“With him?” Jordana scoffed. “Please. He’s the rudest man I’ve ever met. He has no social skills whatsoever. He’s coarse and cold and menacing.”
“And yet you kissed him a few nights ago.”
She hardly needed the reminder. Jordana felt her forehead crease harder with her deepening scowl. She’d never been particularly comfortable in her own skin, had felt practically all her life that she was different somehow. That she was merely pretending so hard to be normal—to be the good daughter, the exemplary woman, the pleasant Breedmate—goals that seemed always just out of her reach.
No matter how hard she strived to be what everyone around her expected, inside she felt she was only going through the motions. Acting, not living.
Pretending to be something she wasn’t and maybe never could be.
She’d never felt that lack so markedly as she did in Nathan’s company. He had the uncanny ability to strip her bare, to pare her down to her bones with just a glance. He had the unnerving power to unravel the tentative constructs of her life with just one uninvited touch.
“He scares me, Carys. When Nathan looks at me, I feel as if he’s seeing all my flaws, every crack in who I am. When I’m near him, it’s as though I’m standing na**d in the middle of a raging storm. He makes me feel as if I’m on the steepest cliff, about to lose my footing. That if I step too close to him, I might never get back on solid ground.”
Carys stared at her. “And this is a bad thing, the way you see it?”
“Yes, it’s bad. It’s the worst thing,” Jordana said, uncertain who she needed to convince more: her friend or herself. “I’ll be better off—safer—if I stay far away from Nathan.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Carys replied after a long moment. “It would be safer for you if you steer clear of him.”
“Yes,” Jordana said, pushing out the breath she’d been holding. Having her best friend’s agreement was just the confirmation she needed. “I’m glad you understand.”
“Oh, believe me, I do,” Carys said. Her lips curved into a wry smile. “Because what you just described? That’s how Rune made me feel from the moment we first met. I stepped off that cliff with him, and so far, I haven’t missed solid ground beneath me for so much as a second.”
7
CASSIAN GRAY STEPPED OUT OF A TAXI AND INTO THE LATE-AFTERNOON sunlight on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston’s Back Bay. He ambled up the street at a casual pace, even though daytime was ending in less than two hours and he had every reason to hustle his ass to where he was going.
This close to dusk, it was a risk for him to be out and about. Although he hadn’t been in touch with anyone at La Notte in a couple of days, he had no doubt the Order was on his trail. He’d suspected his cover had been blown from the instant one of their warriors—an errant comrade-turned-rebel-leader named Kellan Archer—had body-blocked him during a minor confrontation in the club.
Cassian didn’t know what the Breed male’s unique psychic talent might be, but something told him the warrior’s touch had outed Cass as being other than human.
That bit of shitty luck had nearly been enough to make Cass cut and run from the life he’d made for himself in Boston, but it was the more recent bout of bad news—the death of Reginald Crowe—that had Cass skulking around the city and constantly looking over his shoulder like the fugitive he truly was.
Crowe’s attempt to disrupt the Global Nations Council summit several nights ago had made headlines all over the world. So had his slaying at the hands of the Order. As much as Cass dreaded the possibility of being captured for interrogation by Lucan and his warriors, there was another, equally lethal army of soldiers that he hoped to elude.
His Atlantean kinsmen.
Cass had been on the run from them for far longer than he had from the Order. Hiding in plain sight had worked well enough all these years, and it was that same method of concealment he employed now, as he made his way to an important appointment in the city.
As he strolled nonchalantly by a coffee shop window on the avenue, he caught his reflection and smiled to himself at how different he looked. His short crown of hair was dyed a nondescript brown and combed into an obedient side part. Dark sunglasses masked his eyes.
He’d traded his usual public camouflage of leather and metal for thrift store denim and a faded Red Sox logo T-shirt that had probably started showing its wear a decade ago. Scuffed loafers covered his feet, their soles so thin he could feel every pit and bump in the concrete of the sidewalk as he made his way toward the designated meeting spot.
He looked more than passably pedestrian, hardly distinguishable from any other civilian man in his thirties. To anyone seeing him on the street today, Cass was unremarkable, forgettable. Just as he’d intended.
No one would think that he and the platinum-haired, black-leather-clad Goth nightmare proprietor of La Notte were one and the same.
Nor would any of the humans around him on this stretch of crowded pavement ever guess that he was an immortal on the north side of a thousand years old.
Only his fellow Atlanteans might sense he was one of them, and he’d been careful to keep his head down in the time since he’d left their realm and come to Boston. He’d constructed an all-new identity, a facade he’d carefully maintained for twenty-some years, from his unsavory occupation and all the underworld connections that went along with it, to his offputting appearance and the presumed kink of his carnal proclivities.
Cassian Gray, proprietor of La Notte, was a mask he’d perfected over a long period of time. Keeping his ear to the ground, his fingers busy greasing palms and pulling various strings in the shadowy underbelly of the city were cautious necessities of his new life.