AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Nathan's cool stare pierced him even deeper now. "She doesn't know you're surrendering." Not a question; a cold, accurate statement of fact. "Why would you do this to her?"
"I've hurt her enough. I want this - all of it - over."
Nathan's brows lowered into a scowl. "You care for her, that's obvious enough, even to me. I know she cares for you. Why not run somewhere together? After all, you've lived a lie this long. Why throw yourself on the sword now?"
The irony of it made Kellan exhale a sharp breath through his nostrils. "Because I have no fucking choice."
Nathan cocked his head, studying him. "What is this - some eleventh-hour attack of conscience? Too late for that. If it's a sudden resurrection of your honor after such a long absence, I promise you, it's wasted. This thing has gone too far. It's gone too public now. There won't be any clemency for you - for Bowman. There can't be."
Kellan nodded. "I know that. This will only end one way for me. I've seen that for myself."
"You've seen it." Something cold and suspicious flickered in Nathan's steady gaze now. His voice, which had been carefully schooled and quiet, now notched a bit louder. "You mean Mira's shown something to you. A vision?" A curse, ripe and violent, erupted from between his old friend's lips. "You've used her ability, knowing what that costs her?"
"Jesus, no. I never would've done that," Kellan said. "Not intentionally - "
"Fuck you and your intentions," Nathan growled now. He stalked forward, dangerous in his outrage. "Did you use her? Did you use her gift for your own selfish gain?"
"Kellan . . . ?"
Ah, Christ.
Mira's worried voice sounded from behind him in the dark of the bedroom. He wasn't ready for her to walk into his conversation with Nathan yet. He wasn't ready for her to learn that he'd brought Nathan to them as a means of surrendering without bloodshed or casualties. Everything was happening too fast, a snowball picking up speed as it careened down the side of a mountain.
"It's okay," he told her, sending the reassurance over his shoulder as he heard her start to get up. "Mira, stay. I'll be right there and we can talk.">"Cleared out fast, evidently," Balthazar remarked, the big vampire's typical humor absent tonight. "Like rats from a sinking ship."
Rafe nodded, grim. "Maybe someone warned them we were coming."
"If they did get a warning we were on to them," Eli put in, "that would mean they hauled ass outta here less than five minutes after our lead came in."
"Didn't take off in a panic," Torin said. He tipped his head back, long braids at his temples swinging against his sharp cheekbones as he read the energy in the air. "They had time to gather everything they needed. When they left - by the fade of it, my guess would be sometime late morning - they left on their own terms."
Jax twirled one of his hira-shuriken between nimble fingers, the metal winking with lethal precision under the moonlight. "Doesn't matter why or when they left. Only matters where."
"And that puts us right back at square one," said Webb, the warrior Lucan had put in charge of Mira's squad after the incident with Rooster not even a week ago. From the sober look on the Breed male's face, it was a mantle he accepted out of duty alone, not personal ambition. "Can't believe she hasn't kicked those rebels' asses single-handed by now and come strolling back to us like it was no big thing. Shit, the way Mira goes into combat?" Webb shook his head, contemplating. "Fucking Valkyrie, man. Doesn't matter she's not Breed; it would take an army of humans to knock her down and keep her there. And I, for one, refuse to believe she's not still breathing out there somewhere."
For what hadn't been the first time, Nathan's thoughts were going down a similar path. What had they done to Mira to keep her captive for so many days? Had she tried to fight back? And what of Bowman? How had he been able to bring her last night into La Notte, a public place, and she not find some way to break free of him?
A troubling scenario was beginning to take root in Nathan's mind.
He didn't like the taste of it. Didn't want to think that Mira might have gotten somehow unwillingly entangled with the rebels and their criminal acts. Or worse . . . could she possibly have allowed herself to be charmed by Bowman?
The last was almost laughable, it was so incomprehensible. There had only ever been one man for Mira, and he was eight years dead and gone. A handful of days in the company of human rebels - a class of individuals she openly despised - would not suddenly turn her away from the Order and her kin.
And yet . . .
It was that last disturbing possibility - the least logical of them all - that proved the hardest for Nathan to ignore.
There was something he wasn't seeing. Something he hadn't yet connected. Something he'd maybe glossed over and dismissed as unimportant amid the urgency of the bunker's search.
"Problem, Captain?"
He waved off the question without acknowledging who had asked it. His boots were already chewing up earth beneath him, his strides long and purposeful as he stalked back into the damp gloom of the rebel hideout.
He checked each room and corridor again, less rushed this time, sending his gaze over every rustic table, chair, and cot, into every corner and cranny of the place. And he found nothing.
Not until he stepped into the last room, the one situated at the far end of the concrete passageway.
Something crunched under his boot heel. A small piece of broken glass.
