Crave the Night: A Midnight Breed Novel (2 page)

Not yet, anyway. If Aric and Carys’s father, Sterling Chase, ever found out his daughter had taken up with an unapologetic underworld player like Rune, Nathan had no doubt the Order as a whole would definitely have something to say about it.

Nathan, Rafe, and Jax pushed through the jeering crowd just in time to see Aric lunge past Elijah to grab hold of Rune. Aric body-slammed the big fighter into the nearby cage, fangs bared and eyes aglow with fury. He threw a couple of wild punches, each deftly avoided by Rune. Aric’s anger opened him wide for a punishing blow.

Rune didn’t hit back. He was glaring lethally, his savage face twisted in rage. But under his shaggy mane of dark brown hair, the undefeated fighter with more kills to his name than any other before him stayed his hand.

Nathan shoved past the onlookers so he and Rafe could peel Aric off Rune. No easy feat, that. Although just twenty years old, Aric was Gen One like Nathan. He was strong as hell and deadly powerful, especially now, when his whole body was electric with animosity toward his sister’s unsavory lover.

“What the fuck, man?” Rafe shouted at his friend. “You lost your mind, Aric? What are you doing down here?”

Aric continued to glower at Rune. He jabbed his finger at the deceptively cool fighter. “You keep to your own. Stay away from her. She’s better than this, better than you.”

Now Rune’s lips twisted slowly, into an ironic smile. “I tell her that all the time. She seems to think otherwise.”

As Rune spoke, one of La Notte’s blood Hosts sauntered over to drape her nearly naked body around him. She took Rune’s earlobe between
her teeth, whispering something against his dark, stubble-shadowed cheek. Rune gave her thong-strung behind a meaningful swat and told her to wait for him in one of the nearby booths.

Aric went apeshit. Snarling and seething, he struggled to break loose of his comrade’s hold.

Nathan shot a hard look at Rafe. “Let’s get him out of here.”

“A wise move,” Syn agreed, as Nathan and his crew wrestled Aric away from the cages and out of Rune’s reach.

They hustled the furious vampire out of the club and back onto the street outside. He tried to lunge for the door, but Nathan and Rafe blocked him. He shook them off and rocked back on his bootheels.

“She has to know this can’t go on. Carys has to understand that asshole 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.

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 breasts 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—”

“Aric?” Carys Chase rushed through the unmoving crowds, panic in her normally calm voice. Dressed as elegantly as Jordana and the other women, she gaped at her brother as she charged forward to meet him on strappy sandals that echoed the geometric cut of her curve-hugging copper silk gown. “What are you doing here? What’s wrong?”

While Jordana’s beauty was diamond bright and icy fair, Carys Chase was earth and fire combined. Her eyes simmered with a fierce intelligence, and her caramel blond mane of hair swung around her face and shoulders like liquid bronze.

Of course, the differences between the two females went beyond the physical.

Where Jordana Gates was a Breedmate, half human in addition to the other, more elusive genetics that made her different from her mundane
Homo sapiens
cousins, Carys Chase was something rarer still. She was Breed, and a daywalker at that.

The same as her twin brother.

“Aric, are you okay?” she asked him, reaching up to touch his rigid jaw. She glanced at him then, studying him in a quick instant. Her shrewd eyes narrowed. “Where have you been tonight? Why is your shirt torn?”

“We need to talk,” Aric snapped at her.

Carys blinked. “Now? Can’t you see I’m in the middle of some—”

“Now,” he snarled, finally breaking out of Nathan’s grasp to grab hold of his sister’s arm. “This is fucking serious, Car. I’m not gonna let it wait.”

He tried to maneuver her away from the onlookers, but Carys dug in her five-inch heels and stood her ground in front of him. “Have you lost your mind? Let go of my arm.” She wrenched loose, outrage sparking in her eyes. When she spoke, Nathan glimpsed the tips of her emerging fangs. “For God’s sake, Aric. You’re embarrassing me.”

Across the room, Jordana started to move away from the others, toward her distressed friend. She was prevented from getting any closer by a man who stepped up behind her now. He was Breed, tall and attractive, with clear blue eyes and golden hair.

One of the shiny people who belonged in this place.

The male’s hand came to rest protectively—possessively—at Jordana’s
waist as he gathered her to him, subtly holding her in place. As if she belonged with the man.

Nathan observed this with cool logic and understanding, even if his blood spiked with an unwelcome jolt of disdain for the male who touched Jordana like he owned her.

He stared at her, watched her cheeks flame a little redder under his scrutiny before she abruptly glanced down and refused to look at him again.

Was this the source of her nervousness in front of Nathan tonight?

Not merely Nathan’s presence tonight, but his presence when she was in the company of someone else.

This man, whose hand had drifted from her small waist down to the tempting swell of her hip, fingers idly caressing her even as he retrieved a comm device from his tuxedo jacket pocket and held it at the ready to make a call.

Jordana’s gaze never lifted, not even as the conflict rose to troubling heights between Aric Chase and his sister.

“He’s using you, Carys. Can’t you see that? Trash like that will only hurt you in the end.”

She scoffed, exhaled a curse under her breath. “What are you talking about?”

“Rune.” Aric practically spat the name at her. “You need to end it now. Before it goes any further with him. Before I have to kill the bastard for thinking he can touch you.”

“You don’t know anything about Rune and me.” She glared, fury igniting in her pretty face. “And you have no right to interfere—”

Aric cut her off with a harsh snarl. “I’m your brother—your twin, Carys. And I love you. That gives me every right.”

She slowly shook her head, glancing around at the silent spectators who made no effort to hide their rapt interest in the night’s other, unplanned exhibit. When Carys looked back at Aric, her pupils had transformed from dilated circles to thinning, vertical slits. Although she projected total outward calm, Nathan and every other vampire in the place could plainly see the Breed female was furious.

Carys’s voice was quiet, but as she spoke, her long fangs glinted razor-sharp and lethal in the low lights of the museum reception. “Go home, Aric. For now, I’ll forgive you because you claim you’re doing this out of love for me. But this conversation is over.”

The man at Jordana’s side cleared his throat, an awkward interruption, and late as well. “Shall I call JUSTIS for assistance here, Carys?”

“No. That won’t be necessary, Elliott,” she replied coolly. “My brother and his friends are leaving now.”

Rafe stepped up beside Aric to take his other shoulder in a firm grasp. The two warriors were as tight as brothers, just like their fathers before them, Dante Malebranche and Sterling Chase, both long-standing members of the Order. When Aric didn’t budge, Rafe cuffed him none too gently on the biceps. “Come on, man. This is messed up and you know it. Let’s get out of here.”

Aric relaxed but kept his hard glare trained on his sister. “End it, Carys. Don’t make me do it for you.”

She stared at him, wounded but unbowed. “If you so much as try, then I’ll no longer have a brother.”