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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.
Dragos had fed upon her behind a restaurant Dumpster that reeked of fish guts and brine. She'd put up a struggle at first, scratching at his face and kicking him in the moments before his bite had fully taken hold of her delicate throat. She'd let out a short scream and tried to put her knee into his balls.
He raped her for that, brutally, repeatedly, and with pleasure. Then he'd drained her almost to the point of death and made her what she was now - his Minion, selfless, devoted, utterly enslaved to him. She no longer resisted anything he demanded of her, no matter how depraved.
The girl entered his study with a demure incline of her head. "I have this morning's mail from your box on the mainland, Master."
"Excellent," he murmured, shadowing her as she walked in with a handful of envelopes and placed them on his large desk in the center of the grand room.
When she pivoted to face him, her expression was bland but receptive, the hallmark look of a Minion awaiting its Master's next command. If he told her to drop to her knees and suck him off then and there, she'd do it without the slightest hesitation. She would respond with equal obedience if he told her to pick up the silver letter opener and slice it across her own throat. Dragos cocked his head and studied her, wondering which of the two scenarios would amuse him more. He was about to settle on one when his eye strayed to a large white vellum envelope sitting atop the rest of his incoming mail on the desk. The Boston return address and handwritten calligraphy on the front of the invitation captured his full attention. He dismissed the Minion with a bored flick of his wrist.
Seating himself in the thick leather cushions of his desk chair as the girl quietly exited the study, he picked up the white envelope and smiled, brushing his fingers across the carefully handlettered script that spelled out the alias he'd been using in human circles of late. Dragos had assumed so many false identities over the centuries of his existence, among both his own Breed kind and humans, he hardly bothered to keep track anymore. It no longer mattered; his time of hiding who he was, and what he was capable of, had nearly reached its end. He was so close now. Never mind the recent interference of the Order. Their efforts to thwart him were insignificant, and had come too late as well.
The holiday party announcement in his hand was just another step along his path to triumph. He'd been courting the junior senator from Massachusetts for the better part of a year now, tracking the ambitious young politician's every move and ensuring that the pockets of the senator's campaign coffers remained more than amply full.
