Lazaro slipped away from Melena’s side to shower and get dressed, the predawn morning a prickle in his ancient Breed veins as he headed down to the command center to meet with his team. The warriors were just coming in from the night’s patrol.
Trygg said nothing as he approached with the others from the far end of the corridor. The brutal warrior merely strode into the team’s meeting room for the mission review. Jehan and Sav both slowed as their path met Lazaro’s in the passageway. They greeted him with measured nods and sober, suspicious gazes.
“How did it go out there?” Lazaro asked them. “Any rumblings on the street about the explosion on Turati’s yacht?”
Jehan answered first. “Nothing that we found. It was just a typical night in the Eternal City. A couple of club brawls to break up before they got too bloody and created a bigger problem. Handful of Breed youths feeding past curfew near the train station.”
“No unusual activity at all?”
Sav glanced down, trying to suppress a grin. “Seemed like the only unusual activity going on last night was in here.”
Lazaro glared, but he couldn’t take offense at the truth.
“Is everything all right, Commander?” Jehan asked, ever the diplomatic professional, despite being one of the most dangerous warriors Lazaro had ever seen. “The situation with Melena seemed...difficult.”
Now, it was only more difficult. Not to mention complicated. If she had cause to despise him last night after he’d seduced her then fled to find a blood Host, she had every reason in the world to loathe him for what he did a few hours ago.
And for what he had yet to do, after he saw her safely home to the States.
“Melena Walsh’s welfare is no one’s concern here but mine,” he said, eager to shut down the topic of discussion, even though it weighed heavily on him. “The Order has difficulties of its own to worry about. For instance, does it bother anyone else that no one is stepping forward to claim responsibility for the assassinations of Turati and Byron Walsh the other night? The attack smacks of Opus Nostrum, yet the group hasn’t formally declared it was their doing.”
“Maybe they’re waiting for the right time to own up to it,” Savage suggested.
Jehan grunted, not quite convinced, if the shrewd look in his sky-blue eyes was any indication. “If it is Opus, maybe it wasn’t a sanctioned attack. Maybe it was an over-zealous member looking to make a name for himself among his comrades. Or maybe it was done for more personal reasons than that. Turati was a high-profile businessman with political connections as well. He could’ve had any number of enemies. The same could be said of Walsh.”
Lazaro gave a grim nod. The warrior could be right about any of those scenarios. And the only thing more troubling than Opus making such a bold move was the thought of a renegade agent operating from his own agenda.
Walking into the meeting room with Sav and Jehan, Lazaro couldn’t help but relive the shock and horror of the rocket’s destruction. And the fact that Melena might have been part of the carnage? That she had been mere seconds away from complete obliteration along with the others on that yacht?
Christ. What had shaken him that night—what had outraged him as a man and as the one entrusted with the security of those dead men—now put a cold knot of dread in his chest.
It put real, marrow-chilling fear in his bones.
Now more than ever, he needed to ensure she would be kept far out of harm’s reach. And as bitter as the taste was on his tongue, he knew that anyone in the Order’s orbit, or in that of the ever-expanding number of enemies seeking to incite true war between man and Breed, would always be at risk.
Like Ellie had been.
Like their sons and the dozen other family members living in Lazaro’s Darkhaven who were killed on his watch.
He couldn’t bear to have anything happen to Melena. She’d been through enough pain and loss already.
And so had he.
As Lazaro took his seat at the head of the conference table in the room with his men, Trygg palmed a slip of paper and slid it toward him. “What’s this?”
Trygg nodded his shaved head at the note he’d scrawled. “Located her brother, like you asked.” Lazaro glanced at the Baltimore, Maryland, address. “Derek Walsh is on a plane out of London as we speak. Booked the flight yesterday, after his father’s death aboard Turati’s yacht made international headlines.”
Lazaro nodded gravely. He would’ve rather Melena’s brother—Byron Walsh’s only blood kin—had heard the news another way, but there was no fixing that now. At least her brother would be there for her. She would be home again, with family and familiar things. God knew, she had needed someplace soft to fall these past days, Lazaro thought grimly. And she hadn’t exactly found that with him.
No, she’d found tears and anger and hurt.
She’d found a man ill-prepared to give her what she needed, what an extraordinary, tender-hearted woman like Melena deserved in life...and in love.
Instead of offering her comfort during her most vulnerable state, he’d growled and snapped at her. When he wasn’t busy seducing her, that is.
When he wasn’t selfishly slaking all of his needs on her as if he would ever be worthy of her heart or her blood.
He had no business giving in to those urges when war was still brewing all around him. So long as there were enemies killing innocents, his duty was, and always would be, to the Order. How could he have let himself slip so egregiously when it came to Melena? How could he be letting himself fall in love when he knew all too well how easily it could be ripped from his arms at any moment?