Dawn Endeavor 1: Fallon's Flame by Marie Harte (book recommendations website TXT) 📕

back to the truck in a foul mood. Tersch walked beside him with a spring in his step, humming under his breath.

“You kids done playing?” Hayashi asked from the truck's interior, his voice bored.

Something classical played on the radio. As usual, Hayashi sat behind the wheel.

Fallon grunted and shoved aside Tersch's helping hand. “Fuck off. I don't need help getting into the truck.”

“Sorry.” The unrepentant bastard had the nerve to smile.

“Well, at least one of you is in a better mood.” Hayashi grinned over his shoulder at the finger Fallon gave him. He engaged Tersch in conversation on the ride home, seeking details about the fight, which Tersch was all too happy to give him. While they drove, Fallon fought his aches as his body healed and tried to relax, glad he didn't need to join in on the conversation.

The last three years of his life had been fraught with danger. Hell, if he were honest, he'd been in one scrape after another since joining the navy and becoming a SEAL. Fallon hated to admit it, but he liked trouble. He found nothing as invigorating as a challenge. Reading minds paled next to saving people and protecting his country. Volunteering for the top secret Project Dawn had been a no-brainer, especially when his team leader and fellow SEALs said yes.

Becoming a Circ did have its advantages. Project Dawn had turned him into a super soldier, or super sailor, as he liked to call himself. He was now faster, stronger, and had better instincts than a normal person. Hell, he could hold his breath underwater for an hour. If not for those more unfortunate side effects to the project, he'd consider being a Circ perfection.

Pain splintered his brain again, and he gritted his teeth to avoid groaning out loud. His telepathy, while occasionally handy, took its toll if he used it too much. The shields he worked hard to hold in place prevented him from hearing thoughts when he went out on the town, but his brain didn't like the extra stimulation. He was just grateful his fellow Circs had learned to shield themselves from him, so he didn't have to work so hard at home.

He didn't like showing weakness, not even around men he considered family. It didn't help that everyone seemed so damned capable. Hayashi rarely complained about anything. Jules, his team leader, handled missions with a calm assurance. Even when the team had been under Dr.

Elliot Pearl's evil thumb, Jules had protected them and promised an escape from Pearl's hellish labs, which he'd delivered. Tersch, for all his violent ways, only needed a bit of physical relief to become his jovial if boisterous self.

Fallon, however, constantly felt pressured to keep up with the others, as if he were the weak link striving not to slow anyone down.

“So quiet back there. I didn't hurt you too bad, did I?” Tersch asked in a deep voice.

Hayashi coughed, probably to cover a laugh.

“Shut up, Frederik.” Fallon turned his head and rested his forehead on the cold glass of his window, hoping the cold would numb the throbbing.

“I hate when you call me that.” Tersch glared over his shoulder.

“I know.”

The ocean rolled by as Hayashi accelerated. Winter approached Emerald Isle, North Carolina, in a fierce whip of wind and pelting rain. At the promise of the first clear night they'd had in a week, Fallon and the others had ventured out to take advantage of the crisp night air, as well as their recent breather from six months of nonstop training. The training aside, he appreciated the southern climate more than he'd liked living in Jersey. Two years in Trenton had made him long for anything south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

They passed several condominiums, as well as new beach houses being reconstructed in the aftermath of the last tropical storm to hit the area. Turning away from Cape Carteret, they continued along Route 58 inland, away from the ocean toward the Croatan National Forest. A perfect place to hide creatures that were neither man nor beast, but something in between. Those

“unfortunate side effects” of the project, he thought with a brief burst of humor, wondering what the world would think if it knew the popular green cartoonish monster was in actuality a military brainchild, not green, and fully capable of thinking for itself.

He glanced at his friends in the front seat. Make that, capable of thinking for themselves.

Hayashi continued to drive through a small spatter of raindrops. At least the constant swipe of windshield wipers lulled Fallon's temper, if not his headache. He couldn't wait to get back and relax in the one place he felt truly at home.

The large mansion they occupied served its purpose well enough. Near enough to the Marine Corps base at Camp Lejeune and the air station at Cherry Point, he and his team could use air, ground, or water for transport.

Hayashi pulled up to a gate, inched the truck to a halt, and punched in a few numbers on the dash. Once the gates opened, he drove up the winding drive. The large estate housed a ten-thousand-square-foot home, big enough to contain four Circs with varying temperaments and give each of them the privacy their secret organization demanded.

The truck pulled to a stop outside the front door. The small droplets of rain turned into a larger, faster deluge.

“Need me to carry you in, princess?” Tersch offered.

Fallon ignored him and sucked up the pain as he exited the truck. He stopped so suddenly, Hayashi crashed into him.

“What—”

He held out a hand and concentrated past the agony in his brain and the cold rain leeching away his warmth. “Admiral London's inside with Jules,” he said, hearing the admiral's thoughts as he spoke with their team leader. “And someone else.” Someone who made him hurt far worse than any bruising Tersch had given him that evening.

He sagged and would have fallen had Hayashi and Tersch not grabbed his arms. He heard Hayashi snap his fingers