emotion-reading hands for him to understand just how close Chase teetered at the edge of disaster. "Maybe you're not comprehending what I'm trying to tell you, Harvard. You're coming back with us. You and the female both."
The feral part of Chase bristled, pulling his lips back from his teeth and fangs in a sneer. "Last I knew, Lucan and the rest of you had written me off. Didn't need to be any clearer to me that I wasn't welcome anymore."
Ever the peacemaker, Rowan cleared his throat. "Chase, for God's sake. Dial it down." Tegan shrugged off the plea, unfazed by the threat of confrontation. "You can either come freely, or we're prepared to take you by force."
When Chase barked out a caustic, humorless laugh, Renata moved in between Tegan and Niko, as graceful as she was dangerous. "I'd listen to him if I were you. We have our orders." "Is that right," he challenged, bearing down on her with a look that had shriveled more than one Agency squad of fully armed Breed males into a knot of anxious, perspiring little girls. But not Renata. Nikolai's Breedmate braced her long legs in a battle-ready stance and stared him right back. Which only pissed him off more. "If you hit me with that mind-zapping talent of yours, better make damn sure you kill me fast. Or you won't even see me coming back at you." Niko's growl was as deadly as Chase had ever heard it. The warrior took a hard step forward, his palm curled around the grip of a nasty-looking semiauto that was holstered under his arm. Chase knew the weapon would be loaded with an arsenal of Rogue-killing titanium hollowpoints - Niko's handcrafted specialty.
The way his blood was raking him now, cold and acidic, Chase had little doubt that one round would probably be enough to smoke him on the spot. God help him, he was half tempted to test the idea right then and there.
Instead, with a curse, he started to lift his hands in a show of surrender.
He barely twitched before he felt the sudden jolt of lightning entering his skull. Renata. She'd opened up on him before he even knew what hit him. It was brief and only a warning shot; he knew that. Otherwise he wouldn't have wits enough to question it. But holy hell, did it feel like death. Chase let out a strangled roar as the psychic energy ricocheted in his skull and sent him down on one knee.
He didn't see Tavia coming.
None of them could have, she moved so fast and so stealthily. Materializing as though out of nowhere, she leapt over the second-floor rail of the hallway and dropped, catlike, to the tiled foyer below.
One second Chase was stooped brokenly on the floor. The next, he was pushed behind her sleek form, watching through pain-squeezed eyes as she faced off alone against three heavily armed, lethal Breed warriors and a Breedmate who could just as easily turn her staggering power away from Chase and blast it full force onto Tavia.
God, no.
If she took a bullet or a jolt of Renata's fury because of him - "Don't hurt her!" he roared, the words tearing out of his throat, wild and otherworldly. Commanding all his strength to push past the pain of Renata's mental blast, he scrambled to his feet and took his place at Tavia's side. "Don't any of you fucking hurt her!"
But none of them made an untoward move.
They wouldn't have, he realized only then. They hadn't come here to hurt anyone, not even him, except he'd forced their hand. They all stared, Mathias Rowan included, gaping wide-eyed and slack-jawed at Tavia Fairchild in all her transformed magnificence.
Crouched low, her long, jeans-clad legs were bent, bare feet ready to spring. Her loose hair swung around her shoulders like a caramel-colored mane, untamed waves barely concealing the amber blaze of her eyes. She hissed, lips peeled back to expose the twin fangs that gleamed as bright as diamonds and sharp as daggers. Between the deep V of her black sweater, her dermaglyphs were alive with furious color, churning like a tempest written on her smooth, pale skin.
There could be no mistaking what this female was: dangerous, stealthy, utterly lethal Gen One Breed.
And hotter than hell itself.
The three warriors from the Order seemed to shake themselves back to their senses all at once. They spoke in nearly perfect unison, Tegan, Niko, then Hunter, one after the other. "Holy - "
"Fucking - "
"Shit."
Renata