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  “You didn’t.” Dasha laughed. “Just for your information, Weres rarely have human partners. Although I’m not mated, my interest is only in other Weres. I hope you’re not insulted.”

  “Not insulted. Absolutely not. Embarrassed? Absolutely. Are we almost there?”

  “Nearly. I would have blindfolded you, but the centuri said to extend you the utmost courtesy.” Dasha looked from the road back to Becca, and the gold glowed brighter in her eyes. “Please do not make me regret that.”

  “I won’t,” Becca said, hoping she wouldn’t discover any reason to change her mind.

  Chapter Three

  “I feel the dawn,” Michel said. “The dog tests you, Regent.”

  “Don’t fret, darling, I trust you’ll have me home well before sunrise.” Francesca, Chancellor of the City and Viceregal of the Eastern Vampire seethe, reached across the space between the buttery, tan leather front seats of the Rolls and caressed the slim, leather-clad thigh of her senechal. Michel’s slender, deceptively strong body tensed, and her fiercely elegant features hardened. Michel never completely relinquished her responsibilities as Francesca’s enforcer, not even when she was in the throes of bloodlust. Another time, another place, Francesca might have teased her oh-so-serious protector into relaxing her hypervigilance, even coaxed a smile from her. But not tonight, not when she’d received a call from Bernardo, a wolf Were and one of her fellow Shadow Lords, informing her of an emergency meeting less than an hour to full sunlight. Michel was right to worry.

  Unlike younger Vampires, she wouldn’t succumb to circadian torpor as soon as the sun rose, but eventually she would fall into moribund coma even well protected underground from ultraviolet radiation. And she would incinerate nearly as quickly as a newly animated Vampire if exposed to full sunlight. She didn’t have much time, and Bernardo knew that. She didn’t entirely trust her fellow Shadow Lords—they might join forces to increase their strength, but undoubtedly each of them had a private agenda. She certainly did.

  Michel fixed her Adriatic blue eyes on Francesca. Her midnight hair bled into the night and made her pale, stark features even more hauntingly beautiful. “I don’t trust any of them. They’ll turn on you if it’s to their advantage.”

  “Of course they will. But it’s better to be close to your enemy.” Francesca laughed, thinking of Cecilia Thornton, the Fae Queen and one of the five Shadow Lords in addition to herself, Bernardo, Nicholas Gregory—the only human, and another Vampire whose identity remained a secret even to the other Lords. She intended to stay very close to Cecilia, whose golden beauty hid a ruthless soul. It was rumored that Fae blood bonded even more potently with Vampire ferrin than that of Weres and produced an exquisite orgasm. She grew wet thinking of what pleasures the Fae Queen might deliver. The muscles in Michel’s thigh quivered, and Francesca rasped her nails over the tightly stretched leather at the apex of Michel’s legs. Michel was the highest-ranking Vampire in her house, closest to her in lineage, and acutely attuned to her hunger. Her lust awakened Michel’s. “When we’re done here, we’ll feed together.”

  “Yes, Regent,” Michel whispered, maneuvering the Rolls under an abandoned railroad trestle over a deserted stretch of the Hudson River north of Albany. She pulled into line with a Harley hog, a Lincoln Town Car, and a silver Lexus SUV. Human bodyguards, Were sentries, and Fae Royal Guards ringed the vehicles, staring at each other with varying degrees of distrust and animosity. Francesca’s sight and hearing were ten times that of a human and even more acute than a Were’s. She had no trouble picking out the gunboats filled with the same mixture of armed guards with automatic weapons patrolling the murky waters under the bridge.

  “You see,” she said lightly to Michel, curling her fingers around Michel’s forearm as they walked side by side. “Perfectly safe here.”

  “Do not jest, Regent,” Michel said with a low growl. “You are not immortal, merely nearly so.”

  Francesca stilled and Michel halted instantly. Francesca framed Michel’s face, her thumbs tracing the sharp arch of Michel’s cheekbones, and kissed her. She let her incisors unsheath and scraped the inner surface of Michel’s lip until she drew blood. She sucked the tiny tears, rhythmically stroking the tip of her tongue over Michel’s. She bathed Michel in the full spectrum of her sexual thrall and felt Michel tremble. “You worry too much, darling.”

  Michel breathed heavily, but her expression remained resolute. “Let’s hear what the rabble has to say. I want you secured before daybreak.”

  “I do love it when you’re forceful,” Francesca said. “I suppose we should.”

  As they drew near to the three Shadow Lords hidden in darkness beneath the underpass, Nicholas Gregory, the behind-the-scenes leader of HUFSI, Humans United for Species Integrity, jabbed a manicured finger at a heavyset, russet-haired wolf Were.

  “Your orders were to eliminate the wolf Alpha,” the silver-haired, patrician human shouted. “Not only did you fail, your underlings involved the Vampire detective and the very same human reporter we chose as an information conduit. Now you tell us Sylvan Mir—the one you were supposed to destroy—has killed the leader of your drug distribution network. Could you be any more incompetent?”

  With a growl, Bernardo, the Alpha of the Blackpaw Were Pack, leapt across the six feet separating them in the blink of an eye, forcing the startled human to stumble in retreat. Three-inch canines flashed in the Were’s snarling mouth. “I do not take orders from you, weakling.”

  “Perhaps you should,” Nicholas said, his expression filled with disdainful condescension. “Don’t think you’re indispensable. Your drug money bought you a seat on our council, but you can easily be replaced.”

  “Now, boys,” Cecilia, the Fae Queen, chided, her lilting voice filled with laughter and lust. “There will be time for you to measure your penises when we control North America. Until then, let’s concentrate on our Grand Plan, shall we?”

  “Yes, we need to focus on the first order of business.” Francesca glided up to the voluptuous blonde’s side. “We must block the Coalition’s attempt to secure legal protection for the Praetern species. Legitimizing our rights will force us to reveal more about our power base. Disclosing our financial holdings, exposing our species’ strengths and weaknesses, allowing the humans to insert themselves into our affairs when they outnumber us will eliminate the advantage we have as the stronger species.”

  “That’s not enough,” Nicholas insisted. “The present Coalition needs to be destroyed. We must eliminate the wolf Alpha. With her gone, the Praetern Coalition will need a new leader, and we can put our own representative in her place. Someone who will guarantee that the bill to protect Praetern rights never makes it out of committee.”

  “We all want to see the Coalition fail.” Francesca wondered if Nicholas really appreciated that his loathing for all Praetern species extended to his fellow Shadow Lords. She would never have agreed to work with the human if Nicholas hadn’t commanded considerable political and financial resources. For now, he was useful. Ultimately, he would not be. “We must wait until our numbers are stronger and we are prepared to infect the human population with the synthetic fever toxin.”

  Nicholas nodded with obvious reluctance. “I agree that exposure at this point would be disastrous. That’s exactly why we can’t afford the kind of sloppy work our dog friends have been doing.”

  “I will kill you, human,” Bernardo growled at the ultimate insult. He dropped to all fours, his body shimmering on the edge of shifting.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Francesca said, moving between the two males. “Sylvan Mir is well respected among humans and commands the largest wolf Pack in this hemisphere. We might consider winning her over to our cause”—she gave the still-snarling Were a contemptuous glance—“especially now that she and the authorities have been alerted to the possibility of an attack on her life.”

  “Sylvan Mir is her father’s daughter,” Nicholas said. “She won’t turn her back on his vision o
f Praeterns living openly among humans.”

  Bernardo rumbled in agreement. “If it weren’t for Antony Mir instigating the Exodus and exposing us all, we wouldn’t be negotiating with humans.”

  “And we wouldn’t be negotiating with animals who barely have a conscience,” Nicholas snapped.

  “I’m afraid where Sylvan is concerned, Nicholas is right,” Cecilia murmured, languorously tracing her fingertips along the edge of Francesca’s diaphanous camisole as it dipped between her breasts. “The ever-so-beautiful wolf Alpha is quite incorruptible.”

  “Perhaps not,” Francesca mused. “Not if we have leverage over her.”

  “She needs to die,” Bernardo said. “Her lands rightfully belong to me.”

  “She won’t be easy to eliminate,” Cecilia noted in a reasonable tone edged in steel, “but with her gone, the Coalition will be far more malleable. If we make it appear she was assassinated by humans, the others in the Coalition will soon see our only hope is to create autonomous nations where we can rule as we see fit without interference.”

  “Why not attempt to sway her while work continues on refining the fever toxin?” Francesca suggested. Sylvan would not be easy to kill, and she would make a formidable ally. Sylvan had become the public face of the Praetern species, representing the Coalition in Washington. Blond and beautiful, Ivy League educated, she was the perfect spokesperson, and the media loved her. Besides, the gorgeous Were Alpha was as intoxicatingly powerful in bed as out, and Francesca was quite fond of her. At least, she was very fond of the sex they shared. “We can always eliminate her, and letting some time pass may make her think the threat is over.”

  “You have a point,” Cecilia said, her fingertips slipping beneath the camisole and stroking the curve of Francesca’s breast. “When we have raised our armies and driven a wedge between the Coalition and the human governments, we will be in a much stronger position to assume control and divide the lands among us. Do you have a plan, dearest Francesca?”

  Francesca laughed softly. “What is a Were’s greatest weakness?”

  “Other than silver?” Nicholas said. “Their mate.”

  “Sylvan is unmated, but there are others in her Pack she would die for.” Francesca kept her gaze on Bernardo and caressed Cecelia’s neck. “Sylvan is likely to think differently of her father’s quest if she begins to lose those closest to her. In the meantime, we can concentrate on synthesizing the fever toxin.”

  Cecilia turned to Nicholas. “What do your researchers say about their progress?”

  “We have scientists in multiple labs working twenty-four hours a day to synthesize the toxin capable of inducing Were fever in humans.” Nicholas sighed. “They report inducing the fever in twenty percent of subjects. Unfortunately, they can’t predict the severity of the symptoms or who will be affected. Mortality rates among the subjects has been very high.”

  “I haven’t seen any public reports regarding the subjects you released,” Francesca said.

  Nicholas shrugged. “I had hoped the reporter would alert the public to the potential menace, but thus far, she has not.” He sneered at Bernardo. “Now that we’ve involved her in the attack on Mir, she may be searching in places we would rather she not look.”

  “Your laboratory experiments appear to be failures,” Bernardo said smugly.

  “Since the Were traits are only transmitted through females, we’re limited in being able to only use human female test subjects,” Nicholas said. “If Were males were not impotent—”

  “We are not impotent,” Bernardo snarled.

  “Don’t bait him, Nicholas,” Cecilia said with a long-suffering sigh. “You know as well as the rest of us Were males are capable of impregnating females, they simply can’t produce Were offspring on their own.”

  Francesca cut into the argument. “Dominant Were females can also induce pregnancy, and that’s one important reason we need to control the Were Alpha. She will only gain strength among the Were Packs if she mates and produces an heir.”

  “You just want Weres for food,” Bernardo said, his canines flashing. “Were blood makes you come harder than a human’s, doesn’t it, bloodsucker?”

  “You dream of me taking your blood,” Francesca crooned, drawing him into her thrall. His eyes glazed and an erection bulged behind the fly of his dirty blue jeans. She forced one sexual image after another into his mind. “You hunger for my bite, for the scent of my pleasure coating your skin, for the heat of my mouth closing over your co—”

  Bernardo’s hips jerked, and a damp stain spread over the front of his pants.

  Laughing, Francesca released him with a casual flick of her fingers, and he staggered, shaking his head in a daze. “But I’m afraid you’re just not enough for me.”

  “Bitch,” he muttered, but his eyes burned gold with lingering frenzy.

  “We need more subjects,” Nicholas said, turning away from the sexual display with a look of displeasure.

  “I’ve had my street crews searching,” Bernardo said. “Finding human females who won’t be missed is not easy.”

  “In the meantime,” Francesca said, “let’s delay further attempts on the wolf Alpha. If she was to bring the Timberwolf Pack into our camp, we would have a formidable army when the time comes to exert our dominance.”

  “Very well, we’ll wait.” Nicholas Gregory turned to Francesca. “You have two weeks to bring Sylvan Mir over to our side. Then she must die.”

  Chapter Four

  Becca braced both hands on the dashboard as the vehicle bounced over a progressively more rutted track. After what seemed like miles of twisting trails, Dasha slowed in front of an eight-foot-high, razor-wire-topped chain-link fence. A male and a female, both tall and muscular and wearing the same black BDUs as Dasha, appeared in the headlights in front of the gate. Dasha leaned out of the vehicle. “I’ve been cleared to bring a visitor to headquarters.”

  The male, heavy boned and blond, stalked to the side of the vehicle. Stalked was the only word Becca could bring to mind. The way his long legs covered the ground and his eyes never wavered in the harsh halogen light reminded her of the way predators hunted in the nature shows she’d seen. He drew abreast of Dasha and peered into the truck, his eyes slowly coursing over Becca’s face and down her body. “Who is this?”

  “A reporter.”

  A snarl curled his full, almost-beautiful upper lip.

  “She has clearance to enter.” Dasha straightened in the seat, appearing taller and broader all of a sudden. The air around Becca shimmered as if one or both of the Weres emitted electricity. This couldn’t be good.

  “From who?”

  “Callan.”

  The male rumbled, and the sound would have been terrifying had Becca not heard Dasha make a similar growl not that long ago. Whatever was happening at the Compound, the Weres didn’t want anyone witnessing it. Deciding silence was the wisest course, she clamped her tongue firmly between her teeth.

  Dasha gestured toward the gate with her chin. “Open it.”

  For a long moment, the male hesitated. Dasha emitted a full-throated rumbling growl. A challenge. The hairs on Becca’s arms stood up. The male remained motionless as Dasha’s growl grew louder. Finally, he shrugged with the smallest dip of his head and turned away. “Make sure she doesn’t wander.”

  Dasha engaged the clutch and drove deeper into the forest.

  “What is it that no one wants me to see?” Becca asked after a few moments had passed and the churning, grating sound emanating from Dasha’s chest had stilled.

  “The Compound is our home. We do not like outsiders here.”

  “I’m not a spy or anything.”

  Dasha glanced at her. “Interesting choice of words.”

  “I just meant—”

  “It doesn’t matter. If you are, you’ll never leave here alive.”

  “And how will you decide if I’m an enemy?”

  Dasha smiled with just the corners of her mouth. “We’ll know.”

>   Becca couldn’t decide if that was just an empty threat designed to frighten her, or if the Weres were sensitive to every human physical and emotional cue. If that was so, her years of living with a controlling father would come in handy. She’d learned early how to hide her feelings about what really mattered.

  A stockade fence even higher than the chain-link they’d passed through earlier rose out of the darkness, denoting the final barrier to the interior of the Compound. To the heart of Pack land.

  Becca rubbed her palms on her pants, suddenly struck by the enormity of where she was. Apparently, these guards knew she was expected, because as Dasha maneuvered the vehicle across the flat, bare ground toward the barricaded gate, it slowly opened. She took a deep breath.

  Game on.

  Once inside, a group of interconnecting two-story log and stone buildings came into view, dominated by a massive three-story structure with block-long stone steps and a front porch as wide as a two-lane highway. The ground between the buildings was hard-packed earth, and other vehicles like the one in which she rode were parked near each of them. Here and there shadowy figures garbed in BDUs passed from one building to another through the thin fingers of light cast by security lights hidden under the eaves of the heavy slate roofs. Dasha brought the vehicle to a halt in front of the central building, and a dark male with thick black hair that fell to his shoulders bounded down the stairs and strode toward Becca’s side of the vehicle. Dressed in the same body-hugging black T-shirt and black BDUs as Dasha, he was as gorgeous as Dasha. Thankfully, Becca didn’t feel the slightest twinge of desire. Maybe she’d been wrong in presuming that Weres, like Vampires, exuded some sort of sexual attractant. Of course, terror did tend to dampen the libido even when the source was preternatural. He grasped the handle of the door and yanked it open, and her pulse jumped. His eyes might have been beautiful if they hadn’t been as hard as the stones in the building behind him.