As Dante swaggered back to his place among his brethren, Niko peered at him with mock intensity, getting up close and staring at his face before finally giving an exaggerated shrug. "I'll be damned. Nothing there, after all."
"What?" Dante asked, his black brows crunched into a scowl. "What the hell are you doing?"
Niko grinned, baring his twin dimples. "Just looking for a nose ring or something. Figured Tess might have had one installed on you to go along with that short leash she's got you attached to."
"Piss off," Dante said around a deep chuckle. He pointed a finger in Niko's direction. "I'm gonna remind you of this when Renata's the one who's eight and a half months pregnant and it's your turn to worry."
"No need to wait on that," Kade put in. "Renata's already got him trained to jump on command. Probably got him on a leash of her own, too."
"Yeah?" Niko reached for his belt and made a show of starting to unbuckle it. "Give me a second and I'll show you."
Brock shook his head at his brethren, not quite feeling part of the jokes and lighthearted smack-talk about Breedmates and babies soon to be on the way. He couldn't help thinking about Jenna, and about how he might find a way to make a future for them together.
She wasn't a Breedmate, and that troubled him. Not because of the fact they would never have offspring together. Not even because of the absence of a blood bond, which would connect them to each other inexorably for as long as both of them lived.
He didn't need a blood link to strengthen what he felt for her. She was his mate already, in all the ways that mattered. He loved her, and although he wasn't sure what their future would look like, he couldn't begin to imagine living it without her.
He looked to the other warriors in the weapons room with him, and knew that he would die for Jenna if it came down to that--the same as any other blood-bonded Breed male.
As his gaze traveled past Kade and Niko and Dante, he realized that Rio had gone quiet in the past few minutes. The scarred, Spanish-born warrior leaned against the nearby wall, staring at nothing in particular as he idly rubbed his fist in a small circle at the center of his chest.
"You all right, Rio?"
He glanced over at Brock and gave him a vague shrug. His fist kept circling, directly over his heart. "What time is it?"
Brock checked the clock at the other end of the facility. "Almost three-thirty."
"The women ought to be calling in any minute now," Kade said. His gaze seemed preoccupied, as well, his silver eyes glinting with a note of unease.
Niko set down his weapon and grabbed his cell phone. "I'm going to call Renata. Something doesn't feel right to me all of a sudden."
"Yeah," Kade agreed. "You don't think anything is wrong, do you?"
Although Brock wasn't liking the suddenly serious vibe that was coming over his brethren, he assured himself that everything was fine. The day trip Jenna and the other females were on was just a quick drive to the Cape. A visit to a seventy-year-old nun, for crissake.
Jenna had a weapon on her, and so did Renata, and both of them knew how to handle themselves. There was no reason at all to be concerned.
Dante walked over, frowning darkly, while Niko waited in prolonged silence for his mate to pick up his call. "Any answer?"
"No," Niko replied quietly.
" Madre de Dios, " Rio blurted as he pushed away from the wall.
"Something has Dylan frightened. I can feel her fear in my veins."
Brock registered the alarm traveling through each of his brethren now.
"The both of you, too?" he asked, shooting a grim look at Kade and Niko.
"My pulse just kicked into overdrive," Kade said. "Ah, shit.
Something bad is going down with Alex and the others."
"It won't be dark for another hour, minimum," Dante reminded them, sober with the warning.
"We don't have that long," Niko said. "We've got to go after them now."
With Dante looking on, Brock fell in alongside his three fellow warriors, feeling lost and adrift, dependent on their instincts to help guide him toward whatever threat was now facing Jenna and the other males'