Defy the Dawn (Midnight Breed 14)

“Assassins,” he confirmed grimly.

Brynne knew the basics. The same Breed madman who tinkered with DNA to create Tavia and her and a rumored dozen or more Breed females like them had also bred a race of Gen One boys from the Ancient he kept imprisoned in the lab and a cage full of Breedmates abducted from their families and used like chattel for his experiments and twisted pleasures.

Hunters like Nathan had been raised by handlers, as Brynne and her half-sisters had been. But where Brynne and the other Breed females were shackled by lies and abuse and genetic-stunting chemical therapies, the Hunters were kept obedient by the use of even crueler tactics.

Nathan looked at her finally, and there was a bleakness in his eyes that touched her. Not because she pitied him, but because she admired how normal his life seemed now, with Jordana. With the Order. With his mother, Corinne, and Hunter, her Gen One mate who was also a product of Dragos’s madness.

“No one who survived those damned labs did it unscathed,” Nathan said.

Brynne nodded. “I know.”

“Yeah, I know you do. But you look like you need someone to say it out loud for you now.”

She stared at him in the dim light of the dashboard. Although he had no idea how deep her wounds had gone, or how hideous her reality was even years and miles away from the torture of the labs, his compassion moved her.

She swallowed on an arid throat. “Thank you, Nathan.”

He gave a curt nod. “Go do what you have to do and take care of your needs. I’ll wait for you here.”

Certain she misheard him, or at least misunderstood his meaning, Brynne’s breath caught.

Did he know she dreaded walking into that parlor?

Holy shit. Was he giving her permission to go feed on her own terms?

“Nathan, I—”

She didn’t get the chance to say another word.

Without warning, something big fell from the roof of a nearby building and smashed onto a parked car about a block up the street. Metal crunched. Glass exploded. Alarm lights and sirens split the darkness.

People started screaming, pointing up at the roof of the nearby parking deck.

“What the fuck?” Nathan killed the engine. “Stay in the vehicle!”

He leaped out and vanished into the night before Brynne even realized he was moving.

She sucked in a gasp as she peered through the windshield.

Another body pitched to the street, plummeting down like a stuffed dummy freefalling off the parking garage rooftop. Except they weren’t dummies. They were humans—brutalized, broken, their clothing shredded and blood-soaked.

Savaged.

Nausea swamped Brynne as she realized what she was seeing. “Oh, my God.”

Something else descended to the street now. A Breed youth, his chin and the whole front of his body painted red from his crime. The young male dropped into a crouch next to his kill and howled like the animal he had become, his fangs enormous, his face feral with Bloodlust.

Holy shit.

The male was Rogue.

And he wasn’t alone. Another descended to the rooftop of a parked van, wearing more evidence of the slaughter.

Brynne instinctively reached for her JUSTIS-issued firearm, but her fingers came away empty. Dammit. She’d lost her service weapon the same day she’d lost her job with the agency.

Panic swept the street as swiftly as a flash fire.

The humans who’d stopped to stare in dazed confusion now bolted blindly away from the scene. One after another, they streamed past Brynne in the SUV, shrieking as they raced for cover.