Crave the Night: A Midnight Breed Novel (30 page)

There were whispers and curious, pitying glances as people hurried out. A few murmured reassurances that it must be some kind of mistake, just a terrible misunderstanding that Martin Gates could have somehow run afoul of Lucan Thorne and his warriors.

Jordana wanted to believe that.

She wanted to believe Nathan would come back any moment and tell her it was a joke or a bad dream—anything to alleviate the ragged hurt inside her.

A hurt that told her this was no mistake.

Her father hadn’t acted like an innocent man. He’d fought and fumed with a desperation that had made Jordana’s heart quake as she watched Nathan take him away.

Jordana had never seen him like that before, so terrified and combative. As though he knew he had something awful to hide.

As for Nathan … the hurt Jordana felt tonight was all the worse when she thought of him.

Had she been wrong to get so close to him?

Could her father have been the reason Nathan had shown any interest in her?

Nathan told her from the start that he wasn’t the kind of man she
might have wanted him to be. He’d told her that as recently as last night.

By his own description, once locked on a target, he pursued, he conquered. Then he moved on, never looking back.

Oh, God
.

Jordana felt physically ill. Had he used her to buy the Order necessary time or opportunity to go after her father?

Was that all she’d been to Nathan—a means to an end?

He hadn’t pretended to be anything other than what he said he was: a warrior, a Hunter. Jordana had fallen in love with him anyway.

Last night she thought she’d seen a different side of him. A tender side, as though he’d let down some of his armor and shown her the wounded, noble man behind the forbidding wall of impenetrable stone and cold, cutting steel he reserved for the rest of the world.

At the party tonight, and during their stolen passion in her office, Jordana had felt as if she were seeing Nathan in a way no one else ever had. He’d made her feel special, as though she meant something to him.

As though he might even have loved her too.

Had it all been a facade meant to lull her into trusting him further?

Could he and the Order have been plotting to spring some kind of trap for her father with her as the unwitting bait?

It staggered her to think so.

Her heart wanted to reject the idea outright, but doubt ran like oil in her veins.

“How are you doing, sweetie?” Carys’s heels clicked lightly on the marble as she came out to the lobby, turning off the museum lights behind her as she approached. “Everyone’s gone now, and I’ve closed up. Come on, let’s get you home.”

“No.” Jordana numbly shook her head. “No, I don’t want to go home. I want to see my father. I want to see Nathan. I need to know if what happened tonight was his plan all along.”

Carys’s brows pinched in a mild frown. “Jordana, you have to know Nathan would never—”

“I don’t know anything anymore,” she replied hotly, hurting so badly she thought her chest might crack open. “I need my father to tell me what he’s done. I need Nathan to tell me that he hasn’t been using me, playing me as part of his mission for the Order. I need to know if the
two men I care most about in this world have been lying to me this whole time.”

When Carys reached out with a touch meant to soothe, Jordana wrenched away from her. “I’m going there now. I can’t stand by another minute without knowing the truth.”

“Jordana, wait.”

Ignoring her friend’s plea, she started across the lobby, heading for the exit at a brisk pace.

She didn’t get far.

From behind her, Jordana felt a disturbance in the air. Carys sucked in a sharp gasp, then went utterly silent.

Jordana spun around—just in time to see her friend’s legs crumble beneath her.

A large, hooded figure dressed in a black trench coat stood over the fallen Breed female. As he released Carys’s limp body to the floor, the man lifted his head, his face obscured in deep shadows.

He bore no weapon, but his palms were bright with an unearthly glow as he stepped away from Carys to stalk toward Jordana.

She screamed.

Panic exploding in her breast, she lunged for the exit.

She pushed the glass door open, inhaling a breath of chill night air as another scream built in her throat.

No sound left her lips.

Her feet simply stopped moving. All her fear—all conscious thought—went softly, swiftly silent as her skull filled with sudden heat and light …

Then all went dark.

“Cass made me keep his secret,” Martin Gates said, misery in his voice and in the droop of his mouth as he spoke. “He made me vow she would never know he was her father—not unless the worst should occur and his enemies caught up to him.”

Nathan had to admit, there was a part of him that wasn’t completely shocked to hear that Jordana’s true father was Cassian Gray. Aside from a passing similarity in their fair coloring, in hindsight Cass’s visit to Jordana at the museum the day of his death had been more telling. Had he gone there because he feared his enemies were closing in, and he wanted to see his child one more time?

As for the fact of Jordana being the child of an Atlantean father, that in itself was hardly a revelation. Although the truth had been unknown for many centuries, and was still kept secret from the public at large, a couple of decades ago the Order had discovered the link between the Breed and the immortal race that had fathered the rare females born Breedmates.

“If Cass wanted to keep her safe from enemies among his own kind,” Nathan said, “he would’ve done better to leave Jordana in your care and stay far away from Boston.”

Gates nodded. “He tried. And he never stayed in the city more than a few weeks at a time, just in case he might be found out. But Jordana meant everything to him. Cass loved her just as much as I do. I think that’s why he understood when I couldn’t make good on the other part of my original promise to him.”

“What promise was that?” Chase interjected, narrowing a hard look on the Darkhaven leader.

“That I take Jordana as my mate before her twenty-fifth birthday.”

Nathan recoiled at the idea, confused and suspicious. “Why the hell would he ask that of you?”

“Cass wanted her blood-bonded to someone he trusted. Someone he knew would keep her safe.” Gates gave a slow shake of his head. “I couldn’t be that man. I raised her as my own child. Jordana was my daughter every bit as much as she was Cass’s. No matter what I promised all those years ago, I couldn’t force my blood onto her. As she got older, I knew I had to safeguard her some other way. I had to find someone else I could trust with her secret.”

Something still wasn’t making sense. Nathan failed to find the logic in Cass’s plan.

And deep down, a possessive, protective brand of fury sparked to life in him when he thought of Jordana with any male other than him.

“Why not let her choose who she wants to take as her mate? The blood bond is sacred. It’s unbreakable.” Nathan nearly spat the words, recalling how easily Gates would have pushed Jordana onto his crony, Elliott Bentley-Squire. A decent man, maybe, but a man who didn’t love her.

Not like Nathan did, fiercely and with his whole heart.

“You would’ve locked her into an irrevocable union, all for the sake of a promise made without her consent?” Nathan blew out a violent curse. “Jordana is an extraordinary woman. You raised her; you ought to
know that. She deserves more than you or anyone else of your choosing could give her as her mate. God knows she sure as hell deserves more than I could ever give her.”

Gates lifted his chin, understanding flickering across his features. “You really do love her.”

Nathan gave a firm nod, his chest heaving with the intensity of everything he felt for Jordana. “I do,” he answered solemnly. “But even if I didn’t—even if I’d never met her—I would tell you that no Breedmate should be forced into a bond she doesn’t want. Not for any reason.”

Gates stared at him. “I never said Jordana was a Breedmate.”

A sound of disbelief went up, though whether it came from Chase or one of Nathan’s team members in the room, he wasn’t sure.

Nathan could count on one hand the number of times he’d been struck silent for any reason. Never like this. Never with the sense that the floor had opened up beneath him and left him dangling over an abyss of uncharted terrain.

Chase spoke where Nathan was unable. “What do you mean, she’s not a Breedmate?”

“Jordana’s mother wasn’t human,” Gates said. “She was one of Cass’s kind.”

“Are you saying Jordana is fully immortal?” Chase pressed.

Gates nodded. “She is Atlantean, as were both her parents.”

Finally, Nathan found his voice. “She has the Breedmate mark.” He could see the small, scarlet-colored teardrop and crescent moon symbol in his mind. He’d stroked it more than once as they’d made love. “It’s on the inside of Jordana’s left wrist.”

“A tattoo in the shape of the mark,” Gates clarified. “Cass inked it on her himself when she was an infant, soon after he took her out of the Atlantean realm.”

“Jesus Christ,” Rafe murmured from his position across the small interrogation room. “What for? Why try to pretend she was something other than what she truly was?”

Nathan knew. “To hide his child among the Breed,” he said, the pieces beginning to fall into some logical pattern now. “Cass wanted to hide Jordana where he thought she’d be safest. In plain sight.”

Chase looked at Gates narrowly. “How was he so certain you’d keep his secret, or that you could be trusted with raising his child?”

“Because I’d already proven myself to him the night I found Cass hiding
with an infant in my barn outside Vancouver. He’d been on the run for days. He was bleeding, gravely wounded, even for an immortal,” Gates explained. “Naturally, the scent of so much blood drew me to the barn. But when he pleaded with me to help him and I saw the baby girl in his arms, I put aside my thirst and allowed him to recuperate in my home.”

Nathan pictured the scene, imagining what he might have done, had he been in Martin Gates’s place.

Having been raised not to feel mercy or compassion—to have been conditioned as a Hunter to exploit weakness and punish kindness—Nathan couldn’t deny that he was humbled by Gates’s actions and his honor. He was grateful to the man as well.

“Cass was fortunate to have ended up in your care. There aren’t many who would’ve been so charitable with their trust.”

Gates shrugged in mild dismissal of the praise. “I was fortunate too. Back then, I was alone, with no mate or kin of my own. All I had was a meager farm in the middle of nowhere.” Gates’s expression softened in remembrance. “It’s because of Cass that I live in luxury now. It was his wealth that allowed me to start a new life here in Boston. He made me who I am today. And he gave me the most precious gift of all, my daughter.”

“She knows nothing of this?” Nathan asked. “Jordana has no idea that she’s not a Breedmate but full-blooded Atlantean?”

“No. But soon enough, she’ll know.” Gates leveled a sober look on Nathan and the other warriors in the room. “When Jordana turns twenty-five, her Atlantean powers will mature. In addition to extrasensory gifts a Breedmate might have, she will become stronger both physically and psychically. Her aging will stop, and she’ll be impervious to all but the most severe injuries. She will know that I’ve been deceiving her all along about who she is. But even worse, Cass warned that unless she’s shielded by a blood bond, the enemies who hunted him will now be able to sense her as one of their own kind.”

The thought of Jordana being pursued by the same killers who caught up with Cass made Nathan’s veins go icy with dread. If he had to take on the entire Atlantean race to protect her, he would. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for her, and if he’d known his blood might keep her safe, he would have already begged her to accept his bond.

Hell, he wanted that connection to her regardless of anything he’d heard here just now.

And he could only hope she would let him make it up to her for how things had gone so wrong tonight.

“She has to be told.” Nathan pulled out his comm unit and hit Carys’s number. As it started to ring, he stalked for the door. “Jordana should have been told all of this long before now.”

And she needed to be told how he felt about her. That he loved her. That he was sorry if he hurt her tonight. She needed to hear that she was the only woman he would ever want, if she would have him.

Carys wasn’t picking up.

The realization seeped into him like acid. Something wasn’t right.

Nathan knew it in his marrow.

He was already bolting into the corridor outside the interrogation room before he heard the rise of panicked female voices carrying from the other end of the long hallway.

Tavia Chase had her arm around her Breed daughter, Carys staggering alongside her mother. When she saw Nathan heading toward them, Carys let out a ragged sob.

“I didn’t see him until it was too late,” she murmured. “He did something to my head. Bright light in my skull. Too much power—I couldn’t fight it. I’m so sorry, Nathan. I couldn’t do anything. It just happened so fast.”

All the blood in Nathan’s body seemed to halt. Froze solid in his veins. “Where is Jordana?”

“He took her.” Carys shook her head weakly, her face wrenched with anguish and worry. “When I came to in the museum lobby a few minutes ago, there was no trace of her. Oh, God, Nathan … Jordana is gone.”