way, I don’t think we’re completely out of the dark. There’s something else going on; we just have to figure out what it is before it’s too late.”

Ary entered the room then, her hands in the pockets of her scrub shirt. “The bodies are done. I just heard on the news that the warehouse exploded. A couple of officers are hurt. It’ll be a while before they can get inside to see who was left in there,” she told them.

“Or what was taken out of there,” X said thoughtfully.

“It’s late. We’ll all get some rest. I’ll meet with Nick, X, and the guard leaders around three this afternoon. Nivea is to continue her detail on Agent Wilson. And Caprise,” Rome said finally.

She looked over at him, her long raven-black hair hanging past her shoulders. She looked just like Nick, he thought. “We want to officially welcome you to the family. I’d also like to suggest—and I know at least two people in this room who might protest, but I’m in charge so I can make a declaration if I want—I suggest you be trained as a guard. Your instincts are great, you’re agile and obviously able to handle yourself in stressful situations. I’ll expect the training to begin as soon as you’re up to it.”

As Rome grabbed Kalina’s hand and they started to walk away from the table he saw Nick’s frown and X’s totally pissed-off look. He grinned to himself as he imagined Caprise telling both of them to go to hell when they tried to stop her. As for Caprise, the smile on her face was genuine, her eyes already alight with excitement. In that moment Rome thought he’d done good, no matter the wrath of his best friends that would undoubtedly come later.

* * *

She was beautiful, that was a given. X had already accepted that fact and the one that made him just a little breathless each time he looked at Caprise. Tonight, or rather this morning, she looked different. For starters, she had more color. Her creamy complexion had a healthy glow that made him poke his chest out a little farther—he assumed it was because she was now mated. Her eyes seemed brighter, her bitchy attitude taking longer to appear. The sway to her hips, the curve of her breasts—everything seemed softer, more alluring. And his body reacted accordingly.

They’d left the dining hall, walking slowly back to Caprise’s room. He would stay with her for a while, then head back into town for a change of clothes and be back for the meeting with Rome. His body was tired from the adrenaline rush, then the letdown of not really being able to do much by way of fighting. He’d wished like hell he could have taken down Sabar or at least been in the room when the bastard took his last breath. But he wasn’t going to dwell on it. A hot shower, a soft bed, and a willing mate were all he needed to get past this bout of edginess.

“I’m not sleepy,” she said to him when they’d stopped in front of her door.

Her hands clasped and unclasped in front of her and she shifted from one foot to the other. X didn’t answer right away but looked at her eyes. Melted honey. He almost smiled because he knew just what she needed.

“Let’s go” was all he said before grabbing her hand and pulling her behind him.

The hallways of Havenway were a dusky gray color, the floor white tile. The doors were reinforced steel with control pads beside them. When they came to the door at the east entrance, the one closest to Caprise’s room, X punched in a code that would bypass the alarm and let them out without sending a signal to the mainframe in the control room. Havenway’s security was designed to indicate who was coming in and going out at all times. Each action was recorded on the computer and documented by the guard on duty. But this time, X didn’t want anyone to know that he and Caprise were not in her bedroom.

Instead they stepped out into the damp evening air. A light trickle of rain sprinkled their skin as the door closed behind them.

“We need to get to the gate in three minutes,” he told her, heading toward the back of the structure.

“Where are we going?” she asked, following behind him.

“You’ll see” was his only reply before he broke into a run.

He stopped when they were at the edge of the grounds, guarded by motion-sensor gates. One hundred feet from Havenway’s entrance was the starting point for the gate. It circled the building and stood seven and a half feet tall. Above were electrically charged wires.

He’d bypassed the alarm system, but that only bought him three minutes total. If they touched that gate after that time, they were going to get an electrical jolt between seventy-five and two hundred kilovolts. Then the first-response guard teams would be in their face within the next thirty seconds, guns drawn.

But they made good time, Caprise’s long legs moving almost as quickly as his. He adjusted the latch and opened the gate, standing to the side so she could move past him. Upon their return he would have to use the front entrance and call the control room to be let in.

“Now I know who to come to when I want to escape,” she said, not at all winded by the run.

“You’re not a prisoner here, you know. And you don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to,” he told her, leading the way through a small brush of bushes, taking them deeper into the park where the larger trees and foliage would cover them.

“Are you inviting me to move in with you?” she said, looking up at him with a sugary smile.

“I’m just letting you know you have options,” X said, wondering if that smile meant she wanted to move in with him.

He’d never thought of a female in his apartment on a permanent basis.

“It probably makes sense that I’m here during the day for the guard training.” She kept right on talking as if she hadn’t heard the hesitation in his voice. “But then you’re here almost every day, I could easily commute like real people do.”

“I don’t like you becoming a guard. And I don’t know if I’ll be out here every day. Just because I don’t have a job doesn’t mean I’m devoting all my time to the shifters now.” Even though he’d be foolish to think they didn’t need him. He was sure Rome would appreciate the help since he and Nick still had a very prominent law firm to run.

“I don’t like you brooding over a job that didn’t deserve you if they let you go at the first whiff of trouble. So I guess we’re even” was her retort.

They’d entered the thicker trees, moonlight struggling to stream through the rich fall foliage to provide very little light. But they could see regardless. Caprise had been walking right beside him. X stopped, touching a hand to her arm. “They did not let me go. They suspended me.”

She shrugged. “Well, you’re the one who said you didn’t have a job.”

“Because,” he said, knowing she was going to love his next words, “I’m not too keen about working for people who don’t believe in me. I mean, there was no real evidence that pointed to me in those murders. They should have believed me.”

“Did you try to talk to anyone else from the Bureau?”

“Nobody else wanted to talk to me.”

She shrugged again. “Whatever, it’s their loss.”

He couldn’t help but chuckle at how flippantly she’d said that. Like a career at the FBI wasn’t worth crap anyway.

“Right,” he said with a nod. “Take off your clothes.”

She had been looking in the other direction, but her head snapped around at his words. “Excuse me?”

He pulled at the T-shirt he’d put on when he arrived at Havenway, then tossed it at the base of a tree. “You heard me, take off your clothes.”

X kept his eyes on her as he gripped the band of his sweatpants and pushed them over his strong thighs. The boots he wore—ones that were in the trunk of the SUV they’d taken to Slakeman’s place—were kicked off. Another Assembly mandate was that all guard vehicles carried extra clothes for the shifters just in case.

She stared at him another moment before kicking off her tennis shoes. The rest of her clothes quickly followed and X marveled at how gorgeous she was even in night vision.

His shift was quick and seamless as his human muscles cracked and molded to the form of a jaguar. Paws fell with grace against the dirt-padded floor of the park. Even though parts of Great Falls National Park were open to tourists, the spot where Havenway was located and the surrounding area where the shifters liked to run was hundreds of miles away from public areas. There was no fear of being seen here; the shifters could stretch and exercise in the way they were meant to.

Caprise didn’t hesitate to follow suit and when she did her cat took off. X hadn’t been surprised. Adrenaline

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