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The Harvard he'd known would never have done that.
Kade was right.
Harvard was gone, probably for good.
Chapter Ten
Hunter hadn't spoken two words to her in the time between his phone call to the Order and his driving back to the airport outside Detroit. Not that Corinne had been looking for conversation. Her head was still reeling from what had occurred at the Darkhaven, her heart still raw, rent open like a gash in the center of her being.
She had come home looking for her family and found betrayal instead. Even more painful, her hopes of having Victor Bishop's power and resources rallied toward finding her lost little boy were now completed dashed.
Who was she supposed to trust now, when the only family she'd ever known had knowingly abandoned her to a monster?
Despair clogged her throat as she sat in the dark cabin of the vehicle, mindlessly watching the passing, moonlit scenery as Hunter navigated the maze of the airport's private access roads, heading toward a complex of domed hangars adjacent to the public terminal and runways. Corinne couldn't stop thinking about her child, the precious infant Dragos had stolen from out of her arms just moments after she'd given birth. He would be a growing boy now - an adolescent who'd never known his mother.
Helpless as one of Dragos's prisoners, she'd had no calendars, no clocks, not even the most meager comforts. She had counted her son's years the only way she could: in nine-month increments, marking the passage of time by observing the pregnancies of other captive Breedmates. Thirteen birth cycles from the time she'd held her newborn baby boy and the day of her rescue just last week.
Despite the circumstances of his horrific conception, Corinne had loved her baby deeply from the instant she saw him. He was hers, a vital part of who she was, no matter how savagely he'd come into this world. She recalled the anguish of missing him. She felt that still, the sorrow of knowing in her bones that he was alive but uncertain where he'd been taken or what had become of him.
It gnawed at her even now. She weathered the fresh sense of mourning as Hunter parked inside an unmarked hangar where the sleek white private jet waited. He took out his cell phone and made a call. His deep, low voice seemed like nothing more than background noise - a deep, oddly comforting rumble. Just the sound of him speaking, strong and calm, a confident presence, so effortlessly in control of everything around him, somehow made the swelling tides of her memories seem more navigable.
She let it anchor her as the waves of painful memories - of her failure to hold her baby close and keep him safe - continued to swamp her.
If her disastrous reunion tonight had given her anything to hold on to, it was the resolve that had become like iron now that she understood how brutal abandonment could feel. She would not forsake her child. She would walk through the fires of hell itself to find him. Not even Dragos and his evil would keep her from reuniting with her son. She would let nothing - and no one - stand in her way.
Hunter was ending his brief phone conversation, she noticed. He disconnected the call, then tucked the tiny device back into his coat pocket.
She glanced over and their eyes met across the dimly lit interior of the car. "Is everything all right with your friends in Boston?"
Although he hadn't confided in her about his first call to the Order's compound that night, Corinne had heard enough on his end of the conversation to know that something bad had happened while Hunter had been with her. She'd heard Dragos's name and the mention of a young Darkhaven boy whose family and home had recently been lost to Dragos's violence. From the little bit she'd gathered, and from Hunter's elusive, almost forbidding, expression right now, it seemed pretty clear that Dragos had somehow managed to gain the upper hand.
"Are they in terrible danger, Hunter?"
"We are in the midst of war," he answered, his maddeningly calm voice sounding more bleak than apathetic. "Until Dragos is dead, everyone is in terrible danger."
He wasn't speaking only about the residents of the Order's compound. Not even the warriors and the Breed nation combined. The war Hunter referred to encompassed something much larger than that. He was speaking of Dragos's threat to the world in total. If anyone else had said such a thing, she might have chalked it up to dramatics. But this was Hunter. Exaggeration wasn't a part of his personal lexicon. He was factual and concise. He was exact with both his words and his deeds, and that only made the weight of his statement settle all the more heavily on her.
Corinne sat back, unable to hold his piercing golden stare. She swiveled her head and looked out the tinted passenger-side window of the car, watching the side of the small jet open to allow the stairs to fold out and descend to the concrete floor of the hangar.
"Are you sending me back to Boston?"
"No." Hunter turned off the car's engine. "I'm not sending you anywhere. You are to stay with me for the time being. Lucan has charged me with your temporary safekeeping."
She glanced away from the waiting aircraft and ventured another look at her remote companion. She wanted to argue that she didn't need anyone's safekeeping, not when she'd just tasted freedom, bitter as that taste had been so far. But his announcement raised a bigger question. "If we're not going to Boston, then where is that plane headed?"
"New Orleans," he replied. "Gideon has been able to substantiate Regina Bishop's recollection of Henry Vachon. He owns several properties in the New Orleans area and is presumed to reside there. As of this moment, Vachon is our most viable link to Dragos."
Corinne's heart thumped hard in her chest. Henry Vachon was the Order's best link to Dragos ... which meant he was also her best link to Dragos. Perhaps the only link she had to finding out what had happened to her son.
As much as she wanted to reject the idea of being leashed to Hunter or to anyone else, a larger part of her understood that she had few options and even fewer resources at her disposal. If hitching her wagon to Hunter would bring her closer to Henry Vachon and any information regarding her child, she had to do it. Anything for her child.
"What will you do," she asked, "if you are able to find Vachon?"
"My mission is simple: Determine his connection to Dragos and extract any useful intelligence I can. Then neutralize the target to disable any potential future fallout."
"You mean you intend to kill him," Corinne said, not a question but a grim understanding. Hunter's stark eyes showed no waver whatsoever. "If I determine that Vachon does in fact have an allegiance to Dragos - past or present - he must be eliminated."
She felt herself nodding faintly, but inside she was unsure what to think. She couldn't feel pity for Henry Vachon if he had anything to do with her ordeal, but another part of her wondered how Hunter's brutal occupation must impact the one who dealt so frequently in death.
