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The three Breed males stood side by side in the crisp, cold darkness. Above them the sky was clear and cloudless, endless black, pierced with stars. Everything was still, as if Earth and the heavens had frozen in time, suspended in that instant between the silence of a perfect winter night and the first low rumble of the destruction unfolding roughly three hundred feet beneath the warriors' boots. It seemed to carry on forever, not some great bombastic spectacle of furious noise and spewing fire and ash but a quiet yet thorough annihilation.
"The living quarters have been sealed," Gideon reported somberly as the thunder began to ebb. He touched the screen of his handheld device and another series of deep growls rolled from far below the snow-covered ground. "The weapons room, the infirmary ... both gone now."
Lucan didn't allow himself to dwell on the memories or the history that was housed in the labyrinth of rooms and corridors being systematically exploded with a touch of Gideon's finger on that tiny computer screen. It had taken more than a hundred years to build the compound into what it had become. He couldn't deny that it put a cold ache in his chest to feel it being pulled down so neatly.>Thane, the guard who was no guard at all, gave Mal a grim look. "Reiver won't get far. Neither will his cronies. The Agency is aware of what was going down here tonight. My squad will be here any minute, if they're not waiting outside right now to round everyone up."
Malcolm gave a slow shake of his head. He couldn't trust anyone else to finish this. Not after everything he'd been through. He couldn't rest for a moment thinking Reiver or his murderous colleagues were still walking free, able to hurt more innocent people.
Able to hurt Danika or Connor, the two people who mattered more to him than anything else in his life.
He looked at Dani, his heart squeezing with a love so profound it rocked him. As determined as he was to see Reiver dead, there was only one thing that could keep him from pursuing that goal now. Danika could stop him. With a word, a tear, a pleading look.
But she held his gaze with a steady courage. A faith that humbled him, even as it gave him new resolve.
His strong, beautiful female.
His Breedmate, once this was finally over.
He knew what her courage right now cost her. It was written in her haunted blue eyes as she gave him a subtle nod of permission, of stoic understanding.
Malcolm gathered her close and brushed his mouth against hers in an unrushed kiss. "I have to finish this."
Her reply was quiet but resolved. "I know."
It was a struggle t c a ght="0em"o let her go, but he released her and glanced to Thane. "Keep her safe. I'm counting on you."
The other Breed male gave him a solemn nod. "You have my word."
Mal couldn't take his eyes off Danika. She held his gaze, her own unwavering, as proud and stalwart as the regal Nordic princess she truly was. "Go and finish this, Malcolm. Then come back to me, and never leave me again."
Epilogue
He came back to Danika two nights later, haggard and worn, but the most welcome sight she'd ever seen. She opened the door of her little farmhouse in Denmark and there was Malcolm, standing on the cold front stoop in the December moonlight, snowflakes dancing all around him. Her heart swelled so swiftly, she couldn't speak. And while the urge to throw herself into his arms was a need that arrowed through her as basic as the need for air, she held back, trying to read his grave, unsmiling expression.
"Reiver is dead," he told her. "The others too."
She exhaled the breath she'd been holding. Relief flooded her, not so much for the final justice Malcolm had delivered on his enemies but for the simple fact that he was standing in front of her now, whole and hale, safe and sound.
Mal didn't move. He cleared his throat. "Thane tells me his contact in Boston, an Enforcement Agency director by the name of Mathias Rowan, has alluded to big trouble brewing over there. If things get as ugly as Rowan and the Order seem to feel they will, Thane and his men may be called on to help them out."
The news worried her deeply. She'd been trying to get in touch with Gideon since she'd arrived home, but the private number she had for the Order's compound in Boston was out of service. Which had never happened in all the time the direct line to the warriors had existed.
If the Order was off grid-by their own choice or by force-and gearing up to combat something awful, she hated to imagine what that could mean.
"Thane's offered me a place in the Enforcement Agency," Mal added. "He wants me to be part of his team."
Danika's heart sank like a stone. The two days he'd been gone had been torture, but she'd made it through. She'd had faith because she knew he'd come back once he'd done what he had to do. She'd endured his absence because she trusted that when he returned, he'd be back to stay.
But she put on a brave face as she looked at him now. "When do you leave?"
"I turned him down, Dani." He took a step closer now and caught her face in the warm, callused palms of his hands. "There's only one place I want to be, and that's with you."
Elation filled her, but she couldn't celebrate if it was her fear for him that was holding him back. "Don't do this just for me, Mal. I know I f a ghould2019;ve told you that I can't bear the thought of you in danger, and it's true. But I don't want to be the one keeping you somewhere you don't want to be. I can't ask that of you."
"You didn't," he said, caressing her cheek with his thumb. "Thane and his offer will wait, but this won't. I love you, Danika. Be with me. At my side, as my mate."
She held his intense gray gaze, love swelling inside her, filling her up with joy and hope. "Yes, Malcolm. I will be with you. As your mate, your partner, your friend."
He pulled her against him as an amber fire began to spark in his eyes. "My everything, Dani."
