Beyond the Dark

by Angela Knight

  “I don’t know how to play football.” He cleared his throat nervously.

  “That’s okay, they don’t either,” she assured him drowsily, confusing him further. “And while the neighborhood guys gather around in the back lot to teach you how not to play football, Mom will be cooking up a storm, and me and the sisters-in-law will be admiring your manly butt and broad shoulders. But don’t wear leather to play football in. You need jeans.”

  “I always wear leather.” It was slicker, harder to grip. It didn’t make as much sound when one moved, and he had grown accustomed to it.

  “You wear jeans to meet Mom and Dad, so you can play ball with the boys.” She yawned again, as though compliance with her little demands were a foregone conclusion. “And remember, Mom makes the best cherry pie in the world. And she still makes homemade vanilla ice cream. You’ll love it.”

  He was certain he would, but that wasn’t the point.

  “Grace, don’t get your hopes up,” he whispered, pressing his cheek to the top of her head, as his eyes closed in despair.

  She wasn’t like him, she had a family, interaction, a life outside of him. He only had her.

  “You’ll see.” She sighed, her body relaxing against him. “You’ll see, my family is going to love you.”

  Her father and brothers would likely warn him away from her with a weapon. When that didn’t work, they would complain to the Bureau of Breed Affairs. When that didn’t work, they would attempt to turn Grace against him.

  He hadn’t considered this, the reaction of her family. Hell, he hadn’t considered her family at all, and that had been a mistake. He could hear her love for them in her voice. They were important to her. She would hate losing them. She would hate him, if she lost them because she was bound to him by the mating heat.

  Matthias could feel sweat beading on his brow. What the hell would he do when that happened? Grace didn’t know, she had no concept of how important she was to him. She was his life. She was every dream he had ever dreamed in the hell of the labs. And after his release, the thought of the woman who would eventually fill his life had been his every hope for the future. The first time he had seen her, he had known she would carry his soul through eternity. Life or death, it wouldn’t matter, he belonged to Grace Anderson.

  And she belonged to her family.

  There had to be a way to ensure her family’s compliance, he thought. He had money. He could make certain they had no legal difficulties. He could kill their enemies.

  No, no killing. Grace wouldn’t like that. Okay, he could make their enemies wish they were dead. He had a few resources he could draw on. Men understood such matters. At least, the non-Breed men he knew understood such matters. Were fathers and brothers somehow different?

  Surely they couldn’t be. They were still men. He might not be good enough for Grace, but he could find a way to ensure that they didn’t hurt her by turning their backs on her when she refused to toss him free of her life, like she should the mutt he was certain they would believe he was.

  He resumed stroking her back, using just his fingertips, relishing the feel of her satiny flesh. He knew she longed to live closer to her parents. He could buy her a home near them, that would surely earn him a few good points.

  Damn. He would have to make plans to deal with this one. Research her family before he went to meet them. He would have to research them extensively. Perhaps he’d get lucky, and if worse came to worse, he could find something to hold over their heads to ensure that Grace wasn’t hurt.

  Because there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that they would want him out of her life. He was a Breed. Part animal. He wasn’t a man, he was a creation. A freak of science. No man who loved his daughter would want such a mate for her. Hell, he wouldn’t want it for his own daughter, why would her father want such a thing?

  And he was a killer. Or, he had been a killer.

  A smile quirked at the corners of his lips. He had a feeling that before it was over with, many of his habits would be changing. But, that was okay. He was looking forward to it. She was soft and gentle, and as long as he could forestall the problems he knew would come with her family, then he could ensure she stayed soft and gentle with him.

  Losing her would kill him, he knew that. Even without the mating heat, his soul was already bound to her in a way that he knew he would never be free of.

  He kissed her head, loving the feel of her against his chest, a delicate weight that warmed him to his core.

  He would figure out this family thing, for her. He wasn’t so certain about the football, though. He had never touched a football in his life, though he had watched other Breeds attempting to learn during his stay on Wolf Mountain in Colorado.

  Dealing with her family’s hatred of him would be a small price to pay to have her in his life. He would pretend not to notice it, make himself as unobtrusive as possible, and should they need any help in anything, he would take care of the matter.

  He nodded with a barely discernible movement. That should work. And if worse came to worse…he sighed. If worse came to worse, he would deal with it. She was worth it to him.

  “I love you, Grace,” he whispered against her hair.

  He loved her laughter, her smile. The way her nose wrinkled when he teased her, the way her ears twitched when he kissed them.

  She shifted against him as though trying to burrow deeper into his chest, and he let a smile tilt his lips and gathered her closer to him. His arms surrounded her, his head bent over hers, and he let her legs tangle with his.

  His body was now as bound by her as his soul was. Silken limbs encased him, and soft breaths fell against his chest.

  For the first time in his life, Matthias closed his eyes and slept while a woman lay tangled with his own body. He had never before been able to relax with a lover. But damn if he could help it. She had worn him out. She was as enthusiastic in their sex play as she was at everything else she did. Maybe a bit more so, he thought, as he remembered her nails raking his back and her demands for harder, faster, now, echoing in his head.

  Yeah, definitely more enthusiastic in their love play was his last, distant thought as he breathed out in exhaustion and let sleep throw its final web across his senses.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Dawn wasn’t far from making its first appearance over the horizon when Matthias came awake with a start. The scent of diseased perversions and hatred filled his senses, as he pressed his hand over Grace’s lips and brought her quickly awake.

  “Danger,” he growled softly at her ear, while he pressed the panic button at the side of his watch. Jonas was their only hope. “Dress quickly.”

  He moved out of the bed, pulling her with him and tossing her the clothes he had insisted she keep by the bed, just in case. Jeans, a T-shirt, and light jacket. Thick socks and hiking boots.

  He jerked his leather pants on, a black shirt, socks, and boots. Within seconds he was dressed and pulling his duffel bag away from the wall.

  His weapons were there. The tools of his trade. He strapped the pistol to his thigh, knives against the underside of his arms. He tucked a backup pistol in one boot, a dagger in the other. He grabbed the shorter model automatic rifle he used for warfare.

  “Matthias?” Grace whispered in fear, as he grabbed her wrist and moved her quickly from the bedroom.

  They didn’t have much time. He could feel the coyote soldiers moving in, could smell their blood-drenched souls, but they hadn’t surrounded the house yet.

  “It’s okay. Just do as I say, and we’ll be fine.”

  He prayed. Oh God he prayed, as he quickly unlocked the window on the far side of the living room and lifted it soundlessly.

  He dropped to the ground, then lifted Grace from the ledge, as she attempted to follow him. She was shaking, but stayed silent. Silent was good. It could have been their ticket out of there, if it weren’t for the smell of her heat.

  The soft scent of mating arousal was unmistakable. There was no way to hid
e it. That meant their asses were in a sling, if Jonas didn’t get here fast.

  Matthias made certain they were downwind of the coyote soldiers, who had attempted to come in downwind themselves. But the winds in the mountains were capricious. At some point they had shifted, betraying the coyotes’ advance while hiding his escape with Grace, for the time being.

  He didn’t dare use the vehicle they had driven up in. The sound of a motor would betray them instantly. That left their feet. He only prayed he could get her far enough away to ensure a fighting chance at saving his mate’s life.

  What the hell had made him think he could have this time with her? That he could possibly steal just a few days of peace?

  Somehow, he must have missed the signs that he was being watched. Only a coyote could have scented the mating heat building between him and Grace before he kidnapped her. But how had he missed a coyote trailing him?

  Matthias kept Grace close to his side, as he moved from the house to the sheltering trees that ran along the rough track leading into the cabin. He kept to the far side, knowing the coyotes were moving up along the upper side.

  The breeze drifted around him, bringing the smell of them to him and causing his lip to lift in a snarl of hatred. If he were alone, he would have gone hunting. He would have killed every fucking mongrel that thought he could blindside Matthias this way.

  But he wasn’t alone. At his side, his mate was struggling to keep up with him, trying not to breathe too hard, to stay as quiet as possible.

  As a twig crunched under her feet, he throttled a curse and wrapped his arm around her waist, lifting her off the ground. Her arms wrapped around his neck, and he felt her tears against his shoulder. Tears he wished he could shed.

  There was no time for tears now. He had to get her as far away from danger as possible. There were a few other cabins farther down the mountain; there had been vehicles there as they drove in. If he could steal one and get a head start…

  That wasn’t going to happen.

  He caught the scent of the coyotes’ change of direction and knew he was fucked. Somehow, they had figured out that he and Grace had left the cabin, and now they were on his ass.

  “Leave me,” she whispered in his ear, as he found a faint animal path and began to move faster along it. “You can get away on your own.”

  “It’s you they want, Grace.”

  She shuddered at his words and pressed her face tighter into his shoulder.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Her voice trembled at the words. “I know how to hide. You can get away and go for help.”

  He would have howled then, if he could have. She honestly thought he would allow her to sacrifice herself? For him?

  “You’re wasting your time,” he growled. “I won’t leave you.”

  Even in death, he would follow by her side. But he didn’t intend to die. If ever there had been a time when he intended to live, then it was now.

  “Four. I have you.”

  Matthias slid to a stop at the sound of the number he had been known by in the labs. Not a name, by all means they shouldn’t believe they had the rights that even pets had. No, they were known by numbers. He had been the fourth Breed created in the Albrecht lab in the German mountains.

  Matthias stared at the six coyote soldiers that stepped from the surrounding trees. Behind them stood Vidal Velasco, the Spanish directorate of genetic protocols.

  It was this bastard who had chosen the women who were kidnapped for the European labs and used for their ovum and life-giving wombs. It was he who had decided which woman would be released and which woman would be bred to death. It was this bastard who had slit the throat of the surrogate that had birthed Matthias.

  Matthias had been five when Vidal had gathered three of the Breed children in that lab together, called this woman their mother, then slid his blade over the weakened female’s throat. Even then Matthias had recognized the thankfulness in the woman’s eyes at her realization that the horrors she had been suffering were over.

  “I hear you have chosen a name for yourself, Four,” Vidal’s mocking, aquiline features were illuminated by the glow of the full moon, as it peeked from the clouds above.

  Vidal was much older now, nearing his seventies, Matthias knew, but he moved like a much younger man, his black eyes glowing in the night, his short gray hair gleaming.

  Even now, he wore a dark gray suit. His black shirt was dull against his swarthy flesh, his gray tie cinched snug at his neck. Matthias bet he was wearing the overly expensive leather shoes he was partial to, as well.

  Vidal was nothing if not precise and neat in appearance and action. Even when he was killing.

  Matthias lowered Grace to her feet, keeping his arm wrapped snugly around her, as he checked the position of each coyote. He held his rifle in one arm, his finger on the responsive trigger, as the coyotes began to spread out behind him.

  “You picked the wrong night, Vidal,” Matthias growled. “I’m not in the mood for you.”

  Inside, he was praying. He needed the coyotes closer together, not farther apart. He needed just one chance to catch them in a spray of bullets and to keep them from shooting Grace.

  If he died, he would die knowing he left his mate to these monsters. He couldn’t allow that to happen. Grace must survive.

  “Is she breeding yet, Four?” Vidal asked him in his precise, flawless English. “I hear wolves are having a difficult time transitioning from animal to man when they take their mates. Have you managed that yet?”

  Matthias watched Vidal carefully. He stood just behind two of the protective coyotes whose weapons were aimed, not at Matthias, but at Grace.

  “When the shooting starts, I’m taking you out first, Vidal,” Matthias said. “My bullets will tear right through your coyote pets and enter your chest. I won’t miss.”

  Vidal frowned. “Now, Four, we don’t have to be antisocial about this,” he chastised Matthias. “Just give us your pretty girlfriend, and we’ll let you run for a while longer.”

  Matthias lifted his lip in a mocking snarl. “I think you know that’s not going to happen. I’m well aware of the experiments the council scientists are running. I’d kill her before I’d let you get your hands on her.”

  Vidal crossed his arms over his chest, as Matthias tracked each soldier with his eyes and with his senses. He would have one chance to get Grace out of this alive. If the coyotes continued to surround him, he would have just enough room to drop and roll Grace to the small, rocky crevice next to them. It would provide the barest cover, but perhaps enough for him to cover her body with his own, as he tried to take the coyotes out.

  “I can’t believe you allowed yourself to be caught so easily.” Vidal’s teeth flashed in the darkness. “You had a coyote on your ass the whole time you were courting Miss Anderson and never realized it. Have you grown soft, Four?”

  Matthias shook his head. He had wondered about that.

  “There was no coyote tracking me. You got lucky, nothing more. Seems fate shines on the diseased and soulless at odd times after all.”

  The scent of Vidal’s anger began to pour around him. It made the coyotes nervous, as well it should. Vidal never could handle a Breed who dared talk back. It was one of his failings.

  “Why did the directorate decide to send you on this little mission anyway?” Matthias shifted closer to the shadowed natural indention in the earth, as he watched Vidal. “Did they decide they didn’t like you after all?”

  “I am part of the directorate, you ignorant mutt,” Vidal snapped.

  “But not the head of it,” Matthias pointed out, knowing well the ego that filled the bastard. “Are you certain they didn’t send you on a suicide mission, Vidal? Every assassin you’ve sent after me has failed. What makes you think you could succeed?”

  “I tracked you. I trapped you. With your mate,” the other man gloated.

  “Everyone gets lucky sometimes.” He turned to glance around him, shifting ever closer to the rocky ledge that
dropped into a four-foot ditch that water and erosion had created. “I think you just got lucky this time.” He turned back to Vidal once more, giving him a cool smile. “Will your luck hold out?”

  “Give me the woman, or the coyotes will fill her with holes, Four. My patience is wearing quite thin with your taunting.”

  Grace was shaking in his arms, but for each move he made, she slid into place with him. Her hands gripped the arm wrapped around her waist, and her body was tense, prepared. He could smell her fear, but he could also smell her determination to live.

  Unfortunately, for them to live, their enemies had to die. The thought of shedding more blood in front of her was abhorrent to him. He had promised her the killing would stop. He had promised himself that for her, he would no longer kill. And yet, the cycle the council had began couldn’t be stopped. Not for Matthias, not for any of them.

  “I’ll just have a bullet put in your head,” Vidal sneered. “And I’ll take your woman from your lifeless body. I hear it’s quite painful for a woman after having been mated by you creatures, to be touched by another. Perhaps I’ll get lucky, and my coyote was right when he sensed the possibility of her fertility. Is she carrying your pup?”

  “Perhaps.” He felt Grace’s start of surprise. She wasn’t carrying his child, he would know it if she were. But the thought of that could keep the coyotes from directing their bullets at her. “But you’ll never know one way or the other,” Matthias assured him. “Because you’ll be dead.”

  “I will listen to her screams, just as Benedikt and I listened to the last bitch we dissected to get the brat she carried,” Vidal sneered. “Her mate begged for her life, Matthias. Will you beg for your mate’s life?”

  And what of the child? Sweet God, what were those monsters doing now? Matthias remembered the sight of the female mate. She had been cut in so many places, sliced to ribbons. There had been no way to tell exactly what the scientists were looking for. If they had successfully removed a fetus from her body, though…His stomach twisted at the thought.