Maybe Tayla was having some luck. He didn’t know the Guardian well, but he did know she was tough, and she hadn’t had an easy life. It was possible that she could relate to Sin on a female level no one else could.

The brothers were all watching him speculatively, but he ignored them. “Those bastards we killed outside the house, they were all assassins?”

Lore nodded. “I checked their bonds. The ones who hadn’t disintegrated before I got to them, anyway. Three worked for two different masters, but the other four belonged to Sin.” “Son of a bitch.” He paused. “Did you see a dude on a stallion?”

The brothers all shook their heads. “Why?” Lore asked.

“I saw what looked like a knight on a horse when my house was firebombed. He barely missed Sin with an arrow, and then when we were under attack at the warg settlement, he saved us. I’m confused as hell. Do you know of any assassins who work from horseback?”

Lore folded his arms over his chest, which was criss-crossed by a loaded weapons harness. Not even Wraith was that well armed. Of course, Wraith didn’t need to be. “No, and that would be a stupid way to do business for an assassin. Not very subtle.”

“We need to get Sin out of here,” Con said. “It’s only a matter of time until assassins get past Rivesta’s barrier.”

Eidolon nodded. “We’ll get her to the hospital. She’ll be safe there.” He turned to Wraith. “See if you can find Luc. If he’s cool with it, we can run the infection experiment on him.” “He’s not going to be cool with it,” Wraith said. “But I’ll see what I can do.” No, Con did not see Luc volunteering. The guy was truly an all-for-one-and-one-for-me type, and risking his life for complete strangers wasn’t in him. And though Con might not say it to Luc’s face, he really didn’t want the warg to volunteer. Luc had grown on him. Like a fungus, maybe, but still… he’d grown.

“How’s the virus?” Eidolon asked Con. “In you. Is it under control?”

Jesus, how could he have forgotten to mention that earlier? “It’s gone. Since last night.”

“Then you won’t feed on Sin anymore, right?” Shade’s dark eyes fixed on Con, and somehow… Shade knew. He was well aware of the addiction issues. But how?

Con glanced between the other brothers, but as far as he could tell, they didn’t know, nor had they picked up on Shade’s underlying concern. “I don’t need her blood anymore,” he assured the demon. “Now, we’d better go.” Shade blocked the door. “Hold on, dhampire.” The shadows in the male’s eyes writhed madly, and Con knew what was up before Shade said it. “So you’re done with the feedings. But what else is going on with you and her?”

A knowing smile curved Wraith’s mouth. “Duh. He’s boning her.”

“How serious is it?” Lore asked, and no, this wasn’t embarrassing at all.

“There’s nothing going on.” He hoped he sounded more convincing to them than he sounded to himself, because there was something going on between them, no matter how much he tried to keep it from happening.

“Good,” Shade said. “You know I like you, man. But you have… issues. If you hurt her…” Shade didn’t need to finish his sentence, because the warning in the brothers’ eyes said it all. Con would die. Painfully.

Lore moved forward, and Con stiffened. “You’ve been taking care of her. Thank you. But you should know that if you’re looking for anything other than sex from her, you’re not going to get it.” For some bizarre reason, that struck a nerve. Sin was more than a hole to drill, and though Con got what Lore was trying to say, it still shifted his temper into overdrive as his own shame over how he’d once treated her heated his cheeks.

“Yeah?” he spat. “And why is that? Maybe it’s because you abandoned her when she needed you the most, and now she thinks everyone will do the same?”

The temperature in the room dropped to subarctic levels, and a range of emotions, from guilt to fury, crossed Lore’s face. “You don’t know what the f**k happened.” Con got right up in Lore’s grille, his anger mounting as everything Sin had told him roared back. Instinct made him want to defend her, avenge her, and prove that Lore was wrong about getting nothing but sex from her.

Even though Lore had to be right. “I know that people owned her, tortured her. I know she cradles her dagger like a stuffed animal when she sleeps because she doesn’t feel safe. I know you left her like a coward and then sat on your ass feeling sorry for yourself while she was fighting just to survive—”

Lore’s gloved fist slammed into Con’s jaw. Con lurched backward, caught himself, and returned fire with a jab to the gut and an uppercut to the chin. He ducked another of Lore’s punches, but took a boot in the chest hard enough to make him suck air.

“Stop it!” Sin rammed Lore into the wall and turned on Con, shoving him against the opposite wall. “What’s this about?”

“Just a little alpha posturing.” Lore shot Con a glare, and Con nearly went at him again. Sin narrowed her eyes at both of them, then settled on Con. “Just keep in mind that Lore is not a warg. Winning a fight does not give you special privileges.”

Con blinked and then grinned as the impish twitch of Sin’s mouth brought dawning realization— she remembered the battles followed by sex in the warg village.

Lore dabbed blood from his mouth with the back of his bare hand. “What the hell are you smiling about?” “Trust me, you don’t want to know.” Then, in front of everyone, he grabbed Sin and kissed her, not caring—actually, taking a perverse pleasure in the fact—that her brothers were tense as nocked arrows. “You,” he said against her lips, “are wicked.”

And he was so screwed.

Seventeen

“Go to hell, Valeriu. And take the Sigil with you.” Kynan slammed the satellite phone down so hard that a piece of plastic snapped off it and pinged off the stone wall of Shade’s Central American cave. Cursing, he checked to make sure the phone still worked. It did, but damn, he was pissed. Beyond pissed. And he hoped to hell Serena hadn’t heard him telling her father to bend over for Satan’s big stiffie.

But f**k if he was going to take orders from the R-XR again. Picking up the phone, he sank down on the leather couch that ran the length of the cave’s living room wall. He started to dial Tay’s cell phone number… and froze at the hair-raising rumble of a growl.

The women had heard the intruder before Kynan did. It wasn’t that he wasn’t alert; it was just that Serena was a vampire with uber-sharp senses, and Runa was a werewolf with ultra-sensitive hearing even when she was in human form.

Which she wasn’t right now. Runa, thanks to military experimentation immediately after she was bitten by a warg—Luc—had been altered. She still shifted into a raging beast on the three nights of the full moon, but she could also shift at will. The way she just had.

Her snarls echoed off the smooth rock walls of the cave. Kynan, drawing his Sig, darted to the kitchen, where Runa was standing on two strong, toffee-furred legs, teeth bared. Behind her, Serena, fangs bared, blocked the doorway to the bedroom, where Runa and Shade’s triplets, and Serena and Wraith’s son, were sleeping.

The narrow entryway filled as someone stepped inside. Kynan held his breath, letting his finger ease from the trigger guard to the trigger. He damn near sighed with relief when Runa’s brother and Kynan’s old Army buddy Arik stepped out of the shadows. Arik wore a standard-issue beige T-shirt with his cammie BDU pants, an M-9 Beretta at his hip, but his hands were empty, and when he held them up, Ky lowered the weapon.

“Take it easy.” Arik’s voice was the calm, soothing drawl of a police negotiator talking someone off a ledge. But Ky knew Arik well enough to recognize a rare note of stress. “I’m not here to take you in, Runa.”

Kynan angled his body so he could cover the cave entrance. “Are you alone?” “Of course I am,” Arik snapped. His muscled arms bunched up hard, as though he was prepared to end any further doubt with his fists. Because of the charm, Kynan couldn’t be injured—unless he wanted to be injured. He hadn’t had a decent challenge in months, and he almost hoped Arik would throw a punch just so Ky could work off some aggression.

For a long moment tension circulated in the cool air, and then Runa shifted back into her petite human form. Ky and Arik averted their gazes as Serena handed her a robe to replace the clothes that had been shredded by her shift. One of the babies started crying, and Serena disappeared back into the bedroom.

“I’m sorry, Arik,” Runa said, the rustle of cloth on skin mingling with her voice as she shrugged into the robe. “You startled us. And the R-XR does want me as a lab rat.” He had the grace to blush. “It’s not an issue now.”

“So, what, have I been given a pass? And you can look at me now.”

Arik’s mouth tightened into a grim line. “You haven’t been given a pass.”

Runa froze as she tugged her caramel-colored hair out of the back of the robe, and Ky’s pulse picked up. He didn’t want to believe that the man who used to be his friend had come to grab his own sister, but a lot of things he hadn’t wanted to believe had proved to be true over the last couple of years.

“Why are you here?” Kynan tapped the pistol against his thigh, drawing Arik’s gaze. “You’ve got five seconds to fill us in.”

Arik’s pause lasted four. “I refused to give up Runa’s location, and they threatened to lock me up until all of this is over. So I walked.”

“You’re AWOL?” Arik nodded, and Ky let out a low whistle. Absent without leave was a serious offense in the regular military. But from the R-XR? The paranormal unit played for keeps and without oversight. It could do anything it wanted to Arik, and no one would argue or even know.

The only thing that might save him was that the people who worked for the R-XR were specialists and worth their weight in gold. And Arik, an ex–Delta Force operative who could learn any demon language after hearing only a few words, was priceless.

Runa ran to Arik and folded him into her embrace. “You can stay here, Arik. For as long as you need to.” Arik cocked a dark eyebrow at Kynan. “And what does your bodyguard have to say about that?” “Brother,” Kynan drawled, “it ain’t me you need to worry about.”

“Shade will be fine,” Runa said, as she drew away, and Ky hoped she was right. Arik and Shade weren’t the best of friends; Arik still hadn’t forgiven Shade for his role in turning Runa into a werewolf, and Shade had a total distrust of the R-XR.

“Do I get to see my nephews?”

“They’re in the bedroom with Stewie.” Runa’s champagne-colored eyes lit on a rattle on the floor and then flicked back to her brother. “You haven’t met Wraith’s son, have you?” “Nope.”

“Okay, hold on a minute.” Runa went into the bedroom, leaving Kynan and Arik alone.

Ky gestured for Arik to follow him into the living room. Once there, Ky pivoted, putting himself in line to keep an eye on the doorway. “Tell me everything.”

Arik rubbed his hand over his dark, military-short high-and-tight. “Have you spoken with the other Elders recently?” “You could say that,” Kynan said.

“Did they tell you The Aegis is taking orders from the R-XR now?”

“Val mentioned something about that. But I don’t know why The Aegis is going to be the R-XR’s bitch. We didn’t get that far into the conversation.”

Arik glanced through the doorway at the bedroom Runa had disappeared into. “You know born wargs are now being affected by SF, right?” “Yeah. And there’s a danger it’ll jump species.”

“There’s no time left to find a cure.”

Kynan exhaled slowly, as if that would put off what he knew was going to be very bad news. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” Arik said gravely, “that the powers that be are done waiting. They’re mobilizing forces and joining up with The Aegis to go out on a search-and-destroy mission. If a cure for this disease isn’t found now, they intend to eradicate every werewolf on the planet.”

They had just gotten to the mountainside Harrowgate when Tay’s phone rang. She peeled away from the group to answer, and through the static and in-and-out reception, she could barely hear Kynan’s voice.

“Tay? Where are you?”

“Montana. Are Runa and the kids okay?”

“They’re fine. But The Aegis has been trying to contact you—” As if on cue, her phone beeped, and the caller ID identified her supervisor, the head of the New York State cells. “Yeah, Richard is on the other line—”

“Don’t answer!”

Jesus. Okay… Ky never got excited like that. “Ky, you’re making me nervous.” He was making everyone nervous—they’d gathered around, and Shade was about to grab the phone from her. “Look, I got a call from Val earlier. He said the R-XR and every military supernatural unit in the world is heading up an operation, and that The Aegis was going to be taking orders from them.” Tayla snorted. “Bullshit.”

“That’s what I said. Val told me to fall in line, and I told him to go to hell. Right after that, Arik showed up.”

She lowered her voice and turned away so Shade wouldn’t flip out. “At the cave?” “Yeah. He’s here because he refused to hand over Runa. Apparently, the R-XR and The Aegis are sending out extermination squads to kill all wargs, born and turned.” “Oh, shit.” Tayla paused, the implications of what Kynan had just told her flashing like a movie in her head. A horror movie. The worldwide slaughter would be off the scale. “We’ve got to stop them.”