Break the Day - Lara Adrian Page 0,3

at his midsection in a frenzy, his face going ashen with shock.

“Oh, fuck! Cruz, I think I’m hit. Son of a bitch, I’m bleeding!”

The olfactory punch of fresh hemoglobin hit Rafe’s nostrils at the same time the scrawny man tore off his leather jacket to reveal a blooming red stain across his stomach.

Just fucking great.

Rafe’s fangs erupted in response. It was next to impossible for a Breed vampire not to react to the sensory blast of spilled blood. His eyes burned amber, his vision sharpening with the vertical narrowing of his pupils as everything Breed in him came to dangerous life.

The gangbanger’s wailing intensified. A couple of his companions gathered around him, including the one in charge. A few others moved farther away, including the pretty brunette who averted her gaze from her wounded comrade and wheeled away from the others as if she were on the verge of throwing up.

Behind him, the Breed bartender growled through his fangs. “Fucking hell. That son of a bitch is gonna bleed out in another minute.”

Rafe couldn’t pretend he actually cared. He glanced back at the human with the likely mortal gut wound and the grave faces of his comrades. A few more seconds was probably all the life their friend had left.

Rafe had been studying the hard-partying, petty-thieving crew for weeks, looking for a way to win their attention—and their trust. The plan he’d put together with Lucan and Sterling Chase required patience he didn’t really have. Maybe this unscripted opportunity might be his best chance to grease the wheels of his mission.

Rafe glanced down at his hands. He’d been born with his mother’s gift for healing. As much as he hated to use his personal ability on vermin like these, it would all be worth it if it got him closer to his ultimate goal: the destruction of Opus Nostrum and everyone loyal to their cause.

The bartender uttered a harsh curse. “If that human dies in my bar, I’m holding both you and the Order personally responsible, asshole.”

Rafe shook his head. “He’s not going to die.”

Fisting his hands at his sides, he headed across the bar.

CHAPTER 2

Her stomach seized up as if she’d been punched.

Bloody hell. Devony Winters wheeled away from the rest of the group on a groan. She was barely able to resist the urge to run from the sight of the gushing bullet wound in Fish’s skinny gut.

Not because she was squeamish around blood.

Far from it.

The reaction she strove to conceal was something much different, and a lot more damning than fear or sickness. Her fangs surged behind her tightly closed lips. Her vision sharpened, everything tinged with an amber glow.

She was Breed—a daywalker, rarest of her kind. It was a truth she’d been hiding from Cruz and his gang since she first joined up with them five weeks ago.

Far as she could tell, the group of law-breakers were more interested in thievery and partying like kings off the proceeds than wholesale hatred of the Breed. That didn’t mean she wanted to test the theory, or lose the trust she’d been cultivating since they took her on as one of them. Now, all her meticulous caution was on the verge of being undone by an errant bullet and a pointless bar brawl.

All of it caused by the arrogant, tawny-haired behemoth across the room.

Fucking brilliant.

Too bad the pair of warriors from the Order hadn’t bounced him from Asylum at the same time they’d ejected the trigger-happy Darkhaven idiots who’d been so eager to goad him into a fight.

Devony struggled to tamp down her body’s automatic response to the sound of Fish’s drumming heartbeat and the scent of the lifeblood pooling beneath him on the floor. Daring a quick glance over her shoulder she saw that the source of all her problems tonight was now heading across the tavern. Not leaving at all, but striding toward Cruz and Fish and the others in a long-legged swagger, his large hands fisted at his sides.

Shit.

The Breed male—Rafe, his comrades from the Order had called him—was no less affected by Fish’s rapidly spilling blood than she was. But he made no effort to hide it.

His transformed irises threw off fiery heat, his pupils narrowed from their normal state to catlike slits. The tips of his fangs glinted diamond-bright behind the generous cut of his parted lips. And his dermaglyphs, the Breed skin markings that wrapped his forearms and tracked up onto his throat from below the collar of his black T-shirt, were now