Lara Adrian's Midnight Breed 8-Book Bundle (68 page)

“Dante, you’re awake.” She brightened at once, coming up nearer to him and caressing his face and hair. “I’ve been so worried. How do you feel?”

He thought he should feel a hell of a lot worse than he did. But he was well enough to pull Tess into his arms. Strong enough to bring her onto his lap on the bed, where he kissed her soundly.

He was alive enough to know that what he needed more than anything right now was to feel her nude body pressed against his.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured against her lips. “Tess, I am sorry for everything I’ve put you through—”

“Shh, we’ll have time for that later. We can sort everything out later. Right now you need to rest.”

“No,” he said, too glad to be awake—to be with her—to think about wasting any more time on sleep. “What I need to tell you can’t wait. I saw something terrible today. I saw what it would be like to lose you. That’s someplace I never want to go again. I need to know that you’re protected, that you are safe—”

“I’m right here. You saved me, Dante.”

He stroked the velvety skin of her cheek, so grateful that he could. “You’re the one who saved me, Tess.”

He wasn’t talking about his injuries from the UV exposure, which she had healed with her amazing gift of touch. He wasn’t talking about the first night he’d found her either, when her blood had fortified him when he was at his weakest. Tess had saved him in so many ways beyond any of that. This female owned him, heart and soul, and he wanted her to know that now.

“Everything makes sense when I’m with you, Tess. My life makes sense, after so many years of running scared in the dark. You are the light, the reason I live. I’m bonded to you deep, woman. For me, there will never be another.”

“We’re bonded by blood now,” she said, but her faint smile wobbled on her lips. She glanced down, frowning. “What if you hadn’t bitten me that night at my clinic? Without the blood bond, would you still…?”

“Love you?” he finished for her, lifting her chin so that she could see the truth of it in his eyes. “It’s always been you, Tess. I just didn’t know it until that night. I had been searching for you my whole life, connected to you by the vision of what happened today.”

He smoothed her mussed hair, letting one of her honey-brown waves curl around his fingers. “You know, my mother swore by destiny. She believed in it, even though she knew her own destiny held bitter pain and loss. I never wanted to accept that belief for myself, that anything was preordained. I thought I was smarter than that, above it. But it was destiny that brought us together, Tess. I can’t deny that now. God, Tess…have you any idea how long I’ve waited for you?”

“Oh, Dante,” she whispered, blinking away a stray tear. “I wasn’t prepared for any of this. I’m so afraid….”

He gathered her close, sick for everything she’d been forced to endure because of him. He knew the trauma of what happened today would stay with her for a long time. So much death and destruction. He never wanted her to feel that kind of pain again. “I need to know that you are somewhere you’ll always be safe, Tess. Where I can protect you best. There are places that we can go, safe houses within the Breed. I’ve already talked to Chase about securing a place for us in one of the area Darkhavens.”

“No.” His heart sank as she carefully extricated herself from his embrace and sat on her knees beside him on the bed. She shook her head slowly. “Dante, no…”

God help him, but he couldn’t speak. He waited in agonizing silence, knowing that he fully deserved her rejection. He deserved her contempt for so many reasons, yet he’d felt certain she cared for him. He prayed she might, even just a little bit.

“Tess, if you say you don’t love me—”

“I do love you,” she said at last. “I love you with all my heart.”

“Then what is it?”

She looked at him searchingly, her aqua eyes moist but resolved. “I’m tired of running. I’m tired of hiding. You’ve opened my eyes to a world I never dreamed could exist. Your world, Dante.”

He smiled at the beauty sitting next to him. “My world is you.”

“And it’s all of this too. This place, these people. The incredible legacy that you’re a part of. Your world is dark and dangerous, Dante, but it’s also extraordinary—like you. Like life. Don’t ask me to run away from that. I want to be with you, but if I’m going to live in your world, then I want to do it here, where you belong. Where your family is.”

“My family?”

She nodded. “The other warriors here and their mates. They love you. I saw that today. Maybe in time they might love me too.”

“Tess.” Dante pulled her close, embracing her with a full heart and a gratitude that soared into his chest like it was borne on wings. “You would want to be with me here, like this, as the mate of a warrior?”

“As the mate of
my
warrior,” she corrected, smiling at him with love shining brightly in her eyes. “I can’t have it any other way.”

Dante swallowed on a throat gone dry. He didn’t deserve her. After all they’d been through, after all his ceaseless running, his heart had finally found its home. With Tess. With his beloved.

“What do you think?” she asked him. “Can you live with that?”

“Eternally,” Dante vowed, then pulled her back down onto the bed with him and sealed their pact with a passionate, endless kiss.

Read on for a preview of
Lara Adrian’s next novel
in her pulse-pounding
Midnight Breed
series…

Midnight Awakening

by

Lara Adrian

On Sale

December 2007

CHAPTER One

T
he scent of blood carried on the thin, wintry breeze. It was faint, fresh, a coppery tickle in the nostrils of the vampire warrior who leaped soundlessly from the roof of one dusk-shadowed building to another. Snowflakes fell around him like floating white ash, blanketing the city that spread out beneath him some ten stories down.

Tegan crouched at the ledge and surveyed the tangle of bustling streets and alleyways. As one of the Order—a small cadre of Breed vampires engaged in war against their savage brethren, the Rogues—Tegan’s primary nightly objective was dealing death to his enemies. But down to his marrow, he was Breed, and there were none among his kind who could ignore the call of newly spilled human blood.

He curled back his lips and dragged the cold air in through his teeth. His gums tingled, an ache blooming where his canines began to stretch into fangs. His vision sharpened beyond its preternatural acuity, pupils narrowing into thin vertical slits in the center of his green eyes. The urge to hunt—to feed—rose up in him swiftly, an automatic response that even he, with his disciplined, iron self-control, was powerless to suppress.

All the worse for him, being of the first generation of vampires spawned on Earth. Gen One appetites—physical, carnal, and otherwise—burned the strongest.

Tegan crept along the edge of the building, then leaped down onto the roof of another, his eyes rooted on the movement of people below, searching for a weak member in the herd. But he didn’t comb the crowds merely for his own needs: find a human with an open flesh wound, and he knew for a fact that any Rogues within a mile radius would not be far behind.

Except now that he was zeroing in on the source of the blood scent, he realized that what he smelled had an increasingly stale edge to it. It was spilled blood, not fresh at all, but several minutes old.

Following the metallic odor of it, Tegan’s gaze lit on a short, slight figure in a long, hooded parka who was hurrying up the main thoroughfare, past the train station. There was an anxious clip to the person’s gait, an obvious desire not to be noticed in the low tilt of the head as it cut away from a crowd of pedestrians and headed for an empty side street.

“What the hell have you been up to?” Tegan murmured under his breath.

Male or female, he couldn’t be sure under all that dark, quilted down. Either way, the human was about to get some very unwanted company.

Tegan saw the Rogue an instant before it came out of hiding near a Dumpster several yards ahead of the human. He couldn’t hear the words being said, but he could tell by the vampire’s swagger and glowing amber eyes that it was taunting the person—just having a little fun before it made its move. Two more Rogues came around the corner from behind now, hemming the human in.

“Damn it,” Tegan growled, rubbing a hand over his jaw.

He’d never had much use for the shiny brand of honor that demanded his kind act as unsung saviors to the humans who inhabited the planet with them. Even half-human himself, as was all of the Breed, Tegan had long ago given up needing to be the hero. He’d seen too much bloodshed, too much senseless slaughter and tragic waste from both sides. His purpose now and for the past five hundred years—since the brutal torture and death of the only woman he’d ever loved—was simple enough. Take out as many Rogues as possible, or die trying.

But there was an ancient part of him that still bristled at the thought of grossly unfair odds, like the situation taking place on the street below.

The human in the blood-stained parka was being surrounded. Like sharks moving in for the kill, the Rogues started closing ranks. The hooded head came up suddenly, pivoted around to note the threat closing in from behind. Too late, though. No human stood a chance against one Bloodlusting suckhead, let alone a pack of three. With a curse, Tegan advanced his position and jumped to a lower rooftop above the alleyway…just as the Rogue in front of the human lunged into action.

Tegan heard a sharp intake of breath—a female gasp of terror—as the Rogue grabbed for its prey. It seized the front of the woman’s hood and threw her down on the snow-covered pavement, letting loose a howl of savage amusement as she took the hard fall.

“Jesus Christ,” Tegan hissed, already drawing a large blade from the sheath at his hip.

With a running leap and dropped down from the ledge of the building, landing smoothly on the ground in a low crouch. The two Rogues nearest him split up, one taking cover while the other shouted that they were under attack. Tegan silenced the warning in mid-sentence, slicing his length of titanium-edged steel across the suckhead’s throat.

A few yards ahead of him in the alleyway, the female was on her stomach, scrabbling to get away from her assailant. She had a weapon too, Tegan was surprised to see, but the Rogue noticed it at the same time and kicked it out of her hand. The Rogue planted his boot on the center of her back, pinning her to the ground with his heel jammed hard into her spine.

Tegan was on him at once. He threw the Rogue off the woman, driving the snarling vampire into the side of the brick building and holding it there with his forearm wedged under the suckhead’s chin.

“Get out of here!” he shouted to the human as she started to drag herself up off the ground. “Run!”

She flung a frightened look over her shoulder—the first glimpse Tegan got of her face. His gaze locked on to a pair of huge, pale lavender eyes. The woman stared at him from over the top of a dark knit scarf that could hardly disguise the delicate beauty beneath it.

Holy shit. He knew her.

And she wasn’t just a random human female; she was a Breedmate. A young widow from one of the vampire nation’s Darkhaven sanctuaries in the city. Tegan didn’t know her well. He hadn’t seen her for several months, not since the night he’d taken her home from the Order’s compound after she’d learned her only son had gone Rogue.

It was the last he had seen of her, but it hadn’t been the last time he’d thought about her.

Elise.

What the hell was she doing here?

Tegan’s flat stare held Elise transfixed for a moment that seemed to stretch out endlessly. Battle rage had fully transformed his face to that of his true nature—a Breed vampire, with gleaming fangs and fierce eyes that were no longer their usual gem-green, but swamped with bright, glowing amber that burned like twin flames in his skull.

“Run!” he shouted, a deep, otherworldly growl. “Get out of here—now!”

That brief inattention cost him. The Rogue he had pinned to the bricks in front of him twisted its big head, jaws wide, huge fangs dripping saliva. It bit down hard on Tegan’s forearm, ripping into the warrior’s muscled flesh. Without a sound of pain or anger, Tegan brought his other hand up and buried a blade in the Rogue’s neck. It dropped, lifeless, its corpse sizzling from the titanium that poisoned its corrupt bloodstream.

Tegan whirled around, his breath sawing out from between his lips, clouding in the chill air. “Goddamn it, woman—go!” he roared, just as the remaining Rogue vaulted into a further attack on him.

Elise jolted into action. She sped out of the alleyway and onto another street, running as fast as her legs would carry her. The small apartment she rented wasn’t far, just a few long blocks from the train station, but it seemed like miles. She was exhausted from her own ordeal that day, and shaking from the violence she’d just witnessed in the alley.

And she was worried for Tegan, even though she was certain he didn’t need her concern. He was a member of the Order, probably the most lethal of them all, based on what she’d seen of him when they’d met for the first—and last—time a few months ago. She’d never encountered such cold apathy as she had in Tegan. He was a killing machine, according to all who knew his name, and Elise didn’t doubt it for a second. And now that she’d been discovered in the city, she could only hope that the warrior would take no interest in what she was doing. She couldn’t allow herself to be pushed back into the Darkhavens, not even by a male as fearsome as Tegan.

Elise ran the last block to her apartment and raced up the concrete steps. The main door used to be keyed access, but someone broke the lock five weeks ago and the building super hadn’t gotten around to fixing it yet. Elise pushed the door open and dashed down the first floor hallway to her unit. She unlocked the deadbolt and slipped inside, immediately flipping on all the lights.

The stereo and television went on next—neither tuned to anything in particular, but both playing loudly. No longer needing the MP3 player she wore on her hunt that day, Elise pulled it off and set it down on the chipped yellow kitchen counter, along with the dead Minion’s cell phone. She ditched her ruined parka on the floor next to her treadmill, her stomach turning as the bare bulb hanging from the combination dining-living room ceiling washed over the dark red stains from the Minion’s blood. It was on her hands too; her fingers were sticky with gore.

And her head was still pounding, the usual vicious migraine that came in the wake of any prolonged period of using her skill. It wasn’t as bad as it would be soon. She still had time to clean up and try to get herself to bed before the worst of it hit her.

Elise dragged herself into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Her fingers were trembling as she unfastened the empty leather knife sheath from her thigh and placed it on the sink. She’d lost the titanium blade in the snow when the Rogue kicked it out of her grasp, but she had others. A lot of the money she’d left the Darkhavens with had gone into weapons and training equipment—things she had never wanted to know anything about but now considered necessities. How drastically her life had changed in just four months. She could never go back to what she was.

The person she had been all the time she’d lived under the protection of the Breed was gone now, dead, like her beloved mate and her son. The pain of those losses had been a furnace that devoured her old life, reduced it to cinder. She was what was left—the phoenix that rose out of the ash. Elise glanced up into the fogging mirror and met her own haunted gaze in the glass. Blood smeared her cheek and chin, grime smudged her brow, all of it like war paint. There was a feral glint in the weary eyes staring back at her.

God, she was tired…so tired. But so long as she could stand, she could fight. So long as her heart still ached for vengeance, she would use the psychic gift that had for so long been her greatest weakness. She would endure any hardship, face any risk. Whatever it took to have justice.

Tegan wiped his bloodied blade on the dead Rogue’s jacket and idly observed the swift disintegration of the last body in the alley. He blew out a curse, his senses still quivering with the heat of combat. Battle-sharpened eyes lit on the knife Elise had lost in her struggle. Tegan walked over and retrieved the weapon, which was not some dainty dagger a lady might carry for protection but a serious-looking bit of hardware. It was seven inches long, serrated near the upward jut of the tip, and unless he missed his guess, the metal was not your basic carbide steel but Rogue-eating titanium.

Which only begged the question again: What the hell was the Darkhaven female doing out on the streets alone, covered in blood, and toting warrior-grade weapons on her person?

Tegan lifted his head and sniffed at the air, searching for her scent. It didn’t take long to find it. His senses were always sharp, predatorily acute; combat lit them up like Roman candles. He pulled the heather-and-roses scent of the Breedmate into his lungs, and let it guide him deeper into the city.

The scent trailed off at a shit-hole apartment building in one of the seedier sections of the low-rent area of town. Not at all the kind of place he’d expect to find a genteel Darkhaven-raised female like Elise. But she was inside the graffiti-tagged, brick-and-concrete eyesore, he was certain of that.

He stalked up the steps and scowled at the feeble door with its broken lock. Inside the vestibule a battered wooden staircase rose to the left, but Elise’s scent was coming from the door at the end of the first-floor hall. Tegan crept past another apartment door on his right, the thump of music vibrating the floor and walls. He could hear a television too, a barrage of background noise that seemed to swell as he neared Elise’s place. He rapped on the door and waited.

No response.

He knocked again, dropping his knuckles hard on the scarred metal. Nothing. Not that she could hear anything inside the place with all the racket going on in there.

Maybe he shouldn’t be there, shouldn’t get involved in whatever it was that brought the female to this place in her life. Tegan knew she’d had a rough time since the death of her son. Already widowed some five years, Elise had been devastated when her only child went missing and was later found to have gone Rogue. The Order had gotten word that Camden was dead, killed by Elise’s brother-in-law, Sterling Chase, when the kid showed up at the Darkhaven in full-on Bloodlust. The report stated that Camden had been about to attack Elise when Chase gunned him down with titanium rounds—right in front of her.

God only knew what witnessing her son’s death might have done to Elise. Not his concern, though. Yeah, not his fucking problem at all. So why was he standing in this rank tenement house with his dick in his hand, waiting for her to come around and let him in?

Tegan eyed the array of locks on the apartment door. At least these were in working order and she’d had the good sense to set them once she got inside. But for a Breed vampire of Tegan’s power and lineage, tripping the locks with his mind took all of two seconds.

He slipped inside and closed the door behind him. The decibel level in the small studio apartment was enough to make his head shatter. He glanced around the place with narrowed eyes, taking in the odd decor. The only furniture was a futon and a bookcase, which housed a quality stereo system and a small flat-panel television—both on, and blaring.