he'd stolen into the private lodge of a Gen One vampire named Sergei Yakut on orders to kill from Dragos and found himself staring into the mesmerizing, mirrorlike eyes of an innocent little girl.
"It was Mira who gave me the courage to demand my freedom," he said, a warmth opening in the center of his chest at just the thought of the child. "She is a seer. She has the gift of precognition. It was in her eyes that I saw myself released from Dragos's control. If not for her, I might never have known it was possible to live any other way."
"She saved your life," Corinne murmured. "No wonder you care for her like you do."
"I would lay down my life for her," he answered, as automatic as breathing. And it was true. The observation jolted him on some level, but he couldn't deny the fondness he had for the little girl. He had become fiercely protective of her, just as he was coming to feel protective of the beautiful woman seated beside him now. But where his affection for Mira was a soft warmth, his regard for Corinne Bishop was something altogether different. It went deeper, burned with an intensity that only seemed to grow stronger every moment they were together. He desired her; that much had become evident when they'd kissed earlier. He wanted to kiss her again, and that was a problem. As for the other feelings she stirred in him, he didn't know what to make of that. Nor did he want to know. His duty was to the Order, and there was no room for distractions. No matter how tempting they might be.
It took Corinne a long while before she responded. "Every child deserves to have someone willing to do whatever it takes to keep them safe, to ensure their happiness. That's what family is supposed to be, isn't it?" When she looked at him now, her expression seemed troubled, haunted somehow. "Don't you think that's true, Hunter?"
"I would not know." He slowed in front of a dark little shotgun house with boarded windows and a sagging front porch. It looked abandoned, as did the rest of the meager homes that still stood after the waters had receded years earlier. Cracked, weed-choked cement foundations marked the places where other houses had been. "This one should suffice," he told Corinne as he put the vehicle in park.
She was still staring at him oddly from across the wide bench seat of the El Camino. "You never had anyone at all - not even when you were a child? Not even your mother?"
He killed the engine and took out the key. "There was no one. I was taken away from the Breedmate who bore me in Dragos's laboratory when I was still an infant. I have no memory of her. The Minion handler assigned to me by Dragos was responsible for my rearing. Such as it was."
Her face had gone pale and slack. "You were born in the lab? You were ... taken away from your mother?"
"We all were," he replied. "Dragos engineered our lives from the instant we were conceived. He controlled everything, to ensure we became his perfect killing machines loyal only to him. We were born to be his assassins. His Hunters, and nothing more."
"Hunters." The word sounded wooden on her tongue. "I thought Hunter was your name. Is it your name?"
He could see her confusion. Her frown furrowed deeper as she quietly processed all that she was hearing. "Hunter is the only thing I've been called from the day I was born. It is what I am. What I will always be."
"Oh, my God." Her soft exhalation trembled a bit. Something else flickered across her face in that moment, something he could not place. It looked like sorrow. It looked like fresh, dawning horror. "All the infants born in Dragos's labs were taken away. They've all been raised like you were? All those innocent baby boys. That's what became of them all ..."
It wasn't asked as a question, but he answered her with a frank, solemn nod. Corinne closed her eyes, saying nothing more. She turned her head away from him, toward the dark glass of the passenger window.
In the suddenly awkward and lengthening silence, Hunter reached down and opened the driver-side door. "Wait here. I'll go check the house and make sure it's suitable shelter."
She didn't answer. She didn't even look at him, her face now tucked into her right shoulder. As