wasted no time claiming responsibility,” Gideon said grimly from beside Lucan. “It’s all over the Internet now.”
The Order’s technology expert had a tablet in hand, scanning underground sites where hackers and other society misfits liked to boast and preen for one another. Gideon was as much a warrior as any of his comrades, but he also had skills that would leave any black hat computer genius in his wake.
Lucan ground out a tight curse. “We should’ve seen this coming.”
“No one saw this coming,” Gideon said. “There was no chatter, no posturing. No threats. Nothing but silence leading up to this attack.”
“Even so, we should have known they wouldn’t let us take out two of their key players without some kind of response.”
Sterling Chase, head of the Boston command center, shook his head as he considered. “This kind of assault takes time. It takes planning and coordination. You don’t just roll up to a high-security government facility with enough firepower to raze the place.”
Dante, another of the longtime Order members, grunted in agreement. “Not without getting your own ass blown to pieces as soon as your toe crosses the property line.”
“There were no reports of unusual activity anywhere in the area,” added Tegan.
The massive male was first generation Breed, like Lucan—both of them powerful Gen Ones, both of them centuries-old founding members of the Order. They had gone from friends to enemies and back again in the long time they’d known each other. Now, both mated to extraordinary women who’d given them each brave sons who shared their fathers’ commitment to the Order, Lucan and Tegan had become as close as kin.
“No one saw this coming,” Tegan said, “let alone had time to prevent it.”
As much as Lucan wanted to believe that was true, the leader in him didn’t feel the weight of the blame on his shoulders any less.
“Is that what we’ll tell the public when they ask how this was allowed to happen? That we were all caught unaware and now we’re standing around with our dicks in our hands?”
“JUSTIS never wanted our help, Father.” Lucan’s son, Darion, stared at him from the other side of the room. The adult Breed male stood with a few of the other warriors’ grown sons who had gathered in the war room as the first reports were coming in from London.
As he spoke, several heads of the younger recruits nodded.
“Ask anyone in JUSTIS or the Global Nations Council,” Dare went on. “They don’t trust us and they don’t approve of our methods. They haven’t from day one.”
“Neither did the old guard of the Breed’s famously ineffective Enforcement Agency,” Rio pointed out. “But we outlasted them too.”
The Spanish warrior’s statement drew assenting comments from his fellow comrades Brock and Kade. Even Hunter, the formidable former assassin, voiced agreement.
Lucan glanced back to the fiery destruction still filling the video monitors. “I don’t give a damn about JUSTIS’s approval, or the GNC’s, or any other organization that talks a good game right up until a real threat comes around and blows them all to shit. I care about peace. I care about protecting the lives of the innocents who can’t do it for themselves.”
“We all do, Lucan.” His Breedmate, Gabrielle, moved in closer and nestled against him, her voice calm and rational, even in the face of terror like the kind that was dealt tonight. That steadiness was one of the things he’d always admired about her.
But she clung tightly to him as she spoke. Whether she intended the physical contact as a reassurance to herself or to him, Lucan wasn’t sure.
Gabrielle looked at Mathias Rowan, who led the Order’s command center in London. “Do we know how many people were in the building tonight?”
Mathias might have been home in England tonight himself, but he’d recently come to the States with his newly expecting Breedmate, Nova, to visit his friend Sterling Chase in Boston.
Mathias gave a vague shake of his head, his arm around Nova’s shoulder as the pair watched the horror unfold on the monitors. “They’re still working to get an accurate count. Given the late hour of the attack, there were few human members of JUSTIS on site.” His gaze was as sober as his voice. “My men over there are on the ground as we speak. Thane, the team’s captain, says there were no survivors. From the looks of it, he thinks we should expect Breed casualties to be in the high double-digits, possibly a hundred.”
A ripple of outrage traveled the gathered