Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [401]
Niko clucked his tongue. “And if someone thought to ally himself with that kind of deadly power? Somebody like Marek…”
“We can’t afford that risk,” Lucan said. “So, it looks like we need to haul ass to Prague and see what we can find.”
“Reichen’s only a few hours away from there in Berlin,” Tegan said. “He’s offered us his help in whatever way we can use him.”
Lucan narrowed his eyes, considering the idea. “Can he be trusted?”
“Yeah,” Tegan said, nodding in certainty. “I can vouch for him.”
“Give him a call then. But keep the details to a minimum. Let him know we’re on the way and we’re going to need transportation. We can rendezvous with him on arrival at Tegel Airport.”
“Shouldn’t we head straight for Prague instead and meet up with him there?” Brock asked.
Tegan shook his head, picking up on Lucan’s tactic. “Reichen may be trustworthy, but we don’t know about anyone else around him. Marek’s already aware that we’ve got an interest in Berlin. No sense tipping our hand about Prague.”
Lucan nodded. “We’ll fill Reichen in once we arrive.”
“Right,” Gideon said. “I’ll get clearance for a flight out tonight.”
There was none of the usual bravado as the lab emptied out and the warriors each went to prepare for the mission ahead of them. Tegan normally would have gone off to suit up by himself and think in peace. He thought he probably should now, but then Elise linked her fingers through his as the two of them paused in the vacant corridor.
“Are you all right?” she asked, her gaze as sober as his must have been. “If you want to be alone, or if you have something you need to do…”
“No. I don’t.”
He thought about calling the denial back and feeding her some line of bullshit that he was needed somewhere else right then, but the words wouldn’t come. And he found he couldn’t let go of her hand.
He’d be leaving in a few hours, and the odds were pretty damn good that he wasn’t coming back.
He was going in this time with one goal: to personally take out Marek. Even if he had to take himself out in the process. Tegan was more than ready to bring the war to Marek, and, one way or another, that son of a bitch was going down.
“Come on,” he said to Elise, tipping her chin up to meet his kiss. “There’s only one place I want to be right now.”
Elise and Tegan spent the rest of the day in his quarters, making love, and, it seemed, avoiding talk of what the future might bring them. She knew the secrets the tapestry had revealed weighed heavily on him—on all of the Order—but Tegan seemed especially remote as dusk drew near and the group of them prepared to head out. He had withdrawn in some way, as if he were already gone, fighting the ghost of an enemy that had haunted him for too long and had to finally be exorcised.
His call to Reichen earlier that day had brought troubling news: Petrov Odolf had slipped further into Bloodlust and was not doing well. The word out of the containment facility was that the Rogue had become increasingly unstable in the hours after Tegan and Elise left him that last time. At some point overnight, he lapsed into violent seizures and attacked one of his handlers, nearly killing the attendant in a fit of rage.
As for Tegan, he seemed skeptical of Director Kuhn’s report to Reichen. He didn’t trust the facility director, and, as he hung up with Reichen, he left the Darkhaven male with a mission to get more answers about the Rogue’s condition.
“Be careful,” Elise told him as they walked out of his quarters to meet the others who were gathering in the main area of the compound.
Tegan paused and kissed her passionately, but there was a distance in his eyes.
“I love you,” she said, stroking his strong jaw and trying to tamp down the worry that was beating like a caged bird in her chest. “You’d better come back to me soon, you understand? Promise me.”
The sounds of the other warriors talking in the hallway up ahead drew his attention. Weapons and gear jangled, deep male voices rumbling against the marble walls. That was his world calling him, the duty he’d been sworn into