by Lora Leigh
And it was sincere. Whatever Bartel had said to the other woman, it must have been taken to heart, because Lillian meant the apology, and not for the first time, Dawn thanked the Breed senses that allowed her to pick up on that sincerity.
“We’ll consider the words unsaid,” Dawn finally told her softly.
Lillian stared at her in surprise, and Dawn realized that she had prepared herself for the worst. An insult as well, or perhaps more.
“Craig was right,” she said. “Your beauty is only overshadowed by your compassion. Thank you.” She extended her hands, and preparing herself for the contact of another’s touch, Dawn accepted it.
She was surprised, no, she was shocked when the feeling only produced mild discomfort. It was a bit stronger when Craig shook her hand as well, but the pain she should have felt wasn’t present.
That could mean only one of two things. The mating heat was easing or she had conceived. She wasn’t certain which. She didn’t feel pregnant, but then again, how the hell would she know what it felt like?
“You have the most incredible look on your face,” Seth murmured as the Bartels moved away. “You’re making me hard.”
“You stay hard,” she purred. She really did love that about him.
He grunted at the comment, but there was laughter in his eyes, a smile pulling at the corner of his lips. As she smiled back at him, a peculiar feeling swept over her. Not so much panic, or even fear. As though the panic had hardened inside her and turned silently feral.
Her head lifted, her gaze swept over the dance floor, and her senses seemed to come alive in a way they never had before.
She couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, couldn’t smell anything that could explain the sudden feeling, and she felt like growling in fury at the odd warning traveling through her system.
This was why she had been so adept at tricking the Breeds she trained with. This feeling. It warned her when something was coming, warned her when danger approached, whether it be Breed, human or inanimate. This extra sense, this animal knowledge and instinctive self-preservation.
“Dawn?” Seth’s hand settled at her nape and rubbed at the tense muscles there. “Is everything okay?”
“Fine,” she answered absently, continuing to search.
As her gaze swept over the entrance to the ballroom, Dash and Elizabeth stepped inside with their daughter.
Dawn’s gaze stopped abruptly at the sight of Cassie. Her makeup was expertly applied and appeared barely there. But it was there. It was masking her pale face, but nothing could mask the other girl’s wide, haunted eyes. Just as nothing could hide Dash’s and Elizabeth’s tension.
“We should talk to Dash and Elizabeth,” she murmured to him, feeling the instincts inside her latching on to the small family.
Dash was dressed in an evening suit, Elizabeth in a gorgeous gray silk gown that smoothed over her breasts and hips and gave her a seductive appearance.
Cassie wore black once more, a shimmery fabric that gleamed and glowed as she moved. Thin straps extended from the snug bodice, and the material displayed her curved figure without appearing too seductive or alluring. The dress was like Cassie herself, understated and shielding the secrets it covered.
Seth nodded, took her hand and led her to the fairly private table they had taken across the room.
Cassie wasn’t dancing. Her father’s stern, forbidding expression kept the admirers held back for the moment. As Dawn and Seth neared the table, Dash rose, resplendent in black evening clothes, his black hair pulled back at his nape, his brown eyes glittering in anger.
“You look gorgeous, Dawn,” he murmured as he shook Seth’s hand.
“And you look ready to explode,” she pointed out. “Is everything okay?”
She carried her weapon and her link in her bag, and she knew Dash hadn’t tried to contact her before coming down. The link would have vibrated and warned her of his attempt to do so.
“It will be.” Dash nodded. “Elizabeth and Cassie and I will be leaving first thing in the morning. We need to get back to Sanctuary.”
Not just to their home. Dash wouldn’t consider the brief stop at the Breed compound to collect his son as getting back there.
Dawn’s eyes flickered to Elizabeth’s concerned gaze and Cassie’s averted one.
“Is anything wrong?” She turned back to Dash. “What’s happened?”
“I happened,” Cassie drawled then, her soft voice stiff, bordering on angry. “I don’t obey so well anymore. Perhaps there’s been an error in my training program.”
Dash’s eyes flashed with pain as Elizabeth’s lips compressed.
“She won’t stay off that fucking balcony,” Dash muttered. “She was out there this morning when we returned to the suite, shaking like a leaf.”
“She was thinking and attempting to make sense of things.” Cassie shrugged. “And it was a little chilly.”
Her father cast her a fuming look as Dawn glanced at her in surprise. Cassie never disobeyed her father’s orders when it came to her safety. She well knew what awaited her if all protection failed and the Council managed to get their hands on her.
“Cassie?” Dawn questioned her softly, staring back at her quietly.
They had been friends. Cassie was always invading her space when the dreams were rising hard inside her in the past. With her spooky little riddles, her compassion and the knowledge that others’ pain hurt her as well, Cassie had never been one to deliberately make things harder on those around her. Especially her parents.
“I’m fine, Dawn.” She rolled her eyes, but Dawn could feel the tension in the other girl. There was also a certainty that Cassie had no intention of discussing it. It was in her eyes, in her closed expression.
As Cassie turned back to Dash, he merely shook his head; the frustration he was feeling was clearly evident in his expression.
“If you need anything, just let us know.” Seth nodded then. “We’ll circulate a bit more and then perhaps return to our suite for drinks. I’d like to talk to you before you leave.”
Dash nodded again before moving back to his seat, his hand finding his wife’s naturally as Seth and Dawn moved away from the table.
“What’s going on?” Seth asked her quietly, his gaze sharp, picking up, she knew, on the tension rising inside her now.
“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “But whatever is going to happen, it’s going to happen tonight, Seth.” She knew that as well as she knew her love for Seth.
It burned clear to her soul.
Seth paused, his hand dropping hers to allow his arm to curve around her back and pull her to him.
“We’ll get through it,” he promised her.
“I can only pray.” And for the first time in ten years she was doing just that. She was praying hard, praying with everything inside her. Because losing him now wasn’t something she could consider. Losing him now would kill her.
She stayed at Seth’s side through the hours they chatted, danced and celebrated not just the end of the board meetings and an agreement in Seth’s favor, but also the engagement that she had dreamed of.
They were watched closely. Some gazes were angry, some surprised, others genuinely happy for them. As they moved about the room, Dawn instinctively used a set of silent signals to the other Breeds there, keeping them carefully around Seth and close enough to stop a bullet if they had to.
Breed physiology could survive wounds that the human body couldn’t. They were more resilient, better able to endure as well as heal from life-threatening wounds. They weren’t just stronger and faster, they were created for abuse and trained within it.
That training had killed more Breeds than lived now. More than a century of the scientists’ work had created bodies and internal organs that could continue to fight under circumstances that would leave a normal human dead hours before. It was the reason they were created. To endure and to succeed despite all odds.
“Seth.” Brian Phelps moved toward the
m, a smile on his face despite the concern in his hazel eyes. “Congratulations again. She’s a beautiful woman.” He nodded to Seth and handed Dawn a glass of champagne before taking one for himself.
“She is indeed, Brian.” Seth smiled.
“I just received a report from one of my people in Los Angeles,” Brian told him. “Valere landed and immediately called a press conference. It’s a few more hours before it’s due to air. I’d hoped he wouldn’t do it.”
Seth shook his head as Dawn felt, scented, his regret.
Seth finally shrugged. “He can’t hurt the deal, Brian. And it’s not the first news conference he’s called to try to put pressure on the board to force our decisions his way. It won’t work now any more than it worked in the past.”
Brian nodded his thinning gray head, but his expression was lined with worry. “It makes me wonder if the rumors of his family’s involvement with the Council are true,” he finally sighed. “As God is my witness, I didn’t know the true scope of what we were funding, Seth. Research and development, they called it. The reports I received didn’t mention anything about children, or adults, being created.”
It was, Dawn suspected, no more than that truth. The Council reports to many of the companies funding them had been in terms of “weapons” developed; the testing of those weapons, the units built or destroyed for lack of efficiency.
A lack of efficiency. More clearly defined, the inability to endure the horrors of their “training.” And the scientists’ excuses?
Callan had nearly lost his sanity during the Senate hearings just after they revealed themselves. The Council scientists’ reasons for their cruelties, expressing their utter lack of humanity, had been brief. The Breeds were weapons that could be tortured for information. Better they understood the torture before embarking on their missions.
Their unique physiology and DNA required the various tests that were performed against them. Tests such as autopsies performed while the Breed screamed in agony. Beatings inflicted while electrodes measured pain, strength and neural synapses. It went on and on, the horror of it often too much to grasp, even for a Breed reliving it through those hearings.
“Lawrence Industries went over the records of its board members carefully, Brian,” Seth reminded him. “We’re aware of the reports that were sent out, just as we’re aware of the evidence that proved the knowledge of those we forced off the board ten years before.”
Brian nodded, then his lips quirked. “Have you regretted allowing Vanderale to take the place of one of those board members?” he asked. “He’s definitely a unique personality, Seth. Not always a comfortable one, but unique all the same.”
“That’s the most tactful description I think I’ve heard of him.” Seth chuckled as Dawn’s gaze began to move around them once again. “Normally, the language gets much more colorful.”
“Not to mention threatening,” Brian admitted. “I think I threatened to rip his throat out for him during a meeting last month.”
Dawn jerked her gaze back to the portly, charming board member in surprise. This little man had threatened Dane Vanderale? Dane wasn’t a man that even Dawn wanted to meet in a fight.
“I was a little irked,” he informed her with a deep chuckle. “Dane has that effect.”
She smiled at that, her lips parting to speak, when she felt him. She smelled him. That touch of evil was so deep, so invasive she felt pummeled by it.
She stiffened, aware of the growl the rumbled in her throat, of Seth stiffening and Brian watching her with narrowed eyes.
He was here. The one from her dreams. She could feel him watching her now and she realized she had felt him the entire time she had been on the island.
She had known him, but the block within her memories had hid the knowledge from her. The smell of liquor and smug satisfaction. Of malicious pleasure and depraved lusts.
“Dawn,” Seth murmured at her side, forcing her into a position where he could protect her, rather than the other way around.
She searched the room. He was in the room. That brief whiff of his evil had been enough to assure her of that. She turned, scanning the crowd, knowing, fearing the worse.
He wasn’t outside. He was here, in the room. He wouldn’t be unarmed; he would know better than to ever go unarmed. As the scent reached her again, she tensed further, the various layers of smell sorting through her mind as she tried to identify him.
She had smelled him before, though there had been other scents around him at the time. Scents guaranteed to throw off the Breed senses. Liquor and drugs, they temporarily affected the body’s chemistry, and their basic scent hid him. Her memories had returned though, and with them the memory of his scent beneath the liquor and drugs.
Her eyes were restless, her mind working, ignoring Seth’s demand for an explanation as it began coming to her, slowly. So slowly.
The soldier who raped her had used drugs to maintain an erection. Even then. He had been young, in his early twenties, she had sensed that much about him. He drugged himself for the added pleasure as well as the added length of time it afforded him to torture the children he enjoyed.
He still raped. She could smell the scent of that depravity, the subtle smell of the pain he had inflicted that still clung to his body now that he wasn’t attempting to disguise his scent.
“He’s here,” she murmured.
“Who’s here?” Seth’s hand was in the pocket of his jacket, his fingers curled over a weapon she had watched him place there earlier.
“He is,” she whispered again.
There was a long, strained silence as Dawn searched the faces her gaze touched upon.
“That’s not possible.” Rage burned in his voice now.
“It’s possible,” she told him quietly, ignoring Brian Phelps, knowing she couldn’t worry about him now. Wherever his wife was within this crowd, she would have to worry about him.
“Where?” Seth snapped out, motioning several Breeds closer.
Dawn was aware of his every move, just as she was suddenly aware of every guest within the room. She could feel their heartbeats, smell their emotions. Many were so oblivious, but there was one. One that was waiting, watching.
His scent hit her again, her eyes widening, her lips parting as the fear nearly overwhelmed her. Her gaze jerked to Dash’s table, her heart nearly stopping in her throat as it returned to the room.
And then she found him.
Her heart slammed in her throat. He had worn contacts when she had seen him before. Colored contacts to shield the hue of his eyes. He hadn’t bothered tonight. And he wasn’t drinking tonight.
The smell of liquor was still a part of him, but his system wasn’t affected by it. He wouldn’t be slow, he wouldn’t hesitate to use the young woman who danced in his arms.
Dawn took a step, intending to rush across the room, to jerk Cassie from his grip. The sight of that bastard’s hand at Cassie’s waist sent rage tearing through her.
At that moment, his head lifted. His eyes were filled with triumph, and before Dawn could move, before she could gasp, Jason Phelps swung Cassie around, jerked a gun from his jacket and had it at her temple.
He smiled then. The curl of his mouth so familiar, so hated that Dawn snarled as guests gasped, screamed and rushed out of the way.
And through it all Cassie stood still and silent, unsurprised as Jason gripped her neck and held her in front of him, her back against his chest, her heart blocking that shot. The muzzle of his weapon at her temple, the fingers adding just the right amount of pressure to the trigger to ensure that a head shot would take her life as well. His throat was blocked by her head, no way to take him out there. He had thought of all the angles. And now he was playing his hand.
CHAPTER 24
Dawn heard Seth curse. She felt Brian’s shock, his pain. This was his nephew, his heir. He was also the scourge of the Breed labs. A figure so horrifying that the female Breeds in the New Mexico labs had cowered at the thought of him.
&
nbsp; He had been smarter in those days. He’d kept his face covered by the snug, black mask he and his fellow rapists had worn. Just in case, he had always laughed. Smell me, good little breed. Kill me if you can.
“Jason, what the hell are you doing?” Brian moved for his nephew, only to be jerked back by Seth and pushed to one of the Breeds that stood protectively around Seth.
The other man was pale, staring at his only heir with horror and outrage. As though he couldn’t believe his own blood could do such a thing. As though he were fighting to convince himself this wasn’t some horrible nightmare.
Dawn could have assured him it was no nightmare. The monster that stood in the middle of the ballroom, Cassie as a shield in front of him, was very, very real.
Jason smiled as he noted the Breeds’ position around Seth, a gleam of triumph in his eyes. He had done what no Council soldier had managed in the eleven years since the news broke of the Breeds’ existence. He had their most prized possession. The female that both Felines and Wolves cherished. The light, the wonder, of Cassie Sinclair.
“It’s not Cassie you want, Phelps,” Seth bit out. “You came for me. Well, here I am.”
“It never was you I was after, Lawrence,” he sneered with a laugh. “Six tries and all of them failures? My little cat beside you can tell you, I never miss.”
No, he didn’t. He had killed Breeds. Trained, wary Breeds who knew to watch for him on missions. He never missed. He always had a plan and he had never failed. She should have guessed. She should have known that Seth wasn’t the target. But how could he have guessed Cassie would be here?
The decision was made at the last moment. No one had a clue that Cassie and her mother would arrive with Dash.
She stared back at Phelps, trying to read the intent on his gloating face, seeing his sense of triumph. Why? Because he had gained more than he had ever imagined he could?
As she watched him, she was aware of his gaze turning to her, his eyes stroking her as though with a lover’s caress. Her flesh crawled.
“You acquired a name,” he drawled, that gaze so hated, so despised it had followed her for twenty years. “Dawn. How refreshing. Does he whisper your name when he’s fucking you?” He nodded to Seth. “Or do you even fuck? Did I mark you for life, little girl?”
Dawn stared at him silently, looking for a weakness, a way past Cassie’s fragile body to the larger one behind her.
Phelps was careful. Cassie covered all his weakest spots and she knew it. Knew it and was doing nothing to fight it. It didn’t make sense. She knew if he escaped this island with her, then her life would effectively be over. Hers, her parents’ and the entire Breed community’s as well.
“Jason, you’ve lost your mind,” Brian called out. “Let that child go.”
Jason laughed. “This child, as you call her.” His fingers stroked Cassie’s neck. “She’s worth more than all of you combined. Do you have any idea how much the Council will pay for her?” His expression hardened. “Which is where she belongs. She’s an animal, as the rest of them are. No more than tools and pets. Isn’t that right, Dawn?”
His gaze was oily, reeking of evil, just as his scent did.
Dawn lifted her head, her hands clutching her purse, her finger on the trigger of the powerful handgun it contained.
She let a gloating smile curl her lips. “We escaped though, didn’t we? We survived.”
A frown tugged at his brow as anger flashed in his eyes. His hand tightened on Cassie’s throat as a wolf’s snarl filled the room.
The absolute rage that filled that wolf’s growl was a testament to a father’s love for his child. Dash was enraged, barely controlled, the scent of his fury filling the air as Dawn kept her attention on Phelps.
Jason wouldn’t make it out of the ballroom. It wouldn’t be allowed. Jonas was amazingly efficient and Dawn knew the order that had gone out concerning Cassie. Every attempt would be made to save her, but if she were ever taken in such a way, then ensuring the Council didn’t acquire her was imperative. She would be killed before it was allowed to happen.
Dash knew it. Dawn knew it. Every Breed there knew that getting her out of Jason Phelps’s hands was the only way to ensure her survival. There would be no rescue attempts later, there would only be a funeral and more death. More blood spilled.
Jason laughed. “You should have kept her at home, Sinclair. I still haven’t figured out what possessed you to bring such a valuable little jewel out of hiding.” He lowered his head and licked Cassie’s cheek. The caress was disgusting, insulting.
“Then Cassie was the goal all along?” Seth asked him, his voice icy with the promise of death.
Jason chuckled. “Actually, no. Cassie is a side benefit. A twofer, you might call it. No, Lawrence, I wanted what belonged to me. And there was this nasty little rumor Caroline so enjoyed telling of the little Breed’s name you whispered in your sleep. Little Dawn. My little girl.”
You’ll always be my little girl, his voice whispered through her mind, his vow each time he dirtied her body.
“You look shocked, Lawrence,” he said tauntingly. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? She was mine in those labs, and I want her back. That was the object all along; it just took me a while to arrange things to my satisfaction once she arrived.”
“You won’t take either of them, Jason,” he snapped. “Give it up now, while you’re still alive.”
Jason smiled, an evil, malicious twist of his lips. His fingers caressed the smooth line of Cassie’s throat with just enough pressure to cause her to part her lips to draw in more air.
Rumbled growls and enraged, throttled snarls filled the room as the guests were pushed behind the line of Breeds now facing Phelps.
He was surrounded, and yet so confident. Dawn knew if he managed to actually escape the ballroom then his success would be almost guaranteed.
“Are you going to let me take her out of here without you, Dawn?” he asked then. “We can do this one of two ways. You can come and be my pet.” He stroked Cassie’s throat. “Or I can make her my pet for a while. You know how the scientists enjoy watching me work. Do you think she’ll survive it?”
Cassie would survive, but her mind would be damaged forever, and Dawn knew it. She knew it, but as she met Cassie’s gaze, she saw only acceptance. Acceptance and regret as she glanced at her parents.
I love you. She mouthed the words to them as a sob escaped Elizabeth.
“Come on, Dawn.” Jason’s voice took a teasing tone. “Tell me you don’t dream of me taking you. You’ve missed me, little cat, you know you have.”
The scent of horror filled the room. Finally, finally the cream of the world’s financial crop was seeing the evil that filled the Council and its soldiers. The complete disregard for life. Adult’s or child’s.
Noble, one of the Breeds on the security detail, shifted in front of her carefully, hidin