Deeper Than Midnight by Lara Adrián Read Free Book Online

the pale lavender eyes. It was she—Tegan’s mate, Elise—who’d gasped, her hand still lifted toward her mouth.
    “I’m out of here,” Chase muttered, notably subdued as he brushed past Hunter and the others and stalked off down the corridor toward his quarters.
    Hunter hardly noticed the warrior’s departure.
    His attention was riveted on the third female who stood in the passageway now. Petite and fair-skinned behind the curtain of long ebony hair that partially hid her face from his view, she held him utterly transfixed in that moment. He couldn’t look away from the large greenish blue eyes that tapered delicately at their outer corners. At a loss to categorize their specific color, he didn’t try, instead attempting to determine why he found her presence so arresting.
    “Is everything all right?” Gabrielle asked, moving over to Lucan in obvious concern.
    “Yeah,” he replied. “It’s all good now.”
    Hunter drifted closer to the unidentified woman, hardly aware his feet were moving until he was standing directly before her. She looked up at him then, lifting the perfect oval of her face until her gaze had traveled past the blood-spattered length of him and their eyes were locked on each other.
    She was a stranger to him, yet, somehow, strangely familiar too.
    He cocked his head, trying to puzzle out the peculiar sense that he’d seen her somewhere before. He blurted the thought that was banging around in his brain. “Do I know you …?”
    Gabrielle cleared her throat and walked over as if she meant to protect the female from him. “Corinne, this is Hunter. He’s a member of the Order. Say hello, Hunter.”
    He grunted the greeting, still staring at her.
    “I saw you the night of the rescue,” she said quietly. “You were one of the warriors who brought me and the others to Claire and Andreas’s Darkhaven.”
    So, she’d been among the captives Dragos had been holding. He supposed that made sense. He gave a vague nod, his curiosity somewhat satisfied by her reminder. But he hadn’t seen her in Rhode Island, he was almost certain of it. He felt sure he’d remember that face, those luminescent eyes.
    “I’m afraid we still don’t have an ETA on Brock and Jenna,” Gideon told the dark-haired beauty. “The weather report out of Alaska doesn’t look good for another three days, minimum.”
    “Three more days?” Corinne’s smooth forehead creased with a small frown. “I really need to get home. I need my family now.”
    Lucan blew out a sigh. “Understood. Since Brock is a few thousand miles and a couple of blizzards away from Boston at the moment, someone else will have to—”
    “I will take her.” Hunter felt Lucan’s stare land on him the instant the words left his mouth. He met the other Gen One’s gaze and gave a decisive nod. “I will see that she gets home safely to her family.”
    It seemed a simple enough task to manage, yet everyone in the immediate vicinity had fallen into a sudden, lengthy silence. The most stricken of all seemed to be Corinne herself. She stared up at him mutely, and for a second he wondered if she was going to refuse his offer.
    “It will take about fourteen hours by car,” Gideon said. “That’s a couple of days total, since we’re talking about night travel only. If you left right now, you could put in about a hundred miles before the sun starts to rise. Or I could have one of our corporate planes fueled up and ready to go at sundown. A couple hours of flight time and you’re there.”
    Lucan stared hard at him, then gave a nod. “The quicker, the better. I’m gonna need you back on patrol tomorrow night.”
    “Consider it done,” Hunter replied.

C hase sat in the dark alone, hunkered down on his haunches in a shadow-filled corner of the compound’s small chapel.
    He didn’t know why his boots had carried him in here, to the quiet, candlelit sanctuary instead of his personal quarters farther down the corridor. He’d never been one to