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“Then they’ll have a fight on their hands,” Lucan said. “We’re damned well not going to surrender you to Selene. As commander of the Order, my first priority is the protection of this location and everyone inside it. That includes you now, Zael.”
The conviction in Lucan’s statement moved him, but Zael shook his head. “I appreciate that, but I would never ask it of you.”
“You didn’t. I’m offering,” Lucan said. “You’re a friend to the Order. We protect our own.”
Zael smiled. He had his own warrior’s code, even if his blade and shield had once been bloodied in Selene’s name. He inclined his head at Lucan. “Because I feel likewise about the Order, I cannot stay. It will be better for everyone here—safer for all—if I go.”
All three warriors standing before him appeared ready to argue his decision, but instead of them answering, it was Brynne’s voice he heard behind him.
“Go where?”
He turned to face her. She stood there, looking drowsy and adorable in her untucked button-down and black pants that hugged her long legs. Her dark hair was a mass of bed-tossed waves that made his pulse kick with the urge to have her beneath him again.
Zael couldn’t couch his pleasure at seeing her, nor did he care if the rush of affection he felt was on display in his gaze for everyone in the room.
“To the colony,” he murmured in answer to her question, regret in each syllable. “I should go as soon as possible.”
The expression on her lovely face was one of confusion. And more than a trace of hurt. “You’re leaving.”
There was accusation in the words. A look of resignation creeping into her dark green eyes.
“Selene knows Zael is here,” Lucan informed her.
“How?” Brynne’s troubled gaze never left Zael. “What’s going on?”
“When I used my light in that alley earlier tonight, it broadcast my location to the realm.” He held out his hands, palms open to her. The light was absent now, but she still stared at him in dawning misery.
“Oh, my God. She found you because of me?”
He firmly shook his head. “My actions, Brynne. My decision.”
“She knows Zael is in D.C., and she knows he’s allied with the Order,” Lucan added. “She just overtook our computer systems to inform us that she expects us to turn him over to her.”
Brynne sucked in a shallow breath. “She’ll kill you.”
“Most certainly,” Zael agreed. But then, that had been the risk from the moment he first crossed the barrier that shielded the realm from the outside world.
It had been easier to accept that fact in the past, easier to disregard it. The thought of death took on new meaning when his heart still beat with the memory of Brynne tangled naked with him in his arms.
He wanted to draw her into his embrace and reassure her that if they separated now, it wouldn’t be forever. But he wasn’t certain he could make that promise to her. Not out loud. Selene drawing a line in the sand with the Order had changed everything.
Until the threat of war with her had been neutralized, so long as he was within Selene’s reach, Zael was a hazard to anyone close to him. Selene’s grudges knew no limits. Neither did her wrath.
“Selene can make all the demands she wants,” Lucan said. “She’s going to find out that the only thing she’ll get by pushing us into a corner is war.”
Darion made a derisive sound. “She’d better prepare herself for disappointment. I’d like nothing better than to deliver her defeat personally.”
Zael wanted to warn the tenacious Breed male that Selene was not an opponent who would go down easy. Before he was too eager to charge into battle against her, Darion Thorne would do well to remember that it had taken the combined efforts of several Ancients to bring Selene down the first time, and only because they were aided by sabotage, betrayal, and stolen otherworld technology.
But that was a conversation for another time.
Right now, all of Zael’s attention was rooted on Brynne. He watched her absorb all of this unpleasant news in silence. “I can’t stay now,” he told her gently. “I’ve already stayed too long.”
She didn’t reply. The tenderness they had shared a short while ago was still there in her eyes as she looked at him, but Zael also saw the beginnings of mistrust. Her dark lashes shuttered her gaze, as if she were already starting to withdraw from him.
“I have to go, Brynne.”
“Yes. Of course, you do.” She nodded crisply, refusing to meet his gaze. “I understand.”
