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day take a seat beside him on the GNC, despite the exemplary skill that the young male had demonstrated during his training in weapons and combat. That hope died a little as he met his son’s intense gaze. The gaze of a warrior, though his father was loath to admit it. As a parent, he wanted to keep his son close. Keep him safe.
    “I can help,” Darion said. “You know I want to help. You know I’m ready.”
    Lucan dropped back into his chair and reached for the pile of documents still awaiting his approval. “Don’t wish for war, boy. You’re too young to remember the hell of that word.”
    “I was six when the wars were at their worst. I heard enough. I learned enough in my studies at the Order’s compound and at university. I’ve listened to you talk about battles and fighting for most of my life. I understand what war means, and I understand what it takes to be a warrior.”
    Lucan’s pulse spiked, more from concern than anger. He aggressively scrawled his name on one of the GNC agreements, then grabbed for another set of documents. “Reading and talking about war doesn’t make you a warrior. It doesn’t prepare you to witness or be part of the things people do to one another under the banners of war. As your father, I hope you never know those things.”
    Darion’s temper was a palpable thing, a force of power rolling from across the desk. “You still see me as a child in need of your protection.”
    Lucan set his pen down. “That’s not true,” he replied, sober now. Regretful that his conversations with Darion always seemed to end up in this same place. At this same cold impasse.
    His son’s jaw was clenched tight, a tendon ticking in his cheek. He scoffed, holding Lucan’s stare, unblinking. “I trained under Tegan from the time I was twelve years old, because he is—in your own words—one of the best warriors you’ve ever known. Why send me to learn from the best, if you never intended to give me a place within the Order?”
    Lucan couldn’t tell him that he’d sent him to Tegan because of all the warriors ever to serve the Order, it was under Tegan’s hard, merciless training that Dare stood the best chance of breaking. But Darion hadn’t broken. No, far from it. He’d excelled. Smashed all expectations.
    “You have your place here.”
    Dare grunted. “Advising on tactical stratagems and mapping out ops I’ll never be part of in the field.” He leaned back now, a negligent sprawl, with his long legs outstretched and one muscled, dermaglyph -covered arm draped along the back of the chair. His frustration was evident in the pulsing color that had begun to seep into the flourishes and arcs of his Breed skin markings. “Just once, I’d like to put my training to a true test, on a true mission, not mocked up in a computer program or scribbled on the walls of the war room. I could do more, if you’d only give me the chance.”
    “Your role with the Order is no less important than any other.” Lucan picked up his pen again and calmly began to sign his name to the rest of the documents littering his desk. “I don’t imagine you came here at this hour to reopen our same old argument. If you did, it will have to wait.”
    “No. That’s not why I’m here.” Darion took out his comm unit and touched the screen of the slim device. “I wanted to ask you about something I ran across in the headquarters’ private archives today.”
    Lucan looked up at the mention of the chamber in the D.C. compound that housed a large and ever-growing history of the Breed and its otherworldly origins. A history the Order had been collecting for the past two decades through the sole efforts of an extraordinary woman. “You’ve been reading Jenna’s journals?”
    Dare’s smile was dry. “I have a lot of free time. Not like I’m spending it all on Facebook.”
    Lucan chuckled, glad their conversation wouldn’t end in a heated stalemate after all. “Tell me what you’ve found.”
    No sooner had he