Lara Adrian's Midnight Breed 8-Book Bundle (241 page)

“He picked the wrong person for that, eh?”

Her smile was faint and fleeting. “I don’t want Jenna to see …” She gestured toward the front yard as her words trailed off. “She’ll have to know the truth, of course, but not like this.”

Kade nodded. “Yeah, of course.”

As they spoke the rest of the warriors roared up to the cabin on their sleds. Kade went out to intercept them, informing them that the Ancient had been there just a short
while ago and that the victim outside was the brother of Alex’s friend.

Chase and Hunter fell in to perform a discreet cleanup, while Tegan and Brock walked with Kade back inside.

“This is Alex,” he said, making quick introductions to the two warriors. It was difficult not to touch her as he explained what had occurred before they arrived, just to reassure himself that she was whole and unharmed.

“Are you and your friend all right?” Tegan asked, the Gen One’s voice deep with respect despite the fact that he’d come there to assess a situation that had gone from mildly screwed up to fucked up beyond all recognition.

“I’m okay,” Alex replied. “But I’m worried about Jenna. I didn’t see anything wrong with her, but she doesn’t seem quite right to me, either.”

Tegan glanced at Brock, but the big warrior was already heading over to have a look at the woman across the room.

“What’s he going to do to her?” Alex asked, worry creasing her brow.

“It’s all right,” Kade said. “If something is wrong, he can help her.”

Brock smoothed his hands over Jenna’s back, then gently swept aside her hair and placed his dark fingers against the wan paleness of her cheek. “She’s been tranced,” he said. “She’s coming out of it, though. Gonna be fine.”

Chase and Hunter strode into the cabin and looked to Tegan. “The yard is cleared. The two of us can start searching the area for the Ancient’s trail.”

Tegan pursed his lips, blew out a sharp sigh. “He’s miles away from here by now. A needle in a haystack. We’ll never catch him in this wilderness. It’s not like we can track the son of a bitch across the whole damn interior in this blizzard.”

Kade felt Alex’s gaze light on him. “What about Luna? If you used your talent with her, would she be able to help us track the Ancient?”

Tegan eyed the wolf dog that had come over to nuzzle Kade’s hand. “It might be our best shot, man.”

“Yeah, I can do it,” he said, “but what about the rest of you? Are we all going to run with her, fully loaded with weapons in case we catch up to the bastard?”

“I can fly you,” Alex suggested.

“No way.” Kade shook his head. “No fucking way. I’m not going to put you any farther into this whole thing than I already have. That’s a risk I’m not willing to take.”

“I want to do it. I’m not going to leave Luna, and I can carry all of you in my plane while she tracks the Ancient on the ground.”

“It’s dark, Alex,” he bit off harshly. “And it’s snowing like a bitch.”

“I’m not seeing your point,” she countered. “And the longer we stand here arguing about this, the farther that creature can run. That’s a risk that
I’m
not willing to take.”

Tegan leveled a questioning look on Kade. “She’s right. You know she is.”

Kade slanted his gaze to Alex, seeing in her eyes all of the courage and determination that had made him fall in love with her in the first place. The fact was, the Order needed her right now. He was proud of Alex and petrified at the same time. But he exhaled a low curse and said, “Yeah. Okay, let’s do this.”

“What about the human?” Chase asked, gesturing toward Jenna. “We’d better scrub her before she sees anything more than she already has.”

When the ex–Enforcement Agent started to walk
toward her, Brock wheeled his head around, fangs gleaming behind his lips. “Back off, Harvard. You don’t touch her. Got it?”

Chase paused at once. He gave a negligent shrug and withdrew as Brock turned his attention back to the human female.

As the tension in the cabin subsided, Alex kneeled down beside Luna and wrapped the wolf dog in a loving hug, whispering something to her before she looked up at Kade. “All right, she’s in your hands. Promise me you’ll be careful with her.”

“I promise,” he said, meaning it completely.

As Alex moved away, Kade took Luna’s chin in his palm and met her intelligent gaze. He established his connection with the canine’s mind, then gave her the silent command to show him where the Ancient fled.

Alex had her arms crossed over her chest, one hand pressed to her mouth, as Luna took off running from the cabin and into the swirling snowstorm outside.

CHAPTER
Twenty-eight

N
ot long afterward, Alex was flying them over the dark wilderness landscape, with Kade in the copilot’s seat and three of his Breed brethren huddled in the cargo area behind them. Kade called out directions to her, navigating their course through his mental link to Luna on the ground.

Alex couldn’t see her. They were too far up, the snow too thick in the darkness, for her to make out anything much farther than the nose of the plane. These were dangerous conditions to fly in—potentially deadly—but Alex knew this terrain intimately. She followed Kade’s directions, practically able to anticipate the path Luna was tracking
along the Koyukuk, the most logical route the Ancient would have taken into the bush.

“Keep following the river,” Kade told her. “The trail is getting fresher now. We’re gaining on him.”

Alex nodded, focusing on her flying and the heavy gusts that blew down off the Brooks Range as they pushed farther north along the frozen river below. Although she could barely see the icy ribbon of water, she knew that they were coming up on a spot where the fleeing Ancient would have been forced to make a choice: stay low to the ground and trust the thickening woodlands to conceal him from pursuit, or veer to the west and take his flight to higher terrain, up into the craggy ridges of the mountains. Neither option would provide the best landing conditions, but in this weather, there was little more treacherous than attempting a short landing on high, potentially unstable rock.

“The trail is turning,” Kade announced. “We need to bank left.”

“Okay,” Alex replied, sending up a silent prayer as she changed course away from the river and headed toward the mountain range instead. “Hang on, everyone. There are going to be some bumps as we turn into the headwinds.”

“How you doing up there?” Tegan asked from behind her. “You sure you can handle this?”

“Piece of cake,” she said—not quite the truth—and felt Kade’s hand slide over to brush hers.

It felt good, the contact of his touch. Even though she still carried the chilling vision of what she’d seen in the woods, her stomach still coiled with ice from that experience and the even greater terror of having seen the Ancient
at Jenna’s cabin, Alex could not deny her feelings for Kade. He was the one person who knew her, better than any other now. Despite everything that had occurred between them and around them, her heart could not completely seal itself off from the comfort that only he could give her.

Some of the betrayal and anger she’d had for Kade and the rest of his kind had melted when she’d seen how he and his friends from the Order had handled the awful situation at the cabin. Kade had been tender and loving with Alex, respectful and considerate with Jenna. The other warriors had been, too. Especially the one called Brock, who had stayed behind to tend to Jenna.

It was difficult to reconcile a race of beings that could show so much humanity yet belong to the same ruthless, otherworldly line as the creature that had killed Zach and so many others in recent days. Or the blood-addicted Rogues who’d killed her mom and little brother. Or the twin Kade had been too ashamed to admit he had until Alex had seen Seth’s savagery for herself.

But Kade and the other Breed males he’d introduced her to were different. They were good men, regardless of the genes that made them something other—something more—than men.

They had honor.

Kade did, too. And now, as she flew him and his brethren of the Order through a patch of gusty air, toward the jagged crag of the mountain and an imminent battle with a creature not of this world, she only hoped that she and Kade would have the chance to sort out the tangled mess of what they meant to each other. She could only pray there would be some kind of future waiting for
them on the other side of the danger that lay ahead right now.

“Luna’s tracking the Ancient’s scent up the base of the mountain,” Kade said from beside her. “Ah, shit … it’s rough rock and it’s damned steep. Son of a bitch is escaping up the ridge. We’re gonna lose him on the mountain.”

“Just tell me where Luna’s heading,” Alex said. “I’ll worry about getting us there.”

She flew the plane along the dark ridge, following Kade’s directions, straining to see through the windscreen as the fine flakes of snow danced and rolled in her line of vision.

“Damn it,” he snarled a moment later. “The scent is gone. It just went cold. Luna’s circling around on the ledge below us, but she can’t pick up the Ancient’s scent anymore.”

“Because he leapt from that point,” Hunter remarked evenly. “The Ancient is now either above the animal, or below her.”

“We’re close enough to pursue him on foot,” Tegan said. “The Ancient can’t get far now without us right on his ass. But we need to set this plane down now.”

“Okay, here we go,” Alex said, and peered through her window, seeing limited options for anything more than the shortest of short landings.

She aimed the little plane toward a small patch of pristine snow on the rocky tableau, and began the descent.

Kade had seen Alex in action behind the controls of her plane before, but it didn’t diminish his awe for her as she brought the small plane down onto a narrow, snowy ledge
on the mountain. It wasn’t until they had landed that Kade noticed she’d successfully touched them down into a gentle glide that left barely a few feet of room for error on any side.

None of the warriors uttered a word as the single-engine growled into idle and the plane came to a delicate rest on the ridge.

Not even Hunter, who sat stock-straight in the cargo hold, his face imperturbably calm, even though his knuckles looked a bit white for their grip on the netting above his head.

Finally, Chase muttered a ripe curse.

Tegan chuckled low under his breath. “Hell of a landing, Alex.”

“Hell of a woman,” Kade said, looking across the cockpit at her and taking a personal pride in her that he probably had no right to feel. But her gaze was soft on him, although brief, and it gave him a surge of hope that maybe he hadn’t lost her completely.

Maybe there was a chance for them yet.

As the group climbed out of the plane and suited up with weapons and ammunition, Luna came bounding up the sloping incline and straight into Alex’s open arms. For a moment, Kade selfishly held onto his telepathic connection to the wolf dog, letting himself savor the warmth of Alex’s love for the animal.

When he broke the link, Tegan was standing next to him, armed for war. “We’re going to split up: Hunter will take the incline, Chase and I will cover the ground below,”

Kade gave him a grim nod. “Where do you want me?”

Tegan glanced over at Alex, who was talking in low, praising tones to Luna. “Stay here and make sure your female is
safe. That’s more important than anything else you can do, yeah?”

Kade considered the comment, feeling duty spurring him to say that the mission was the most important thing right now. That nothing mattered more than his pledge to the Order, his brethren, and their goals. Part of him believed that. Part of him knew without the shadow of a doubt that he would give his life for any one of the warriors, just as they would lay down their lives for him. They were family, as tight as any bond he’d ever known.

But Alex was something even more.

She owned his heart now. He wouldn’t even attempt to deny that. And he knew that when Tegan spoke about her, the mated Gen One warrior drew from a point of personal experience, as well.

“Yeah,” Kade admitted to him. “Without Alex … ah, Christ. Without her, nothing else would matter.”

Tegan nodded, mouth pressed in a thin line. “Maybe you ought to make sure she knows that.”

He cuffed Kade on the shoulder, then gestured to the other warriors to fall in and begin the next leg of their pursuit. When Hunter had vaulted up to the next ledge and Tegan and Chase had dropped to the one below, Kade strode over to Alex.

“I guess the three of us make a pretty good team,” he said, reaching out to scratch behind Luna’s ears only because it distracted his hands from reaching for Alex instead.

She wrapped her arms around herself. “You’re not going with the others?”

“Tegan wanted me to stay behind and look after you. He knows how much you mean to me, and he knows it would kill me if anything happened to you.”

A small line formed between her brows as she looked at him. For the longest time, there was only silence between them. The quiet of falling snow and the faint cry of a wolf baying low in the distance.

When Alex finally spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper. “I wanted to hate you. When I saw you in the woods, covered in blood—”