to the periphery and merely carried out his tasks in stoic efficiency.
Later that night, one of the other women had whispered that she'd overheard Andreas and Claire talking privately about Hunter. She'd said it sounded as though he had once - not long ago - been allied in some way with Dragos. Corinne could hardly pretend that she hadn't recognized the air of danger that surrounded the mysterious warrior. She couldn't deny that the thought of being near him unnerved her, then and now.
It didn't take much to picture him as he had been in the compound a short while ago, with his bloodstained combat clothing and the arsenal of terrible weapons that he wore circled around his slim waist. It took far less effort to recall the striking golden color of his eyes and the way his hawklike stare had locked on her the instant he saw her.
Why she had caught his attention so thoroughly, she couldn't begin to guess. All she knew was she'd felt trapped by his penetrating gaze, scrutinized in a way that had made her feel both enlivened and exposed.
Even now her skin tingled with the remembered awareness of him.
She shivered with the feeling, though her body was nothing close to cold within the insulating folds of her coat. Nevertheless, she tried to rub away the sensation, running her hands up and down her arms to dispel the peculiar, heated prickle of her nerve endings.
"Hunter!" Without warning, little Mira leapt up from her game in the snow and launched into a headlong run toward the terrace patio. "Hunter, come out with us!"
Corinne pivoted her head along with the other women, following Mira's excited dash right past and up to the set of open French doors that looked out over the grounds from the mansion behind them.
Hunter stood just inside those framed glass doors.
He was no longer dressed in gore-covered head-to-toe black, but recently showered, wearing loose-fitting denim jeans and an untucked white button-down shirt that hinted at the elaborate pattern of the dermaglyphs that covered his chest and torso. His big feet were bare despite the time of year, and the short damp spikes of his blond hair hung limply over his brow. And he was studying her again ... studying her still. How long had he been standing there?
Corinne tried to look away from him, but his piercing golden eyes would not release her. His gaze didn't move from Corinne to acknowledge the approaching child until the last moment, as Mira giddily threw herself into his strong arms.
He lifted her effortlessly and held her aloft in the crook of his left elbow, listening as the little girl chattered animatedly about all of her day's adventures. Corinne could hardly hear what he said, but it was obvious that he favored the child, holding his voice to low, indulgent tones. In the few moments that he conversed with her, something passed over his otherwise unreadable face. Something that made him go quite still. He sent one further glance in Corinne's direction - a lingering glance that seemed to bore straight through her - before slowly setting the child down on her feet. Then he walked away, back into the heart of the compound. Even after he was gone, even after Mira had run back to play with the dogs in the snowfilled yard and the other Breedmates had resumed their own conversation, Corinne could still feel the unsettling heat of Hunter's eyes on her.
He had seen Corinne Bishop's face somewhere before.
Not during her rescue from Dragos's prison cells. Not at the Darkhaven in Rhode Island either, where she and the other freed captives had been brought for shelter and protection. No, he had seen the woman months earlier than that, he was certain now. The realization had hit him like a physical blow when he'd scooped little Mira up into his arms a few moments ago. All it had taken to remind him was a glimpse into the child's innocent face - into the young Breedmate's eyes, which held the power to reflect the future. Although specially crafted contact lenses usually muted Mira's gift, as they did tonight, there had been a time, months ago, when Hunter had inadvertently looked into her mirrorlike eyes and saw a woman pleading for his mercy, begging him not to be the killer he'd been born. In the vision, the woman had tried to stay his hand, asking desperately that he spare this life - just this one, just for her.
Let him go, Hunter ...
Please, I'm begging you ... Don't do this!
Can't you understand? I love him! He means everything to me ...
Just let him go ... you have to let him live!
In the vision, the woman's expression had fallen when she realized he would not be swayed, not even for her. In the vision, the woman had screamed in heartbroken anguish an instant later as Hunter pulled his arm out of her grasp and delivered the final blow. That woman was Corinne Bishop.
Chapter Five
His given name was Dragos, like his father before him, although there were few who knew him as such.
Only a handful of necessary associates, his lieutenants in this war of his own making, were privy to his true name and origins. Of course, his enemies knew him now too. Lucan Thorne and his warriors of the Order had exposed him, driven him to ground more than once. But they hadn't yet won.
Nor would they, he assured himself as he paced the walnut-lined study of his private estate.
Outside the tightly shuttered windows that blocked the scant midday light, a winter storm howled. Wind and snow gusted off the Atlantic, buffeting the glass and shaking the shingles as it whipped up over the steep rocks of his island lair. The tall alpine evergreens surrounding his large estate whistled and moaned as the gale slammed westward, heading toward the mainland, just a few miles away from the isolated crag he now called home.
Dragos relished the fury of the storm that raged outside. He felt a similar tempest churning inside him every time he thought about the Order and the strikes they'd made against his operation. He wanted them to feel the lash of his anger, to know that when he came to collect his vengeance - and he would, very soon - it would be blood-soaked and complete. He would give no quarter, grant no mercy whatsoever.
He was still ruminating over the plans he had for Lucan and his heretofore unbreachable, secret Boston compound when a polite rap sounded on the closed doors of his study.
"What is it?" he barked, his temper as short as his patience was thin. One of his Minions opened the door. She was pretty and young, with her strawberry blond hair and dewy, peaches-and-cream face. He'd spotted her waiting tables in a podunk fishing town a couple of weeks ago and decided she might prove amusing to him back at his lair. And so she had.
