Page 6

“Oh, fuck that.” Marcus shook out his legs, trying to get them working again.

“We aren’t just going to sit here,” Kurt stated, glancing over at him, then Craig.

“My trigger finger is ready when you are,” Logan grunted. “I’ve been wanting to kill those fuckers for decades.”

“Decades, wow.” He heard Brooklyn whisper behind them. She probably thought she was speaking under her breath.

Sorry, sunshine, I’m a vampire. I can even hear your heart beating.

And on that, it was too damn fast, which wasn’t surprising given the amount of fired up testosterone in the room.

“Ari is right.” Craig shook his head. “We need to protect the king. But...”

“Please don’t do anything rash. I want them back too, but I don’t want you to die.” Brianna began crying into his chest.

The look on the commander’s face was deathly.

Just then, Darnell, Tristan, Alex, Ben, Oliver, Mack, Tom, and Lance pushed through the doors to the medical center. All of them top to toe in black Moretti fatigues, looking ready to kill.

The team was uniting, ready to get not just their captain—a role Brayden also held—but their princesses.

“What’s our first move?” Alex, one of the newest SLCs and one of his former assassin colleagues, asked.

He’d followed Ben, who’d also joined the Moretti army. Logan still worked for Ari at The Institute—a private security company based in Seattle. Oliver was the head assassin and the other senior team members were made up of Elijah and Jason.

Their numbers dwindled, but now their purpose was the same. Plus, they might not be SLCs—senior lieutenant commanders—in the king’s royal army like the others, but they were just as deadly.

After all, Ari had been the original warrior trainer for the first king. King Gio was his twin brother, they now knew.

At The Institute, their focus had been on private clients—many human—and keeping evil at bay. Often those people were part of the mafia ecosystem. So yes, he’d seen the worst kind of humanity.

If it was up to him, Logan thought this planet would be far happier without the lesser race.

But now, after what BioZen had done to their kind during their experimentation, there was no one worse than those fucking scientists.

Surely they’d all known what was going on under their roof.

So many of them turned a blind eye constantly to pain and suffering.

If he ever met one—except for Sage, who had helped them get Callan, the captured vampire, out of the Seattle BioZen building and then became Ari’s mate—he’d fucking kill them.

Lucky for them, he wasn’t allowed to.

Technically.

It was bad enough pretty little Brooklyn was allowed in the castle. Her science and medical training were needed, and he had accepted that.

Reluctantly.

If she helped the race create an antidote, then great. Then she needed to leave.

“Your first move is getting out of my medical center with all your weapons.” Sage frowned.

She was a soft-spoken female, but as Ari’s mate and a member of the royal family, she was respected. And, in some ways, their greatest hope of winning the war was with her and the team if they could come through with the goods.

The antidote or a vaccine.

“Shit,” Logan muttered at the knowledge Brayden had taken off. It was understandable given the mafia had kidnapped Willow, but knowing the Moretti prince was technically missing was a big fucking deal.