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Hell, it might already be too late.

As he cleared the membershe he membx2019; lounge and turned the corner down a stretch of empty hallway, his steps hastened. Worry and rage snarled in his gut when he thought about Reiver’s evil touching someone else he cared about. He couldn’t bite back the curse that boiled out between his teeth and emerging fangs.

“I gather it didn’t go well.”

Bran paused, swung a dark look over his shoulder at Thane. The guard stood behind him in the hallway, one beefy shoulder pressed against the wall, his booted feet crossed at the ankle. His expression might have been mistaken for boredom, if not for the glint of suspicion in his eyes.

“Something went wrong with the surveillance camera feed today. But I guess you already know that,” Bran said, wrestling his concern and fury into a semblance of curt frustration. And it didn’t escape him that the best defense was often a good offense. “Thanks for not telling me that my ass was on the line with the boss.”

“Wasn’t my place to tell you,” Thane said. “You going down to the control room to have a look?”

“Yeah.” Bran nodded, well aware that there was a back exit to the building down there too.

Thane started walking toward him. “I’ll go with you.”

Bran scoffed. “You’ve helped me enough for one night, don’t you think? Why don’t you do something useful and send a few of the girls up to the boss for a while, tell them to take good care of him, make him real happy. Pick the best ones too, the ones with the most skilled mouths. Maybe if we keep him busy, he’ll lay off the rest of us for the night.”

Thane stared at him, unsmiling. “All right, Bran. You do what you have to. I’ll handle things with Mr. Reiver.”

Bran might have questioned the cryptic response, but all his focus was zeroed in on one task now. He stalked toward the club’s security control room, casting a quick look behind him as he neared the back exit. The hallway was empty. Thane was gone.

Bran punched open the door and stepped into the bracing wintry chill outside. Too risky to take one of Reiver’s fleet vehicles and hope it wouldn’t be missed. Besides, he was Breed. He’d get where he was going even faster on foot.

He summoned the speed of his preternatural genetics and vanished into the night.

Chapter Four

Danika got up from the rocking chair and gently placed little Connor into the nest of blankets in his crib, careful not to wake him. His face was as innocent as a cherub’s as he slept, sated from his evening feeding at her wrist. She savored these tender moments with her baby.

Watching the small bundle nestled in the center of the delicate crib, it was easy to forget how fierce and unbreakable he’d be one day. How bold and courageous his father’s noble Breed blood would make him. In just a few years’ time, by the age of five or six, Connor wouldwha be old enough to hunt his own prey. A short decade more and he would be full grown, lethally so, a Breed male ready to make his mark on the world. Would he accept a civilian life, perhaps find a Breedmate to give him sons of his own and centuries of peaceful existence? Or would he follow in his father’s footsteps, pledging himself to a greater purpose?

In her heart, Danika knew the answer to those questions, difficult as it was to accept. Each time Connor grasped her finger in his tight little fist, his innocent eyes far too knowing, too fathomless for a mother’s peace of mind, she knew. Her son would be a warrior, like his father.

And it killed something inside her to think she might lose him one day too.

With a soft kiss to Connor’s velvety head, Danika drew away from the crib to let him sleep. She retrieved her empty tea mug from the table beside the rocking chair, then clicked off the bureau lamp on her way out of the bedroom, her gaze lingering on her child as she quietly closed the door.

Even before she turned around, she realized she and Connor weren’t alone anymore.

“Nice little place,” said one of the two vampires who stood inside the living area of the cottage.