“She has to know this can’t go on. Carys has to understand that ass**le is beneath her. I can’t stand by and let her get hurt by gutter filth like Rune.” Aric cursed, low and savage. “Goddamn it, I won’t stand by.”
Then he bolted. Not for the club again, but out into the street.
“Shit,” Rafe muttered, raking a hand over his head. He glanced over at Nathan. “You know where he’s going.”
The museum reception. Nathan didn’t have to guess. But he hated like hell to acknowledge it. No more than he hated to acknowledge that he and his patrol squad were going to have to abandon tonight’s search for Cassian Gray and instead go after one of their own.
One of their own who was about to earn the wrath of his beloved sister, if Aric followed through on his threat to see Carys and Rune separated.
And going after Aric meant coming face-to-face with something else Nathan would rather avoid, especially under these circumstances.
Jordana Gates.
The beautiful, Darkhaven-raised female he’d been trying to bar from his thoughts for the past week—ever since she’d pressed her mouth against his in an entirely unexpected, totally unforgettable kiss. A kiss that had unsettled him and, yes, enraged him.
Disturbed him on a level he was still struggling to comprehend.
“The art museum’s on Huntington Avenue,” Rafe said beside him.
Nathan’s reply was short, almost a growl. “I know where it is.”
He knew more than he had a right to about lovely Jordana Gates and the places she frequented. Primarily so he could take steps to avoid them.
But there could be no avoiding her now. Not with Aric charging off to defend his sister’s virtue.
Nathan rubbed his palm across his clenched jaw. “Fuck it. Let’s go.”
As reluctant as he was to follow the path where this night was heading, Nathan was the first to step off the curb and race for their destination.
2
ON FOOT, GIFTED WITH THE PRETERNATURAL SPEED OF THEIR Breed genetics, it took all of three minutes for Nathan and his team to arrive in front of the museum across the city.
Aric was ahead of them, already shoving his way past the sputtering human doorman to barge inside. Nathan, Rafe, Jax, and Eli followed quickly behind him, but not fast enough to stop Aric from completely disrupting the invitation-only social event.
Storming through the knots of men garbed in tuxedoes and women swathed in elegant gowns and glittering jewels, Aric roared his sister’s name. “Carys!”
Conversations halted abruptly. Heads turned from all directions, Breed and human alike. Only the string quintet in the gallery overhead seemed capable of ignoring Aric’s intrusion on the private gathering. They played on, Mozart’s spirited Serenade Number 13, an odd accompaniment to the current of alarm now spilling across the main floor of the museum.
With Nathan and his squad of warriors trailing close behind him, Aric stalked past the sculpture and art displays arranged specifically for the wealthy patrons assembled there tonight. “Carys Chase!” he bellowed. “Dammit, where are you?”
Nathan was right at Aric’s heels. Nathan reached for him, his hand coming down hard on Aric’s shoulder to halt him in his tracks. “This is not the time or the place,” he warned his comrade, low under his breath, prepared to yank the young Breed warrior out of there bodily before things got any worse.
He would have. But at that same moment, Nathan’s senses came to a full stop as she emerged from within the shelter of a nearby throng.
Not Aric’s sister, Carys.
Jordana Gates.
Tall, slender, wrapped in a gown of sheer, pale blue fabric that floated around her body like a silken cloud, she stepped away from the throng of society’s most privileged elite and met Nathan’s eyes across the several yards that separated them. Her oceanic blue gaze locked on him in what he guessed to be surprise at first—then confusion—beneath the complicated twists and delicate spirals of her upswept white-blond hair.
The gauzy dress she wore hugged the swell of her br**sts and her tiny waist, skimming the gentle flare of her hips. She was stunning, like a vision from an enchanted other world. And she was nervous, not because of Aric’s furious disruption of her swanky society party but because of Nathan.
Because he was standing there in front of her now.
Even at this distance, he could see the way her pulse kicked harder in the hollow at the base of her creamy throat as she looked at him. He could practically feel the acceleration of her heartbeat as he held her in an unapologetic stare, drinking her in from head to toe.
He could almost taste her mouth on his again, soft lips crushed against his in a startling kiss he never would have allowed. A sweet, reckless kiss that never should have happened.
Not with someone like him.
No, Jordana’s anxiety wasn’t misplaced at all.
She’d had no idea what she’d done, kissing him like that. The way his thoughts had been turning in the days since then, she damned well should be nervous around him.
“Carys!” Aric called once more into the crowded reception.
His deep, booming voice made Jordana jump, one delicate hand coming up to her throat in alarm. In the gallery above, the music faded, then halted altogether. The museum patrons began to murmur and shuffle about to gape at Aric’s spectacle, though none of the tuxedoed men seemed eager to play hero and take on the threat of a seething warrior from the Order by themselves.
Aric shouted for his sister again and tried to shake loose of Nathan’s hold.
“Not happening,” Nathan said, digging his grip deeper into the meat of Aric’s shoulder. Rafe, Eli, and Jax were right behind him, waiting for his orders. “Come on,” he said to Aric. “You need to cool down. Let’s take this outside. All you’re going to do is piss her off—”