I snarled, baring my fangs.
“Fuck me,” Lachlan mumbled.
Lyric kissed me long and hard, opening for me with complete surrender, letting me claim her in the only way I could in public. Mine. She was mine. And they had a piece of her over there.
“Like I was saying,” she said softly, brushing her mouth over mine. “They have the sample now. No harm done.”
“Until he murders Julian,” Ransom said under his breath.
“Explain yourself,” I ordered Julian, shifting Lyric on my lap so she faced the table.
“We think we can clone the cells,” Julian said simply.
Gabriel nodded with excitement. “We do. And if we can, we’ll have a ready antidote that will render Night Thistle useless.”
“See!” Lyric kissed my cheek. “How great is that?”
“You’re going to feed my mate’s blood to anyone who gets hurt?” My eyes narrowed again.
Gabriel blinked rapidly.
“Mayday, mayday, danger, Will Robinson!” Olivia said behind her hand.
Avi chuckled.
“No, no, God, no.” Julian shook his head.
“The antibodies. That’s all,” Gabriel offered.
Lyric shifted in my lap, and I didn’t need to look at her to know what she was thinking. We had a cure. We could fight back. We had to. Slowly, I nodded at the pair. “Start working on it. God knows how long it will take until it’s ready.”
Lyric sighed in relief.
“Benedict. Ransom. Hawke. You’ll be with me at Conclave this afternoon. We’re all going to have to pull together to survive this.”
They nodded.
“Dismissed.”
They filed out a great deal more somber than they’d arrived, leaving Lyric and I alone in the command room.
“We’ll be okay,” she promised, cradling my face.
“It’s going to get dangerous.”
A smile lit her beautiful face. “Apparently that’s just how we do things.” She kissed me, slow and sweet, her lips soft against mine. “We’ll keep each other safe, Alek. It’s you and me for eternity.”
“I just wanted it to be easier,” I admitted. “I want you and Avi safe. I want you to love everything about this new life. I hate that I can’t make it perfect for you.” I brushed her long blonde hair behind her ears.
She yanked my shirt from my pants with a smirk. “Perfect is boring, my love, and if I know one thing about you, it’s that you’ll never bore me.” Her fingers trailed the lines of my abs and the scent of her arousal flooded the chamber.
I set her on the onyx table and sent my hands up her skirt as I licked the shell of her ear. “We can’t have you bored, now can we?”
Her throaty laugh hit me right in the chest, and I lost myself in my mate.
“I love you,” I growled, kissing her until we were both breathless with need. Were we facing a fight? Yes. But in the midst of it all, I had Lyric’s body beneath me, and her heart wrapped around mine. I had something worth fighting for. Worth dying for.
Love.
And that made all the difference.
Lachlan
Six Months Later
For a human with limited resources, frozen accounts, and an incredibly recognizable face, Valor Moorehouse was a pain in the ass to find. I’d been searching for six fucking months only to come up empty every time.
Six. Fucking. Months.
It wasn’t like she was some master of disguise, or could blend into a crowd, either. Fuck no, that woman was a knockout. Long, auburn hair that made me miss the highlands, coupled with pale green eyes the shade of the water just off the Florida coast, and that wasn’t where her charms stopped. That body of hers was lithe and toned, with firm, high breasts that made a man’s mouth water, and I wasn’t even going to start on those fucking legs of hers because that would only lead me to her ass, which wasn’t up for discussion, especially since I wasn’t about to pull up to the shittiest motel in Lycan territory sporting a hard-on.
Which is what always happened when I thought too much about the most inconvenient human on the planet. I’d been in a state of semi-arousal that only rivaled my annoyance the last six months. Chasing Valor was sucking the joy right out of my life.
Nothing tasted sweet anymore, not even pussy. Feeding—damn, did I love feeding, had become a chore. Something to accomplish before heading out again for the next dead lead. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d taken a female of any species to bed.
The never-ending search for Valor had consumed my whole existence.
I killed the engine of my Rover and cursed the clock. June meant longer days and shorter nights. And there was too much shit to get done at night to lose even a minute of it.
“You Lachlan?” A kid in his twenties asked, rolling his shoulders in a way that told me he hadn’t transitioned at a full moon yet. Once lycans hit the change, they stopped acting like badasses and just became them.
“Aye,” I answered. “You called about a witch problem?”
As the second in command to Alek Markov, I wasn’t just the general of his armies, or his right hand man, I was also one of the Onyx Assassins, a member of his elite guard that dispensed justice when Conclave—or Alek—demanded it.
And lately, that had been a lot.
With the Sons of Honor—those human traitorous sons of bitches—running amok, attacking supernaturals in broad moonlight, or daylight for the sun-walkers, doing their best to slay every creature with a drop of supernatural blood, our nights weren’t exactly peaceful anymore. The thing about vermin, is they’ll hide while they can, but once they’re out in the open, exposed for the shit they are, it’s all teeth and claws.
“My father is in his office,” the kid nodded toward the blinking neon sign that read vacant. “He’s a friend of Luka’s, you know. They’re tight.”
“Is that so?” I managed not to roll my eyes. If someone was actually close to the Lycan Alpha, Luka, we knew about it. The guy was an asshole, but he made sure to protect what he loved.
“Yeah. They went to school together or something.” The kid nodded as a human hit a button on a nearby vending machine with the side of his hand, dispensing a can of whatever cancer tasted the sweetest. The guy didn’t look our way twice, but most people didn’t.
If humans noticed us, we were fucking up in more ways than one.
The kid twisted the rusted out door knob and yanked the slab of aluminum across the concrete, the door sending a nails-on-a-chalkboard cringe down my spine.
“Dad, he’s here.”
I stepped back to give the guy some space. Wolves were always going on about that shit, and if it made my job easier, I could go with it. Fine. It wasn’t like my Glocks weren’t locked and loaded right under my arms. I’d even holstered the one with the silver bullet clip.
Vampires didn’t survive hundreds of years like I had without taking a few precautions.
A muscled guy who stood about six two, three inches shorter than me, walked out of the office. Clean cut. Classic rock T-shirt. Cargo shorts.
Then again, I was in tactical pants and a black wife-beater, so I wasn’t exactly earning the style points my friend Benedict prided himself on.