“What?” she shouted over the chaos.
He moved. One second he was across the room; the next, his massive body caged her against the desk. His scent—pine, smoke, and raw male—wrapped around her like a physical touch.
“Because you cracked the wrong file,” he said, tilting her chin up with one calloused finger. “The one about the ‘Genesis Protocol.’ They know you’re alive. And they’ve sent a cleaner team. We have twelve minutes to run.”
Three weeks later, they stood on a cliff overlooking a hidden valley—a sanctuary for rogue Breeds and escaped experiments. The chip had been duplicated, distributed. The kill switch was dying. lora leigh books
She hated how her body reacted—a flush of heat, a betraying quickness of breath. The Breeds’ primal pheromones were a weapon she’d been conditioned to resist. But Dane had always been different. Two years ago, he’d let her escape when his orders were to terminate her.
He pulled back, breathing ragged. “The chip can wait. The hunters can wait. Right now, I need to be inside you, or I will actually lose my mind.”
Kira Vance hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours. Her fingers flew across three keyboards, lines of encrypted code reflecting in her haunted, silver-flecked eyes. She was a phantom—a data runner who didn’t officially exist, hunted by a rogue faction of the government that had created her. “What
Dane grabbed her wrist—not hard, but with an unyielding possessiveness that made her knees weak. “From this moment, you don’t run alone. You don’t hide alone. You are mine to protect.”
And for the first time in her life, Kira Vance wasn’t running. She was home.
They fought through the burning safe house, a lethal dance of instinct and trust. Kira’s Lynx agility let her flip over debris, her shots always finding their mark. Dane moved like a nightmare—silent, unstoppable, claws extending from his fingertips to tear through body armor. His scent—pine, smoke, and raw male—wrapped around her
Tap. Tap. Tap.
He leaned closer, his lips brushing the shell of her ear. “But the wolf inside me has a different name for it, mala . Mate.”