It was as if she had simply vanished.
And then he heard it.
Just the slightest bump of noise coming from one of the closed rooms along the main floor’s hallway. To any of the humans in attendance the sound was too muted to register at all. But to his Breed ears, it was unmistakable.
The sound of a scuffle.
His senses on high alert, he ducked into the passageway. Behind one of the ornately carved doors, another tangle of movement sounded. Followed by the unmistakable thump of a body hitting the floor.
Fuck.
Aric freed the lock with sharp mental command. Then he threw the door open.
Holy shit.
“Kaya.”
She straddled the big body of one of the estate’s security detail. The guard who’d cleared them through the metal detectors when they arrived lay supine on the room’s thick Oriental rug, his face splotched red as he struggled and sputtered under Kaya--no easy feat when her bent knee was jammed against his throat.
Her pretty dress was torn in several places, her glossy dark hair drooping into her face in wrecked disarray. Her breath gusted through her parted lips, one of which was split open and bleeding.
A growl exploded out of Aric. There was no stopping the battle rage that flooded him as he flicked his furious gaze back to the man who’d hurt her. His vision burned instantly, hotly, amber. His fangs ripped out of his gums, not only in anger, but in reaction to the sudden olfactory blast of Kaya’s blood.
The guard’s eyes flew wide when he realized what Aric was. There was horror in those human eyes, but there was hatred too. “Fucking bloodsucker!”
In a panicked scramble beneath Kaya’s hold on him, the man somehow managed to free his service pistol as Aric stalked forward.
The shot he squeezed off was wild, aimless. But it was lucky. Aric felt the bullet’s sting as it grazed his shoulder. He glanced down in reflex, and when he looked back at Kaya it was just in time to watch her crush the guard’s throat under her knee.
Her fury was swift and cold. Lethally so.
“I had no choice,” she murmured softly, while outside the room the sound of gunfire had ignited panic among the reception. She looked up at Aric, her eyes stark, but without apology. “The son of a bitch was on to us.”
He frowned. “How?”
She shook her head as she climbed off the body. “I don’t know. He seemed to believe he knew me.”
“Did he?”
Her gaze strayed to the dead man on the floor. “I never saw him before in my life.”
Aric had questions for his partner, dozens of them. But they would have to sort everything out later. Right now, they had a bigger problem to deal with.
Screams of frightened wedding guests and the cattle stomp of rapidly moving feet filled the air. But not everyone was fleeing the mansion. Guards swarmed. Their heavy boot falls and low shouts sounded in the hallway just outside the room.
“The shot came from somewhere down here,” one of them called to his comrades.
Damn it.
They were too close already. Aric might elude them by calling upon his Breed genetics to speed him past the men like a chill breeze, but Kaya didn’t have that gift. And he’d be damned if he left a partner behind--even if she was the one who brought this trouble down on them.
Aric ground out a curse and grabbed Kaya by the wrist, stepping away from the body and pulling her into a corner of the room just as a trio of uniformed men burst inside.
Her eyes rounded as he held her tightly against him, with one arm keeping her close, the other bent between them, his index finger pressed over her lips to encourage her silence.
“It’s Portman,” one of the guards said. “Shit. He’s dead.”
Another let out a hissed curse. “Who the hell did he piss off? Looks like someone drove a hammer into the poor bastard’s larynx.”
Dread seeped into the dark brown pools of Kaya’s eyes as the men spoke only a few feet away from them. Aric willed her to stay calm. Any movement could betray them now. He didn’t blink, just held her uncertain gaze as steadily as he held the rest of her, unmoving, with barely an inch of space between her face and his.
He understood her worry. Kaya couldn’t see the shadows that hid them from the armed men searching the room. Aric had to count on her to trust him now, to trust his ability. With Kaya melded against him, he bent the gloom of the small chamber, gathering it around them like a cloak. All while trying to ignore the erotic sensation of her soft curves fused against the front of his body.
His skin felt too hot, too tight, burning everywhere they touched.
“We got blood over here,” announced the third man. “At least Portman left us something to go on. Looks like his final shot hit its mark.”
“Call it in,” ordered one of the others. “Alert the gate too. As of right now, this whole fucking place is on lockdown. Nobody leaves the estate until we’ve turned every corner inside out.”
Aric kept the shadows close even after the men had gone. “Are you okay?”
Kaya nodded. “What about you? Your arm--”
“Already healing,” he said with a shrug, showing her the vanishing wound.
“You just saved our lives, Aric.”
He gave a grim shake of his head. “Not yet. We still have get off the property. Driving out of here is no longer an option, so that means we’re leaving on foot.”
“How? You heard those guards. They’re putting men at every corner of the estate as we speak.”
“There’s three hundred acres of woods abutting the property to the north.”
“Yes,” Kaya agreed. “All of it surrounded by a ten-foot high electric fence.”
He wasn’t going to mention that technicality, but it didn’t surprise him that she was already aware of it given the way she’d devoured the
