Shades of Midnight by Lara Adrián Read Free Book Online Page B

here with our current operations, but we can’t afford to let the situation up north go unchecked,” Lucan said. “I need to send someone who knows the terrain and the people, and who has connections in the Breed population up there.”
    Kade held Lucan’s stare, knowing he could hardly refuse the assignment, even if Alaska was the last place he wanted to be. When he’d left there last year to join the Order, he’d done so with the hope that he might never return.
    He wanted to forget the place where he’d been born. The wild place that had called to him like a possessive, destructive lover every moment since he’d left.
    “What do you say, my man?” Lucan asked as Kade’s silence grew long.
    He didn’t see where he had any choice. He owed it to Lucan and the Order to take care of this unexpected, unpleasant business. No matter where it led him.
    Even if the search for a vampire with an uncontrollable itch to kill ended up leading Kade home to a ten-thousand-acre stretch of land in the Alaskan interior. Home, to his family’s own backyard.
    Grim with the idea, he gave the Order’s leader an accepting nod. “How soon do I leave?”
    Forty-five minutes later, Kade was wearing a track in the rug of his private quarters, his packed duffel sitting on the end of the bed. A satellite phone lay beside the black leather bag, and for the third time in the past ten minutes, Kade reached for the device and punched in the number he hadn’t called since the night he left Alaska.
    This time he let the call ring through.
    It was a shock to hear his father’s strong voice come on the line.
    “Been a while,” Kade said by way of greeting, to which his father only grunted.
    It was a lame effort at contact after a year of being out of touch by his own doing. Then again, it wasn’t as if his father had ever accused him of being responsible or reliable, or anything else for that matter.
    The conversation was awkward, a strained attempt at hi-how-are-you as Kade worked up the nerve to ask how everything was going back home. His father talked about the hard winter, the only benefit of the season being the fact that it kept the sun in hiding for all but three hours at midday. Kade recalled the extended darkness of the north country. His pulse kicked eagerly at the thought of so much night, so many hours of freedom in which to run.
    It was obvious that his father hadn’t yet heard about the recent slayings. Kade didn’t mention them, nor did he speak of the mission that was sending him north. Instead, Kade cleared his throat and asked the question that had been burning in his gut since the moment he heard there had been trouble in Alaska.
    “How’s Seth doing? Is everything all right with him?”
    Kade’s blood went a bit cold in the hesitant silence that preceded his father’s reply. “He is well. Why do you ask?”
    Kade heard the suspicion in his father’s voice, the mild disapproval that always had a way of creeping into the elder male’s voice whenever Kade dared to question matters concerning his brother. “Just wondering if he might be around, that’s all.”
    “Your brother had Darkhaven business to attend to for me in the city” came the terse reply. “He left a few weeks ago.”
    “A few weeks,” Kade echoed. “That’s a long time for him to be away. Have you heard from him at all recently?”
    “Not recently, no. Why?” On the other end of the line, his father seemed to go silent with impatience. “What exactly is this about, Kade? A year without any contact from you, and now you want to interrogate me about your brother’s comings and goings. What is it you want?”
    “Forget it,” Kade said, instantly regretting that he’d made the call in the first place. “Just forget I called. I gotta go.”
    He didn’t wait for his father’s reply. Frankly, he didn’t need to hear it.
    Kade ended the call without another word, his thoughts swirling with the grisly images he’d seen in the tech lab a