Rapture's Edge

“If he was stupid enough to pull something like this, I’ll kill him myself,” Celian hissed, and Leander was satisfied by the conviction in his voice.

“See that you do,” said Leander as he watched the falcon descend just a few yards above the manicured lawn outside, talons extended, wings beating noiselessly, piercing yellow-green eyes avid on his face. “Or I will.”

Before Celian could reply, Leander clicked shut the phone and disconnected the call.

Outside the snowy falcon dissolved into a funnel of swirling mist and descended to the grass in a silken plume that began to coalesce into something else altogether as it touched down. Feet first, then legs, then a body—nude and breathtaking—a face that could make grown men cry for its beauty. Hair of spun gold bounced around her shoulders, cascaded in glinting waves down her chest.

Jenna. His Queen. His miracle. The only one of them who could Shift into anything she wished.

Her father’s daughter, to be sure.

She quickly crossed the few feet from where she’d landed, watching him watch her as she came. Sensual and unabashed as an odalisque, she waded through the waist-high rosebushes and thick beds of lavender and stood just outside the window. She had to look up a little, her head tipped back, her shell pink lips tipped up at the corners.

He pressed his palm to the glass. She mirrored it, her fingers spread open against his on the opposite side of the window.

“Come in,” he murmured, knowing she heard him clearly through the closed, double-paned window. “Jenna. Come in.”

She studied his face, and her lips lost their upward curve. A little furrow appeared between her brows. How well she knew him.

“Come inside,” he insisted, huskier than before.

Leander heard the door shut behind him, but he’d already altogether forgotten Christian was there.

For ten seconds in which the rage building inside him felt like he was being hollowed out with knives, Celian stood with the phone to his ear, listening to dead air.

Then, with a curse, he turned and threw it clear across the room.

It exploded against the bare rock wall with a dull metallic clatter and fell in a tinkling heap to the floor.

“Good news, I take it.” Lix’s dry humor, ever present, only served to enrage him even more.

“Smug son of a bitch!” Celian spat.

Lix’s dark brows shot up, but Celian waved his hand dismissively, indicating he hadn’t meant him. He sat down heavily into his carved wood chair, identical to the one Lix occupied across from him at the solid oak square that served as the Bellatorum’s version of a conference table. Like King Arthur’s famed round table, this meeting place of knights had no head, no hierarchy. Everyone was on equal footing.

Everyone but D, that is, because he’d missed the morning meeting. He could only be equal if he bothered to show up.

To Celian’s right sat Constantine, glowering. He even glowered prettily, which, at the moment, also pissed Celian off.

Today wasn’t starting off well. He’d already lost two promising young half-Blood Legiones to the Transition, and five more would have their twenty-fifth birthdays within the next thirty-six hours. If they didn’t make it…at this rate, they’d run out of the half-Blood caste of soldiers within a few years.

They were dying off faster than they could be replaced. Especially now since the Council of Alphas—even in his mind he said it with a sneer—had forbidden them to mix with humans under penalty of death. So breeding new half-Blood stock was out of the question.

You can’t be too cautious during times of war, Leander had said, smiling his smug British smile at Celian the one and only time they’d met. He spoke slowly, with cool condescension, as if the gathered Bellatorum before him would have a little trouble with the big words, looked at them like they were nothing but dirty barbarians living like Neanderthals in caves. Celian had wanted to smash his face in. Only one thing stopped him.

Leander, unfortunately, was right.

The dead king Dominus had turned out to be far more treacherous than anyone had guessed, plotting to take over as dictator of all the colonies, killing his own kind if it suited his needs. Even working with humans. There was no doubt his network of paid killers and spies was still out there, waiting for the chance to pounce.

Caesar was still out there. Silas was still out there, and he was craftier and therefore more dangerous than the king’s egotistical, Giftless son.

He didn’t know what those two were planning, if anything, but Celian hated feeling like a sitting duck. And now—if it was true—D had thrown an ugly wrench into this already colossally bad situation.

“What is it?” Lix leaned his bulk over the table and propped himself up on his elbows.

“Little Lord Fauntleroy is at it again,” Celian muttered, drumming his fingers on the wood.

“He’s still insisting you join the Council of Alphas?” Lix asked, surprised.

In the three years since they’d met, Leander and the other three leaders who comprised the Council of Alphas had attempted to persuade him by coercion and flattery and thinly veiled threat that not to join was a declaration of war. But Celian had lived long enough under one dictator, and he would never trade one for four, no matter how nice they pretended to be or how many flowery promises they made. Stronger together than apart. All for one and one for all. Duty to the tribe, etc. etc.

He wasn’t having any of it. He’d agreed to keep his people contained within the catacombs until the rebels were found, and that was enough to hold them off for now. But now this…

Celian looked at Constantine, who immediately dropped his gaze to the table and shifted his weight in the chair.

Interesting.

Celian watched him carefully as he said, “Actually, he had a bit of news about Eliana.”

A muscle in Constantine’s jaw twitched. He glanced up, then back down again.

“What?” exclaimed Lix, bolting upright. “Eliana? What is it? What happened? And why were you talking about D?”

Yes, that’s the correct reaction, thought Celian, staring at a very still, quiet Constantine. Aloud he said, “Apparently someone who looks a lot like our beloved brother has blown up a Paris police station and stolen the missing princess.”

Lix stood abruptly, shoving back the heavy wooden chair in the process. “WHAT?”

“What indeed,” Celian murmured, looking at Constantine. “Anything you’d like to add to the conversation, Constantine?”

Constantine took a deep breath, spread his big hands flat on the table, exhaled, and quietly said, “I owed him one.”

Lix looked at Constantine. “WHAT?” he shouted again.

The Servorum he’d sent looking for D chose that exact moment to burst into the room. Young and gangly, he skidded to a stop inside the arched doorway. “Gone!” he said, breathless. “He’s gone! The guards at the north gate were overpowered—”

Celian lifted a hand, and the boy instantly lapsed into silence. A wave of his hand and the boy backed from the room with a bow. The entire time, Celian’s gaze never left Constantine’s face. “Tell me all of it now, because if I have to hear it from that fucking British peacock—”

“I was with him when we saw Eliana on TV being taken in by the French police—”

“WHAT?”

“Sit down, Lix, and shut the hell up!” Celian snapped. The long-haired warrior lowered his bulk to the chair, slowly, looking back and forth between him and Constantine with a look of horrified disbelief.

Constantine spoke, low, to his spread hands. “She was being arrested. They said on the news she was some notorious thief. They had her in handcuffs—”

“She was injured,” Celian deduced instantly. She’d never have been captured otherwise.