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Several heads nodded in agreement with Renata.

“And if the pullback is an indicator of something else?” Lucan asked grimly. “If they’ve abruptly pulled out of Boston not because they’re worried about being found, but because they’re working on something bigger?”

“Actually, I think we need to assume that it’s not fear so much as strategy.” Claire’s voice drew everyone’s attention to the back of the weapons room. She glanced around at the group, lingering the longest on Reichen. Her gaze was troubled, and he could feel the distress that had her heart pounding uncomfortably in her breast. “I don’t know Dragos, but I know Wilhelm Roth well enough. He never operates from a position of fear. He believes himself invincible, smarter than everyone else. Wherever he is, he’s got an alternative plan to strike even harder than he has before.”

“All the better reason to use any advantage we can to find him,” Rio added.

Lucan’s gaze traveled from Claire to Renata to Dylan, the trio of Breedmates who would be carrying out the daytime mission. “You’re all in agreement, then? You want to do this?”

“Yes,” they answered in unison.

He considered it for a long moment, then gave a solemn nod. “All right, then. Gideon will grid the best area for you to start searching. Let’s plan on meeting for one final review in the tech lab before you roll out.”

With a round of assenting comments, the meeting began to disperse. Reichen started to move toward Claire, but before he could reach her and offer the dozen different apologies he’d been rehearsing in his mind since they’d last parted, Renata and Dylan swept her along in a rush of conversation.

She gave him only the briefest look as she passed, the message in her gaze unmistakably clear. He had nothing to say about what she was doing. He had refused to give her promises he couldn’t keep, and now she was dealing it back to him in spades. The taste of his comeuppance was bitter as hell.

Claire turned away from him, then continued on with her two female companions to discuss the daytime mission that had put a lump of icy dread in Reichen’s gut.

By the time the sun rose, Claire’s frustration with Andreas had long dried up. She understood his concern, and his anger. She had been foolish to think she could negotiate with Roth. Even more foolish to think that she could ever endure a return as his mate. She would have done it, though. She would have done anything to ensure Andreas’s well-being. Especially after the vision she’d seen of his fiery demise.

All she’d known was the need to hold on tightly to him. That was why she’d asked him to give up his quest to avenge his family and all but begged him to let the Order fight the battle with Roth and Dragos on the front lines. It had been a moment of keen and selfish desperation, one that had made her blind to anything else but her love for him. All she had known was her need to keep him near so that nothing and no one could take him away from her again.

But as Claire prepared to leave the compound with Dylan and Renata that morning, she had come to realize that she had been asking too much of him. In the compound’s tech lab with the others, she watched from the periphery as the two females’ mates, Rio and Nikolai, spent a last few quiet moments murmuring tender words to them and holding them close.

Witnessing the soft good-byes and lingering embraces of the two couples parting for the day, Claire felt a sting of shame for what she’d expected of Andreas. Their love was no more sacred than what she was seeing here. The safety of either of them was no more important than that of any of the warriors or their Breedmates.

Andreas had been right to reject what she had asked of him.

Claire might have told him as much, but he hadn’t come to see her off with the rest of the Order. Instead it was Tess and Savannah who pulled her into quick, warm hugs as she and Dylan and Renata began gathering their gear for the day’s mission. Lucan and Gabrielle came over a moment later, the Order’s leader giving her a somber nod as his Breedmate