Tempted by Midnight (Midnight Breed 12.5)

Melena couldn’t speak. She wasn’t even sure she was breathing as the weight of what she’d just heard settled on her.

She hadn’t known about Lazaro’s Breed gift. Now it made sense, of course. His ability to search for her for so long in the frozen pond all those years ago. The fact that he’d swum across nearly half of the Tyrrhenian Sea to save her tonight, impervious to the cold, unlike her.

He’d saved her twice, but had been unable to save the ones he loved. Including his blood-bonded Breedmate.

“He will not be pleased if he knew we told you,” Jehan warned grimly.

Sav gave a nod. “Probably want to stake both of us out in the sun. Or worse.” He glanced at Melena. “So, not a word, yeah?”

“Okay,” she murmured woodenly. But oh, God, her heart ached for Lazaro now.

“Enough about him,” Sav said, grinning as if he wanted to lighten the grave mood. “You asked about me, if I recall. So, to answer your question, yes. Most people who know me call me Savage.”

She took his bait, needing to put her sympathy for Lazaro on a higher shelf. He wouldn’t want it anyway. “Why do they call you that? You seem nice enough to me. Are you usually mean or something?”

“Or something,” he said, the glint in his eye and the playful, seductive hue of his aura providing all the correction she needed.

Jehan snorted. “He’s a legend in his own mind. Pay no attention to him.”

Sav barked a laugh. “Envy isn’t a good look for you, Highness.”

“And you may kiss my royal ass, peasant.”

Melena found herself smiling with them. She took in their banter and warm, welcoming faces, not realizing until then how much she needed to feel she was among friends.

She needed her family, which was now reduced to just one other person. Her Breed brother, Derek, had been living in Paris for the past year, bouncing between England and France on one business venture or another.

Melena hadn’t seen him since he left, hadn’t even spoken to him for several long weeks. She couldn’t imagine the anguish it would cause him to learn their father had been killed. Before he heard it anywhere else, she wanted to be the one to break the news to him. She wanted to spare him the unnecessary grief of thinking she had died along with everyone else tonight.

“Do you think it would be possible for me to try to reach my brother somehow?” she asked the two warriors. “He’s traveling and I need to let him know—”

“Is there a reason half my team is not where I expect them to be?” Lazaro’s deep, furious growl interrupted the conversation without warning. He stood in the open doorway, looking every bit as ferocious as a Gen One Breed male could. His sapphire eyes were thunderously dark, except for the flashes of amber outrage sparking in their depths. “Out. Both of you. Now.”

Sav and Jehan departed on command.

Leaving Melena to face Lazaro’s rage by herself.

She waited for him to lay into her too, but he didn’t. He merely stared at her, a tendon ticking hard in his jaw. His aura was as stormy as his glower, back to the gunmetal haze that she found so difficult to read.

His animosity seemed clear enough. He didn’t want her in his command center any more than he’d wanted her in his presence on the yacht or at the cave.

And she wanted to be somewhere safe now, even if that meant returning to her father’s empty Darkhaven in the States. “I don’t want to be here,” she murmured. “I need to get in touch with my brother Derek, and I need to go home.”

“Out of the question.” His answer was firm, flat. Unyielding. “I’ve spoken to Lucan Thorne. Before you go anywhere else, he wants me to bring you to the Order’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. He’ll talk with you there, debrief you.”

“I already told you everything I know. What more can I tell him?”

Lazaro didn’t answer. “We leave tomorrow evening, Melena.” He started to go, then pivoted back to her. “In the meantime, I won’t have my team distracted by the fact we have a Breedmate underfoot. I’ll make a place for you in the villa. You’ll stay there until we depart for D.C.”

CHAPTER 6

Melena had been moved out of the command center’s infirmary to the living quarters of the mansion hours ago. Lazaro’s team had gone back to their business as instructed. The morning passed with discussions of Order objectives and priorities. Chief among those priorities being to ensure that reports of the tragic, “accidental” explosion on board Paolo Turati’s yacht didn’t brush up against the truth that it was, in fact, a stealth missile attack.

And while no one yet had stepped forward to publicly claim responsibility, there wasn’t a shred of doubt among the Order’s entire organization that the killings were surely instigated by Opus Nostrum.

Halfway through the afternoon in Rome, the warriors were now dispersed to prepare for their patrols that coming evening, everyone focused on task and ready to carry out their missions.

And yet the female under their roof remained a distraction.