Hidden Embers by Tessa Adams

in the cool silkiness of his hair. She never wanted him to let her go, never wanted her feet to touch the floor again.

CHAPTER NINE

    Q uinn had disappeared. He had walked out of the clinic two days before and hadn’t been heard from since. It was perfect, exquisite. The only thing that would have been better was if he was still at the clinic—as a patient. Laid up with the beginning symptoms of the disease.
    Though it was more dangerous for her to be here than at the clinic, she stood in the back of Quinn’s main laboratory and simply watched as things went to hell around her. Interesting, wasn’t it, how the entire operation fell apart if he wasn’t there to keep it running smoothly? Despite her arguments to the contrary—she hadn’t wanted to give Quinn that much credit—Brock had been right all along.
    He’d told her that striking at Michael was a better move than infecting Quinn—a big payoff with none of the unsightly consequences. Michael’s death had gotten the healer out of the way, his feelings of grief and incompetence sending him off somewhere to lick his wounds, at least temporarily. Yet it hadn’t raised Dylan’s suspicions. And if the virus somehow managed to infect Quinn as well, then so much the better. At least it would have been “accidental.”
    If she’d infected Quinn first, as had been her original thought, she could only imagine how different things would be. His death would have struck a new kind of terror into the hearts of the entire clan, which would have jibed nicely with her agenda, but it also would have looked odd, since he’d attended so many of these deaths and had never before been infected. Like Dylan, Quinn seemed to have a natural immunity to the virus in its more basic form. Which meant that questions would have been asked, and people would have been sniffing around—two things she and Brock definitely didn’t want.
    Brock had warned her—the last thing any of them needed right now was for Dylan to figure out he had a traitor among his people. Security would tighten up, and the narrow windows of opportunity she had been carving out for herself would close completely. She couldn’t afford that, not if she was going to accomplish what she’d told Brock she could.
    At the front of the lab, Phoebe banged her hand down onto one of the marble lab tables in frustration. A couple of lab techs rushed up to her, started to soothe her, but she shooed them away and continued fumbling through the information she had in front of her.
    Earlier, she had tried to get close enough to get a peek at the info Phoebe found so fascinating, but she didn’t really belong in this part of the lab. Someone might notice, and though one slip-up wouldn’t give her away, she didn’t want to worry about anyone putting the pieces together. At least not yet. Not when Brock wasn’t ready for her. Not when her job here was unfinished.
    No, she would just follow the plan. Brock hadn’t steered her wrong so far. He had, in fact, come up with a lot of really good ideas. Like injecting Michael.
    After all, Phoebe was supposed to be some hot-shot scientist, some miracle-working doctor, and yet she was clueless in the lab without Quinn. She hadn’t done anything all day but fiddle with the report she had in front of her, glance at the clock and stumble over the other employees in the lab. If Quinn didn’t come back, or if Michael’s death drove him away from the clan for an extended period of time, then the Dragonstars would never recover.
    They would be doomed—just the way she wanted them.

CHAPTER TEN

    H e woke alone, sleepy and satisfied, his dragon curled up and relaxed inside of him.
    It was an odd feeling, and one so unfamiliar that it took him a moment to place it. When it hit him—when he realized that he was at peace for the first time in longer than he could remember—Quinn sat up abruptly. After all, being with a woman had never made him feel like this before. He wasn’t sure what to