He looked at her for a long moment, then conceded with a vague nod and left her alone in his room while he stepped out and summoned his rebel troops for a strategy meeting.
It was after midnight and no one had heard from Mira. Word out of D.C. was Lucan was pissed over her neglect to check in from her assignment, but when Nathan heard she was out of contact all day, he'd a cold suspicion that something was terribly wrong. Which was why he had assembled his team that same night and headed to rural western Massachusetts, where Jeremy Ackmeyer lived.
What they'd found at the reclusive scientist's home was a whole lot of bad news and trouble.
The moonlit lawn was scarred with deep tire gouges and shattered headlight glass. Burned rubber had left the paved driveway streaked with black. Half a dozen spent casings littered the ground from what Nathan could only guess was Mira's Order-issued 9-mm.
No sign of her or her vehicle.
No sign of Jeremy Ackmeyer.
"Nothing's tossed inside, but we do have signs of a struggle," Elijah drawled. His face was grave in the darkness as he and Jax rounded the front of the house and approached Nathan near the open garage bay. "Whoever they were, these guys knew exactly what they came for, and they wasted no time getting the hell out once they had it."
"And now they have Mira." Nathan's voice betrayed none of the fury that seethed inside him at the thought of one of the Order's own having fallen into apparent enemy hands. That it was Mira, a female as close to him as any family could be, made his blood run cold and quick in veins.
"Hey, Captain," Rafe called to him grimly from across the side lawn, where the worst of the skirmish seemed to have taken place. "You'd better have a look at this."
Nathan walked over, his nostrils filling with the chemical stench of leaked fuel and vehicle fluids. Another scent drifted on the warm night air too - faint and fading, the lily-sweet perfume of Mira's blood.
Small droplets stained the grass and torn-up ground. Nathan hunkered down on the fouled lawn, brushed his fingers over the drying splatters of the Breedmate warrior's blood at his feet. Mira had been injured, but he would bet all he was that she hadn't gone down without a fight.
"She must've dropped this in the scuffle," Rafe said, holding a slender, hammered-metal object out to Nathan.
He didn't have to look to know what it was.
One of Mira's treasured blades.
Nathan took the hand-tooled dagger from Rafe's grasp. The carved hilt was rough against his fingertips. He turned it over in his palm, reading the words that graced each side of the intricately crafted weapon: Faith. Courage.
He knew Mira had no shortage of the latter. As for the other, he was certainly no fair judge of that. Nathan operated on logic and strength, skills he'd mastered as a child being reared in a madman's assassin ranks. Faith was as elusive to him as magic. In his worldview, it simply did not exist.
But he knew hope. And through his cool logic, he knew a colder fury. He felt it build inside him as he slid Mira's beloved dagger into his weapons belt.
She would survive; he knew that. She would fight the bastards who took her today - whoever they were, whatever their reasons - and her courage would keep her alive, long enough for the Order to reach her.
And when they did, Nathan would see to it that whoever took her suffered.
Before he made them pay for this day with their miserable lives.
Chapter Eight
KELLAN PACED THE MAIN CHAMBER OF THE REBEL BUNKER, feeling a twitch in his bones that told him dawn was rising outside the thick concrete walls. His crew dispersed hours ago, gone about their daily duties of replenishing the camp's food stores, refueling vehicles, tending to weaponry and general maintenance of the base's solar power panels and grounds.
Morning for their Breed commander usually meant a couple of hours of undisturbed shut-eye, but Kellan would get no sleep today. Not with Mira stowed away in his quarters.
His blood was still running hot from his confrontation with her . . . to say nothing of the kiss that had been unplanned but unstoppable. A kiss his libido was all too eager to repeat. And Kellan knew that if he let himself get that close to her again - if he let himself touch her, even in some small way - it would be only a matter of time before he found a way to get her naked beneath him.
Bad, bad idea.
But damn, did the thought of it make everything male inside him stand at full attention.
He hadn't returned to his room all night. No, he'd conveniently called rank and sent Candice in his place. She'd looked in on Mira a few times during the evening, made sure she had water and something to eat, took her to the bunker latrine the humans shared so she could use the toilet and shower. Candice had reported back that Mira seemed cooperative enough, but her eyes never stopped taking stock of her surroundings, studying every corner of the place as Candice led her through the fortress at gunpoint.
God, it killed him to have to treat Mira like this, to drag her into the crossfire of a battle he'd never wanted to fight. One he dreaded he might not survive in the end, let alone win. And now the woman who'd once mattered to him more than anything was sitting behind the locked door of his chamber, hating him. Wishing him dead for good this time.
As far as fucked-up scenarios went, he couldn't imagine how things could possibly get any worse.
There was a weak part of him that wanted nothing more than to go to her now and ask her forgiveness. Try to make her understand that this was not what he wanted. It was, in fact, the very thing he'd wanted to avoid. All these years, all this time, of distancing himself from everyone who'd ever cared about him, everyone he'd ever loved.