• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“It’s a bit late for that, don’t you think?” She caressed his tight jaw, only the barest skate of her fingers over the tender skin. “I’ve heard everything you’ve said. I’ve seen what happened to your brother. I understand your fear, Kade. But I’m not going to run away. Not ever again. And I won’t let you push me away, either. I love you.”

He expelled a harsh breath, and when he looked at her now, sparks of amber lit the silver irises of his eyes. She saw the glint of his fangs behind his lips, sharp white points gleaming with deadly power.

“I love you, Kade,” she insisted, refusing to back down. “And unless you tell me here and now that you don’t love me, too, then I can think of no reason why either of us should be alone.”

He stared hard at her, his jaw held tight. “Goddamn it, Alex. You know I can’t say that. I do love you. And that has complicated everything.”

She smiled with a humor she barely felt. “A little too much gray for you?” she asked softly. “And here I thought I was the one who liked to keep things simple, black and white.”

He didn’t return her smile. He was too far gone for that. As Alex drew back, she saw his eyes move from her lips to the base of her throat.

Her pulse was fluttering there, a fast tick that intensified to a heavier throb as she watched Kade stare hungrily at that spot. He caught her looking at him and abruptly glanced away. Tried to hide his awareness of her blood, pounding below the surface of her skin. Tried to hide his thirst from her.

Alex brought his gaze back to her with a coaxing touch. “You don’t have to deny who you are or what you need, Kade. Not from me. Not anymore.”

Silently she put down her wet cloth and positioned herself against his mouth, sweeping her hair away from her neck.

Her name was a reverent whisper on his lips as he drew in his breath, then blew it out in a heated rush against her skin. Kade descended on her in a swift motion, his sharp bite filled with need and a desperation that he made no effort to conceal.

Inside Zach Tucker’s house in Harmony, a pair of Alaska State Troopers recently arrived from the post in Fairbanks slumped in subdued silence, both men tranced on the living room sofa.

In a recliner next to them, Mayor Sidney Charles snored softly, tranced, as well. The elderly Native man had proven immensely cooperative, albeit unwittingly so, to the Order’s mission objectives in town. Not only had he delivered on his promise to summon every citizen of Harmony into the church a few hours ago, but he’d also had the good manners to escort the newly arrived Staties to Zach Tucker’s place when their plane had touched down from Fairbanks around daybreak.

With Brock still on post at Jenna’s cabin, Tegan, Chase, and Hunter had since relocated their operation to Tucker’s house. They’d waited out the scant few hours of daylight there, using the idle time to dig into the dead trooper’s computer records and look for further evidence of his corruption in the house. They hadn’t had to look very far.

Zach Tucker might have been a bush cop but he had an accountant’s eye for record keeping. He’d logged every drug deal and bootlegged bottle of booze that had passed through his hands and into Skeeter Arnold’s for distribution around the area.

When the two Staties woke up, they were going to find every handwritten ledger and computer-stored spreadsheet in Zach Tucker’s ransacked house. They were going to find the safe where Zach kept all of the considerable cash he’d made from his little side business over a period that had to have been several years.

The uniformed troopers were going to follow a hunch neither one of them could shake that would lead them to a remote area of the bush where they would discover Harmony’s sole police officer, brutally murdered and scavenged by animals. Near the body, they would find Skeeter Arnold’s cell phone, showing a history of plenty of calls to and from Trooper Tucker. With Skeeter nowhere to be found, nor heard from, the Staties