Anger spurted, spinning around me, a firestorm that would not be tamed. "He wasn't just fucking you," he said, his golden eyes flashing. "He was taking what was mine, and he was draining you."

"I was dealing with it - "

"Yeah," he exploded. "I felt how you were dealing with it. Believe me, I wasn't impressed."

"He didn't end up with a knife in his back through magic," I retorted, and thrust a hand against his chest, trying to push him away from me.

He tightened his grip on my thighs and didn't budge. "I warned him," he growled. "I told him not to - "

He stopped.

Oh my God, I thought.

Not only had I been soundly fucked by one murdering son of a bitch today, but two.

"Come alone," he said, and before the meaning of his words had even really registered, his fist smashed into my jaw.

I was unconscious before my head hit the desk.

Chapter Twelve

I was awoken by the sensation of ice pressing against my jaw. It wasn't helping the ache in my face much, but at least it meant there was someone present who cared enough to try.

The sunshiny scent that teased my nostril told me it was Kade, but the musky scents that were entwined within his also said that he wasn't alone. As did the murmur of conversation.

Kye wasn't here. His scent still was, but the heated, tingly awareness that always hit when he was close was absent.

He'd obviously run.

Part of me hoped he ran far and fast, because then I wouldn't have to deal with him.

But the other part - the part so angry about being so completely fooled and used - wanted the chance to confront him.

To get her own back.

To ask why.

The surface under my hips was soft, not the hard wood of the desk, and the slide of material against my skin told me I was no longer almost naked.

I opened my eyes. Kade was kneeling down in front of me, holding the ice pack to my decidedly tender jaw. Behind him, Cole and Dusty were examining Starke's remains.

"The cavalry arrives," I commented, wincing as the mere act of speaking had pain flickering along my jaw. Not that it would actually stop me. I flicked my tongue across the left side - one lose tooth and several others feeling as bruised as my jaw. "But it arrives too late, as usual."

"Well, you will get yourself into situations where the cavalry has no option but to arrive late," Cole commented. "Next time, give us a little warning and we'll be on time."

"I'll try and remember that," I said wryly, and pushed upright. Aside from the sore jaw, I was actually feeling pretty good. But then, good sex and multiple orgasms tended to do that to you. "How did you know that I needed help?"

It wasn't as if I'd actually called for it.

"We didn't." Kade removed the ice-pack and sat back on his heels. "When the com-link went dead again - this time mid sentence - Jack feared the worst and sent us scurrying."

Meaning Kye had not only been wearing a deadener similar to what he'd placed on me, but that it had a fairly decent range. The com-link connection had been severed long before he'd kicked his way into the room.

And that was a scary thought, because it had huge ramifications for the Directorate. It could become deadly when it came to on-street personnel. "Who hit you?" Kade added.

"Kye." I hesitated, a mix of anger and hurt and confusion rolling through me. Part of me - the wolf part, no doubt - still couldn't accept the fact that my soul mate was one of our killers. Where the hell did that leave me? What options did I have? If he didn't have a kill order on him already, he soon would. Because I couldn't - and wouldn't - conceal the truth. And yet if they killed him, they'd very likely kill me. "He wasn't here when you arrived?"

"No." He eyed me closely, his expression concerned. As an empath, he'd be feeling every bit of the twisted, tortured emotions currently running riot through me. "Why would he be here?"

"Because he's one half of our beheading team, and he came here to warn his client that the Directorate knew several of his identities." Of course, Kye himself had given us one of those identities, and I had to wonder why.

"Oh, fuck," Cole said. Obviously, Kade had been sharing the news about just who my soul mate was. "What the hell are you going to do?"

I glanced over Kade's broad shoulders at him. His expression was one of horror. He might not be a werewolf, but he was familiar with the werewolf culture and understood exactly what it meant. "I don't know."

Kade expression was decidedly confused. "Why is this a bad thing? He's a cold blooded killer - you've said that yourself multiple times. So we take him out and he's gone from your life forever. Which is what you wanted, isn't it?"

"He's her soul mate, Kade," Cole said, as if that explained it all. And it did - for those in the know.

But Kade obviously didn't understand the full impact of the bond. "The soul mate bond is unbreakable," I explained. "If one half dies, the other generally follows."

His frown deepened. "Ben didn't."

Ben was big, black wolf I'd met while investigating a case a few months ago. We'd become firm friends since then, and though he'd made continuous efforts to seduce me, it could never have amounted to anything more than sexual gratification. Ben's soul mate had died long before I'd met him and he, in his own words, existed. Nothing more, nothing less.

"That's rare. I don't want to take the chance." Not given the way fate liked playing her games with my life.

"So," Kade said. "We can't kill him. What about just capturing the bastard, beating him up, then throwing him in a nice dark cell somewhere to rot?"

"I don't know if Jack will go for that." Or rather, I wasn't sure that the council - higher or lower - would let him go for that option. "But it's certainly a solution that appeals to the animal side of me."

Kade raised an eyebrow. "Animal? Or betrayed lover?"

"They're one and the same," I muttered. "And before we can talk about beating him up and tossing away the key, we need to find him."

"The signal from the tracer is erratic. Given the bug placed on you, we suspect he's got others in his possession and that they're interfering with the signal," Jack said into my ear. "But we're in the process of trying to boost it. I've ordered a lock-down on all the airports, so he won't get out that way."

"There are plenty of private airfields, and he has the money to use them."

"Private planes still have to register their flight details, or they're forced down. And once the problems with the tracer have been sorted, it won't matter."

I didn't think it would matter anyway, because Kye wouldn't do the obvious. His mind just didn't work that way.

"Do you want us to come back to the office or wait here?"

"Not here," Cole muttered, voice disparaging but amusement evident in his brief glance. "We do not need the crime scene disturbed any more than necessary."

"Come back," Jack agreed. "If we get a location in the mean time, we'll let you both know."

"Okay." I pushed to my feet. Kade rose with me, his fingers under my elbow. Not really supporting but ready to steady me if I actually needed it. "Looks like you got your wish, Cole."

"Sometimes, fate does take pity on me," he murmured.

I couldn't help wishing that fate would take pity on me occasionally. "Hey, I want my silver knife back when you finish with it, too."

Cole raised an eyebrow. "What silver knife?"

"The one I left sticking in Starke's back when I stabbed him. "

"There was no such knife when we arrived."

"Then the bastard's taken it."

"I gather we're talking about Kye?" Kade said.

I nodded. "It was a gift from Quinn, and had some unusual properties. I don't want to lose it."

"Then we'll retrieve it before we pummel the shit out of him," Kade said cheerfully. "Don't you wish all problems were that easily fixed?"

I certainly did. I hooked my arm through his, and let him escort me outside. I didn't feel like driving, so I climbed into the passenger seat of Kade's car.

"Thanks for dressing me," I said, once we were on the road.

He gave me an odd sort of look. "I didn't. You were fully dressed when we arrived."

I closed my eyes. Kye had been the one who'd cleaned me up and covered my nakedness. And somehow, that just made the whole situation even worse.

Damn it, why did he have to do this? Why did he have to take this job and risk losing both our lives?

But I knew the answer even as I asked the question.

It was all about control. Controlling me, and controlling the situation.

Yet I very much suspected it was also about the risk. The high of knowing that everything was at stake, and that one wrong move could end everything.

Literally.

I knew that high, but I wasn't addicted to it. Kye, I suspected, was.

What a fucking mess this was all turning out to be. And I bet fate was having a jolly old time watching all her plans unfold.

We didn't make it into the Directorate. Jack called on my phone when we were still ten minutes away. I hit the button and put it on speaker.

"You got a location?"

"We do. His signal is coming from an old biscuit factory out near Broadmeadows. Benson's sending the address through to Kade's onboard now."

The computer beeped as he said it. I hit the switch and shifted the address over the nav-com. Kade glanced down then nodded, doing a fast u-turn and hitting the gas.

"We're on our way. Can you get hold of a floor plan of the place?"

"We're searching now. And I've called Iktar back from his vacation, but he's not going to get there before three-thirty."

I glanced at my watch. That was nearly an hour away, meaning Iktar was at the spirit lizard's reservation up in the mountains near Taradale.

One way or another, the action would probably be over by then. Which left Kade and me alone against a professional hitman.

The odds should have been in our favor. We were as well trained - or better trained - than him. And yet uncertainty gnawed at me.

Or maybe it was just the memory of his last words. Come alone.

He had to know that I wasn't that stupid. The link between us had grown a lot stronger over the past few days, and I wasn't about to trust my ability to bring him to justice.

"And Rhoan?" I asked Jack. Part of me wanted my brother there, and yet it was also a risk I didn't want to take. Kye knew that stopping Rhoan would stop me, and if it meant the difference between him escaping or not, then he'd shoot to kill and to hell with the consequences.

"Rhoan's apparently in the process of escorting Liander out of town. He'll get back here as soon as he can." Jack paused. "Be careful going in, you two."

"We always are," Kade murmured, amusement twisting his lips.

Jack made a disparaging sound. "You might be, but your partner has a definite tendency towards carelessness."

"I resent that," I said mildly, then frowned and added, "Boss, if Kye still has those deadeners on him, you may lose contact with one or both of us when we get within range."

"We know. I've ordered our clean-up teams to be on standby, and they'll be ready to go if we lose contact for more than five minutes."

"Teams? It's not going to be that big a mess."

"Maybe not, but the teams are trained to defend themselves, and can legally render armed help if the situation calls for it."

Which meant he was sending us help the only way he legally could, but he was also giving us the chance to do our jobs first while trying to avoid endangering the lives of men and women who weren't trained killers. "Oh. Thanks."

"Just be careful," he said and hung up. I rubbed a hand across my eyes and wondered if I was ever going to wake up from this nightmare.

A killer was on the loose and the lives of non-guardian personnel were being put on the line because of me.

Because I'd been able to really believe that Kye was as cold and as ruthless as he portrayed himself. Because I'd been unable to see past my own twisted feelings for the man.

"Riley," Kade said softly, "don't be too harsh on yourself. None of us seriously suspected that Kye could be involved. It's as much our fault as yours that he's on the loose."

"But I was with him a lot over the past few days. I knew he was playing some sort of game, but I - "

He placed a hand on my bare knee, squeezing it gently. "Enough. You did what you could. No one could ask for anything more."

"Jack could."

"Jack hasn't. The only person angry at you is you, and you don't deserve the beating you're giving yourself. Besides, you did take out one of our killers."

"That was more Kye than me."

It might have been the truth, but Kye hadn't really come there to save me, but rather to preserve the ideal of control. He was a man who kept a tight leash on every little aspect of his life, and he'd needed to prove to me - and to himself - that nothing and no one could get past him.

That's why we'd made love. He might have wanted me, but it was also another means of proving that I would comply with his wishes, no matter what the situation.

Which was probably why he wasn't running now. That would be messy. Kye didn't do messy, or leave unfinished business behind.

It could only mean he planned a more personal ending to this. Maybe that's why he'd warned me to come alone. The man who needed to be in command of every little aspect of his life planned to end all this his way.