by Lora Leigh
FOREWORD
They were created, they weren’t born.
They were trained, they weren’t raised.
They were taught to kill, and now they’ll use their training to ensure their freedom.
They are Breeds. Genetically altered with the DNA of the predators of the earth. The wolf, the lion, the cougar, the Bengal; the killers of the world. They were to be the army of a fanatical society intent on building its own personal army.
Until the world learned of their existence. Until the council lost control of their creations, and their creations began to change the world.
Now they’re loose. Banding together, creating their own communities, their own society and their own safety, and fighting to hide the one secret that could see them destroyed.
The secret of mating heat. The chemical, biological, the emotional reaction of one Breed to the man or woman meant to be his or hers forever. A reaction that binds physically. A reaction that alters more than just the physical responses, heightening the sensuality. Nature has turned mating heat into the Breeds’ Achilles’ heel. It’s their strength, and yet their weakness. And Mother Nature isn’t finished playing yet.
Man has attempted to mess with Her creations. Now She’s going to show Man exactly how She can refine them.
Her males are strong. They bend, they never break. They are the pinnacle of strength from birth. Built to fight, to survive, to protect.
To protect their females, be they lovers, mates or sisters. And it is their sisters who suffered far more than they. Females created by men as objects, as little more than tools to kill, and to satisfy their own craven, horrific lusts. And it is these females who suffer the most enduring pain. The females who must, now that freedom has been attained, rise above the nightmares to become mates.
Mother Nature will accept nothing less. And their hearts flow with the blood of the greatest creatures on earth: the female, the Amazon, the lioness, the cougar, the giver of life, the caretakers and the hunters. It is these females who must now face the nightmares, the fears and the burning memories of pain to find the life Mother Nature intended for them all along.
Man created them. But God has adopted them. And now Mother Nature will see to their ultimate survival.
PROLOGUE
BREED SANCTUARY
BUFFALO GAP, VIRGINIA
TEN YEARS AGO
Seth Lawrence stepped into the office the Breed Enforcer directed him to and stared back at the Breeds gathered together. He knew them, not well, but well enough. He backed them, his companies supported them. His father would have betrayed them all as well as the sister that now lived among them. The sister Seth had never known he had, but loved anyway.
Callan Lyons, pride leader. He stood by the window, the late evening sunlight spearing through the heavy mane of hair that fell to his shoulders and cast his expression in shadow.
Beside him was Seth’s brother-in-law, Taber Williams, who watched him with quiet anguish, a look in his eyes that had Seth tensing, preparing for the worst.
Kane Tyler, brother-in-law to Callan Lyons and Sanctuary’s head of security, was resigned, somber. And Jonas Wyatt, the arrogant, forceful enforcer who had been steadily moving up the ranks of Security, stood at a scarred desk.
“Is she okay?” Seth asked the question, his voice gruff, fear squeezing his heart.
She was Dawn. Dawn Daniels, the little Cougar Breed female that he couldn’t get out of his mind, that he couldn’t forget. She had been wounded when Seth’s chauffeur had attempted to kidnap a Breed child, Cassie Walker, and Seth’s half sister, Roni, months ago.
She was too tiny, too delicate to be as reckless and fearless as she was in battle. To be so haunted when touched by a man.
In the few glimpses he had managed of her in the past months, she had looked haunted. And Seth wanted nothing more than to wipe those dark shadows from her eyes.
“She’s fine, Seth,” Kane answered after glancing at the others, his ice blue eyes flickering in indecision.
“Then why am I here?” He crossed his arms over his chest and stared them down. If they had brought him here to warn him away from Dawn, then they were wasting their time.
Nothing, no one, could change the course he had set for himself. In all his life no one had belonged to him. He hadn’t loved anyone since his mother’s death, until Dawn.
“I won’t be part of this.” Taber suddenly stiffened his shoulders and shook his dark head.
The Jaguar Breed was tall, leanly powerful and obviously not in agreement with this meeting.
“Taber.” Callan kept his voice low. “None of us like it, but it has to be done.”
“Then let’s get to the damned point,” Seth demanded coldly, his voice sharp, brisk. “I’ll assume this is about Dawn?”
Callan almost snarled. Taber jerked his head to the side and Kane rubbed at the back of his neck.
“Mr. Lawrence, we’ve only met briefly.” Jonas Wyatt, with his weird silver eyes and savage features, stepped forward to lean against the front of the desk, a television remote control in his hand.
“I remember you,” Seth answered, his voice clipped.
“Dawn concerns us,” he said then, his voice gruff, arrogant. He was one of those men that other men naturally never get along with. They might respect him, might admire his power and cunning, but he wasn’t a man others could be comfortable around.
Seth knew the type. He was the same way. Control and power came with an innate arrogance that naturally didn’t fit well when it came in contact with those who were similar.
“Dawn concerns me as well, Mr. Wyatt,” Seth informed him. “For some reason I’ve been barred from seeking her out, and no one wants to talk to me about her. Damned inhospitable, if you ask me. Considering the aid Lawrence Industries has offered to the Breeds.”
“Dawn isn’t for sale, Lawrence,” Callan growled then, the sound rumbling in his throat.
“I didn’t ask to buy her.” Seth sent him a cold smile. “I believe I made my intentions clear to you, Lyons.”
“And that’s why we’re here.” With a flick of his hand toward them, two silent enforcers slid the heavy curtains over the windows, leaving the room in shadows.
Seth noted the movement, a part of him, an instinctive part of him, warning him that what was about to come was something he didn’t want to know.
“I’m out of here.” Taber’s growl was more animal than man and had Seth tensing for action.
Seth caught the other man’s arm as he passed, ignoring the flash of dangerously sharp canines as Taber turned to him.
“What the hell is going on?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.” Taber jerked away from him and strode to the door. He jerked it open then slammed it behind him.
Callan turned his back on him. Kane shook and lowered his head.
“Dawn’s the same as his sister,” Jonas said then. “You’ve made your intentions clear where Dawn is concerned. We’re going to show you, Mr. Lawrence, the battle you have ahead of you. Every soldier should be prepared for the war he’s going to face. Wouldn’t you agree?”
He pressed the remote, and the viewing screen on the wall behind the desk flared to life. Jonas kept his back to it and watched Seth.
There was no need for an explanation. He saw the number that flashed on the screen, the date, time, subject. Cougar Breed Female, six years of age. Listed number 7.036. They held the child to a cold metal table and branded the numbers on her hip.
The screams that filled the room had Seth stepping back, his fists clenching, rage shattering through his head. But if that was hard to watch, what came later would scar his soul for life.
He couldn’t turn away. He wouldn’t turn away. She had endured hell and he loved he
r to his last breath. She had lived through it, he could do no less.
He loved her. He already knew he loved her. He ached for her. He would kill for her, and he would have given his own life to have saved her from the dark brutality the monsters that created her had taped.
Number 7.036. Age six. Age ten. Ah, God. Ah, God. Age thirteen. So tiny. So fucking tiny she looked like a doll as those bastards raped her. Sweet merciful Jesus. His guts cramped with pain, everything inside him howled with rage, and hopelessness filled him.
They strapped her to a cold, steel table. Metal restraints at her neck, her arms, her thighs and ankles. She strained against them, she fought them until blood seeped from beneath the edges and ran down her fragile limbs.
She screamed. She begged for God, and they laughed at her. Laughed at her and told her God didn’t care about Breeds, and then they tore into her helpless, fragile body.
The images flickered through those first thirteen years of her life in a matter of minutes. A collage of brutal, horrifying flashes. Of abuses that should have killed her. Twenty minutes of the most horrific nightmares that could be inflicted on the female body. On a child.
When they winked off, no one moved. No one spoke. Seth continued to stare at the now-dark screen, seeing the child she had been in the woman she was now. The dark eyes flashing with nightmares, with pain each time she looked at him, each time she realized what he wanted from her. What he needed from her.
He tried to swallow, and couldn’t. He blinked back moisture. Fuck, tears. He hadn’t shed a tear in more years than he could remember. And he hated his father more than he ever had in his life.
His father and Lawrence Industries had helped fund those monsters before Seth took over. They had helped pay for the brutality committed against the woman who held his soul. The woman he could never have.
Seth finally managed to work up enough saliva to swallow, to force his vocal cords to work. Callan turned back from the closed window, his expression heavy with grief as he watched Seth. And now Seth understood why Taber had refused to stay.
He had never felt pain so deep, so intense as he felt it now. Agony that resonated through every part of his soul, that tore through his heart, his very spirit, like a jagged dagger, ripping pieces of his being to shreds.
“I love her,” he whispered.
“And we’re aware that an anomaly known within Breed physiology called ‘mating heat’ has begun showing in both of you. Dawn’s blood is already showing the presence of minute quantities of the hormone released during this. It’s like an aphrodisiac, Mr. Lawrence; it creates an arousal so strong that the mating pair can’t deny it. It’s something we’re desperate to keep quiet until we can understand it and find a way to control it. In Dawn, it could be destructive, mentally and emotionally. You saw the images. You saw what they did to her, both with the drugs and without. At this time, none of us believes it’s something she can endure. Had the atrocities ended there, perhaps she could have healed. Perhaps. But once Callan rescued them, unknown to him, their pride brother, Dayan, festered the memories inside her to control her. She was brutalized within the labs, and later, outside them. She’s had less than a year to come to grips with true freedom, and she’s making incredible progress. None of us want to see that progress experience a setback. None of us who love her, that is.”
Seth stared back at Jonas, feeling the icy knowledge that what the other man said was no less than the truth.
“Should Sanctuary require anything of Lawrence Industries, you have only to contact my assistant.” He moved to the door, opened it and stared back at them. “Should Dawn need anything, I, personally, expect to know immediately.”
He moved from the room, closed the door carefully behind him, then came to an abrupt stop. The child who stood before him was the same one who had run so courageously from the estate house months before and thrown herself into the back of the limo Seth had been riding within. Little Cassie Walker Sinclair, with her thick black hair and too-solemn little face.
There was a smidgen of chocolate at the side of her mouth, and her big eyes stared up at him sadly. She had just returned to Sanctuary, coming ahead of her mother and stepfather in advance of her mother’s release from the hospital.
He couldn’t speak to her; instead, he moved to go around her.
“Seth.” Her little girl voice was eerie, filled with compassion, heartbreaking in its gentleness.
Seth turned back to her, cleared his throat and tried to speak. He couldn’t.
“She’ll come to you,” Cassie whispered then. “When she awakens.”
Seth shook his head, watching her, seeing the odd glow that came to those spooky eyes.
“Who, Cassie?” She was a strange little girl, but adorable. Innocent.
“Dawn,” she said softly. “Let her awaken before you give up on her.”
Fuck. He’d heard rumors, whispers of this kid’s strange knowledge, her sometimes spooky advice. He shook his head, believing them now.
“She’ll come to you.” Her smile was sad. “And you’ll both hurt. Remember that, Seth. You’ll both hurt. But she’ll be whole then.”
Then she turned and walked slowly down the hall to the curved staircase and down the stairs. Seth felt a chill race up his spine, freezing his insides with the knowledge that Dawn would never come to him.
He waited, then followed slowly, moving to the marble foyer and turning to stare back at the entrance to the stairs that led to the infirmary. Where Dawn was under the doctor’s care. Where she was hurt. Where she lay alone, wounded, without him.
He had imagined hanging around Sanctuary for a while. Getting to know her, finding ways to make her laugh, to just once see a smile in her eyes rather than that soul-deep sadness that seemed to permeate every part of her.
He wanted to take her on a picnic. He wanted to take her to the mall. He wanted to take her parking and kiss those perfect pink lips and he wanted to lay her down in the bed at his home and love her until she screamed for more.
And it wasn’t going to happen.
He could have never imagined doing what he did next. He turned and slowly left Sanctuary, and the woman he knew would never come to him.
And in doing so, he left his soul behind.
CHAPTER 1
It was the dreams that brought her awake, sweating, snarling, terror and rage snaking through her system with icy chills and harsh, violent shudders.
Dawn cringed, flinched, her flesh crawling at the feel of icy hands ghosting over it, pinching, probing. She tightened her thighs as she fought to scream, feeling the touch there, hating it, snarling in rage at the pain she knew she was coming.
She prayed. God wasn’t for her. He didn’t care. He didn’t listen to Breeds, but still she prayed. Oh God, make it stop.
She could hear the laughter at her ear, the hands prying at her legs, forcing them apart, securing them with the metal restraints as the cold steel bit into her thighs and warm flesh moved between them…
Her eyes snapped open; savage, inhuman growls were still tearing from her throat, rasping it as it clogged with the tears she couldn’t shed. Her hands bunched in the blankets around her, her arms straight at her side, her legs stiff, the muscles cramped.
She felt restrained. She stared into the darkness, feeling the metal restraints cutting into her flesh, her blood seeping from her, agony resonating through her thighs, her stomach, as a stark red haze met her vision and a feline scream tried to tear from her throat.
She jerked upright, sightless, fighting to breathe, fighting to see what she couldn’t see, to remember what she refused to remember. To breathe. Hands clenched on her flesh, fingers dug into the muscle, and laughter, always the laughter echoed in her head.
“Dawn’s rising soon. It won’t be dark any longer.”
The soft, sweetly pitched voice whispered through the room as Dawn came from beneath the blankets in a surge of violent fury, crouched and snarling, feeling her lips peel back from her canines as she p
repared to attack.
The enemy sat curled in the chair across the room, a long linen gown shrouding her figure, her waist long, pitch black curls framing her heart-shaped face, and her eyes eerie, brilliant blue glowing points in the darkness of the room.
It took Dawn a moment to realize that her weapon, never far from her side, was trained between the child’s eyes. Her finger was trembling on the trigger, sweat pouring from her body, dampening the thin tank top and gray boxer panties she wore as she shivered in reaction.
The chill of the air conditioner washed over her flesh, sending a harsh shudder racing through her body as Cassie Sinclair stared at the weapon.
“You shouldn’t have to wake in the dark alone,” Cassie said gently, reaching out to turn on the light by the chair. Dawn flinched at the movement.
Growls vibrated in her throat, and a distant part of her screamed out in horror at the animal that had pushed ahead of her and stared at the kid with ruthless savagery.
She had to fight back the rage, the memories that weren’t memories, that screamed in her head and refused to show themselves. The ones that the animal, determined to survive, refused to let the woman confront.
“Dash.” The word was savage, guttural. “Where’s Dash?”
The girl’s father should never have allowed her there alone. He should watch after his daughter better, rather than allowing her to slip into a room with a beast that could already taste blood.
A single tear slipped down Cassie’s cheek as her lips trembled. But there was no fear. No scent of terror, just of pain, compassion. And Dawn hated it.
She forced the weapon down. She forced herself to ease out of the crouch, but she couldn’t force back the screams echoing in her head. A child’s screams, an animal’s screams, horrific in their terror and pain.
“Dad is still asleep,” the girl said gently, her hand moving to indicate a tray that sat on a nearby table. There was a steaming pot there, two cups. “I thought we’d have some hot chocolate before you had to get ready and begin your day, Dawn. I didn’t want you to have to wake alone this morning.”
“Are you fucking crazy!” Dawn stared at the girl, well, young woman, really. Cassie wasn’t a precocious child any longer. She was eighteen and still eerie as hell. “Don’t you know better than this, Cassie?” She slapped her weapon to the bedside table as she collapsed on the side of the bed and stared back at her in horror. “I could have fucking killed you.”
Cassie shrugged. “Death isn’t that scary, Dawn. And better your bullet than a Coyote’s rage, yes?”
Eighteen. Cassie was fucking eighteen. A baby. Innocent, sheltered and protected since the moment the Wolf Breed Dash Sinclair had found her and her mother in the middle of a freak blizzard and rescued them from the monsters chasing them ten years ago.
She was still a virgin. She had never been wounded, slapped, beaten or raped. And she spoke more casually of death than any mature, lab-raised Breed ever had.
Dawn jerked her shirt from the floor and wiped the sweat from her face before running the jersey material over her damp hair and shoulders. She needed a moment, just a moment, to get herself under control.
“I brought hot chocolate.” Cassie uncurled herself slowly from the chair and moved like a wraith, like the ghosts it was said she spoke to, to the small table by a window.
She poured two mugs of the sweet, rich brew, turned back slowly and set one on the table beside Dawn. Dawn’s hands were shaking so badly, the effects of the nightmare still so much a part of her, that she couldn’t have held the mug if she’d had to.
Cassie retreated back to her chair, sat down and curled her legs under her once more. She was so tiny, Dawn thought. Barely five-three, delicate. She had so much damned hair flowing around her that sometimes Dawn wondered how she held her head up.
Dawn ran her fingers through her own short locks. She kept them hacked off. If her hair wasn’t long then there was nothing for the enemy to grip. To hold her down with. A woman with long hair might as well extend an invitation to every bastard out there that would hurt her. Hold her down. Force her.
Bile rose in her throat.
“A new day is beginning,” Cassie said, looking toward the still-dark window. “Today will begin a new adventure.” A small, sad smile shaped her lips as she turned back to Dawn. “Every day is an adventure though, isn’t it?”
“Is that what you call it?” Dawn snorted as she glanced at her, slowly finding the control she had fought for so desperately over the years.
“Mom and Dad always give me the same look when I tell them that.” Cassie’s lips tilted in a strange, knowing smile. “Kenton rolls his eyes at me.” Kenton was her brother, barely nine, but already showing the advanced intelligence and strength of a Breed child.
“Cassie, now isn’t a good time.” Dawn sighed roughly. “I need to shower and get some things done.”
Cassie stared down at her own drink, steam rising from the cup as her lips tilted in saddened resignation. “I hear that a lot too.”
Dawn knew she did. Cassie was an anomaly among the Breeds. Her DNA was Wolf and Coyote as well as human. She’d been distrusted and often avoided as she grew older and her eyes deepened to that hypnotic blue. Centuries before she would have been burned at the stake as a witch.
Dawn cared for the girl though. She had been a regular visitor at Sanctuary over the years, first as a precocious child and now often as a prankster and teasing teenager.
“This is a bad time for me,” Dawn gritted out, knowing that sometimes Cassie needed explanations, despite the spooky air of knowledge she carried with her.
“That’s why I came.” Cassie suddenly smiled, as though Dawn had given her the invitation to stay, and that smile lit up her eyes, making their glow brighter. “I knew it would be bad. And the dreams always make you grouchy. Today, you have to look forward to the adventure, Dawn. So I came to cheer you up before you could begin stressing over what you don’t remember.”
Dawn swallowed tightly and couldn’t control the flinch at the reminder of things she didn’t remember.
“Cassie…”
“Dawn. You helped save me when I was little. You and Sherra put your lives on the line for me. You were hurt then just as you’ve been hurt over the years defending Sanctuary. Let me do this.”
“Do what?” Dawn shook her head in confusion. “What can you do for me, Cassie? Can you wipe the dreams away? Can you take away the past or change it? How in the hell do you think you can make this better? Sweetheart, if you want to make it better, go away and let me get control of myself.”