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Hunter declined as well, his glass of beer sitting untouched, ordered only for appearances'
sake when they'd first arrived. After the server left them alone, Corinne glanced across at him in the wobbling glow of the candlelight. Her pupils were dark pools, mesmerizing and endless. When she spoke, her voice was husky and soft, tentative somehow. "What about you, Hunter?
What were you like growing up? Somehow, I don't think you were the wild, impulsive type."
"I was neither of those things," he agreed, recalling his grim beginnings. He was serious and disciplined for as long as he could remember. He had to be; failure in any area of his upbringing would have meant his death.
She was still looking at him, still trying to puzzle him out. "I know you said you don't have family, but have you always lived in Boston?"
"No," he replied. "I came there when I joined the Order this past summer."
"Oh." She appeared surprised by that, and not entirely pleased. "You've only been with them for a short while." She glanced back down at the table and brushed at some errant bread crumbs. "How long were you in service to Dragos?"
Now he was the one caught by surprise.
"That first night, at Claire and Andreas's Darkhaven," she explained. "Someone heard them talking about you. About the fact that you used to be allied with Dragos." She watched him closely, carefully. "Is it true?"
"Yes." Simple. Honest. A fact she apparently already knew. So, why did he feel the sudden want to bite the word back? Why did he have the impulse to reassure her that though he might have served Dragos, he posed no threat to her?
He couldn't tell her that. Because in the pit of his gut, he wondered if it was true. Did he pose no threat to her?
Mira's precognition seemed to indicate otherwise. Since leaving the Detroit Darkhaven, he'd been trying to dismiss the vision as having already played out - albeit altered, the prophesied outcome thwarted - during his confrontation with Victor Bishop. But something wasn't right about that.
Nothing had ever altered the child seer's visions before. He would be a fool to think it should happen now, just because he was finding himself intrigued with darkly beautiful, damaged Corinne.
He heard her quick but subtle exhalation as she absorbed his frank admission. Instead of leaning forward on the small table, he noticed she was now gradually inching away, physically retreating until her spine came up against the back of her chair. For a long moment, she remained silent, staring through the dim light and thin haze that hung in the room.
"How long did you serve him?" she asked, guarded now.
"For as long as I can remember."
"But not anymore," she said, studying his face as she spoke. Searching, he guessed, for some sign in his expression that she could trust him.
He kept his features schooled, deliberately neutral, as he tried to decide if it was she who had something to conceal from him. "Now I do for the Order what I used to do for Dragos."
Her eyes held his, bleak with understanding. "Death," she said.
Hunter tilted his chin in acknowledgment. "I want him and all who serve him destroyed. If I have to hunt him and every last one of his followers down, one by one, I will see it done."
He was only stating fact, but Corinne looked at him with a strange softness in her wary expression. There was a question in her gaze, too tender for his liking. "What did he do to you, Hunter? How did Dragos hurt you?"
To his own astonishment, Hunter found he could not speak the words. He'd never been reluctant to admit the isolation and discipline of his upbringing. He had never cared enough about himself or anyone else to feel any inkling of humiliation for having been raised no better than an animal - worse than that.
He'd never been ashamed of his Gen One origins before - sired by an Ancient, the last surviving other-worlder who, along with his alien brethren, had fathered the entire Breed race on Earth. Dragos had secretly kept the powerful vampire drugged and incarcerated inside his laboratory for some long decades. That same savage creature had been unleashed by Dragos on countless captive Breedmates, like Corinne and the other recently freed females. Like the unknown Breedmate who had given birth to Hunter while imprisoned in those fetid cells.
He had no idea what might have happened to her, had no memory of her whatsoever. But seeing Corinne Bishop, having seen the evidence on her delicate back of the many tortures she had endured, Hunter knew a sudden, deep shame that made him want to deny any link to Dragos or the horrors of his labs.
A tendon twitching in his jaw, he replied, "You don't need to concern yourself with what happened to me. None of it was any worse than what Dragos did to you."
Her frown deepened with disapproval. Even in the dark, he could see color rising into her cheeks. No doubt, she knew he was referring to her scars. Scars he wouldn't have seen if he hadn't been spying on her in her bath.
He waited for her to get angry at the reminder; she had the right, he supposed. He wouldn't have denied that he'd looked. He probably wouldn't have denied that he'd admired what he saw. All night, he'd been trying to forget the thought of her naked in the hotel room bath. The memory came back vividly now, insistent, despite his effort to banish it from his mind. As for the scars, they'd been shocking, but they hadn't dimmed her beauty. Not in his eyes.
It stunned him how tempted he was to tell her that, whether or not she'd want to hear it. Corinne stared at him for too long, then she scooted her chair back and started to rise.
"I'm going to find the restroom," she murmured.
He stood up with her, his eyes scanning the crowd. "I will go with you."
