The Devil's Due

by Lora Leigh

  Barely five three, tawny brown hair, long, thick matching lashes with sharp cheekbones, lips formed nearly like a cat’s, and her eyes—

  Cat’s eyes.

  And so young. So tiny. Surely no more in age than his wee Khileen.

  “Why?” he asked her now as he felt himself drifting, lifting, becoming light as air.

  “Because I’m yours,” she whispered, her eyes glowing like amber fire. “And you are all I can claim as mine. How could I allow death to take you in such a way?”

  What could she possibly mean? God, he needed to know what she meant. He needed to know—

  Agony pierced his chest, his guts. It lifted his body as a scream tore from him as the jagged, serrated teeth of death’s demon bit deep and shredded his insides like a dog shredded meat from a bone. The pain was horrifying. Brutal.

  Darkness closed around him.

  He prayed death took him.

  Katie at 16

  She was all wild Irish red hair, big emerald eyes and soft peaches-and-cream skin.

  Many Irish girls were now freckled, as their American counterparts were. The world was much smaller than it had ever been, and pure Irish blood was all but nonexistent.

  As Devil Black watched Katie Sullivan maneuver through the obstacles set up on the training course, admiration surged through him.

  Sixteen years old and pure human, yet she could outrun, outclimb and outlast a third of the young Breed females on the course with her.

  Mary Katherine “Katie” O’Sullivan was the reason he’d been called to the Breed Protection Network’s training center by the center’s operator, Gilliam Finneghea. A former American special forces soldier and United Nations undercover intelligence officer, Gilliam had not just trained some of the top covert agents the United Nations have ever employed, but he had also gone against some of the best, and had come out of each battle alive.

  Sometimes only barely living, but alive.

  Jonas would have sworn nothing could really impress Gilliam, because the man had already seen the best.

  Until Katie O’Sullivan had entered the network.

  “You’re certain she’s not recessed?” Devil asked, the Ireland showing in his accent. It only happened when he stepped out on Irish soil; no matter how he tried, the Irish blood he’d begun with couldn’t be hidden.

  Gilliam snorted. “She’s adopted on Irish soil, Devil. Do ya think she’s recessed and got away with it? This ain’t America, my friend.”

  Testing in Europe, Ireland and Scotland was far more in-depth and done far more often on adopted children and adults than in any other countries. With the tests becoming more painful every year after the age of twenty-five, many adopted adults were opting to move to countries with less stringent testing laws. Some of Europe’s Breeds continued to hide or escape the European countries to avoid the required one-to-five-year testing requirements for all Breeds, no matter how recessed their genetics were. Many of the Breeds forced into the testing facilities were so radically different, with no scientific reason for the change once they were released, that questions were beginning to be asked.

  This girl was tested yearly as well. During the last genetic screening she had been forced to do, it was reported that she had punched one of the techs when he had been too rough drawing the genetic sample from her liver and spleen.

  She was tough as hell, but she looked as delicate as a red rose.

  Crossing one arm over his chest and propping his elbow on his forearm, Devil stroked his jaw thoughtfully. He was there to watch the girl go through training maneuvers. He would be there tomorrow to watch her in the control room of the underground command center the network had established a decade before.

  It had been hidden at first, to protect the Breeds from the labs they escaped from. If they could make it to a predestined pickup point without being spotted or followed, then they were taken to a safe house overnight. Eventually, several days, underground tunnels and church basements later, they made it here.

  “Okay, so she’s not a Breed.” Devil scratched at his jaw, his eyes narrowed, his body more tense than it should have been as he watched her go through the network’s bruising maneuvers.

  “Yeah, she’s not a Breed,” Gilliam retorted, a question in his voice as he watched Devil. “You act like it’s news.”

  Devil shrugged. She had all the qualities of a Breed female. Beautiful. A delicate, fragile appearance.

  An underlying strength.

  “Okay then, I’m interested.” Giving a decisive nod without looking away from the girl, Devil made his decision quickly. “I’ll let Tiberian know and we’ll check her out in five years.”

  In five years she would be twenty-one and beyond the requirement that the network reveal any underage workers. And at twenty-one, her body would be mature enough, strong enough, to train for the Bureau of Breed Affairs as a human agent.

  The Bureau had been built from the ground up by Breeds, and only in the past years had they begun accepting humans into their ranks. But it was Devil’s hope that rather than joining the Bureau, she would instead join Lobo Reever’s security team in the New Mexico desert.

  As he watched, he couldn’t help but allow his curiosity to grow. A human that moved like a Breed. He was always of the opinion . . .

  If it looked like . . .

  If it acted like . . .

  If it sounded like . . .

  He wasn’t a great believer in coincidences either.

  At that moment, her head lifted from where she watched another trainee slipping around the form of a deserted building. Their eyes met. And in that brief moment, in that connection, Devil swore he saw a hell of a lot more than a human.

  Yet, she wasn’t a Breed?

  ONE

  Katie—8 years later

  Mary Kathleen O’Sullivan, Katie to friends and family, had no idea so many reporters could exist in one place.

  Standing behind one of the protective filters that now covered each of her windows, she stared at the crowd of journalists vying for position, watching her home closely, microphones and notepads held ready.

  “The guardians of the masses,” her father had once called journalists. He now called them “those sons of bitches,” despite the fact that they were doing no more now than they had been when he’d made the first comment.

  “Katie, please come away from the window,” her mother requested, her soft, lilting voice heavy with concern.

  Katie, her parents had always called her. She guessed it beat “Fido,” or “Precious,” as several tabloids’ writers had dubbed her.

  Turning, she did as her mother asked, glancing at the other woman from beneath the veil of her lashes.

  Kella O’Sullivan had aged a bit in the past weeks. There were fine worry lines now etched in her once smooth forehead, while her emerald green eyes reflected a fear that hadn’t been there before.

  Her long, red gold ringlets were caught at her nape with a heavy silver clasp, displaying the family pearls she wore at her neck.

  Katie had often reflected on how alike she and her mother looked. The high cheekbones and slightly tilted eyes. Small, though sensually curved lips and the thick, unusually long red gold lashes that framed their deep green eyes. Eyes that Katie had never seen so clouded with worry and fear.

  Or had they been?

  Katie had always sensed the well-hidden concern that rode her parents, though she’d never truly believed she was the root of it. She’d always assumed the stress came from her father’s job as assistant chief constable of Northern Ireland, rather than from the freak of science their daughter was.

  Maintaining her poise, she returned to the wingback chair beside the gas fireplace her father had just installed in the three-story home she’d lived in all her life. That chair had been turned to face their “guests,” rather like an interviewee’s chair would face some emissary of power, such as the men sitting across from her.

  Callan Lyons, the Feline Breed Pride leader, was accompanied b
y Jonas Wyatt, the director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs, Wolfe Gunnar and Dash Sinclair, the Wolf Breed Pack leaders, Del-Rey Delgado, the Coyote Breed Pack leader, as well as the often elusive Dylan Killato, the European Wolf Pack leader determined to pull the hidden Breeds on his side of the world together, watched her, as she imagined the scientists that created her most likely had watched her: with detached curiosity.

  “Katie, I know you’re frightened.” Dylan leaned forward, the shifting silver and amber colors of his gaze cool and calculating as the heavy Scots brogue offered to wrap her in a false sense of security. “And I hope you know our only concerns at this time are for your safety and security.”

  Katie could have rolled her eyes. Killato used his dark, savage good looks, the old-fashioned brogue and unusual color of his eyes to full advantage whenever he needed to.

  The American emissaries still sat quiet, watchful, offering neither advice nor countering Killato’s claims.

  “You’re becoming a sensation among the paparazzi as well as the scientists tasked by many countries to break the hidden genetic codes the Council scientists used to create us. You’re both a weakness as well as a possible answer for the Breed communities as a whole. This makes you a highly sought-after prize by many opponents as well as proponents of the Breed community.”

  Katie turned her gaze to the still silent American group. “Do the Breeds have proponents?” she asked as her gaze connected with that of Jonas Wyatt.

  One black brow lifted over a silver mercury eye. “Not in that group,” he assured her as he nodded to the door and the crowds outside.

  Killato shot the director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs a chilling look that had Katie wondering at the animosity she could sense emanating from him.

  “I can understand why you’re here, Mr. Killato,” she assured the European leader. “Building and pulling together the European Packs is a daunting task, I realize.” She turned back to his American counterparts. “But why are the rest of you here? How can I profit or aid the American Breeds?”

  “Katie,” her father scolded her gently. “They could be concerned with your welfare, lass.”

  Katie shook her head. “I find that very hard to believe, Da. Why risk their lives as well as their very busy schedules over just another Breed that the world has learned of?”

  “But you’re not just another Breed, Mary Katherine,” Jonas assured her, a hint of mocking amusement filling his gaze as he leaned forward slightly, his arms crossing and bracing on the table between them. “Unlike Pack Leader Killato, I’m not going to assure you that nothing more than your safety matters. That’s not true of any Breed. We’re all a danger to ourselves as well as our Packs and Prides. But you are more so for the very fact that your genetics were so well hidden until this past year. With the surge of your Breed genetics coupled with the fact that your grandfather was one of the most notorious lab overseers in Europe, it makes you a sensation. Breed opponents want you silenced before scientists can use your genetics to possibly hide other Breeds among society, while proponents hope you can do the opposite; and both sides admit to the very high profitability of either answer. You are quite literally worth your weight in gold.”

  “I wouldn’t be quite so extreme,” Killato argued.

  “Dylan, you know damned good and well that her father’s position as Ireland’s assistant chief constable, her grandfather’s secrets into the Genetics Council, as well as her own genetics make her a prize that scientists from among the Breeds, as well as the more acceptable scientific societies assigned to research the Breed genetics, would kill to claim. Even if it meant killing her,” Dash Sinclair argued, the gleam of worry in his eyes as he glanced at her rather surprising.

  “So then?” she asked Sinclair. “How do I profit the American Breeds?”

  “You ensure that you’re not taken by the wrong groups and used against us.” It was Sinclair’s young daughter, Cassandra, who spoke from her position in the far corner of the room, rather than her father, who answered that question.

  “That’s a bit harsh, Ms. Sinclair,” Killato growled, his gaze filled with a latent sexual intensity as he turned and glared at her.

  Cassandra rose to her full height from the chair she sat in, a very false height of five-eight, thanks to the heels she wore. Elegantly graceful, dressed in white slacks and a white vest-style blouse that revealed a hint of cleavage, she moved closer to the group, entirely comfortable in the five-inch heels she wore.

  Cassandra gave a small, lilting laugh. “Your greed doesn’t become you, Dylan,” she murmured as she walked to stand beside her father. “Neither does your need to use Ms. O’Sullivan and her family to your own ends.”

  “Something the lot of you have no intention of doing?” Killato bared his teeth at her in an obvious display of primal superiority.

  That display gained him no less than three harsh warning glares in his direction.

  “What would it gain us?” Cassandra shrugged her delicate shoulders. “As assistant chief constable, Mr. O’Sullivan has nothing that could benefit either Packs or Prides in America. His connections don’t affect us. Our teams were the ones responsible for capturing her grandfather, Walter O’Sullivan, the overseer responsible for many of the labs here in Europe, when he disappeared after the news broke of his true identity, so we have no need to use her to that end. And our laws forbid, in every way, the forced induction of any Breed into a scientific study, something your European laws do not ban. It’s no wonder the Breeds that have scattered across Britain, Scotland and Ireland refuse to heed your demands to reveal themselves.”

  It was Katie’s nightmare. Already her father had had to file countless stays of the Breed scientific mandates that would have forced her into a facility of Breed study for a period not less than one year, but no more than five.

  When Breeds disappeared behind the walls of those facilities, they were rarely the same once they exited, she’d read.

  “How do I benefit you then?” Katie asked her, more inclined to believe this young woman than any of the men seated in front of her.

  “By ensuring we’re not forced to rescue you from one of those facilities as we have been forced to rescue others,” she stated without hesitation, her brilliant blue eyes glowing in the peaches-and-cream complexion surrounding them. “The Bureau of Breed Affairs is already dealing with more than a dozen official demands of restitution as well as extradition of Breeds who have fled Europe or been rescued from scientific facilities whose inhumane experiments your country claims to have no knowledge of despite the fact that they fund them.”

  It was no more than the truth. Her father, Barrett O’Sullivan, had closed down two such facilities and had been summarily berated publicly as well as professionally for not doing more to track down and identify Breeds hiding in Ireland, and enforcing the mandatory one year of research imposed on Breeds in Europe several years before.

  Even Dylan couldn’t counter Cassandra’s statement, though Katie could glimpse his furious need to do so.

  “Katie, they won’t let you alone,” Cassandra promised softly as she nodded to the door and the murmur of the journalists on the street beyond. “Your father’s position can’t save you from the mandatory testing, and no matter Dylan’s claims, he can’t hide you from the testing. In less than forty-eight hours you’ve become a worldwide sensation for the very fact that despite the advanced testing for Breeds, you passed each stage of that testing that the European countries have ordered conducted on all adopted children, no matter their age. You passed each test with not so much as a blip on the DNA screenings from the age of nine until your genetics kicked in last month.”

  “Kicked in.” Now, there was a phrase.

  Her genetics had kicked her ass. A fever of one hundred and seven should have killed her. She’d lain nearly comatose for twenty-four hours before she’d begun convulsing so violently that her fiancé had rushed her to the ER, where the doctors there realized they were dealing with a phenomenon only spo
ken of in the fifteen years since the revelation of the Breeds.

  Genetic Flaming. A sudden, “flaming” awakening of once hidden Breed genetics after a lifetime of the Breed DNA she possessed lying dormant.

  Well, they weren’t dormant any longer.

  “The Feline Breed community of Sanctuary, as well as the Wolf Breed communities of Haven and Avalon, and Del-Rey’s Coyote Packs of the Citadel offer you haven, Ms. Sullivan,” Dash Sinclair spoke again, his gaze once again holding hers with the compassion and integrity all four of these men were known for.

  “Their protection far exceeds what I can offer you, Katie,” Dylan sighed, frustration evident in his voice. “Until Europe’s Breeds become the force America’s have, then we simply don’t have the strength. But I offer what little we have, and I would protect you and your right to freedom with my life,” Killato swore sincerely.

  In that moment, she knew he would do just that. For whatever reason, whether selfish or selfless, Dylan would have done all he could to hide her. If he couldn’t hide her, then he would have died to defend her.

  Katie lifted her gaze to Cassandra’s once again.

  “I’m scared,” she finally admitted, forced to fight back the tears and the horror building inside her.

  From the corner of her eye she glimpsed the tears slipping from her mother’s own eyes as she hurriedly tried to cover them. She watched her strong, prideful Da’s throat work convulsively as he stared up at the ceiling, blinking furiously at her admission.

  She could feel her skin crawling, her muscles tensing and bunching as though battling themselves. Sensations were too extreme, others’ emotions sometimes bombarded her, and the sense of betrayal she felt that her parents had kept this horrifying secret from her was tearing her apart inside.

  She’d always wondered why she couldn’t remember her life before she’d awakened in her “adoptive” parents’ home. The amnesia was the result of a drug she had been given the day the labs she was in had been attacked. The nurse that had given it to her had done so in case the Breed child she was responsible for was rescued. It was a common practice among the European labs, she had learned, to inject the children of possible rescues with the amnesia drug that had often caused older Breeds to revert to a primal state. The genetics scientists had hoped to ensure that those Breed youths would have less of a chance of being adopted into human homes.