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She tried the latch. Unlocked, thankfully. Her mother and a pair of her father's Darkhaven guards, Mason and another Breed male, were right behind her as she pushed open the door and stepped inside.
To her shock - to her utter confusion and disbelief - Victor Bishop had been tossed supine across the surface of his desk, now choking for breath beneath the crushing grip of the large hand clamped down like a vise on his throat. The person assaulting her father was the very last person Corinne had expected to see ever again.
"Hunter," she whispered, incredulous, terrified.
Her mother shrieked Victor's name, then broke down into a gusting sob. Behind Corinne, Mason and the other guard shifted warily. She felt their tension, sensed the two Breed males gauging their chances of drawing their weapons and disabling this unforeseen threat. They would never succeed.
Corinne saw the truth of it in Hunter's emotionless face. The look in his golden eyes was a chilling, lethal calm. Corinne saw in an instant that taking a life was something that gave this warrior no pause whatsoever. He had only to tighten his grip, just a cool flex of his strong fingers and he would crush the life from her father in a second's time.
Corinne's worry stabbed her, and in that instant of fright and concern, she felt a current of power stir deep inside her. It was her talent rising quietly, the low hum of sonokinetic energy that would permit her to grasp any sound and manipulate it to deafening heights. It prickled in her now, standing at the ready. But she couldn't risk it. Not with her father's throat caught fast in Hunter's grip.
When Mason inched slightly forward, more willing than she to test Hunter's intent, Corinne held him back with a faint shake of her head.
She was stunned, confused. What was Hunter doing back here at the Darkhaven? She didn't need to wonder how he got inside. The heavy drapery on the French doors of the study riffled in the wintry breeze coming in from outside. He had entered stealthily, an intruder with a single purpose - a single target - in mind.
"Why?" she murmured. "Hunter, what's this about?"
"Tell her." He turned that merciless gaze back onto her father. Victor Bishop sputtered, tried to claw at the unyielding grasp at his throat, but it was useless. His muscles slumped and his head fell back onto the desk with a spittle-laced, hopeless-sounding moan. Hunter barely blinked.
"Speak the truth, or I will kill you right here and now."
Corinne's pulse was ticking in her temples, fear twisting her insides. She didn't know what sparked the greater worry - the lethal threat to the Breed male who'd raised her, or the dread that was gnawing at the edges of her mind as she looked at Hunter and recognized that he was not a male to act rashly.
No, he was nothing if not deliberate. She hadn't known him very long, but Hunter carried himself with a cool, capable reserve that left no room for irrationality or mistakes. The fact that her father was in the crosshairs of this warrior's wrath put a knot in Corinne's gut. She had the deep, instinctual awareness that her world was about to crack open in front of her. She didn't think she could bear that, not after all she'd been through. Not after all she'd survived.
"No," she said, wanting to deny the feeling that was swamping her now. She clung to that denial, even though it felt as breakable as a thread in her grasp. "Please, Hunter ... don't do this. Please, let him go."
He cocked his head toward her slightly as she spoke. Something peculiar flashed through his gaze, a flicker of distraction. Perhaps a moment of doubt? But he made no move to release her father. Then his brows lowered into the faintest frown. "He knows what happened to you the night you disappeared. He's known all along that you'd been taken, and by whom. He knows much more than that."
"No. That's impossible." Her voice sounded so small, little more than air pushing out of her lungs. She felt the thread of denial begin to fray in her grasp. "You're wrong about this, Hunter. You're making a terrible mistake. Daddy, please ... tell him he's wrong."
Victor Bishop seemed to deflate even more in that instant. He was sweating, quivering, reduced to a state of weak surrender under Hunter's unrelenting power. The handsome face that used to instill such comfort in Corinne as a child now sagged, ruddy and glistening with beads of perspiration. His eyes met hers then, and he sputtered something that sounded like a weak apology.
Corinne went numb, feeling all the blood drain from her head and limbs. The weight settled in her feet, nearly dragging her down to her knees. The air around Mason and the other guard went palpably tense, both males waiting for the situation to either explode or dissolve. Beside her, Corinne felt her mother's body tremble, as off balance as she was.
"Victor, you couldn't have known any such things," Regina insisted. Her pale hand hovered near her mouth, as delicate as a bird until it fell away, drifting back down at her side.
"You mourned this girl when she disappeared. You were shattered, like the rest of us. You could not have pretended those feelings. I'm blood-bonded to you as your mate - I would have known whether you'd been sincere."
"Yes," he managed to croak. Corinne watched the tendons in Hunter's large hand ease up, but only enough to permit the smallest freedom. Victor Bishop was still trapped, still wholly at the warrior's mercy. "Yes, Regina, I mourned. I was shattered that she was gone. I would have protected my family by any means. That's what I did, in fact. I was only trying to protect what was left of my family, and so I had no choice but to remain silent."
Corinne closed her eyes as the words sank in, unexpected and bitter. She couldn't speak, could only lift her lids and hold the steady golden gaze of the warrior whose face revealed neither surprise nor pity. Only a grave understanding.
"I had no choice," Victor Bishop repeated. "I had no idea he would retaliate against me the way he did. You must believe me - "
"Victor," her mother gasped. "What are you saying?"
His eyes slid away from Corinne, toward the Breedmate who'd been part of his life for the last hundredplus years. "He said he would have my support one way or another, Regina. I thought I was smarter than him. I knew I was more connected. But you see? That's what he wanted from me - my connections. He needed my endorsement to help him rise more quickly within the Agency."
Still poised to kill at his whim, Hunter issued a low growl as Corinne's father let his ugly confession spill out.
No, she corrected internally. Victor Bishop was not her father. Not anymore. He was a stranger to her, had become so more in these last minutes than he had in the many decades she'd been gone from his home.
"There were threats when I refused to join his cause," Bishop said, despair roughening the words. "I didn't realize what he was capable of at the time. My God, how could I have known what he would be willing to do?"
"Who was it that threatened you, Victor?" his Breedmate asked, the waver fading from both her voice and her demeanor. "Who stole our daughter from us?"
"Gerard Starkn."
