by Lora Leigh
This book is for you!
The men and women, lost and lonely, searching and wary, uncertain and ill prepared for what the heart can lead them into.
Sometimes, love is right around the corner. It's the road not taken that has suddenly intersected with that congested road of life you're traveling, bringing you to a harsh and sudden stop.
It's a look. It's a smile that warms you to the depths of your soul, steals your breath, and pulls you aside as that moment in time screams to a halt and leaves you struggling to adjust.
It's the love you didn't expect.
It's the love you didn't ask for, hadn't thought about, and you realize it's the love that heals the wounds in your soul.
It's the love that will reveal the person you are, and the life, though never perfect, that you never knew you dreamed of.
Call it destiny, call it fate.
Or call it a gift from God.
Whichever, it's the dream and the everlasting hope for the future.
From Storme Montague's journal, age 14
They're Breeds. Dad says man created them, but only God could give them a soul. At the moment, the world, as well as the scientists that created them, are debating if they have souls. I once believed no creature on Earth could live without a soul, without the blessing of God at the very least, but the majority of the Council scientists believe otherwise.
And still, I'm torn.
Dad and my brother, James, are scientists working here in the Andes Mountains, in the Council compound known only as Omega. It's one of the few remaining functioning Breed labs because Breed rescues have destroyed the others.
Dad and James feel the rescues will be attempted here soon. They seem so confident of it, and even act as though they look forward to it. And I can't understand why.
I see the Breeds. They are perfect specimens, so beautiful and strong, like the lions, tigers and wolves whose DNA they were created from. But it doesn't matter how you dress up an animal, does it? Isn't it still an animal?
When they howl in rage, rip at each other with teeth and claws, and fight for the food the soldiers bring to them each day, they are animals, not humans.
And yet, I look in their eyes when I accompany Father to the training facilities or labs, and in them, I swear I see such desperation and such rage. It's the rage that truly terrifies me.
They speak. They never laugh. They flash sharp canines, and strain at the chains that bind them, and I feel their rage. But I also see the animal inside them. It shines in their eyes, turning them nearly red, glowing with such strength that I know if they were free, they would first seek to kill the men and women who created them.
My father, my brother, even myself. Anger suffuses their expressions when I look at them, as though they cannot bear to be seen, or to see another outside the bars of their cages.
The tension is growing here at Omega. Breeds, soldiers, scientists and lab technicians seem to be holding their breath as they fight to keep the secrecy of this lab intact. To hide the few Breeds held, not for their fighting capabilities, but for some special project Father and James have referred to as an affront to humanity.
How could humanity be offended more than it has been with the Breeds? I've asked my father this, and in his eyes I've seen such disappointment, such a sense of sorrow that my chest clenches in pain.
I just want it to be over. I just want to leave here with Father and James, and I just want to be free.
I can feel the end nearing. We all can. Especially Father and James, who are working such long hours, well into the night, to destroy and to hide whatever they've been working on secretly. I wish they would hurry. I wish we could escape ourselves, just slip out and never return.
Father says, "Once the Council has its grip on you, they ensure you can never be free." And I see in his eyes as well as my brother's that feeling that they too are no more than captives here in this hidden compound.
I won't let them get a grip on me. I won't be like the Breeds, I won't be like the scientists. One day, I swear, I will be free.
PROLOGUE
GENETIC EXPERIMENTATIONS LAB OMEGA SCIENTIFIC HOUSING COMPOUND ANDES MOUNTAINS
The lights were off, the electricity having sputtered out, leaving them to navigate with only the dim emergency lights to see by. Outside, flares of light from the explosions that rocked the labs illuminated the windows. Gunfire and screams echoed, coming closer, filling Storme with a fear so agonizing it shuddered through her body.
"Storme, you have to hide. Don't let anyone find you, do you understand me? No one can find you." Her father helped her slide into the narrow crevice between the walls in the back of her closet.
She stared up at him in terror, aware of her brother working behind him to erase information contained in the computers and on the discs filed along the wall.
"Take this." He grabbed her hand.
The antique sapphire ring her mother had once worn was shoved onto her finger. He had showed her the secrets of the ring days before. The hidden compartment beneath the hollowed out stone and the data chip he had placed here. He had warned her, so many times he had warned her, that if anything happened to him, then she would become the protector of the information contained on that chip.
"Daddy, come with me." Storme could feel panic tightening her chest as the sounds of gunfire, screams and animal rage grew closer to the living area of the genetics research laboratory where her father had worked her entire life.
"No, we can't go with you, baby." Tears filled his tired brown eyes, grief creased his face. "Your brother and I will be fine. Get to the safe house; we'll meet you there after we're certain we've done what has to be done here."
No, they wouldn't meet her. She would never see them again, and she knew it. She watched her brother for long, panicked seconds. She couldn't see his beloved face. The creases that were forming on his forehead and next to his lips. He rarely laughed, though he smiled at her often.
She was only fourteen. She didn't want to face the dark alone. She was frightened of the dark.
"No, don't make me go by myself, Daddy." Sobs were fighting to escape her lips as the tears began to fall.
She stared back at him, seeing the fear and worry in his eyes, the mussed gray hair, the grief he was trying so hard to hide from her. And the courage. She didn't have his courage.
She wasn't strong like her father and her brother were. They faced every day the savage human-animals they had created and trained in the compound behind the houses. They lived with the monsters that Storme had only glimpsed from a distance as they trained. Monsters that could rend flesh with their teeth, that could tear limbs from bodies with only their bare hands. The monsters that howled at night with a savagery, with a horror that haunted Storme's nightmares.
"Storme, be strong for me." He shoved a backpack into her hands before pulling back. "Remember the promises you made me. You swore you would do this, Storme."
Her fists clenched as the panel slammed closed, leaving her in the darkness with the terrifying black void stretching out below her.
She had promised. She had sworn to protect herself and the secrets he had been amassing over the years. Secrets that were to go to one person. A person with no name. A person he had promised would find her, protect her. A mysterious someone who would know what to say, and what to do, to gain her trust.
The information the ring held was all that would save her, all that would save so many innocent people, he had insisted. And he had entrusted her with it.
She tried to step down the narrow steps that led to the tunnel beyond. She did. But as she took the first step, she heard an enraged, savage snarl as an explosion rocked the house.
She almost screamed. Struggling to keep her balance, she pressed her hands tight agai
nst the wall and fought to keep from falling down the stairs.
Fear held her motionless, her eyes wide as she stared through the crack in the wall into the bedroom and watched her father as he stared toward the doorway in fear.
"We have to get out of here." His voice wavered as James moved in closer to him, protectively. "The Breeds will come after those of us who created them first."
Storme saw the realization in both her brother's and her father's faces, and she knew that the horror she had always feared was upon them.
"But not those of you who helped them." The voice was guttural, angry.
Storme swallowed tightly at the sound as her fists clenched in the effort to stay in place, to keep from trying to protect her father as well.
She had promised she would run and hide. That she wouldn't endanger herself.
"Where is the girl?"
The girl? Her?
"I sent her away yesterday," her father replied, his voice shaking.
"Because you knew what was coming?"
Her father shook his head. "How could I have known?"
"You thought you were so careful." The voice was filled with fury. "You aided our destruction, JR. You'll pay for betraying us by aiding the Breed sympathizers in this fucking rescue."
"I aided nothing," her father, JR, James Robert, denied.
A harsh laughed filled the room.
"We'll find the girl. No doubt you sent what I need with her. Or did you? Give me that research, JR, and I'll let her live."
"What are you talking about?" Fear was thick, heavy, surrounding her father, her brother, even as Storme felt it stealing her breath.
"I want that data chip."
"What data chip?" Even Storme could hear the nervousness, the lie, in her father's voice.
An animalistic, harsh snarl filled the room as shadows moved. As though there were many, not just one. Dark, brutal shadows, glowing eyes advanced.
Storme stared at the aberration. The merciless eyes, the face that seemed too young, and yet too cruel. And she memorized it. Memorized the creature that she knew would kill what was left of her family.
Her brother jumped in front of their father, to save him, Storme knew. That was James, so protective, so loving. As the Coyote latched onto her brother's fragile shoulders, Storme covered her mouth with her hand to hold back her screams and watched in horror.
Dear, beloved James. He played word games with her, made her laugh, and as she watched in horror one of those horrible monsters grabbed him, bent his head, and tore James's throat out.
Blood sprayed as another explosion outside lit the room with brutal light, displaying the scene in harsh detail.
Bile rose in her throat as it tilted its head back, the face, so like a human's, covered in blood as its lips opened and a howl echoed around her.
They could smell fear. They could smell her. Her father had warned her of that. He had made her swear to protect herself and the secrets he had risked his life to steal.
If she stayed, she was dead. Her brother was already dead, and she knew her father wouldn't survive.
Because of the Breeds. Because of the human animals these scientists had created, trained, and were now turning loose on the world. Breeds, like the one now tasting her brother's blood.
She backed down the stairs. The darkness enfolded her, wrapped around her. She could hear her father screaming, denying that his daughter was there. She was gone. He had sent her to stay with relatives.
He swore he had no information. He stole nothing. His daughter had nothing. He was screaming in pain and fury.
They would know better. They would have smelled her presence in the house if they had passed by it. They were that good. But here, deep beneath the earth, cocooned as though in a grave, she was safe.
The smell of her father's and brother's blood above, the smell of smoke, fear and death would hide her for a little while. And once she was through the tunnel and into the small town beyond where the tunnel exited, she would have a chance to run.
She was alone.
She could feel it.
A strange sense of disassociation filled her, washed over her and stopped the tears. Fear choked her, made it hard to breathe, but her mind felt mercifully numb.
As she felt her way through the drainage tunnel her father had dug into years before, Storme knew he must have foreseen the chance that he and her brother could be caught doing whatever it was they had been doing.
She had known for years that they were frightened of the people they worked for. That they couldn't leave. That only Storme had the ability to travel back and forth from school in America to this small community her family lived within.
The place her mother had died just after Storme's birth.
Had those who had killed her brother killed her mother as well?
This place, these Breeds--because of them, because of her father's loyalty to them, everything she had held dear had been destroyed. They had destroyed everything that was love and security to her.
She shouldn't be alone. Her father and her brother should have come with her. They should have saved themselves and damned the information they were so desperate to destroy.
Information that her father swore would destroy so many innocent Breeds. Were any of those creatures truly innocent?
As she made her way through the damp, muddy tunnel, the sight of her brother's death flashed before her eyes, over and over. The memory of the Coyote's head bending--canines curved and wicked, flashing in the light of the explosions outside and tearing into his throat--sliced through her mind.
There was nothing that could numb that memory. Nothing that could erase it or the nightmare vision that insisted on invading her soul at the thought that her father was suffering the same fate.
Breeds. Killers. Animals. They were monsters. Evil, wicked monsters that man had created, that man was now losing control of, just as her father had warned them they would lose control. The Breeds were turning on their creators, escaping, killing, turning the world into a place of conflict where their very humanity was in question. There was no redemption for the Breeds; they had no mercy, no compassion, just as the other scientists had always warned her father. A Breed was a Breed. A Coyote was still a Breed, and a Coyote had just destroyed her world.
They were without souls.
And now Storme was without family.
As she reached the metal ladder below the drainage gate just outside the small Chilean town, Storme forced herself to find the energy to climb to it and push it open.
The serene calm she had seen in the town during short visits didn't exist now. People were pouring out of their homes, standing and watching the display of light and explosions on the mountain above their homes.
Storme slipped silently along the edge of the crowd, her gaze locked on the mountain. Howls echoed from above, enraged and filled with fury as gunfire and explosions continued to rip through the night.
Moving quickly, hurriedly, she began to run through the shadows to the house outside of town. The one her father had promised he would meet her at.
He wouldn't be there. It wouldn't matter how long she waited, he would never be there. Only death would find her there if she waited, and she had promised her father she wouldn't allow death to find her.
As she reached the house, she didn't wait around. Racing into the small attached garage, she threw the canvas from the old, rusted pickup that sat there.
It looked like shit, but she knew it would run. It was strong and fast; the tinkering her brother had done with the motor had ensured that whoever drove it would have the best chance possible of escape.
The passports were still in the glove box, the small box of cash was still hidden in the back of the seat. Birth certificates, records needed to hide their identities if all escaped together--everything was still there.
Carefully, she pulled her father's and brother's papers from the glove box, pushed them into the backpack, then shoved the key in the ignition.
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She knew how to drive. She knew how to shoot the powerful gun strapped to the door, and she knew how to fight. She was only fourteen, but her father and brother had been planning this for years.
They had taught her how to survive in case the worst that could happen, happened. As though they had known, despite their assurances to her, that they wouldn't be with her.
As she accelerated from the garage, lights off, nothing but dust moving in her wake, she was aware of the heli-jets lifting off from the mountain.
Breeds or scientists, she didn't know which. Whoever it was, they were no friends of hers. She had no friends, she had no family, there was no one to protect her until whoever her father had been working with found her.
If he found her. And when he did, he damned well better be sure he had proof of who he was, because Storme knew in her soul that she could never trust anyone after this.
Everyone was the enemy.
TEN YEARS LATER HAVEN, WOLF/COYOTE BREED COMPOUND
Jonas strode into the small meeting room, paused and stared at the scientists and the Enforcer staring back at him. Dr. Jeffrey Amburg was a human genome advanced design scientist. He had been involved in more than twenty-five years of Council-backed Breed genetic research. He'd created Breeds, his experiments had killed Breeds, and he was here, in Haven, for the first time. It was the first time in two years that he had been allowed out of the specially secured rooms he had been confined to after Jonas had captured him in Buffalo Gap, Virginia.
Dr. Nikki Armani, Wolf Breed genome specialist and physician, was also human. She too had worked for many years with the Council. The difference was, Nikki had conspired from day one to find freedom for the Breeds she had cared for when they returned from missions wounded and nearly dead. Or when the experiments conducted on them had weakened them to the point of death.
Dr. Elyiana Morrey was the exception here. She was a Breed. A Lion Breed created to treat her own kind. Training had begun with her from conception, introducing her in vitro to the complicated process of manufacturing and repairing the often complicated Breed physiology. She was both physician as well as scientist, and her breakthroughs in the mysterious mating heat afflicting the Breeds had given them the additional time needed to continue hiding the phenomenon from the world in general.
Navarro Blaine was one of the higher ranking undercover Enforcers. A Wolf Breed with specialization in several forms of martial arts, the man was more of a shadow than even the shadow he cast.
This meeting, outside of Jonas's normally preferred base of Sanctuary, home of the Feline Breeds, was the first meeting to bring all three scientists together, along with Dr. Elizabeth Ambrose Vanderale, the ninety-some-year-old mate to the first Leo, Leo Vanderale.
Elizabeth stood at Jonas's side, sleekly tailored in a gray silk skirt and matching blouse, looking barely old enough to be the mother of the self-proclaimed thirty-year-old Dane Vanderale.
It was a damned good thing the Vanderales had adapted and learned how to make themselves appear older before appearing in public; otherwise, Leo and Elizabeth both would have been given away by their acknowledged son's widely known age.
"Ladies and gentlemen." Jonas nodded as he and his mother, Elizabeth, moved to the conference table. "I hear we may have a problem."
As usual, Jeffrey Amburg sat back silently. If Jonas wanted information from him while in the presence of the Breed scientists, then he would have to force it from him. The scientist was aware of the hierarchy of the labs now, and he was at the bottom of the food chain.
"Jonas, this meeting was uncalled for," Ely was the first to speak. "I have things to do at Sanctuary, as does Dr. Vanderale. This subject does not require such an in-depth meeting."
Nikki Armani narrowed her gaze on Ely. It was no secret that the doctors rarely saw eye to eye, which wasn't surprising. It seemed that Feline and canine physiology could be as different as night and day once one began probing into the more intricate aspects of DNA and genetic sequencing.
"The Enforcers being used for this little mission Sanctuary has dreamed up to capture and gain the trust of this woman, are Wolf Breeds outside of the cooperative units detailed in Sanctuary," Nikki reminded her. "Excuse me, Dr. Morrey, but when Haven has requested the assistance of Feline Breeds, they do make the trip to Sanctuary without voicing such protests or showing any irritation they may harbor."
Jonas sat back and looked to Ely. She was his favorite. Like a little sister, Jonas watched out for Ely where he could, especially since his own mating.
Ely had been through hell in the past year, and the consequences of others' actions had nearly destroyed her mind. But in this, there was no protection. She had opened her mouth, and she would now have to defend her stance.
"Dr. Armani, this matter would have been taken care of much more easily at Sanctuary for the simple fact that all the scientific research, with the exception of your personal files, reside there."
"And are accessible by Haven, in their entirety, last I heard," Nikki argued. "Or is there some reason we don't have files that you do indeed poss
