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removed from his kill. Gideon took the ring of charred black polymer out of his hand. “One more to add to your collection, eh? You’re racking up quite a score lately. Good work.”
    Hunter merely blinked at the unnecessary praise.
    “What about Murdock?” Lucan asked.
    “Gone,” Hunter replied. “He fled the scene while I was disabling the driver. By then it was a choice of either tracking him down or going back inside the club to retrieve my patrol partner.”
    The decision to aid his fellow warrior had given him more than a moment’s pause at the time. Logic and training as one of Dragos’s soldiers demanded he carry out his missions as a single entity: efficient, impersonal, and utterly independent. Murdock was a quantified target. Interrogating him would surely provide valuable intel; his capture was imperative to the success of the night’s patrol. To Hunter, apprehending the escaped Agent had seemed a logical enough objective.
    But the Order operated under a different tenet, one he had pledged to follow when he’d joined them, no matter how it contrasted to the world he had once known. The warriors had a code among themselves for every mission, an understanding that if a team went out together, they came back together, and no man was ever left behind.
    Not even if it meant forfeiting an enemy asset.
    “I know Murdock,” Chase said, lifting the back of his hand to his chin to wipe away some of the blood that slicked his skin. “I know where he lives, I know the places he’s likely to hang out. It won’t take me long to find him—”
    “You’re not doing shit,” Lucan interrupted. “I’m pulling you off this mission. Until I say otherwise, any and all Agency contact goes through me. Gideon can dig up everything we need on Murdock’s properties and personal habits. If you feel you’ve got anything more useful to add, turn it over to Gideon. I’ll decide how and when—and I’ll decide who—is best to go after this asshole Murdock.”
    “Whatever.” Chase’s blue eyes glittered darkly under his lowered brows. He started to walk away.
    Lucan’s head pivoted only slightly, his voice as low as distant thunder. “I didn’t say we were finished.”
    Chase scoffed. “Sounds to me like you’ve got it all under control, so what do you need me for?”
    “That’s something I’ve been asking myself all night,” Lucan replied evenly. “What the fuck do I need you for?”
    Chase muttered something low and surly under his breath in response. He took another step and suddenly Lucan was right in front of him, having moved so quickly it had been hard for even Hunter to track him. He shoved Chase with a hard dose of Gen One strength, a frontal blow that sent the other warrior flying into the corridor wall.
    Chase righted himself with a hissed curse. Eyes flashing like bright coals, he charged forward with a fang-bearing snarl.
    This time it was Hunter who moved the fastest.
    Intercepting the threat to the Order’s leader— his leader—he placed himself between the two vampires, his hand clamped around Chase’s throat.
    “Stand down, warrior,” he advised his brother-in-arms.
    It was the only warning Hunter would allow. If Chase so much as flinched with further aggression, Hunter would have little choice but to crush the fight out of him.
    Teeth and fangs clamped together, lips peeled back from his gums, Chase held his stare in a thick, answering silence. Hunter felt a shift of movement in the space of the corridor behind him. He heard a feminine gasp—just the softest pull of air through parted lips.
    Chase’s gaze drifted in that direction and some of the taut fury left him at once. As he relaxed, Hunter let go of him and stepped back from the confrontation.
    “What’s going on out here, Lucan?”
    Hunter turned along with the other males in the corridor and found himself facing Lucan’s mate, Gabrielle, standing behind them with two other females. Hunter knew the fine-boned blonde with