“I know he did it to save me. He let them believe I was a Breedmate, not Breed. He tried to make them think I worked in the club, instead of revealing who I really am.”
Beside her on the sofa, her mother blew out a shaky sigh and hugged Carys close. “My God . . . Knowing what we do about Fineas Riordan, do you realize how close you came to falling into Opus Nostrum’s hands tonight? I don’t even want to consider what they would do to a family member of the Order.”
Carys didn’t really want to think about that either, but what would they do to Rune?
“I never saw fear in his eyes until tonight. He knew those men and what they were capable of. They knew him too—apparently, they know more about him than I do.”
“You’re saying he’s one of them,” Aric said, not a question. “Rune is one of Riordan’s thugs.”
She gave a weak nod. “I think he might’ve been at one time, yes.”
She didn’t want to admit it, but after tonight it was hard to deny that it was possible. The realization was still cold inside her. It was hard to process the fact that some of the secrets Rune had kept from her had materialized as a pack of terrifying thugs bearing the mark of the very criminal the Order was trying to destroy.
“They knew him,” she murmured again. “They said his name was Aedan. He didn’t deny it.”
Nova went suddenly still, almost wooden, where she stood next to Jordana. Her face lost its color and her mouth fell slack. “Aedan?”
“What is it?” Jordana asked her. “Nova, what’s wrong?”
“Aedan is my brother’s name. Aedan Riordan.”
Carys’s stomach bottomed out at the airless revelation. “Oh, my God. He told me there was a little girl . . . that he had a sister. But he said her name was—”
“Kitty,” Nova said. “That’s what he called me. Not Catriona. Kitty.”
Gasps traveled the room. Aric ground out a harsh curse.
As for Carys, she could only close her eyes as the reality sank in.
Rune wasn’t merely one of Riordan’s men.
He was his son.
~ ~ ~
“Not counting the debris and the dead scarab behind the bar, there’s no lingering imprint of violence here,” Mathias said from beside Chase in the vacant arena area of La Notte. “My guess is that they took Rune out of here without a struggle.”
“What about duress?” Chase knew his old friend’s unique extrasensory ability would be able to pick up on psychic echoes of aggression the way other people would notice a bruise on flesh.
Mathias shook his head. “He went willingly from what I can tell.”
“Shit.” About the only thing worse than Carys’s all-too-close brush with some of Fineas Riordan’s men was the possibility that her lover was actually familiar with the son of a bitch too. Familiar enough that he’d walked out of this club with Riordan’s thugs on his own volition.
o;And now?” Jenna asked. “Haven’t you ever wanted to find a mate?”
He shrugged. “Life is a feast to be sampled and savored. Why would I want to restrict myself to a single course forever?”
Brock pulled Jenna a bit closer to him now. “Apparently, you haven’t met the right woman yet.”
“Perhaps not,” he agreed. But his thoughts spiraled back to a moment in time when he had known someone special. Someone who’d made him forget all other women during the handful of days they’d had together. “There was one woman, years ago. A mortal, so no matter how I felt about her, our time together would’ve been short. But she was also married to another man. We spent a couple of weeks together one summer in Greece, before she returned home to America. Home to him.”
Jenna had gone utterly silent. She was staring at him, her brows knit in a pensive frown. “You met her in Greece?”
Zael nodded. “One of the Cyclades islands . . .”
“They met in Mykonos.”
The feminine voice that said the word came from the open doorway behind him. Zael swiveled his head and found a lovely, flame-haired young woman—a Breedmate—standing there. At her side was a large Breed warrior with shaggy dark hair and a web of scars that marred the left side of his face.