But she needed comfort now. She needed to feel safe. He could give her that, at least for the moment.
Gideon held her as she fell into a hard sleep in his arms. Sometime later, easily hours, he lifted her off the sofa and carried her tenderly to her bed so she could rest more comfortably.
He stayed until the hour before dawn, watching over her. Making sure she was safe.
Wondering what the hell he was getting himself into.
Chapter 8
"Tell me this is some kind of f**king joke."
Lucan Thorne wasn't at all pleased to hear that Gideon had gone AWOL from the night's patrol. He'd been even less enthused to learn where Gideon had spent those off-grid hours.
"A goddamn Breedmate? What the hell were you thinking, man?" The Gen One leader of the Order blew out a nasty curse. "Maybe you weren't thinking. Not with your brain, anyway. That alone is cause for serious concern, if you ask me. You've never lost sight of your duty to the Order, Gideon. Not once in all these years."
"Nor have I lost sight of it now."
He was seated in the war room with Lucan and Tegan, the former radiating fury and pacing the room like a caged cat. The latter was sprawled in a conference chair at the other end of the table, showing less than passing interest in Gideon's morning-after ass-chewing while idly spinning a pen around on top of a mission review notebook.
"My interest in this woman has nothing to do with Order objectives. I told you, it's personal."
"Exactly my point." Lucan's stormy gray eyes narrowed on him. "Personal agendas have no place in this operation. Personal agendas make people sloppy. You get sloppy, you get people killed."
"I can handle this, Lucan."
"Not your choice, Gid. You know the protocol. We have to let the Darkhavens know about her, let them step in on this. We don't do diplomatic work. For damn good reason."
"She witnessed a Breed assault on a human," Gideon blurted. "The coed who ended up in the morgue after the attack on her and one of the professors over at the university the other night. The dead girl was Savannah's roommate. She was killed by one of our kind."
Lucan's jaw went even more rigid. "You're certain of this? You're saying this Breedmate--Savannah--was there when it happened?"
"Her talent, Lucan. It's psychometry. She touches an object and can see a bit of its past. That's how she saw her friend's killing."
"She tell anyone about this?" Tegan drawled from his seat at the end of the table.
"No. Only me," Gideon replied. "I'd like to keep it that way--for her own sake and that of our entire race. And that's not all she's seen with her gift."
Both Gen One warriors stared at him now.
"This shit is about to get even worse?" Lucan growled.
"During the attack, there was a sword taken from the university's Art History archives. A sword I'm very familiar with, because it was the one a band of Rogues turned on my young brothers the night they were slaughtered outside our family Darkhaven in London." Gideon cleared his throat, still tasting the smoke that lingered for months after the stable was torched. "Savannah touched this sword too. She saw the Rogues and what they did to my kin. I never gave that damned sword another thought, until now. Until I realized it had surfaced in Boston, some three hundred years later."
Tegan grunted. "Surfaced, only to disappear again."
"That's right. I need to know who has that blade now."
Tegan gave a vague nod, his overlong tawny hair falling over his eyes, but not quite masking the intensity of his gem-green gaze. "You think there's a connection between the sword being here in Boston and the murders of your brothers centuries ago."
"It's a question that needs to be answered," Gideon said. "And I can't do that unless Savannah can identify the Breed male responsible for the attack at the university."
"What about the other victim, the one who survived?" Lucan said. "That's another potential witness who was actually there and lived to tell."
Gideon shook his head. "He's still hospitalized, critical. In the time it takes him to come around enough for some private questioning and the requisite memory scrub afterward, Savannah could have already given me everything I need."
Although Lucan didn't say as much, Gideon could see the suspicion in the Gen One's keen eyes. "You're risking too much, letting yourself get close to this female. She's a Breedmate, Gideon. That might be all right for guys like Con and Rio, but for any of us?" He glanced to Tegan, then back to Gideon. "We're the longest-standing members of this operation now. We're the core. We've each been through enough shit to know that relationships, blood bonds, don't mix well with warfare. Someone always gets hurt in the end."
"I'm not looking for a mate, for f**k's sake." Gideon's reply was sharp, sounding too defensive, even to his own ears. He exhaled a ripe oath. "And I have no intention of hurting her."
"Good," Lucan said. "Then you'll have no problem when I arrange to have one of the Darkhavens meet the female at her apartment and take her into their protective custody while she's being brought up to speed on the Breed and her place in our world."
Gideon bristled, coming up out of his chair to face off with his old friend and the Order's commander. "Trance her and dump her with one of the Boston Darkhaven leaders? Not a chance. She's just a scared, confused kid, Lucan."
"You're not acting like she's just a kid. You're acting like you're responsible for this female. Like you've already got more than a passing interest."
Christ, did he? Gideon wanted to refute the accusation, but the words sat like cold lead in the back of his throat.