by Lora Leigh
hesitate to answer him either.
“The mission was too dangerous. Dealing with the various forces also searching for the girl has turned it into a bloodbath waiting to happen. I don’t want her in the middle of it and neither should you, considering she’s your mate’s sister.”
“Mate her, make it official, and get it over with, then you can deal with the situation yourself,” Jonas growled as he felt the prick of the “claws” threatening to stretch free. “Otherwise, as long as she’s making her men available to cover for the Enforcers we currently have out on assignments, I intend to use them.”
And Lawe couldn’t enforce any wish he had where Diane was concerned until he had fully mated her, marked her and ensured the mating bond between them.
More to the point, until she officially accepted the mating, Lawe had no rights where she or her safety was concerned. It was an amendment to Breed Law that had been unanimously voted in after a female mate had denied the Breed who marked her, because of her perception of his lack of honesty and his treatment of her.
Lawe stared back at Jonas for long moments, the animal genetics he carried burning inside him in the need to challenge the Bureau director.
There was also the damning knowledge that he had no right to that challenge.
He should have known Jonas was aware that mating heat was brewing between himself and Diane. The blood tests would have revealed the potential for it the moment they were conducted. But even more, Jonas would have detected that she carried Lawe’s scent the moment Jonas met her.
A scent her body had refused to relinquish since the night he had aided in her rescue from a Syrian jail cell sixteen months before.
He had refused to take the final step that would initiate mating heat past the preliminary stage it was currently at. Any further and they would be burning for each other. At the moment, it was simply an irritant and a knowledge of what he was denying himself.
Enough of an irritation that he had been running in the opposite direction from the girl for far too long.
The glands beneath his tongue were only slightly swollen; the hormone within them hadn’t yet begun seeping into his system. The hard-on that the need caused came and went with frustrating regularity, but the need for her wasn’t yet a vicious bite in his balls.
He was simply uncomfortable.
It wasn’t yet a biological imperative, but it would take very little to create an overwhelming hunger that would erode the restraint he had so far managed to keep in place.
Allowing his hunger to have its way was a step he had yet to take.
To kiss her or to touch her in any way would send the mating heat spiraling out of control. It was something he refused to do.
To lose a lover to the viciousness of the forces attempting to destroy the Breeds was one thing. To lose a mate, the one woman who would soothe his soul and heal the bitter, ragged wounds a Breed carried inside himself, was something else entirely.
For a second, the memory of his mother, so delicate and fragile beneath the scalpel that cut her open, flashed across his mind. He heard her screams, her pleas, the moment her voice broke and the scent of her horrifying death.
The chances of such a thing happening to a Breed and his mate were much higher than any Breed wanted to face, especially those who had mated.
Mates were protected, kept behind the walls of Sanctuary, the secured Wolf Breed compound of Haven or the newly named Coyote base overlooking Haven, aptly code-named the Citadel. Every unmated Breed made a pledge to protect the mated females and any children of a mating, with his very life. They were too important. They were vital to the survival of the Breed they were mated with and to the future survival of Breeds as a whole. No chance could be taken that they would be harmed.
There were those with mates who allowed their women to travel with them, to fight beside them, but they were few. And though those Breed males were forced to allow their women that freedom for the sake of their female’s happiness, it was still a risk Lawe couldn’t image allowing.
“You’ll lose her,” Jonas spoke softly into the silence, as though he were aware of the thoughts tormenting him. “Just as Dawn nearly lost Seth when she separated herself from him. Continue to ignore it, Lawe, and the mark of your scent will dissipate and leave you vulnerable to losing her.”
Lawe stared back at him as a savage fury threatened to burn through his control.
“I never had her.”
The director’s lips quirked with an edge of knowing mockery as he sat back in his chair, relaxed and at ease despite the fact that Lawe couldn’t control his tension and the need to confront the director over Diane’s position within the Bureau.
She was an Enforcer, one of the well-trained, armed, often covert operatives who fought to eradicate any threat to the survival of the Breeds.
“She’s supposed to text her arrival when her plane lands tonight,” Jonas stated, ignoring the challenge Lawe was silently directing toward him. “Have Rule meet her at the hotel we use and get the information she’s acquired. I know she found something, but she seemed hesitant to discuss anything either electronically or via the sat-cell she was using. Rachel says something has her sister spooked, and I’m assuming that’s the reason for withholding the information.”
Lawe stared back at Jonas thoughtfully, his gaze narrowing, nostrils flaring in sudden realization. He knew Diane. If she was spooked, then she felt she was being tracked or somehow watched.
Diane wasn’t a paranoid individual. And she was too well trained to make such a vital mistake.
Lawe’s fists clenched as he forced himself to ignore that sudden unnamed threat the animal inside him was raging to confront.
“And Gideon?” Lawe asked. “How close do you think he is to finding the Roberts girl or the others?”
Jonas sighed at the question, one brow lifted in a slow, mocking arch at Lawe’s restraint. “He’s closer than we are, I believe. I won’t know for certain until Diane arrives and completes her report. Hopefully she has the information we need and she’s willing to turn it over.”
“And if he finds them before we do?” Lawe asked.
To that, Jonas’s mouth thinned. “If he becomes a threat and we can’t capture him, then we neutralize him. Call in Dog, Loki, Mutt and Mongrel, and have them ready to roll out in case Gideon’s found. I don’t want to take any chances.”
Lawe stared back at him in surprise at the four names. Those Breeds were the most highly trained trackers and assassins to come out of the Genetics Council creations. To pull all of them in was a testament to the threat Jonas feared Gideon could become.
And to reveal the fact that they were Bureau operatives was a move Lawe hadn’t expected Jonas to make. Especially Dog, whose cover was still that of a Council-controlled Coyote, though he was known to freelance on occasion where the Council’s interests were concerned.
“Have Rule report back to me tonight after he meets with Diane as well,” Jonas ordered.
Jonas was pushing for that confrontation. Lawe ground his back teeth together, hesitant to confront this issue, or Jonas, much further. The animal inside him was raging to settle the issue of any threat to this mating.
The human side, the icy logic that ruled him, realized the mistake that would be. Whether Jonas or the animal genetics wanted to admit it, Jonas would never deliberately endanger Diane. She was his mate’s sister, he would protect her as much as possible. Still, the fact that she was facing any danger, period, had Lawe’s guts tightening in reflex.
Lawe rose to his feet. “I’ll meet with her.” He couldn’t help the growl in his response or the command in his voice.
He’d be damned if he would allow his brother, a Breed with genetics so similar to his own, around Diane at the moment. The silent fear that Rule could perhaps end up mating her was too great a risk. The fear could just be the possessiveness lashing out rather than any true risk of it. Still, it was a threat he couldn’t ignore.
Should it happen,
Lawe knew he’d never control the vicious fury that would erupt inside him against his brother. A brother who had risked his life countless times to save him.
Lawe moved for the door, the tension in his body nearly impossible to control or to hide as he left Jonas’s office and headed for his own.
The rogue Breed cutting a swath of blood through research scientists involved in Breed development was a problem. The young woman the Breed was searching for, and the danger he represented to her and the two research victims she was hiding with, was nothing short of horrifying.
But it wasn’t his mate’s place to handle it or to find either of the missing parties. It was her place to stay safe. He may not have mated her yet, but she was still his mate.
It would still destroy him if she were harmed, or perhaps even killed.
God help whoever so much as scratched her because he would lose his mind, as well as his perspective, and shed a swath of blood that may well destroy the Breeds forever.
She was as essential to him as the very air he breathed.
But as long as he didn’t have her, as long as he maintained his distance, his control, then perhaps, just perhaps he would have a chance—
A chance of surviving, of maintaining control and his sanity if the worst did happen.
It was the only chance he had of holding back the pure, burning rage he could feel ready to ignite inside him. The rage of too many Breed lives lost, too many mates tortured, and far too many nightmares haunting him—
The knowledge that he now understood how a Coyote like Elder, a creature born to mercilessness and blood thirst, had given his life for one tiny, fragile, helpless breeder, sank inside his soul.
He would give his life—he would give his soul—for Diane.
•CHAPTER 2•
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA
Some would say he was insane, and some would be no less than completely accurate.
He was insane.
Staring down at the helpless, terrified research technician before him, Gideon acknowledged that fact with a sense of aching, bitter regret.
His sanity had been stripped from him with each day, with each injection, each slice of the scalpel against his flesh as Phillip Brandenmore’s monsters conducted their experiments on him.
So many years. So many broken bones, so many demonic experiments.
So many times he had prayed for death and death hadn’t come. Insanity had come instead. Insanity, and the overwhelming thirst for the blood of his enemies first, then for the blood of those who had betrayed him when they should have allowed him to die.
Crouching down to the floor where he had stretched his victim out spread-eagle, Gideon tilted his head and stared at the panic in the research tech’s wide hazel eyes.
Gideon had injected him with the same drug that had been used to paralyze the victims in the Council and Brandenmore labs.
The same drug that had been used on him.
Scott Connelly had been a particularly sadistic bastard to the research subjects he had been assigned to. The evil that had existed inside him had gotten off on ensuring his charges felt as much pain as possible.
And they had felt pain. An agonizing, horrible pain that could never be forgotten.
All but one. Only one of those innocent victims had been spared his cruelty, his insanity. The one Gideon considered his ultimate prey.
Vengeance for the night death had been ready to receive him with gentle, comforting arms, only to be torn from them. To be given blood that had tainted his own, that had created a fever inside him he couldn’t endure. A feral rage he couldn’t exist within.
Gideon tensed at the memory, still so clear and vivid, the agony of so many years ripping through his senses and causing an involuntary growl to pass his lips.
His muscles bunched as if preparing to move in for the kill and he felt his mouth water for the taste of blood.
An enemy’s blood.
A primal snarl rumbled in his chest, scraping his throat as he bared the sharpened canines at the sides of his mouth.
He was rewarded with a whimper of terror, and panic. The fear scented the air around him but did nothing to ease the primal violence swirling inside him.
Control was hard won. It was won only because it was now his turn to inflict the pain. His victim awaited him. The scent of his terror wafting through the room. Though it was an addictive aroma, it did little to appease the rage building inside him.
Gideon twirled the scalpel between his fingers as he rested his arms on his upper legs, his wrists lying over the edge of his knees as he watched the former research technician. He barely felt the rasp of his denim jeans against the underside of his arms where the sleeves of the white shirt he wore were folded back. Normally, the thin white scars that lay over that flesh didn’t tolerate the rasp of clothing well. But this time, he barely felt it.
Blood would spray, he thought as he contemplated his victim. It would stain the shirt and jeans, but stealing more clothes wouldn’t be a problem.
“Gideon, please,” Scott wheezed from his position, flat on his back, naked to the chill of the air conditioning that Gideon had set at its lowest setting.
Any sensation that touched the flesh or the organs would be amplified because of the drug. Reactions to each sensation would be purer, stronger, allowing the scientists to better predict how each wound affected the body.
The bastard couldn’t even shiver, though his teeth did chatter on occasion. That sound was another sign of success, of hard-won vengeance, and helped to restrain the animal prowling beneath the flesh.
“Please what?” Gideon rasped.
The sound of his own voice never failed to enrage him.
How many times had it been broken from his screams of pain?
How many times had he begged, pleaded, and cried for mercy?
He was a Prime, a primal male Breed. His pride was as intense as his natural strength and inborn animalistic abilities. To be driven by such agony, such horrific torture to beg, to shed tears and plead for death, had broken that pride to its core and all but destroyed it.
Even in the labs he had been created within there hadn’t been such horrific pain that the Breeds were driven to beg unless the scientists intended death to be the final conclusion to that experiment.
The scientists that had created the Breeds in the Denali Labs in Alaska had prided themselves on the strength and power that filled their creations. They’d had no desire to bow the shoulders of their Breeds by damaging them to such an extent.
The scientists, research assistants and techs, the soldiers to the janitors in the lower depths of Brandenmore Research, had found great pleasure in doing just that. In turning their Breed victims into whimpering animals that begged for mercy.
And Scott had taken more pleasure than most in torturing the two Breeds held in what Gideon suspected was the pits of hell.
