Kiss of Midnight

CHAPTER Twenty-eight

Fresh out of the shower in Lucan’s bedroom suite, Gabrielle toweled off her wet hair and slipped into a plush white terry-cloth robe. She was exhausted, having spent the better part of the day with Savannah and Danika, the three of them helping Gideon attend to Rio and Lucan. Everyone in the compound moved in a state of numb disbelief over Eva’s betrayal and the tragic outcome that left her dead at her own hand and Rio clinging precariously to life.

Lucan was in bad shape as well, but true to his word and his stubborn volition, he had left the infirmary on his own motor to rest in his personal suites. Gabrielle was astonished that he had accepted any care at all, but between the other women and herself, there hadn’t been any hope of his refusing.

Gabrielle felt a swelling sense of relief when she opened the bathroom door and found him seated on the massive bed, his back propped up against the headboard with several pillows. Although his cheek and brow were stitched and bandages covered much of his broad chest and limbs, he was recovering. He was whole, and in time, he would be healed.

Like her, he wore nothing but a white terry robe; it was all the women had permitted him to put on after they’d spent hours cleaning and patching up contusions and bloody shrapnel wounds, which peppered so much of his body.

“Feel better?” Lucan asked, staring as she ran her fingers through her damp hair to push it out of her face. “I thought you might be hungry once you came out of there.”

“I’m starved.”

He gestured to a squat cocktail table in the sitting area of the bedroom, but Gabrielle’s nose had already picked up on the impressive buffet. French bread, garlic and spices, tomato sauce, and cheese wafted from across the room. She saw a plate of field greens and a cup of fresh fruit, even something dark and chocolate-looking amid all the other temptations. She wandered over for a closer look, her stomach growling in anticipation.

“Manicotti,” she said, breathing in the pasta’s aromatic fumes. A bottle of red wine had been uncorked beside a crystal glass. “And chianti?”

“Savannah wanted to know if you had any favorite foods. It was all I could think of.”

It was the meal she’d made for herself the night he had come back to her apartment to return her cell phone. The meal that sat cold and forgotten on her counter while she and Lucan went at it like minks. “You remembered what I was cooking that night?”

He gave a mild shrug. “Sit down. Eat.”

“There’s only one place setting.”

“Were you expecting company?”

She looked at him. “You really can’t eat any of this? Not even a bite?”

“If I did, I could only stomach a small amount.” He motioned for her to take a seat. “Eating human food is merely for appearances.”

“All right.” Gabrielle sat on the floor cross-legged. She slid the creamy linen napkin out from under the silverware and draped it over her lap. “But it doesn’t seem fair for me to stuff my face in front of you.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ve had enough female fussing and concern for one day.”

“Suit yourself.”

She was too hungry to wait another second and the meal looked far too delicious to resist. Using the edge of her fork, Gabrielle cut off a bite of the manicotti and chewed it in a state of absolute bliss. She ate half of it in record time, pausing only to pour a glass of wine, which she also consumed with ravenous delight.

The whole time, Lucan watched her from the bed.

“Good?” he asked when she flicked a sheepish glance at him over the rim of her wineglass.

“Fantastic,” she murmured, shoveling in a mouthful of vinegarette-drenched field greens. Her stomach was much happier now. She swallowed the last bite of salad, then poured another half glass of chianti, and settled back with a sigh. “Thank you for this. I’ll have to thank Savannah, too. She didn’t have to go to all this trouble.”

“She likes you,” Lucan said, his studious expression unreadable. “You were a big help last night. Thank you for looking after Rio and the others. Myself, as well.”

“You don’t have to thank me.”

“Yes, I do.” The small, stitched gash in his forehead bunched up with his scowl. “You’ve been kind and giving all along, and I—” He broke off, muttering something under his breath. “I appreciate what you did, that’s all.”

Oh, she thought, that’s all. Even his gratitude came fully equipped with emotional barriers now.

Suddenly feeling too much like an outsider with him at the moment, she was more than willing to change the subject.

“I hear Tegan made it back in one piece.”

“Yes. But Dante and Niko nearly tore him apart on sight, after he pulled that disappearing act during the raid.”

“What happened to him last night?”

“One of the Rogues tried to slip out a back door at the warehouse as things heated up. Tegan tailed him into the street. He was going to take the suckhead out, but decided to follow him first, see where he might run. He tracked him to the old asylum outside the city. Place was crawling with Rogues. If there was any doubt, now we’re certain it’s a large colony. Probably an East Coast headquarters.”

A chill went through her when she thought that she had been to the asylum by herself—had been inside the place—unaware that it was a Rogue location.

“I have some pictures of the interior. They’re still in my camera. I didn’t have a chance to unload them yet.”

Lucan had gone stock-still, staring at her as if she just told him she’d been playing with live grenades. His face seemed to go a bit more ashen beneath its fatigued pallor. “You not only went there, but you broke in to the place?”

She shrugged, guiltily.

“Jesus Christ, Gabrielle.” He threw his legs over the side of the bed and sat there for a long moment, just looking at her. It took him a while to form words. “You might have been killed. Do you realize that?”

“I wasn’t,” she answered, lame observation, but still fact.

“Not the point.” He ran both hands deep into the hair at his temples. “Shit. Where’s your camera?”

“I left it in the lab.”

Lucan picked up the phone beside his bed and speed dialed on intercom. Gideon came on the other end.

“Hey, what’s up. Everything good?”

“Yeah,” Lucan said, but he was glaring at Gabrielle. “Tell Tegan to put the asylum recon detail on hold for now. I just found out we’ve got pictures of the interior.”

“No shit?” There was a pause. “Ah, fuck me. You mean, she actually went in the goddamn place?”

Lucan arched a wry I-told-you-so brow at her. “Load the images from the camera and tell the others we’ll meet in an hour to discuss the new strategy. I think we just may have saved some crucial time here.”

“Right. See you in sixty.”

The call ended with a click of the intercom.

“Tegan was going to go back to the asylum?”

“Yeah,” Lucan replied. “A likely suicide mission since he was lunatic enough to insist that he infiltrate solo tonight to gather intel on the place. Not that anyone was going to persuade him differently, least of all me.”

He got up off the bed and began inspecting some of his bandages. As he shifted, the top of his robe sagged open, revealing most of his chest and a wedge of his abdomen. The unique markings on his chest were a pale shade of henna, lighter than they had been last night. Now they looked as sallow as the rest of him. Parched and nearly colorless.

“Why are you and Tegan at such odds with each other?” she asked, keeping a close eye on him as she dared the question that had been on her mind ever since Lucan had mentioned the warrior’s name. “What happened between you?”

At first, she didn’t think he was going to say anything. He kept prodding his injuries, testing the flex of his arms and legs in silence. Then, just about the time she would have given up, he said, “Tegan blames me for taking something from him. Something he cherished.” He looked squarely at her now. “His Breedmate died. By my hand.”

“Good lord,” she whispered. “Lucan… how?”

He frowned, glanced away again. “Things were different in the Old Times when Tegan and I first knew each other. Warriors, for the most part, chose not to take Breedmates because the dangers were too great. There were few of us in the Order then, and protecting our families was difficult when combat took us leagues away from them, often for months at a time.”

“What about the Darkhavens? Wouldn’t they have provided some protection?”

“There were fewer of those then, too. And even less that would welcome the risk of housing a warrior’s Breedmate. We, and those we loved, were consistent targets of Rogue violence. Tegan knew all of this, but he bonded himself to a female anyway. Not long afterward, she was captured by the Rogues. They tortured her. Raped her. And before they sent her back to him, they nearly drained her. She was an empty husk—worse than that, she was made a Minion of the Rogue who ruined her.”

“Oh, my God,” Gabrielle gasped, horrified.

Lucan sighed, as if the weight of the memories pressed hard on him. “Tegan went insane with rage. He became like an animal, slaughtering everything in his path. He would appear so awash in gore that many thought he had bathed in blood. He gorged himself in his fury, and, for nearly a year, he refused to accept the fact that his Breedmate’s mind was lost forever. He kept feeding her from his vein, unwilling to see her corruption. He fed to feed her. He didn’t care that he was steadily sliding into Bloodlust. For that entire year, he defied Breed law, and would not put her out of her misery. As for Tegan himself, he was slowly, but surely, going Rogue. Something had to be done…”

When he let the statement hang, unfinished, Gabrielle spoke for him. “And as leader, it fell to you to take action.”

Lucan gave a grim nod. “I put Tegan in a thick stone cell, and then I put his Breedmate to the sword.”

Gabrielle closed her eyes, sensing his regret. “Oh, Lucan…”

“Tegan wasn’t freed until his body had withdrawn from its Bloodlust addiction. It took many months of near starvation and absolute agony for him to be able to walk out of that cell on his own legs. When he realized what I’d done, I thought he would try to kill me. But he didn’t. The Tegan I knew didn’t come out of that cell at all. Something colder did. He’s never said the words, but I know he’s hated me ever since.”

“Not as much as you hate yourself.”

His jaw was clenched hard, drawing the lean skin tighter across his cheekbones. “I’m used to making difficult choices. I’m not afraid to take on the hard tasks, or to be the target of anger, even hatred, because of the decisions I make for the betterment of the Breed. I don’t give a damn about any of that.”

“No, you don’t,” she said gently. “But you had to hurt a friend, and that has weighed heavily on you for a long, long time.”

The look he gave her begged to argue, but maybe he didn’t have the strength. After all that he had been through, he was tired, bone tired, although she doubted he would be willing to admit that, even to her.

“You’re a good man, Lucan. You’ve got a very noble heart underneath all that heavy armor.”

He grunted, dismissive and sardonic. “Only someone who’s known me less than a few weeks would make the mistake of presuming that.”

“Really? I can think of a few people here who would tell you the same thing. Including Conlan, if he were alive.”

His brows went low, like a thundercloud. “What can you possibly know about that?”

“Danika told me what you did for him. The funeral rite. Bringing him topside as the sun came up. To honor him, you let yourself burn.”

“Jesus Christ,” he snapped, shooting to his feet. He started to pace in an agitated, halting track near the bed. His voice was coarse, a barely contained roar. “Honor had nothing to do with it. You want to know why I did that? It was guilt. The night of the bombing in the train station, I was supposed to be running that mission with Niko, not Conlan. But I couldn’t get you out of my mind. I thought maybe if I had you—if I finally got inside you—it might satisfy my itch and I could move on, forget about you. So, that night I put Conlan on the job in my place. It would have been me in that tunnel, not Conlan. It should have been me.”

“My God, Lucan. You’re unbelievable, you know that?” She slammed her palms down on the table and let out a sharp, furious laugh. “Why can’t you cut yourself some fucking slack?”

The uncontrolled outburst got his attention when nothing else had. He stopped pacing and stared at her. “You know why,” he said, his tone level now. “You know, better than anyone else.” He shook his head, mouth twisted with self-contempt. “Turns out Eva knew something about it, too.”

Gabrielle thought back to the shocking exchange in the infirmary. Everyone had been appalled at Eva’s actions, and stunned by her crazed accusations against Lucan. All except him. “Lucan, the things that she said…”

“All true, as you have seen for yourself. But you still defended me. That’s twice you’ve kept my weakness from being exposed.” He scowled, turning his head away from her. “I won’t ever ask you to do that again. My problems are my own.”

“And you need to address them.”

“What I need is to get some clothes on and go take a look at those pictures Gideon is uploading. If they give us enough info on the asylum’s layout, we can hit the place tonight.”

“What do you mean, hit it tonight?”

“Take it out. Shut it down. Blow the fucking thing sky-high.”

“You can’t be serious. You said yourself it’s probably full of Rogues. Do you honestly think that you and three other guys will survive going up against unknown numbers?”

“We’ve done it before. And there will be five of us,” he said, as if that should make a difference. “Gideon has said he wants in on whatever we do. He’ll be taking Rio’s place.”

Gabrielle scoffed, disbelieving. “And what about you? You’re barely on your feet.”

“I’m walking. I’m well enough. They won’t be expecting a retaliation so soon, which makes it the best time for us to strike.”

“You must be out of your mind. You need rest, Lucan. You can’t do anything until you get your strength back. You need to heal.” She watched a muscle work in his jaw, a tendon ticking beneath the sallow, drawn slope of his cheek. His features were harder than normal, too lean. “You can’t go out there the way you are.”

“I said, I’m fine.”

The words rushed out of him, a coarse rasp in his throat. When he looked at her again, his silver irises were shot with bright amber flecks of color, like fire licking through ice.

“You’re not. Not by a long shot. You need nourishment. Your body’s been through too much recently. You need to feed.”

She felt a surge of coldness sweep the room and knew it came from him. She was provoking his anger. She’d seen him at his worst before and lived to tell of it, but maybe she was pushing too hard right now. She could sense he’d been itchy and uptight, his temper on a short leash ever since he’d brought her to the compound. Now he was dangerously on edge; did she really want to be the one to shove him past his threshold of control?

Screw it. Maybe that was just what was needed.

“Your body is beaten down, Lucan, not just from your injuries. You’re weak. And you’re afraid.”

“Afraid.” He swung an icy look at her, sneered with arctic sarcasm. “Of what?”

“Yourself, for starters. But I think you’re even more afraid of me.”

She waited for an instant rebuttal, something cold and nasty to match the wintry rage that was rolling off of him like frost. But he didn’t say anything. He glared at her for a long moment, then turned away and strode, a bit stiffly, toward a tall bureau on the other side of the room.

Gabrielle sat there on the floor, watching as he yanked open drawers, pulled out clothing and tossed it onto the bed.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t have time to debate this with you. It’s pointless.”

A cabinet of weapons opened before he reached it, the doors swinging on their hinges with an invisible, violent jerk. He stalked over and pulled out a retractable shelf. At least a dozen daggers and other lethal-looking blades lay in orderly rows on the shelf’s velvet liner. With a careless grab, Lucan swiped two large knives in black leather sheaths. He slid open another shelf and selected a big, brushed stainless steel handgun that looked like something out of an action movie nightmare.

“You don’t like what I’m saying, so you’re going to run away from me instead?” He didn’t look at her, or even curse in reply. No, he completely ignored her, and that really pissed her off. “Go ahead, then. Pretend you’re invincible, that you’re not scared to death of letting someone care for you. Run away from me, Lucan. You’re only proving my point.”

Gabrielle felt a keen sense of hopelessness as Lucan retrieved an ammunition clip from the cabinet and shoved it into the pistol’s hollow grip. Nothing she said would stop him. She felt helpless, like she was trying to wrap her arms around a storm.

She glanced away from him, her eyes straying back to the table where she sat, at the plates and silverware in front of her. She saw the unused knife lying there, the polished blade gleaming.

She couldn’t hold him back with words, but there was something else…

She pushed back the long sleeve of her robe. Very calmly, with the same fearless resolve that had served her a hundred times before, Gabrielle picked up the knife and pressed the edge of it to the fleshy part of her forearm. A small pressure, the barest slice of the blade through her skin.

She didn’t know which of Lucan’s senses responded first, but the roar he let loose when his head came up and he saw what she had done rattled every piece of furniture in the room.

“Goddamn it—Gabrielle!”

The blade flew out of her grasp and across the length of the bedroom, embedding to the hilt in the far wall.

Lucan moved so fast she could hardly track him. One second he was standing several feet away at the foot of the bed, the next he had his large hand clamped down hard around her fingers, hauling her up to her feet. Blood rose from the thin line of her cut, juicy, deep crimson, trickling down her arm. Her hand was still caught in Lucan’s crushing grip.

He towered over her, a wall of dark, seething fury.

His chest was heaving, the nostrils flaring as his breath sawed in and out of his lungs. His handsome face was contorted with anguish and outrage, and his eyes burned with the unmistakable heat of his hunger. Not a trace of gray remained, his pupils narrowed down to the barest slivers of black. His fangs were stretched long, their sharp white tips gleaming behind the vicious curl of his lip.

“Now, try to tell me that you don’t need what I’m offering,” she whispered fiercely.

Sweat glistened on his brow as he stared at her fresh, bleeding wound. He licked his lips and ground out a word from another language.

It didn’t sound friendly.

“Why?” he demanded, accusing. “Why would you do this to me?”

“You really don’t know?” She held his feral gaze, weathering his anger as droplets of blood splattered a crimson trail across the snowy white of her robe. “Because I love you, Lucan. And this is all I have to give you.”