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“He was Breed,” Niko suggested.

Yakut inclined his head in agreement. “No question, he was Breed. He was dressed like a thief, all in black, his head and face covered with a black nylon mask that left only his eyes visible, but there is no doubt in my mind that he was our kind. If I had to guess, I would say he might even have been Gen One himself based on his strength and speed. If not for the child opening her eyes and crying out a warning, I would have lost my head to him in that next instant. He brought a thin wire garrote down on me from behind the chair. Mira’s scream drew his attention away for a crucial second, and I was able to bring up my hand to block the wire from slicing across my throat. I twisted out of his range, but before I could leap on him myself or call in my guards, he escaped.”

‘Just like that, he turned tail and ran?” Nikolai asked.

‘Just like that,” Yakut replied, a slow smile teasing at the corner of his mouth. “One look at Mira, and the coward fled.”

Niko swore under his breath. “You were damn lucky,” he said, finding it hard to reconcile that the sight of a mere child could cause such a distraction for what had to be a highly trained, expert assassin. It just didn’t make sense.

Before he could point that out to Yakut, footsteps approached from the other end of the long room. Walking in ahead of the guard Yakut had dispatched was Renata and a delicate waif of a girl. Renata had shucked her weapons somewhere, but she strolled alongside the child protectively, her cool gaze wary as she brought Mira farther into the room.

Nikolai couldn’t help staring at the girl’s odd attire. The pink pajamas and bunny slippers were unexpected, but it was the short black veil that covered the top of her face that he found most jarring.

“Renata was reading me a story,” Mira supplied, her soft voice chiming with a bright innocence that seemed so out of place in Yakut’s crude domain.

“Is that so?” the Gen One asked, a slow reply that seemed directed more at Renata than the child. “Gome closer, Mira. There is someone who wants to meet you.”

The guard stepped back once Mira stood before Yakut, but Renata’s booted feet held steady at the girl’s side. At first Niko wondered if the child might be blind, but she moved without hesitation, walking the few remaining steps to where Yakut and Nikolai now stood.

The small head pivoted toward Nikolai without error. She definitely was sighted. “Hello,” she said to him, and gave a polite little nod.

“Hello,” Nikolai replied. “I heard what happened the other night. You must be very brave.”

She shrugged, but it was impossible to read her expression when just her small nose and mouth were visible beneath the hem of the head covering. Nikolai looked at the young girl—the impish, three-and-a-half-foot waif who had somehow driven away a Breed vampire on a mission to kill one of the most formidable members of their kind. It had to be a joke. Was Yakut jerking him around somehow? What could this child possibly have done to thwart the attack?

Nikolai looked to Yakut, ready to call him out for what had to be a line of pure bullshit. There was no way in hell the attack could have gone down the way he’d described.

“Remove your veil,” Yakut instructed the girl, as if he knew the line of Niko’s thinking.

Her small hands reached up to grasp the edge of the short black strip of gauze. She swept the veil back off her face but seemed careful to keep her eyes downcast. Renata stood very still beside the child, her expression placid even while her fingers curled into fists at her sides. She seemed to be holding her breath, waiting with an air of wary anticipation.

“Lift your eyes, Mira,” Yakut commanded her, his mouth curving into a smile. “Look at our guest, and show him what he wants to know.”

Slowly the fringe of dark brown lashes came up. The girl raised her chin, tipping her head up and meeting Niko’s gaze.

‘Jesus Christ,” he hissed, hardly aware that he was speaking at all as he