Edge of Dawn Page 0,20

We clear?”

The rebel soldier gave a weak nod. “Please . . . let me go . . .”

Bowman dropped him, left him where he fell. He swung around and sank into a crouch beside the female warrior who lay on the floor nearby. She wasn’t completely out yet. Her eyes rolled behind her lids, opening in drowsy intervals as she fought against the sedative Vince had pumped into her veins. She murmured incoherently, her voice so quiet, going weaker with every second.

He noticed dried blood in her blond hair, crusted at her left temple where a small red birthmark rode along her hairline. The sight of that tiny teardrop and crescent moon, coupled with the lily-sweet scent of her spilled blood, tightened the knot of regret that had settled like a rock in his gut from the moment of his team’s call from the field.

That she’d been harmed during this operation—injured even before the tranq gun that was leaving a dark bruise on the delicate skin of her neck—made his veins turn cold with self-directed fury.

The urge to touch her was nearly overwhelming.

He wanted to offer her comfort, hold her close, assure her that she was safe.

But he couldn’t do those things.

He didn’t have that right.

Not anymore.

He was no longer that man. To this band of human rebels, he was, and had been for the past eight years, simply Bowman. He was their leader, who also happened to have been born Breed, not Homo sapiens like the rest of them.

But the injured and bleeding young woman lying before him now had known him from a much different time, in a different place. When he’d been a different person, born with a name none of his rebel followers would recognize.

“Kellan . . . ?”

Her voice was hardly a whisper, barely audible, even to him. He felt her hand brush his, feather-light, questioning. Against his own will, he glanced down into her face. Her eyes were not even half open, heavy-lidded and unfocused. She drifted off in that next moment, her fingers falling away limply, head lolling to the side in a heavy, drug-induced slumber.

He briefly closed his eyes, expelling the past and reaching for the only thing he had left.

“Show’s over, people. Now look alive. We still have work to do.”

5

SHE HADN’T EXPECTED TO WAKE UP.

Hell, she hadn’t really expected to be alive. Not after fighting with her captors in transit, sticking the one named Vince with her dagger soon after they’d shoved her into the van at Jeremy Ackmeyer’s house. They might have killed her then. And she couldn’t have blamed them if they’d finished her off during the struggle she’d put up once they’d arrived at this place either.

This . . . wherever she was.

She tried to open her eyes where she lay now but saw only darkness. The pressure on her face told her she was blindfolded. Handcuffs bit into her wrists, which were fastened somewhere above her head. She gave them a tug and heard the shackles grate on what she guessed was a metal headboard. Her ankles were restrained too, fixed to the bottom of the bed.

Her mouth felt as dry as if it had been packed with cotton, but at least they hadn’t gagged her. Then again, what good would it do her to start screaming? She didn’t have to see the walls of her prison to know that they were made of thick, impenetrable material. Stone, she was guessing, from the dank, stale odor of the place, more than likely without a single window in the room.

She smelled the faint brine of the ocean in the damp air. Heard the low roar of waves rolling onto the shore from not far off in the distance. Beyond that, only silence.

No, raising her voice in this place would only alert her captors.

Mira shifted on the thin mattress and winced at the dull ache that flared in the side of her neck. She remembered getting punched there with something sharp. Something that took out her legs and sent her mind reeling. Tranqs, it was obvious to her now.

But it didn’t take much to recall the sudden, overwhelming sense of floating, falling . . .

Dying, she had thought.

She’d even seen the face of an angel in those final few moments of fading consciousness. Kellan’s face, handsome and haunted, his soulful hazel eyes holding her in a gaze that seemed mournful, somehow heartbroken.

God, they must have given her some powerful shit.

It took more than a little effort to shake