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His expression was too mild to be trusted, his movements very calm as he took the Crimson away from his guard and held it up to his nose. He gave it a faint sniff, then sneered with cold malice. "Now, this was an incredibly stupid gamble on your part, Tavia. A pity."
Before she could react, he lunged forward and shoved the open vial into her mouth. She choked on the dry dust of the powder as it hit the back of her throat. Coughing, sputtering, she went down on her knees as a rush filled her head like the buzz of a million stinging bees. Oh, God, she thought, desperate with fear as the Crimson hit her bloodstream and agony arrowed through every cell of her body.
She'd failed.
She'd failed Chase and the Order miserably, and now she was certain that Dragos had just killed her.
CHASE'S KNEES BUCKLED beneath him in the street. A pain racked him, so violent it felt as though his chest were breaking wide open.
"Tavia."
Ah, Christ.
Her agony was everywhere inside him. Fire and daggers and poison - a suffering so intense it was a wonder his heart didn't cease beating in his chest.
No, the wounded organ wanted to explode behind his sternum.
The ferocity of what she was feeling in that moment was the most terrible thing he'd ever known. Not only because of the raw anguish of her pain, but because of the fact it was she who felt it.
His female, his mate, hurting - God forbid, dying - and he unable to be at her side. "Tavia!" Her name ripped out of his mouth on a roar.
"Chase," Dante shouted, right beside him as he stumbled under the weight of her agony. "Jesus Christ. Talk to me, Harvard. What's going on?"
"She's hurt. Ah, fuck ... I've got to get to her!"
His desperation to reach her after hearing a moment ago that she was with Dragos now went nuclear. As Niko and Brock rolled up in the Order's two SUVs with the rest of the warriors, Chase broke for the vehicles. Dante, Lucan, and Archer were right behind him.
Tegan was on the phone with Gideon as Chase and his team piled into the Rover. "We're moving out right now," he said, then glanced to Lucan and the others. "Gideon got a bead on the IP address Tavia provided. It's originating in Maine, a private island off the middle of the coast."
Chase's agony worsened, wrenching him from within. He growled with the fury of his helplessness. "Get me to her. Please ..."
The vehicles started rolling, tearing through the smoke-wreathed streets of D.C.
"Gideon says he's got more intel on those detonation sequences for the UV collar codes. He's trying to grid them to GPS signals, work up some kind of road map to all the active Hunters," Tegan reported.
Lucan grunted. "Tell him he'd better step on it. We may need those codes when we get to Dragos's lair."
As they sped through the chaos and carnage of the dark capital city, the heavy ache in Chase's chest burrowed deeper. His blood bond to Tavia was throbbing, pumping through his senses like the beat of a drum. It felt near enough for him to touch. "We're not going to Maine." Niko's questioning gaze met his pained stare in the rearview mirror.
"Stop the car!" Chase rasped, hardly able to speak for the shredding intensity of his realization now. "We gotta turn around. I feel her. She's here. She's somewhere in this city."
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
SHE COULD HARDLY stand the pain.
It swam through her veins, through her mind, draining her of all strength. Chewed away at her sanity with tiny, shredding teeth.
This was death.
This was true agony, a swift and thorough addiction that left her writhing on the floor. Gasping as though she was dying for air.
This was hell unlike any she could have imagined, to feel her body lost to a hunger - a savage, consuming thirst - that no amount of drink could quench.
Through bleary eyes, her face resting heavily on the floor where she writhed in helpless despair, she watched as Dragos's newest Minion made the call to the man he once served as his loyal second. The vice president's neck still bled from the twin punctures Dragos had made there, but he no longer felt pain. He knew only to please his Master.
"The president is on the way," the Minion said, handing the cell phone back to Dragos with a dead man's smile. "He was suspicious of the request. He will come with heavy military guard, Master. They will be on shoot-to-kill orders if he senses anything amiss."
Dragos nodded. "We are prepared for that. All I needed was to get him close. Soon I'll own him too. And with his allegiance will come the rest of the world's leaders, one by one. You've just helped put the last nail in the coffin of the humans' control over the Breed."
