Darkness Awakened (Primal Heat Trilogy #1) (Order of the Blade) Read Online Free

words needed to be said. They both understood the magnitude of what had happened.
    Their trio was supposed to be eternal. None of them were supposed to go rogue, and they tracked each other carefully to make sure no one was close to crossing the line. Elijah had been nowhere near rogue, and they both knew it. If he had gone rogue, and it looked like he had, it would be their fault for not seeing it coming, and it would be their failure when Elijah had to be assassinated to protect the world from him.
    “You think he met his sheva? Bonding with his soul mate would turn him rogue.” Gideon spoke the words as if it poisoned him to even think it.
    “No chance. He’s too careful. And if he did meet his mate, he’d have let us know before he bonded with her.” Quinn met his teammate’s gaze. “Like we all would do.”
    “There’s no other explanation for how he could go rogue so quickly,” Gideon said. “If he’s met and bonded with his sheva , he could be rogue already.”
    Quinn’s adrenaline surged at the thought of Elijah meeting his sheva. God help them all if that was what had happened… No. That wasn’t it. Elijah would never bond. He would have told them before he got sucked in. It had to be something else. “I have no idea what’s going on,” Quinn said as he crouched beside the trainee with the missing weapon and studied the damage, “but I’m going to ask Elijah when I find him.” He gave Gideon a bitter smile. “Then I’m going to strangle the asshole for killing me.”
    Gideon jerked his head up to stare at Quinn. “You’re going after him yourself? You’re not going to report this to Dante?”
    Dante Sinclair was their leader. A tough son of a bitch, a warrior strong enough to control a race of immortal beings destined to live and die by violence. Dante had been Quinn’s mentor for five hundred years. Yeah, Quinn respected Dante and the mission he’d set forth for the Order, but he didn’t always agree with the big boss’s theories.
    Especially when it came to rogues, and the unilateral edict to take them all out, instantly, no matter what the cost. Quinn had followed that edict one time too many, and his regret still haunted him. He would never give Dante the right to apply his arbitrary rule to Elijah’s fate, no matter how many centuries of evidence supported that decision.
    He stood up. “If we report to Dante, he’ll pull you and me off the run and have someone else do it. Someone who won’t give Elijah a chance.”
    “Hell.” Gideon let out his breath. “ We can’t give him a chance. He slaughtered six people, seven if we count you. He’s rogue. You know we don’t come back once we cross over.”
    “So, he killed me.” Quinn shrugged. “That doesn’t mean he’s rogue, and if he is, that doesn’t mean he can’t come back.”
    Gideon swore. “Quinn, let it go. It’s been five hundred years and no rogue has ever come back. Whatever you think you saw back then was a kid’s imagination. Elijah is done. Look at what he did. See for yourself.” He gestured to the carnage, but Quinn didn’t bother to look.
    He knew the evidence was there. He’d seen it. But he would not believe Elijah deserved to die, not until there were no other options. “He wouldn’t go rogue.”
    Gideon raised his brows. “If he wasn’t rogue, that means he did this in his sane mind.”
    “Then he had a reason.” He would not condemn his teammate, not the man who’d been through hell and back with him. “Something else is going on, and I’m going to find out what it is.” Quinn reached inside the de-weaponed trainee’s jacket to find his ID tag. He made a point of not learning their names, in case he had to kill them someday.
    It was hard enough to do his job when a Calydon or a kid he didn’t know went rogue. It was a hell of a lot tougher when they were friends, so he tried not to get personal if he could help it. It was the only way to survive his mission.
    Gideon ground his teeth