No, Nathan understood now, it had been left behind as an invitation.
A clue meant to lead the right person directly to where Kellan would be found.
It was a token of surrender.
It wasn't so much a sound that woke Kellan but a sudden, quiet sense of expectation. He felt it in the air around him, in the moonlit darkness of the thick forest outside the Darkhaven bedroom's French doors. Silent, stealth, lethal.
They'd been found so soon.
Not that he was surprised.
No, he'd been prepared for this moment from the time he'd left the New Bedford base. Longer still, from the moment he'd found Mira gazing into her own reflection and understood in terrifying terms just how much his delay of the inevitable was costing her.
How much it had taken from her already.
He wanted it all to stop now. For her.
If he wasn't already too late.
Carefully extricating himself from Mira's arms as she slept na**d beside him, Kellan slipped out of the bed. He pulled on his loose jeans and strode barefoot to the French doors. Opened them soundlessly and stepped outside to the cool summer night, scented by crisp northern air and dense pines.
A shadow peeled away from the inky blackness of the woods.
Nathan.
Garbed in black combat fatigues and a belted array of blades and firearms circling his hips, the former Breed assassin could have killed Kellan a dozen different ways by now. But he made no move to attack as he approached from out of the cover of the woods. Said nothing as he looked upon Kellan's face for the first time in eight years.
Kellan sent a quick glance in the direction of the surrounding forest.
"I came alone." Nathan's deep voice was quiet, barely a whisper in the stillness of their surroundings, and it held no trace of expression whatsoever. Flat and calm and unreadable. As was the look in his unblinking eyes. "No one knows where I am. I assume that's what you wanted."
Kellan gave a vague nod. "Hoped, yes."
"She's here with you?"
"Yes."
"She's been safe the whole time?"
Kellan could hardly confirm that, especially now, when he wasn't sure if she would ever be whole again. He'd fed her his blood more than an hour ago in the hopes their completed bond would restore her eyesight. She'd fallen asleep in his arms, trusting he would make her better, but it had felt to him like yet another promise he might fail to deliver to her.
"Mira's inside," he told Nathan, unwilling to lie to his old friend yet not quite ready to accept that Mira couldn't be healed. "She's sleeping, along with the three remaining members of my crew, who helped me bring her here."
Nathan grunted. "And you. Not dead, after all."
"I should've been," Kellan replied. "Someone helped me after the explosion that night, took care of me until I had healed. I never intended to disappear the way I did - "
Nathan cut him off, his voice cool, words clipped and efficient. "Explanations are unnecessary. At least as far as I'm concerned. I am not your judge and jury, just the Hunter come to retrieve a traitor."
Kellan lifted his chin, feeling the reply like a volley lobbed at him broadside. "I guess I deserve that, considering we're friends."
"My friend died eight years ago. I don't know Bowman."
"Yet you came alone after finding the clue that would lead to my arrest."
Nathan took a subtle step forward, his face grim. "Call it a kindness for the memory of my dead friend. And for the female who never stopped loving him. A female who deserves better than this, whose heart will be breaking all over again very soon, no doubt."
"Mira's the reason I led you here. She and my friends are inside this Darkhaven. I needed to know they would all be safe when this moment came. Making sure it happened here, like this, was the only way I knew how."
Nathan's eyes narrowed slightly under the ebony slashes of his brows. "How can you be certain of that?"
"Because you came alone," he replied. "And because despite your training, I know you are no killer of innocents. I'm the one you and the Order want. I mean to go with you peacefully. All I ask is that my crew goes free and Mira goes home safely, taking no blame for anything that happened to Jeremy Ackmeyer or for her time spent with me."
Nathan's cool stare pierced him even deeper now. "She doesn't know you're surrendering." Not a question; a cold, accurate statement of fact. "Why would you do this to her?"
"I've hurt her enough. I want this - all of it - over."
Nathan's brows lowered into a scowl. "You care for her, that's obvious enough, even to me. I know she cares for you. Why not run somewhere together? After all, you've lived a lie this long. Why throw yourself on the sword now?"
The irony of it made Kellan exhale a sharp breath through his nostrils. "Because I have no f**king choice."
Nathan cocked his head, studying him. "What is this - some eleventh-hour attack of conscience? Too late for that. If it's a sudden resurrection of your honor after such a long absence, I promise you, it's wasted. This thing has gone too far. It's gone too public now. There won't be any clemency for you - for Bowman. There can't be."
Kellan nodded. "I know that. This will only end one way for me. I've seen that for myself."
"You've seen it." Something cold and suspicious flickered in Nathan's steady gaze now. His voice, which had been carefully schooled and quiet, now notched a bit louder. "You mean Mira's shown something to you. A vision?" A curse, ripe and violent, erupted from between his old friend's lips. "You've used her ability, knowing what that costs her?"
"Jesus, no. I never would've done that," Kellan said. "Not intentionally - "