Kade's scoff echoed in the cavernous shower room. "Like hell, you don't know."
"Shit." Brock exhaled the curse into the mist that wreathed his head.
"Why do I get the feeling you're gonna enlighten me?"
There was a hard squeak of a spigot handle, followed by the bang of Kade's shower door as he stepped out and walked into the connected dressing area. A few minutes later, Kade's voice sounded from the other room. "You ever going to tell me what happened last night down in Southie at that meat-packing plant?"
Brock closed his eyes and blew out something that sounded like a growl, even to his own ears. "Nothing to tell. There were loose ends. I cleaned them up."
"Yeah," Kade said. "That's what I guessed had happened."
When Brock lifted his head, he found the warrior standing across the way from him. Kade was fully dressed in a black shirt and jeans, leaning back against the opposite wall. His steely silver gaze narrowed, knowing.
Brock had too much respect for his friend to try to deceive him.
"Those humans were scum who thought nothing of harming an innocent woman. You expect that kind of brutality to be condoned?"
"No." Kade stared, then gave a sober nod. "If I found myself face-to-face with anyone who'd laid a finger on Alex, I'd have to kill the bastard.
That's what you did, isn't it? You killed those men."
"They were hardly men," Brock ground out. "They were rabid dogs, and what they did to Jenna--what they thought they could get away with--
probably wasn't the first time they'd hurt a woman. I doubt Jenna would have been the last. So, yeah, I put them down."
For a long time, Kade said nothing. He just watched him, even after Brock stuck his head back under the furious pound of the spray, feeling no need to explain any further. Not even to his closest friend in the Order, the warrior who was like kin to him.
"Damn," Kade murmured after a lengthy silence. "You care about her, don't you?"
Brock shook his head, as much in denial as it was to slick the water off his face. "Lucan gave me the responsibility of looking after her, of keeping her safe. I'm only doing what's expected of me. She's another mission, no different than any other."
"Oh, yeah. No doubt about that." Kade smirked. "I had a mission like that up in Alaska not too long ago. Maybe I mentioned it to you once or twice?"
"This is different," Brock grumbled. "What you and Alex have is ...
not the same at all. Alex is a Breedmate, for one thing. There's no threat of getting serious with Jenna. I'm not the long-term type, and she's human, besides."
Kade's dark brows knit into an intense frown. "I don't think any of us can be sure exactly what she is now."
Brock absorbed the truth of that statement with a renewed sense of concern, not only for Jenna, but for the Order and the rest of the Breed nation, as well. Whatever was happening to her, as of today, it appeared to be accelerating. He couldn't deny that the news of her blood work changes troubled him. To say nothing of the fact that the damned bit of alien matter was actively delving deeper into her body, infiltrating on a level not even Gideon seemed prepared to combat.
Brock blew out a low curse under the punishing deluge of the shower.
"If you're trying to make me feel better about all of this, feel free to stop anytime."
Kade chuckled, clearly enjoying himself. "I don't expect you'll be having any heart-to-heart talks with your new roomie, so this is me, showing you I care."
"I'm touched," Brock muttered. "Now, get the fuck out of here and let me scald myself in peace.">"Once we have enough of a personal link to even one of them,"
Savannah said, "Claire can try to connect via dreamwalking and hopefully bring back some information about where the captives have been moved."
Jenna was used to quick digestion and comprehension of facts, but her head was starting to spin with everything she was hearing. And she couldn't stop her mind from searching for solutions to the problems being laid out before her. "Wait a second. If Claire's talent led her to Dragos's lair once, why can't she just do it again?"
"For her talent to work, she needs some kind of emotional or personal link to whomever she's attempting to find in the dream state," Dylan answered. "Her link before wasn't to Dragos but to someone else."
"Her former mate, Wilhelm Roth," Renata put in, all but spitting the name like a curse. "He was a vile inpidual, but next to Dragos, his cruelty was nothing. No way could we ever let Claire try to tap into Dragos personally. It would be suicide."
"Okay. So, where does that leave us?" Jenna asked, the word us slipping out of her mouth even before she realized she'd said it. But it was too late to take it back, and she was much too intrigued to pretend differently. "Where do you see things going from here?"