"I should," Aric said. "I'm sure Father would be very interested to talk to Jordana's parents too. I doubt the venerable Gates clan of Beacon Hill would be happy to hear their Breedmate daughter was traipsing all over the city, staying out until dawn."
"But you won't tell," she said, smooth and coaxing, yet Nathan was certain he'd detected a note of worry creeping into Carys's bright blue eyes at the mention of her Darkhaven friend. Carys moved closer to her brother and rested her palms on his chest. "You won't tell on me, Aric. And in return, I won't tell Mother and Father about the trio of dancers you and Rafe shared at a Chinatown sim-lounge last weekend."
"How did you hear about that?" Aric practically choked the words out, but Raphael merely grinned, a slow curve of his mouth that showed absolutely zero repentance. "Who the hell do you hang out with that you would hear about something like that?"
"You have your little secrets," Carys chided with a smile and an arch look, "and I have mine. Let's agree to keep it that way, shall we?"
She rose up and gave her brother a peck on the cheek, then she was on her way, tossing a wave at Nathan and the others as she pivoted on her tall heels and strode up the corridor.
While his warrior brethren resumed their trek for the training facility, Nathan felt his instincts prickle with a vague but undeniable suspicion. He turned a curious look behind him at Carys. The retreating female glanced his way, a quick, cautious glimpse over her shoulder, before she picked up her pace and disappeared around a curve in the long hallway.
Chapter Nine
MIRA WOKE UP FROM AN EXHAUSTED SLEEP, THE WARM, spicy scent of Kellan all around her. At first she thought it belonged to her dreams - dark, seductive dreams, where he was not her enemy but the lover she'd yearned to touch again, the only man she'd ever wanted.
But it wasn't a dream that filled her senses now. It was reality. Kellan's cold and empty bed, she all alone in his locked quarters in the rebel base he commanded.
Mira sat up, pushed her tangled hair out of her eyes. The room was quiet. He hadn't returned since he'd left her there the night before. The blanket he'd put down for himself on the floor was right where he'd dropped it, the makeshift sleeping area undisturbed.
Where was he? Since he hadn't come back to his own quarters, where had he chosen to spend the night?
Maybe with one of the pretty human women under his command. Candice, with her easy smile and nurturing, competent hands. Or the indigo-haired sprite, Nina, with her sad eyes and pixie-cute face. A pang of jealous suspicion shot through Mira, uninvited and bitter with an acid bite.
She didn't need to wonder who Kellan wanted to spend his nights with. He wasn't hers to worry about. He wouldn't be ever again.
And maybe he never truly was, if leaving her behind had come so easily to him.
Her heart wanted to deny that, but her head was still struggling to make sense of the fact that Kellan had been alive all this time - living just outside Boston in this new, lawless life he'd created for himself as someone else entirely. He'd never tried to reach her. Never cared enough to end her grief and tell her that he was safe - even if that gesture would come with the sting of learning who he'd become. He had simply walked away and never looked back.
The hurt in her chest cracked open wider, but she refused to let it break her.
And she shouldn't give a damn who Kellan - or, rather, Bowman - decided to share a bed with, so long as it wasn't her.
Mira swung her bare legs over the edge of the mattress and poured herself a glass of water from the tumbler Candice had left on the bedside table. Her contact lenses sat in a small dish of saline solution, also courtesy of the pretty, raven-haired woman. Mira put them in, then downed her glass of water, grateful for both kindnesses Kellan's rebel comrade had provided her.
Mira rubbed a damp chill from her arms as she put her feet on the cold floor. She was wearing just her panties and the extra-large T-shirt Kellan had given her out of the chest at the foot of the bed. Her bra and his borrowed sweatpants were folded over a weathered wooden chair. She was about to get up and grab them when the tumbler on the locked door clicked open.
Kellan walked in, no warning or excuse.
His gaze shot to her in his bed. For a moment, she couldn't tell if it was surprise or regret in his hazel eyes. But there was something dark in them too, something troubled and grim. He stepped inside the room and closed the door behind him.
When he spoke, his voice was coarse like gravel. "You look well rested."
Mira scrambled out of his bed, all too aware of her state of undress and too conscious of the fact that Kellan was noticing it too. "You look like hell," she told him, keeping the sarcasm ripe in her tone as she edged away from the rumpled mattress. "I hate to think you had to find another bed to sleep in, with your private quarters turned into my prison cell."
He grunted as he prowled farther into the room. "Who says I slept?"
Mira watched him, wishing it wasn't so easy to picture him warming another woman's bed. For all her mental reassurances that she shouldn't care what he did - or with whom - seeing him unrested and tense with menacing energy made anger spike in her veins. "Where have you been, Kellan?"
He barked out a caustic laugh. "Masterminding rebel business." He pinned her with a dark look, showing the gleaming tips of his fangs. "That's what I do, remember?"
Mira stared at him, taken aback by the barely restrained anger in his voice. His face was taut with aggression, the lean angles of his cheeks and goateed jaw even sharper now. Kellan was mad. Furiously mad.
She watched him stalk over to the clothing chest on the floor like he was marching to war. He stripped off his wrinkled black T-shirt with savage force, threw open the lid of the trunk. His dermaglyphs were livid with color. The swirling arcs and flourishes of the Breed skin markings that covered his chest and biceps churned and pulsed with stormy shades of red and black and midnight blue. Mira swallowed. "Something's happened, hasn't it? Something bad."