But even as he spoke, a pit of black, yawning dread cracked wide open inside him.
Mira's gift had just shown him a glimpse of a future more bleak than anything he'd imagined in the worst of his countless nightmare scenarios.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
"ONE MORE VIAL and that should do it, Tavia," Gideon said from the other side of his makeshift tech lab. "How you hanging in over there, Harvard?"
Chase grunted his response, all he was capable of as he watched the other warrior withdraw the last of half a dozen blood samples he'd collected from Tavia's arm. Chase felt like a pussy having to sit clear across the room during the clinical procedure, trying his damnedest not to let the sight of those filling vials awaken his feral side. His fangs had erupted from his gums at the first pinprick that scored her skin, his hunger worsening to a fevered throb at the trace exotic scent of her blood.
Hard as it was for him to be there when his body was taut and on edge with thirst, sitting it out in the hallway while Tavia was run through a variety of exams and tissue samplings was out of the question.
Fortunately, Gideon kept everything quick and efficient.
"All set," he announced a moment later.
Chase stalked over as the blond warrior took away the containers of blood and DNA swabs to prepare them for testing. "You okay?" he asked Tavia, thoughts for his own well-being eclipsed by concern for her.
"Piece of cake," she said, rolling her long sleeve down over her glyph-covered forearm. "I spent the first twenty-seven years of my life in and out of private clinics and medical trials. I'm used to being poked."
Chase's grin was filled with another sort of hunger now. "I don't want you getting used to anyone poking you, unless that someone is me."
It was a possessive thing to say, and even though he had no right to think it let alone let the words roll off his tongue, he couldn't apologize for it. The past hours he'd spent with Tavia - baring his soul to her, laughing with her, making love to her, then making love some more - had set a hook in him so deep, he wondered if he'd ever be able to shake it loose.
Not that he wanted to.
And that was the hell of it, right there.
He craved this woman, cared for her more than he had anyone or anything in all his life before her. Some desperate, hopeful part of him wondered if the hole she filled in his heart might someday grow to fill the other, more ravenous one that threatened to consume him.
"Okay, kids," Gideon announced as he came back into the room. "I'll run the blood work and tissue analysis later today. We should have full results in a few days, but based on what I've already seen here, coupled with the data you found in good old Dr. Minion's clinic records, I think it's pretty obvious what they're going to return." He raked his fingers through the blond spikes of his cropped hair and exhaled a marveled chuckle. "Never dreamed there'd come a day when I'd be up close and personal with a female Breed - never mind a female Gen One with Breedmate DNA. You can blend in with humans if you have to, you can subsist on blood or food, and you can walk in the daylight without getting cooked after a few minutes. My God, Tavia. You're absolutely remarkable."
She smiled. "Hey, I've seen you working magic on these computers, Gideon. You're not so bad yourself."
Chase grunted, slanting an arch look at the warrior. "Yeah, and come to think of it, you've been up close and personal enough for one day."
Gideon smirked in Tavia's direction. "What can I say? He gets wicked jealous when I flirt. It's a problem for us."
She laughed along with him, as aware as anyone by now that the Order's resident genius only had eyes for his Breedmate, Savannah.
Gideon studied Tavia in open wonder, his head cocked to the side now, arms crossed over his gray Boondock Saints T-shirt. "Have you considered offspring?"
"Offspring?" Tavia shot an uncomfortable look at Chase. "Uh ..."
"Oh, not that I'm suggesting," he quickly interjected. "I just mean, from a purely genetic standpoint, the possibilities are ... well, exciting. Intriguing, to say the least. Don't you think so, Harvard?"
Chase couldn't have replied if he wanted to. The thought of Tavia pregnant had struck him both mute and stupid. He could imagine nothing more powerful than the idea of her giving birth. The fact that her children would mark the beginning of an entirely new generation of the Breed paled in comparison to the feeling that swamped Chase when he pictured himself as the father of her sons.
Or, Christ ... her daughters.
Tavia's eyes were steady on his, and he wondered if her bond to him would betray the depth of his reaction. He couldn't hide what he felt, not with her. And even without the blood bond to tell her how powerfully she affected him, his unflinching, heat-filled gaze would have given him away.
Gideon cleared his throat in the weighted silence of the room. "You say there were clinic records documenting other cases like yours, Tavia?"
She nodded. "Dr. Lewis was treating others like me, but according to the files we found, the patients had all died over the years. If there were files on others who are living, I didn't see them when we searched the clinic."
"But there could be others like you out there," Gideon said. "Knowing Dragos, I'd lay odds there definitely are others. Women who are embedded in normal human lives as you were.
Women who will soon run out of their meds and begin transforming into their true Breed natures, the same way you did."