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Chapter One

HUMANS

The night was thick with them

They choked the dark sidewalks and intersections of Boston's old North End, overflowed froes, and cocktail bars Strolling, loitering, conversing, they filled the near-ht streets with tooin the unseasonable heat of the early June evening

And da looks - those countless quick, darting glances fro they hadn't noticed, and weren't the least bit terrified, of the four h the middle of the city's former restricted sector

Mira, the lone female of the squad of off-duty warriors, scanned the crowd of Homo sapiens civilians with a hard eye Too bad she and her co street clothes and discreetly concealed weapons She'd have preferred coood citizens of Boston a real excuse to stare in mortal terror

"Twenty years we've been outed to ape at us like we've come to collect their carotids," said one of the three Breed side her

Mira shot hiht, so don't expect to see the welco, Bal Especially when it co with their kind"

Balthazar, a giant wall of olive-skinned thick riolden eyes The dark-haired va on board nearly two decades ago, during the dark, early years following First Dawn, the day the humans learned they were not, in fact, the ultimate predator on the planet

They hadn't accepted that truth easily Nor peacefully

Many lives were lost on both sides in the tirief and mistrust Even now, the truce between the hu heads of both global nations - ood of all, private hatreds and suspicions still festered in each caed on, but it had gone underground, undeclared and unsanctioned but nonetheless lethal

A cold ache filled Mira's chest at the thought of all the pain and suffering she'd witnessed in the years between her childhood under the protection of the Order, through the rigorous training and combat experience that had shaped her into the warrior she was now She tried to sweep the ache aside, put it behind her, but it was hard to do Tonight of all nights, it was next to impossible to shut out the hurt

And the part of this war that was personal, as intiave her voice a raw, biting edge "Let the hu their throats, they'll be less inclined to tolerate the radicals a them ould like to see all of the Breed reduced to ashes"

Froave a low purr of a chuckle "You ever consider a career in public relations, Captain?" She threw a one-fingered salute over her shoulder and kept walking, her long blond braid thuainst her leather-clad backside Webb's laugh deepened "Right Didn't think so"

If anyone was suited for diplonment, it was Julian Webb Adonis handso when he turned on the char the Breed's privileged elite ithout saying Not that he ever had His background - along with his reasons for joining the Order - was a secret he'd shared only with Lucan Thorne, and the Order's founding elder wasn't telling