Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [357]
Reichen’s driver eased the car inside, only to pause before another set of tall gates. A quartet of armed Breed guards approached from either side of the vehicle and opened the doors. Elise didn’t miss Tegan’s deep-throated growl as they all climbed out, practically held at gunpoint.
Another Breed male came forward now, having come out of a windowless door built into the interior gate of the complex. He looked serious and distinguished in his dark gray suit and black turtleneck, his reddish brown beard trimmed into a precise goatee.
“Madam Chase,” he said, greeting her with a curt nod. “Welcome. I am Heinrich Kuhn, director of this facility. If you are ready, we will escort you inside now.” He looked to the two males with her, barely affording Tegan a glance. “Your, er…companions may await you here, if you please.”
“Absolutely not.” Tegan’s deep voice, the first he’d spoken since leaving Reichen’s estate, sliced through the air like a sword. Ignoring the sudden clack of shifting metal as the guards raised their weapons on him, he stepped toward Elise, placing himself between the facility head and her in an unmistakably protective stance. “She’s not going in there alone.”
“It will be perfectly safe,” the director said, pointedly addressing Elise rather than Tegan, as if the warrior did not warrant a direct explanation. “The patient will be restrained, of course, and he has also been sedated for his feeding, which should be finished any moment now. There will be no danger from him, I can assure—”
“I don’t care if you have that suckhead bricked up behind ten feet of solid stone,” Tegan snarled, his green eyes flashing. “She doesn’t go inside that Rogue holding tank without me.”
Two of the guards flicked nervous glances at the director, as if they waited for his order to move in yet dreaded the idea of tangling with the Gen One warrior with a widely accepted lethal reputation.
And well they should hesitate. Elise had no doubt that if things escalated here, it was going to take a lot more than a Darkhaven-trained security detail to handle Tegan. Andreas Reichen seemed to understand that too, and the German evidently found the idea mildly amusing, smiling as he stood back and watched the suited civilian squirm.
“Madam, if you please,” said the director in a patently false diplomatic tone. “Facility visitations are rarely granted to anyone due to the stress it tends to cause the residents in treatment. At the pleasure of the Enforcement Agency’s Chief Director, we have made an exception for you with this interview, but I am loath to think what the mere sight of a warrior inside the clinic could do to my patient’s progress. You must be aware that his kind revels in agitating the afflicted among our race. We practice mercy here, not malice.”
Tegan scoffed. “I’m going in with her. It wasn’t a question.”
Even though he kept his narrowed gaze trained on the containment facility director, Elise knew that Tegan had already sized up the four guards and dismissed them as any kind of true threat. Underneath the long coat he wore, the warrior was also armed with a nasty-looking handgun and several deadly blades sheathed across his torso and at his hip. He made no move to reach for any of his weapons, but Elise knew from seeing him in action that it would take less than a second for him to turn the contained stretch of pavement into a blood-soaked graveyard.
“I would like Tegan to accompany me inside,” she said, taking control of the situation. She saw Tegan’s eyes slide her way for an instant, before he turned his icy stare back on the director.
“Madam, I really don’t think—”