CASSIAN GRAY STEPPED OUT OF A TAXI AND INTO THE LATE-AFTERNOON sunlight on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston’s Back Bay. He ambled up the street at a casual pace, even though daytime was ending in less than two hours and he had every reason to hustle his ass to where he was going.
This close to dusk, it was a risk for him to be out and about. Although he hadn’t been in touch with anyone at La Notte in a couple of days, he had no doubt the Order was on his trail. He’d suspected his cover had been blown from the instant one of their warriors—an errant comrade-turned-rebel-leader named Kellan Archer—had body-blocked him during a minor confrontation in the club.
Cassian didn’t know what the Breed male’s unique psychic talent might be, but something told him the warrior’s touch had outed Cass as being other than human.
That bit of shitty luck had nearly been enough to make Cass cut and run from the life he’d made for himself in Boston, but it was the more recent bout of bad news—the death of Reginald Crowe—that had Cass skulking around the city and constantly looking over his shoulder like the fugitive he truly was.
Crowe’s attempt to disrupt the Global Nations Council summit several nights ago had made headlines all over the world. So had his slaying at the hands of the Order. As much as Cass dreaded the possibility of being captured for interrogation by Lucan and his warriors, there was another, equally lethal army of soldiers that he hoped to elude.
His Atlantean kinsmen.
Cass had been on the run from them for far longer than he had from the Order. Hiding in plain sight had worked well enough all these years, and it was that same method of concealment he employed now, as he made his way to an important appointment in the city.
As he strolled nonchalantly by a coffee shop window on the avenue, he caught his reflection and smiled to himself at how different he looked. His short crown of hair was dyed a nondescript brown and combed into an obedient side part. Dark sunglasses masked his eyes.
He’d traded his usual public camouflage of leather and metal for thrift store denim and a faded Red Sox logo T-shirt that had probably started showing its wear a decade ago. Scuffed loafers covered his feet, their soles so thin he could feel every pit and bump in the concrete of the sidewalk as he made his way toward the designated meeting spot.
He looked more than passably pedestrian, hardly distinguishable from any other civilian man in his thirties. To anyone seeing him on the street today, Cass was unremarkable, forgettable. Just as he’d intended.
No one would think that he and the platinum-haired, black-leather-clad Goth nightmare proprietor of La Notte were one and the same.
Nor would any of the humans around him on this stretch of crowded pavement ever guess that he was an immortal on the north side of a thousand years old.
Only his fellow Atlanteans might sense he was one of them, and he’d been careful to keep his head down in the time since he’d left their realm and come to Boston. He’d constructed an all-new identity, a facade he’d carefully maintained for twenty-some years, from his unsavory occupation and all the underworld connections that went along with it, to his offputting appearance and the presumed kink of his carnal proclivities.
Cassian Gray, proprietor of La Notte, was a mask he’d perfected over a long period of time. Keeping his ear to the ground, his fingers busy greasing palms and pulling various strings in the shadowy underbelly of the city were cautious necessities of his new life.
He’d had to be cautious, because he was a wanted man. A hated man. A defector.
A traitor to his queen.
He’d taken something of great value to her when he fled, and her wrath knew no limits. She’d called for his death. Then again, he’d given her little choice. His death was the only hope she had of ever getting her hands on the precious treasure he stole away from her.>She didn’t doubt that for a minute, yet her blood still throbbed in her veins, kindling the knot of heat that pulsed in her core. Her nape tingled beneath the loose chignon of her upswept hair, the pulse points in her neck echoing in her ears with each heavy beat of her heart. Warmth spread down her throat and across the tops of her breasts, making her light silk blouse feel as hot and confining as a winter sweater.
“Hello? Earth to Jordana.” Carys’s voice broke into Jordana’s thoughts like a splash of cold water. “Did you hear a word I said?”
“Sorry,” Jordana blurted. “I was just finishing a note on this display.”
Carys cocked her head and narrowed her eyes slightly, as if she didn’t quite buy the excuse. “I’ve got the temps and humidity readings you asked for on the French tapestry displays.” She tapped her tablet screen and sent the data to Jordana’s device.
Jordana scanned the report and nodded her approval. “This looks good, Carys, thank you. I would like to see the lighting muted a bit on the Beauvais pastoral piece. I noticed last night that we were losing some of the more subtle colors of the weaving.”
“Okay,” Carys replied. “Are you still rethinking the placement of the Roman mosaics?”
Jordana glanced over to the display of ancient tiles encased in a multi-tiered tower of Plexiglas in the center of the exhibit. She considered for a moment, then gave a nod. “Yes, let’s have that switched with something else. Sleeping Endymion would be a better focal point for that section of the exhibit, don’t you think?”
Carys smiled. “Your favorite piece. Sure, I think it’s a great idea.”
They walked over to the clear case that housed the Italian sculpture that was more than three hundred years old. The terra cotta depiction of the mortal shepherd Endymion reposed in eternal slumber where he waited for his lover, the lunar goddess Selene, had enchanted Jordana from the moment she first saw it. Donated anonymously, the sculpture had been part of the museum’s permanent collection for at least two decades.
It wasn’t the most valuable, or even among the most historically important pieces Jordana had known. But the simple beauty of the work, and the myth it represented, never failed to move something deep inside her.
Jordana stared into the display at the handsome mortal who slept forever under the delicate sliver of a crescent moon. Just looking at the piece made a sadness swell in her chest. She glanced down at the inside of her left wrist, where she bore a small scarlet birthmark in the shape of a crescent moon with a teardrop falling into its cradle.
Her Breedmate mark.
Unlike Endymion, she wasn’t fully mortal. She, like the other half-human females born with the teardrop-and-crescent-moon symbol somewhere on their bodies, could live agelessly once blood-bonded with one of the Breed.
Such an incredible gift, to entwine two lives forever. And yet it could also be an inescapable shackle.