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Anger spiked in the agent’s eyes, the heat of it rolling off him in waves. Although Dante could tell Chase was not accustomed to taking orders—especially from someone he might consider a few steps beneath him in the social order of things—the Darkhaven male kept his irritation to himself. He rigged up in the hardware Dante had given him, checking the safety on the pistol and then shrugging into the leather chest holster.

Dante drove into Boston’s North End, following a tip Gideon had gotten about a possible rave to take place in one of the area’s old buildings. At seven-thirty in the evening, they still had about five hours to kill before any activity around the location would prove out the tip one way or the other. But Dante had never been one to abide that kind of patience. He didn’t do sit-and-wait, being more of the mind that death had a harder time catching up to a moving target.

He cut the lights and parked the Porsche down the street from the building they’d be staking out. A breeze kicked up, sending a smatter of leaves and city dust skating across the hood of the vehicle. When it had passed, Dante slid the window down and let the coolness come inside. He took a deep breath, dragging in a lungful of the crisp, late-autumn air.

Something spicy-sweet tickled his nostrils, sending every cell in his body into instant alert. The scent was distant and elusive, nothing manufactured by man, Breed, or any of their collective sciences. It was dusky warm, like cinnamon and vanilla, although to call it such only captured the smallest fraction of its mystique. The scent was something exquisite and singular.

Dante knew it at once. It belonged to the female he’d fed from—the Breedmate he’d so carelessly claimed as his less than twenty-four hours ago.

Tess.

Dante opened the car door and got out.

“What are we doing?”

“You’re staying here,” he instructed Chase, drawn inexorably toward her, his feet already moving on the pavement.

“What is it?” The agent drew his gun and started to get out of the Porsche like he meant to tail Dante on foot. “Tell me what’s happening, damn it. Do you see something out there?”

“Stay in the fucking car, Harvard. And keep your eyes and ears on that building. I’ve got to check something out.”

Dante didn’t think anything was going to go down at their posted location in the next few minutes, but if it did, at that moment he didn’t really care. All he knew was the scent of that perfume on the night wind and the realization that the female was near.

His female, came the dark reminder from somewhere inside him.

Dante tracked her like a predator. Like all of the Breed, he was gifted with heightened senses, super speed, and animal agility. When they wanted, vampires could move among humans undetected, nothing more than a cool breeze on the back of their necks as they passed them by. Dante used that preternatural skill now, navigating the clogged streets and back alleys, his senses trained on his quarry.

He rounded a corner onto the busy main street, and there she was, across the width of the pavement, on the other side.

Dante went still where he stood, watching as Tess shopped in a lighted open-air market, carefully selecting fresh greens and vegetables. She dropped a yellow squash into her canvas shopping bag, then perused a bin of fruit, stopping to lift a pale cantaloupe to her nose and test its ripeness.

Thinking back on the moment he first saw her in her clinic, even through the haze of his injuries, Dante had recognized that she was beautiful. But tonight, under the strand of small white lights illuminating the produce bins, she looked radiant. Her cheeks were flushed pink, her blue-green eyes sparkling as she smiled over at the old proprietess and complimented her on the quality of the stand’s offerings.

Dante moved up his side of the street, keeping to the shadows, unable to take his eyes off her. This close, the scent of her was inebriating and lush. He breathed in through his mouth, letting the spicy sweetness of her sift through his teeth, relishing the way it played across