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place for me to be to keep my ears open and protect you, to protect this district. Please , don’t underestimate me.’
    ‘I’m not. But I’ve been on the receiving end of the TSCD’s methods for gaining information, remember? It might not be a choice whether you speak or not.’
    ‘So you keep me in the dark.’
    ‘You want the best of both worlds, Caitlin, and you can’t have it. You chose to put yourself back in the middle and I accepted it. You said having your own life was important to you and I’m dealing with that. Now deal with the fact that I have responsibilities too and that there are parts of my life where the further you are away from them, the better.’

    H er legs turned leaden , the ache in her chest permeating deep into her heart. She felt her heart rip at the detachment in his eyes.
    In those seconds, she thought he was about to tell her that it wasn’t working out. The sickness formed in her stomach, her heart pounding to the point the blood had rushed too fast from her head. She could have sworn the room swayed a little at the prospect of life without Kane, of losing him.
    After everything they had been through.
    After all she had done for him.
    Her defenses instantly kicked in.
    ‘Like your master vampire role here, whatever that is? Because even if I wasn’t with the VCU, that’s a part of you you’ll never share with me, isn’t it?’
    She hadn’t wanted to be on the cusp of losing her temper, but frustration burned through her at her inability to get through to him, at the distance between them. And with the cold wall between them being reinforced by the second, that frustration was impossible to quell. Worse was that she couldn’t ask him to simply take her in his arms and assure her that they were going to be okay.
    That everything was going to be okay.
    Because it wasn’t.
    Kane was planning something – everything she knew about him dictated that. If Kane chose to strike first, or strike back, the fallout was going to be unthinkable. So for more than her own sake, she couldn’t lose that connection. At the heart of it, she still had an obligation to her own. If a war was coming, that meant the very locale she was supposed to protect was at risk – and that was even more reason why she couldn’t roll over and play the dutiful lover, simply doing what Kane said just because he told her so.
    But whether she liked it or not, keeping that connection was on his terms now. With a team around him stronger than ever since Sirius’s threat, she wouldn’t get within fifty feet of him without his consent.
    She pulled on her only reserve – the one guaranteed way to ensure he had no choice but to face her.
    ‘I’m trying to save your arse here,’ she reminded him. ‘More to the point, your buddy’s.’
    His eyes narrowed at the mention of Caleb. ‘We have a rule.’
    A rule she was more than aware of, but she had a job to do. She had a responsibility to the families who had lost loved ones to do whatever she could to prevent more of the same. She wouldn’t have gone to him if she hadn’t reached stalemate.
    As soon as Morgan had assigned the case to her on her first day back, she’d laboured over the evidence that had already been compiled. Interviews with a couple of the deceased’s family members and friends indicated a possible link between the eight murdered humans as potentially belonging to some clandestine vigilante group. Further questioning out in Blackthorn had resulted in whispers of assassination attempts on key third-species figures in the district – and that some kind of covert group was involved. The coincidence was too great, but there was no proof. Amidst that, there had been only one lead: two witnesses claiming there had been a failed assassination attempt against the Dehains and that the murders had started around the same time. Knowing there could be more murders in the forthcoming days, the pressure had been mounting.
    ‘I came to you that night