Read Rhyannon Byrd - Primal Instinct 05 for Free Online

himself.
    Wetting her lips, Morgan wondered how best to ease
into what she had to say. “Not in so many words.”
    He shot her a quick, hard glance. “Meaning?”
    “Look.” She took a deep breath, and wrapped her hands
around the strap of her seat belt. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m
just going to spill. Kellan has gone missing.”
    Silence, and then his low, graveled rasp. “What do you
mean ‘gone missing’? He’s in Norway, searching with Noah for the next Marker.”
    Noah Winston was a human who had the rotten luck of
carrying Casus blood in his veins—and it was bloodlines like Noah’s that were
being used as “human hosts” for the Casus shades that escaped back to this
world from Meridian, their name for the metaphysical holding ground where they
had been imprisoned over a thousand years ago. Not wanting to end up being used
as a “body suit” by the Casus, Noah had joined Kierland’s unit a few months
ago, determined to help the Watchmen and the Merrick find a way to stop the
monsters before it was too late.
    “This is kind of a long story,” she began to explain,
“so just bear with me for a minute. When Kellan and Noah came back from Finland
a few weeks ago, Kellan took me into his confidence and told me that he had a
lead he was going to follow, if things panned out for him. While he and Noah
were in Norway, they panned out.”
    “A lead on what?”
    “On where Chloe Harcourt is being kept.”
    “Olivia’s stepsister?” he asked, shaking his head.
    Once a small-town kindergarten teacher, Olivia
Harcourt was now engaged to one of Kierland’s colleagues and best friends, a
tiger-shifter named Aiden Shrader. Although Olivia was human, her father had
married into a family of half-Merrick, half-Mallory witches, giving Olivia two
stepsisters. Her eldest stepsister, Monica Harcourt, had been murdered by the
Casus several months ago, after her Merrick awakening, leaving Olivia to raise
Monica’s daughter, Jamie.
    But that wasn’t the entire story. For a time, Monica
Harcourt’s ghost had been able to communicate with a psychic in Kierland’s unit
named Molly Stratton, warning them that the monsters were coming after her
daughter. She’d also been able to tell them that Chloe Harcourt, Olivia’s
youngest stepsister, who had been feared dead, was actually being held prisoner
by the Casus at their secret compound. But Monica hadn’t been able to give them
a location, and now it was too late. Once they’d reached Harrow House and she’d
known her daughter was safe, Monica’s spirit had moved on from this world.
    “That’s right,” Morgan said softly, in response to his
question about Chloe. “Kellan has gone off on his own to follow the lead,
determined to rescue her.”
    “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would he take such a
risk for someone who means nothing to him?” The raw, sharp-edged words were
thick with frustration, as well as fear. “I mean, it’s tragic that this girl’s
been taken, and I want her found as badly as everyone else, but that’s no
reason for Kellan to go on a damn suicide mission to get her back. She’s a
bloody stranger, for God’s sake!”
    “Kell feels differently. I’m not even sure how to
describe it. But there’s some kind of connection between them.”
    He made a derisive sound, changing gears with a
violence that could’ve ripped the gearshift out. “Bloody idiot. He’s never even
met her.”
    Morgan had known that trying to make him understand
was going to be the hard part, or at least one of them. “He carries her picture
around in his wallet, Kier. He’s…I don’t know, obsessed with—”
    “You mean he wants to screw her,” he growled,
scrubbing his hand down his face. “Christ. His goddamn dick is going to be the
death of him.”
    The youngest of his Watchmen unit at twenty-six,
Kellan had a questionable reputation when it came to sex and duty and trouble.
Morgan understood Kierland’s anger, and yet, she also