by Lora Leigh
And now Morningstar was dying.
He didn’t flinch as the sound of her howls became sharper, filled with a horrendous agony, and the scent of her blood and horror began to fill the room.
His gaze slid to that of his brother, 108.
His twin.
They shared another bond as well that so far they had not revealed to the soldiers, scientists or other Breeds they shared the cells with. A bond and a knowledge of each other that they could be killed for, if it were ever discovered. They shared that bond with their mother as well, and he knew 108 was sharing her agony as well.
Breed number 107 knew his brother as he knew no other. A knowledge that allowed them to sense and glimpse into the emotions and into the heart of each other.
He had to inhale slowly, deeply as the scent of her blood became stronger and her screams sharper with agony, with the horrific knowledge of what was being done to her.
A vivisection. The dissection of a living body.
And he had to ignore it. He had to remain outwardly unaffected.
He had to pretend to be uncaring that his mother was being cruelly tortured for the scent Elder left on her. In her. The scent he recognized on a primal level as one that marked her as belonging to Elder. It was a scent he had never known, never smelled before.
The animal senses that were so much a part of him knew it on a primal level. That knowledge was transmitted to the man, and though it confused the man, he still knew it for what it was—a mark of belonging that pierced to the soul and refused to be denied. And in this place, in the horror of the life they were born into, it was a death sentence.
This was the pain of belonging to a Breed? The horrific nightmare of a vivisection because of a change within her body? A change that every Breed would know marked her as belonging to a Breed, if she had had the chance to live? A scent that marked her as belonging only to Elder.
This was how Elder had been caught. This was why he had been unable to rescue the woman he had bound himself to, because another Breed had detected the mark and reported it. Because one of Morningstar’s ‘get’ had betrayed the strongest of them all.
The Elder.
107 could have understood if it had been another Coyote who had turned the Coyote commander and that scent in to his masters. He could have understood it if it had been a human.
But it hadn’t been. It had been a Breed. It had been one of the Breed whelps who had been sheltered, nurtured and protected within her body until the scientists had cut it free.
It was a Breed that would die, 107 promised himself. He would kill the bastard and he would ensure that the Breed suffered.
That traitor would suffer to the very pits of hell, just as Morningstar Martinez now suffered. Just as her mate, the Coyote Elder, had suffered in his attempt to save her. Her and the Breeds she had given birth to.
The vow marked his soul as the screams became even more tortured, as they knifed into his soul and nearly broke his control.
His guts tightened as he pushed back all emotion. It was the only way to hide it. The only way to hide the rage.
The muscles of his thighs were steel hard, his back clenched and unclenched painfully. He couldn’t let anyone know the agony tearing through him. An agony that couldn’t compare to his mother’s. His screams could never match hers in pain, agony and defeat.
And the only way to save his brother, to ensure 108 didn’t suffer for his mistake of showing his rage, was to bury it. To bury it so deep inside his soul that it wouldn’t exist, so that he could function amid it.
To wipe away that final vein of grief, loyalty and the need to call some emotion his own, a need to feel and to howl in rage.
All that remained now was the need to be free, a need to taste, touch and hold freedom. To know justice, to understand the laws he followed.
The need to have a name.
He sat still and silent, showing none of the rage, the agony or the slow burial of the hungers that had begun to ride him in the past year.
All that remained was that need for freedom, that hunger for justice and the overpowering, enraged hunger for vengeance.
He wanted rules, a law to follow, and in that moment he realized there was nothing, no one, he could follow but himself.
He needed justice, but if he didn’t take it himself, then he would never know it, never taste or feel it.
He would become his own law.
He would become his own justice.
And in that moment, 107 found a name.
In that moment, he became his own law, his own justice.
Lawe Justice.
•CHAPTER 1•
Jonas Wyatt stared at the files spread over the desk, photos, medical diagnosis and research reports glaring back at him in black and white as he wiped his hands over his face wearily.
The files that had finally been decoded from the information gathered over the past months were horrifying. Storme Montague, daughter of one of the lead scientists in the secluded Andes Omega lab for Breed genetic research had finally relinquished the information she’d carried for far too many years.
The death of Phillip Brandenmore, as well as the files his niece had uncovered, had given them information on the continuation of the projects that had begun in Omega lab.
Continuations that had the power to horrify even him. And he had believed that neither the Genetics Council nor Phillip Brandenmore and his research scientists could horrify him any further.
So many experiments on innocent men and women, both human and Breed, mated and unmated, some tested gently, others tortured endlessly, were more than he could take in at once.
The truth of the cruelty man could impose weighed heavily on his soul. The truth of the deceased Phillip Brandenmore’s pure evil had a band of horror tightening around his chest.
He’d thought he’d seen the worst man could do to his fellow man, beast or the Breeds that existed in between. And perhaps he had, but what he saw in the files before him were just as horrific—perhaps in ways more so, because they weren’t done in the name of research or in the name of creating or improving the perfect species the Genetics Council had envisioned.
The files here represented their evil in its worst form. Scientists who had done the worst they could do in the name of science, curiosity and then in the name of immortality.
Lowering his hands he stared at the files again before choosing one from the bottom of the pile.
Brandenmore had been detailed on this one regarding the sound of the victims’ screams, inhuman and agonized. The sound of horror from a Breed medically paralyzed from a customized paralytic created by the Genetics Council that left only the ability to scream. For some reason, the scientists had rarely disabled their victims’ ability to sound their horror, their pleas or their agony. And for this victim, it had been almost never ending.
A male Bengal whose animal DNA was strong enough that he was labeled “primal”—a Prime. For at least two years he had been given not just the serum Brandenmore had created to repress aging and cure the cancer he had tried to eliminate from his own body but also the mind-control drug he had created. A drug that had already been proven disastrous on another Breed, Dr. Elyiana Morrey, when it had been used to convince her that one of their Enforcers and code breakers, Mercury Warrant, was a danger to the Breeds.
“He was drugged with the paralytic the Council created and was vivisected to the point of death three times.” Lawe Justice spoke from the chair across from him, his expression, his voice unemotional, icy in its complete lack of feeling.
The emotions were swirling beneath the surface, though; Jonas could sense them, like a volcano ready to explode.
“He escaped when the scientists and soldiers were preparing the lab, him and two other subjects for termination. He was recaptured again, ten years later. That was when the vivisections began. He escaped the last time just after Phillip Brandenmore’s death,” Jonas stated as he opened the file and stared into the face of the Breed that had e
ndured two years of vicious, horrific testing.
Pale green eyes stared back from a hard, bronzed face bisected with a stripe. From his left eye, across his nose and right cheek, the flesh was a vibrant dark gold in the form of a Bengal’s stripe.
His teeth were clenched, his lips pulled back in an enraged snarl. Sharp canines dropped from the sides of his teeth, glistening white and savagely sharp.
The picture beneath showed large, broad hands chained to a gurney as a soldier held one of the powerful fingers. The nail was slightly rounded and from the soldier’s pressure against the pad of the finger the “claw” had been forced from the nail bed. Though it was filed to be less lethal, it was still harder than a normal human nail, its construction and almost bonelike hardness making it a formidable weapon.
“They named this one.” Lawe remarked on the Council scientists’ habit of giving the Breeds numbers rather than names.
“They’ve learned the power of a name.” Jonas sighed. “But they gave this one the wrong name I believe. If they intended to reinforce his submission, then they should have chosen a far less powerful name than Gideon.”
He watched as Lawe turned his attention back to the identical folder he held. Jonas could guess the thoughts, the torments going through his mind.
The memories.
Memories of the woman he had called mother and of forcing himself to remain still, with all apparent unconcern, as she died beneath a scalpel during a vivisection.
“Three times,” Lawe stated. “They cut him open three times.” His head shook briefly as he lifted the file once again. “And we’re going to punish him for doing the same to the bastards he’s hunting down?”
There was a vein of anger in Lawe’s voice, disapproval that Jonas might agree with silently but didn’t have the power to allow to continue.
“And once the news agencies catch wind that it’s a Breed committing these crimes rather than a serial killer?” Jonas questioned Lawe’s disapproval. “We’ve managed to cover this so far, Lawe, but we won’t be able to much longer. Once the truth is out there, we’ll be forced to terminate him or turn him over to the courts for their brand of justice versus ours. I’d much prefer to capture him, see if the damage to his mind can be reversed and save him. It seems no less than he deserves.”
“And once again Breeds are forced to bow down to their makers,” Lawe accused condemningly.
Despite the sneer in his tone, Jonas knew the intent behind it. It was the same intent he felt when he made similar comments. The injustice of being forced to turn the other cheek so many times was slowly building an aversion for the reality of their situation. And for humans in general.
Breeds had no choice but to garner the goodwill of society and of those untainted by the animal genetics Breeds carried. There were so many more of them, and so few Breeds, that if public opinion turned against them then they were screwed.
“Gideon’s search for the Roberts girl is intensifying,” Lawe said as he read further. “Three of the scientists involved in the testing she was a part of twenty years ago as well as two of the soldiers are dead. The single survivor, a female lab tech, reported that a man slipped into her bedroom, restrained her and questioned her extensively on the escape of the young male Bengal and the second human female as well as any friendship that may have developed between them and the Roberts girl while she was there.” His gaze lifted once again. “She was terrified but left alive. She was the only one he left alive.”
“And strangely enough, she didn’t call the police or her employers,” Jonas mused. “She contacted me instead.”
“Did she say why?” Lawe’s gaze narrowed as it lifted to Jonas’s.
“Public knowledge that she was part of the experiments and tortures against not just Breeds but also humans could potentially lead to charges being filed against her and a conviction that could send her to prison for up to six to ten years.” Jonas shrugged. “She was hoping I would be more lenient in exchange for the information concerning Gideon and what he’s searching for.
She’d had an insurance policy of sorts and Jonas had been in the mood to bargain, as she’d guessed he would be. After all, the injection Phillip Brandenmore had given his daughter was now public knowledge thanks to files Brandenmore had hidden before Jonas had managed to kidnap him. Some of those files, the authorities had found before Jonas could get to them.
“Did she remember anything more than she stated in her initial report about his visit?” Lawe asked as he glanced to the next page and slowly stiffened.
Jonas nodded, his gaze knowing as he ignored the commander’s reaction to what he had read while bringing it out into the open instead. “Diane Broen and her team are due back tonight with their report. They’ve questioned the female tech and completed an investigation into the Roberts girl’s disappearance twelve years ago—just after the other two escaped termination. There’s no doubt she ran away from her parents’ home. We’re simply uncertain why, where she would have gone, or how she disappeared so easily. From Brandenmore’s files, and based on their friendship in the labs, Gideon suspects that the three were together somewhere. He simply doesn’t know where. Diane’s been investigating her possible whereabouts for the past three months. I believe she knows where the three are located and that she’s withheld the information for some reason until she arrives here.”
Lawe’s head lifted slowly at Jonas’s admission that he had sent Diane Broen and her team into the line of fire. For years, the Breeds and her enemies had only known the female mercenary as Diana. The huntress. It was a cover even her sister had perpetuated when needed. Commanding four human males and, one at a time, two Breeds, she had hunted rogue Coyote Breeds as well as Council soldiers, trainers, scientists and backers.
In truth, her name was Diane Broen, Lawe’s mate. The woman Jonas had sent out in search of what was becoming one of the most dangerous rogue Breeds and the three research victims that could bring the full fury of the remaining Council down on Diane’s head.
Jonas had expected a reaction from Lawe, but the sight of the anger flaming in those normally icy, almost violet, blue eyes was surprising.
It was extremely rare to see Lawe pissed off. It was even rarer to see him pissed off over a woman.
Lawe was completely ignoring the fact that Jonas believed Diane may have the information they needed, of course. Nothing mattered at this moment; no one mattered but his mate. Whether he had completed that mating or not.
“Sending her was the wrong choice,” Lawe stated, his voice rumbling with savage undercurrents.
The underlying challenge in that tone had Jonas’s brows arching and he tensed at the deliberate questioning of his decision.
He refused to allow himself to react, at least for the moment. For Lawe. He forced himself to exercise restraint rather than immediate retaliation as he would have with any other Breed.
Lawe was being groomed to take the assistant director’s chair, which allowed him to voice more of an opinion than most would have. It allowed him privileges Jonas would have never given another Enforcer or alpha leader, Breed or human.
Jonas had no need for a “yes” man, but he was damned if he’d be challenged much further over this particular decision. Or any decision regarding the search for the three research victims. Victims who could help find answers to the changes his tiny daughter was experiencing. Changes that made no sense and that so far couldn’t be reversed or explained.
Especially considering the fact he was being challenged over the woman who had undertaken that search. The woman Lawe refused to claim. The mate he refused to mark, or to take. The mate he was attempting to cage and restrain as one would a pet. A decision Jonas highly disagreed with and one he would block at every chance.
“And why is that?” Jonas asked as he closed the file, restraining the need to flex his claws in warning.
Lawe didn’t