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"We have patrol tactics to discuss."
We, he said, but Chase could read Lucan's meaning in the level command of his gaze alone. We meant the Order, which didn't include him.
"Sure," he said, no animosity in his voice or his veins. He was a liability to the Order now, at a time when they could least afford them. He got that. And he couldn't blame Lucan for shutting him out from this mission.
As much as he might have wanted to think he hadn't lost his brethren completely, Chase understood that he still had a long road ahead of him if he wanted to prove himself worthy of their trust. He only hoped they'd one day give him that chance.
Tavia walked with him out to the corridor, saying nothing as she slipped her hand into his. She didn't need to say anything. She understood. She cared, and he wondered for the hundredth time how he could ever think he deserved her.
"Hey, Harvard."
The low male voice drew him up short in the hallway. Dante stood there, the dark-haired warrior's arms crossed over his chest. His curved titanium daggers - weapons that had taken out countless Rogues and had even found their way under Chase's chin not so long ago - were sheathed like huge claws on his weapons belt. His whiskey-colored eyes narrowed beneath the harsh slash of his dark brows. He gestured over his shoulder with a tilt of his chin. "About what just happened in there ..."
"Forget it," Chase said. "I want what's good for the Order too. Right now, that's not me." He started to walk away, but Dante met up with him. Stilled him with a brotherly hand coming to rest on his shoulder. "I just wanted to tell you that it's good to have you back in the compound again. I'm glad you're here."
Chase felt Tavia's eyes on him as he absorbed the offer of truce from the warrior who had once been his tightest ally in the Order. His closest friend. A brother, in every sense of the word. "Thanks." Feeble reply, but all he could muster on his suddenly dry throat.
"Listen, Tess would love it if you and Tavia came around to our quarters sometime. I'd like it too. I'd like to give you a proper introduction to my son."
"Sure." Chase nodded. "Yeah, sure. Of course."
"We'd be honored to meet him," Tavia said, speaking the words that seemed to fail him so spectacularly in that moment.
"Great," Dante said. "That'll be great." He backed away, then abruptly pivoted around again, a wide smirk breaking over his face as his eyes met Chase's across the length of the corridor. "By the way, Merry Christmas, dickhead."
"Same to you." Chase chuckled, falling back into the easy camaraderie they once had. God, he didn't realize how much he'd missed that until just now. "Try not to get your ass handed to you tonight on patrol, yeah?"
Still grinning, Dante gave him a one-fingered salute. His deep laugh rumbled as he headed back to rejoin the other warriors.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
IT WAS LONG PAST MIDNIGHT and the Order had been on patrol from the moment they arrived in Boston. In that time, they'd smashed down the doors of a dozen Enforcement Agency sip-and- strips and known hangouts in and around the city.
Lucan had no intention of calling it a night until they'd raided every last one.
Few of the Agents they'd interrogated had confessed to knowing anything about traitors within their ranks. But there was one name that came up on battered and bloodied lips more than once: Arno Pike.
"His Darkhaven is in the North End," Mathias Rowan reported. Lucan had called the Agency director for a quick rundown on the bastard as Kade, Brock, and Hunter cleaned up the carnage they'd left in the most recent raid.
"Any kin at his place?"
"None," Rowan said. "Pike lives alone, no immediate family. He had a mate until about a year ago, but she died. Says here she was mugged in Dorchester, strangled."
Lucan grunted. "Convenient. Address?"
Rowan rattled off a swanky street in an area of multimillion-dollar brownstones. Lucan typed it into a text on a second phone he carried and sent it out to the rest of the Order's boots on the ground.
"Lucan, look. You know I'm on board with whatever you deem necessary to stop Dragos. And I mean stop him dead. But my dispatch lines are out of control. You've got civilians calling in, terrified of what they're hearing. The word among the Breed population here in Boston is that you've lost your goddamn mind. They're saying you've finally snapped, that on your command the Order is kicking down Darkhaven doors and hauling unarmed civilians into the streets at gunpoint."
Lucan exhaled a ripe curse. "The same shit they've been saying about the Order for years, decades."
"Except now it's true." Rowan's voice sounded weary. "And it's Christmas, for fuck's sake. How long do you mean for this mission to go on?"
"Until I rout Dragos and all his followers out of hiding, once and for all."
Rowan's answering silence stretched long. In the pall of his heavy contemplation, Lucan's cell phone rang with another incoming call. He told the Agent to hang on and switched over to accept the other line.
Niko's voice answered his clipped greeting. "Lucan, we've got Pike."
