CHAPTER ONE

" W here did he fucking go?" Craig roared.

Logan Mathieson lay a few feet from where the commander's voice sounded and rubbed a hand along his face.

Not again.

For fuck's sake. If he got shot with that fucking serum again, he would single-handedly hunt down those human mafia assholes and slice them into little pieces.

While he smiled.

That's how much he hated humans. Especially those piece of shit Russian gangsters.

His vision cleared, and he realized he was in the medical center again. Logan sat up and began to register the loud argument taking place around him. Mind you, anything with Craig was loud. But this was extra loud.

"Keep your voice down," Ari growled.

Jesus.

Watching the two biggest vampires—three if the prince had been there—go at one another was like watching two wild lions in a circus.

He was tempted to move, but that liquid crap was still working its way out of his system, and he was on a go slow.

If it was life or death, he'd move.

But hopefully, the two senior warriors would calm the fuck down.

"It's not a library. Where. Did. He. Go?!" Craig shouted.

"Calm the fuck down, Commander." Ari's voice turned dark, and it made the hairs on the back of Logan's neck stand up.

Ari had a calmness about him that screamed of power. So for him to get riled like this, something was up.

"Who's missing?" Logan said, swinging his legs off the table and trying to sit up.

"Lie down," a sweet voice said from the other side of him as he wobbled. "Ugh, lie down," Brooklyn said again, pushing him.

Great.

The fucking human who didn't belong in their world. Oh, well. One upside to being shot with that crap was that he got to torment the little raven-haired, blue-eyed scientist.

And check out her plump ass.

Not that he was attracted to humans.

Fuck that.

"Hello sunshine." Logan grinned as annoyed eyes locked with his. "We meet again."

"I thought he was banned," Brooklyn said, ignoring him.

She could ignore him all she liked. He knew attraction when he saw it. Her decolletage was pink and her pupils slightly dilated.

So the little human likes me. Interesting.

"Logan can leave when he can stand," Ari said, turning quickly to glare his way.

Great.

Nobody wanted to be on the end of Ari's wrath, and he'd already told him the scientist was under his protection. So he winked at Brooklyn to make her more uncomfortable.

"I'll be out of your pretty hair soon, little mouse," he whispered.

"Not soon enough," she muttered, and he wanted to snap back, telling her she was the one that didn't fucking belong.

Craig began to climb off the table, but his legs failed him. "Mother fucking fuck, shit, cunt, fuckers." He began cursing loudly and scrambled to his feet.

Logan watched Ari rub a hand over his face, clearly covering a grin.

"Babe, just wait. You can't do anything until the serum clears your system," Brianna said, grabbing his arms like she'd be able to hold the nearly three-hundred-pound, solid-muscle vampire.

At a guess.

"You aren't a nurse!" Craig snapped at his mate.

Woah.

The entire room went quiet.

Craig was one of the most protective vampires in the race when it came to his mate. For him to snap at Brianna was...it never happened.

Logan glanced from face to face, waiting for someone to say something. Ari, Sage, and Brooklyn stared while Kurt and Marcus began to wake up.

Brianna stood and planted her hands on her hips, glaring at the commander. "Craig Giordano, don't you dare speak to me like that."

The king walked into the room.

"We don't know where he is," Vincent said.

"Who?" Kurt asked, shuffling to the edge of his table. "Fuck that shit. Last damn time, I swear it."

None of them liked the serum.

Obviously.

Nothing in their history had ever been able to incapacitate them. But after capturing and experimenting on a few of their vampires, the pharmaceutical company, BioZen, had produced the product they despised.

Now, it had landed in the hands of Bratva leader, Nikolay Mikhailov, who was attempting to mass produce it before revealing their race to humanity.

They had remained hidden for over fifteen hundred years. He sought to scare humans and profit from the serum which he'd market as the one thing that could protect them.

And let's face it, humans would buy it in bulk.

They might romanticize vampires in books and movies, but any time in history when there had been something more powerful than them, humans had destroyed it.

Or controlled it.

With a population of only ten million, versus the eight billion humans, due to their low fertility rate, if a war broke out there would be two options for the vampire race. In Logan's opinion.

One, go to war aggressively and dominate the planet.

Two, be dominated.

That was the fundamental rule in nature.

"Brayden has taken off and we are unable to track him," the king added.

The fuck?

Kurt and Marcus both tried to sit up abruptly and, like he'd done a few minutes earlier, wobbled.

"The hell do you mean?" Marcus growled.

"Goddamn it. Gone the fuck where?" Kurt cried.

"WE DON'T KNOW!" Craig boomed. This time, the commander got to his feet and reached for his mate.

"Apologize," she demanded as he cupped her face.

"I'm sorry my love," Craig grunted. "I need to find Brayden."

Ari shook his head. "No. You need to stay here and protect your king. You will stay here and protect your king."

Craig's angry eyes swiveled between the king and Ari.

"While Brayden is gone, I've appointed Ari to the captain's position," Vincent said, referring to a role Ari had held hundreds of years before.

"Wait a goddamn minute. Your majesty." Kurt added that last bit after Vincent glared at him. "Why is Brayden....where...would someone please explain what the hell is going on?"

"What he said," Marcus growled.

Logan was also trying to work out why the prince would have taken off and not be—

Oh.

Crap.

The chopper...the Russians.

"The princesses have been taken by the Nikolay's men. Brayden has gone after them," Ari replied, rubbing his face.

"Fuck me," Kurt said, looking pale.

Marcus's mouth parted.

"Get these warriors back on their feet," Ari said to the medical team made up of Anna, Sage, Dr. Abbot, and Brooklyn. "Males, meeting in thirty in the ops room." Then he placed a hand on the king's shoulder and the two of them walked out.

Holy hell.

Logan sat, shaking his head.

The fucking mafia had two members of the Moretti royal family.

"Little Isabella," Brianna said, tears falling down her face.

"Oh, fuck that." Marcus shook out his legs, trying to get them working again.

"We aren't just going to sit here," Kurt stated, glancing over at him, then Craig.

"My trigger finger is ready when you are," Logan grunted. "I've been wanting to kill those fuckers for decades."

"Decades, wow." He heard Brooklyn whisper behind them. She probably thought she was speaking under her breath.

Sorry, sunshine, I'm a vampire. I can even hear your heart beating.

And on that, it was too damn fast, which wasn't surprising given the amount of fired up testosterone in the room.

"Ari is right." Craig shook his head. "We need to protect the king. But..."

"Please don't do anything rash. I want them back too, but I don't want you to die." Brianna began crying into his chest.

The look on the commander's face was deathly.

Just then, Darnell, Tristan, Alex, Ben, Oliver, Mack, Tom, and Lance pushed through the doors to the medical center. All of them top to toe in black Moretti fatigues, looking ready to kill.

The team was uniting, ready to get not just their captain—a role Brayden also held—but their princesses.

"What's our first move?" Alex, one of the newest SLCs and one of his former assassin colleagues, asked.

He'd followed Ben, who'd also joined the Moretti army. Logan still worked for Ari at The Institute—a private security company based in Seattle. Oliver was the head assassin and the other senior team members were made up of Elijah and Jason.

Their numbers dwindled, but now their purpose was the same. Plus, they might not be SLCs—senior lieutenant commanders—in the king's royal army like the others, but they were just as deadly.

After all, Ari had been the original warrior trainer for the first king. King Gio was his twin brother, they now knew.

At The Institute, their focus had been on private clients—many human—and keeping evil at bay. Often those people were part of the mafia ecosystem. So yes, he'd seen the worst kind of humanity.

If it was up to him, Logan thought this planet would be far happier without the lesser race.

But now, after what BioZen had done to their kind during their experimentation, there was no one worse than those fucking scientists.

Surely they'd all known what was going on under their roof.

So many of them turned a blind eye constantly to pain and suffering.

If he ever met one—except for Sage, who had helped them get Callan, the captured vampire, out of the Seattle BioZen building and then became Ari's mate—he'd fucking kill them.

Lucky for them, he wasn't allowed to.

Technically.

It was bad enough pretty little Brooklyn was allowed in the castle. Her science and medical training were needed, and he had accepted that.

Reluctantly.

If she helped the race create an antidote, then great. Then she needed to leave.

"Your first move is getting out of my medical center with all your weapons." Sage frowned.

She was a soft-spoken female, but as Ari's mate and a member of the royal family, she was respected. And, in some ways, their greatest hope of winning the war was with her and the team if they could come through with the goods.

The antidote or a vaccine.

"Shit," Logan muttered at the knowledge Brayden had taken off. It was understandable given the mafia had kidnapped Willow, but knowing the Moretti prince was technically missing was a big fucking deal.

And needed to be kept confidential.

"Ari is now acting captain," Craig told the warriors. "He's called a meeting, so let's hear what he has to say."

"Tech teams are tracking the flight path of the chopper," Tom shared.

"And Bray's mobile?" Craig asked but Tom shook his head.

Of course he'd destroyed it. It would be the first thing any of them would do if they didn't want to be found.

Craig cursed. "He's gone rogue."

Shit.

The vibe around the room shifted. That changed everything.

Brayden may be able to protect himself—more than all of them—but as the protectors of the race, the SLCs and Ari's assassins now had three Moretti royals to bring home.

And they would all give their lives to do it.