His mind spitting out thoughts, ideas and impossibilities, Nicholas stalked into the library. He found Lucian in front of his laptop, a stack of books beside him-several open and scattered around the table.

"Have you heard from Alex?"

Lucian glanced up. "He texted me about ten minutes ago.

He thinks he may have something. A possible location of the recruits-he fol owed two of them from that club you were in."

Perfect, Nicholas thought, his insides ready to jump, ready to sink his fangs into the heart of the Impure who had caused havoc in his world, changed their lives forever.

Alexander and Lucian could handle the recruits, take down the compound, while Nicholas took down Dare once and for all.

"You look like you're ready to explode, Duro," Lucian said. "We wil end Dare."

Yes, he would, Nicholas mused, his lip curling. He nodded toward his brother's portable library. "Studying for a test?"

Lucian snorted. "Genetics."

"Ah, right. You saw Bronwyn, then."

"You mean Pain in the Ass? Yes, I saw her."

"You gave her the sample?"

Lucian nodded. "She needs a couple of days."

"You couldn't persuade her to hurry?"

"Please."

A dark grin spread over Nicholas's features. "Didn't pul out that Roman charm that I have to assume is in there somewhere, but have never actual y witnessed?"

Lucian's pale eyes flicked up and he cursed. "Here's the problem, Duro. When I'm around that veana, I want to tear the fucking wal s apart."

"That's because you want to mate with her."

"No," Lucian said quickly. Too quickly. "Maybe." He shook his head. "But not in a pure way."

"What the hel does that mean?"

"It's a drive, not a lust. I don't know." Lucian slammed the book shut. "I think this is al a fucking lie."

Nicholas's guts constricted. In his rational mind, he knew that Lucian wasn't talking about his own situation, about his past, and the lies he'd been shel ing out for more than fifty years-and yet his younger brother's words felt directed toward him anyway.

"I think the Order's bul shitting al of us," Lucian continued.

"I think even if we drop Dare's carcass at their ancient feet, they're stil going to morph my ass." He shook his head, his mind working. "Maybe that's what I'm feeling when I'm around Bronwyn, the beginning of morpho-overwhelming aggression. You've felt it, so has Alexander. Does that sound right?"

"Aggression is exceptional y strong after morpho,"

Nicholas conceded. "But I wouldn't go there-not yet. Not for another hundred years."

Not if I succeed in wiping Dare from the earth tomorrow eve.

"Or maybe this is our father's doing," Lucian suggested, his tone dark with disgust. "His cursed blood is sending me through morpho before my time-straining to get out, escape from my cel s and flow freely through my veins."

"No," Nicholas said through clenched teeth.

"Easy as that? Say it and it isn't true?"

"You're not in fucking morpho!" Nicholas said, his tone almost a snarl. "Christ. You're not going to go through morpho until it's your time. I wil make certain of it."

The aggression that had surrounded Lucian so heavily a moment ago dissolved, and he real y looked at Nicholas.

His pale brows knit together and his tone softened as it rarely did. "You know you can't protect me from my destiny, Duro."

Nicholas blew him off. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes, you do, and so do I. That debt you believe you stil owe was repaid a hundred times over."

"Shut it, Luca," Nicholas spat, his eyes combing the room for something to pick up and throw at the wall.

"We are blood," Lucian said, standing, his books forgotten. "It was my duty and pleasure to do what I did that day. The sound of slit throats and heads rol ing was the sweetest fucking music I'd ever heard, then or now."

Images flooded Nicholas's mind. His shirt ripped, his pants ripped, his face smashed into the concrete over and over until he lost consciousness.

"I stil carry that bloodlust within me," Lucian said softly.

As do I, Nicholas thought.

Lucian offered him one more look of solidarity before he returned to his chair, his books. "Maybe someday I wil get a chance to use it again-and on dear old Daddy, perhaps."

As a member of the Order, one was expected to counsel, lecture, set limits, and hold those guilty of crimes accountable for their actions. So it had always been for nearly seven hundred years, for as long as the Order had held power. Members had come and gone, seeking authority, then seeking everlasting quiet beneath the stone pil ars in the Tomb of Nascita.

Within the gardens of the Athens credenti, just one mile from the Plaka, Titus Evictus Roman sat beside his fel ow Order member Jaxelon, on a large flat rock, a group of the credenti's elders seated on the grass around them.

Covered from head to ankle in his burgundy robes, Titus remained quiet as Jaxelon, a veana who at last count was nearing her three hundredth birth year, attempted to spread calm throughout the smal gathering. Though his Breeding Male brands had dissolved back into his skin, Titus was stil the intense-looking paven he had always been: with a shock of white hair and nearly pink eyes. Every time Cruen took his blood, he'd assured Titus that at some point his features would fade into an obscure appearance, but until then Titus should remain covered if he wished to keep his anonymity within the Order. A choice the members had always respected.

"We have heard of the abductions of the veanas in the States," one paven commented, his black beard cut short and square as was the Greek vampire custom. "And the news is spreading throughout the credenti, making our citizens nervous."

"It wil be short-lived," Jaxelon assured him, her voice as calm as a parent to a tired child.

"The perpetrator has been apprehended, then?" the paven asked.

"We have reason to believe it wil be very soon."

"Good thing. We don't want any of the credenti citizens here or around the world to think this problem requires a dire solution."

"No indeed," said a black-haired veana beside him.

"The Breeding Male must never return."

Jaxelon's gaze was steady, though Titus felt apprehension move through his body. "It wil not happen,"

Jaxelon assured them. "At present, no Breeding Males exist, and our eyes are always on their descendants. I am pleased to say that none, to date, has acquired the gene."

The paven with the square beard raised one ink-black eyebrow. "And if one did?"

"He would be caged." Jaxelon said the words without hesitation.

Too easy, Titus thought. Words too easily said and actions too easily taken-and yet he knew the wisdom and experience behind the decision to cage, contain, watch.

An animal wil kil to feed and to breed.

And a Breeding Male, as Titus knew firsthand, is at its core an unfeeling, immoral predator.

"If I remember my history correctly, one or two of the Breeding Males escaped their confinement," the paven remarked. "Elimination seems a wiser, more prudent choice should the Order come across a paven with such a genetic structure."

A col ective murmur of agreement rippled through the smal crowd, and Jaxelon nodded her understanding, put her hands in the air and cal ed for calm. "We hear your concern, and wil take your thoughts under advisement."

As she steered the conversation away from Breeding Males to blood distribution within the credenti, Titus felt his insides curl and wither beneath the protection of his robes.

There would be another Breeding Male, one whose genes were dangerously close to being activated were he not careful.

Granted, there was only so much interference Titus could manage without risking his seat on the Order. But for his youngest son, for al the children he had sired, he would do what he could.