by Lora Leigh
ed into a blood-bath. “Do you think that’s enough time?”
He lifted her to his lap, bent his head to her lips and licked her, with heat, with gentleness.
“I won’t let you go,” she whispered. “I can’t.”
He touched her hair, her face. “Do you think I want to be free, Ria?”
“What if she’s your mate? What if the first tests were right, and she was meant to be your mate?”
He shook his head. “She’s not my mate, Ria. Ever. She never was. I’m holding my mate right here, in my arms.”
“I love you, Mercury,” she whispered on a soft, almost hidden sob. “I love you too much.”
“Never too much, sweet Ria Never too much.”
The animal didn’t prowl. It didn’t crouch and glare. It sighed in contentment, watched its mate through the man’s eyes, feeling the animal that reached out to him from the woman as well.
The animal in the man purred, ignoring the man’s surprise as the sound rumbled in his chest. But the woman purred right back, and she laughed with a hint of tears.
Behind her eyes, within the unconscious depths of her being, the mate of the animal in the man stared back at it.
They were animals contained. Hidden parts of the man and woman that were no longer forced to silence. Genetics, yes. They were a part of them, the spirits the man and woman contained, no longer separate, but connected fully. And mated.
Animal to animal. Man to woman.
And as the man carried his mate into their lair, laid her gently on their bed and completed the union their bodies needed, the animals connected.
They were as they were always meant to be. Soul to soul. Heart to heart. Pulsing and alive. They were Breeds, and they were proud.
TWO DAYS LATER
The lab was cool to protect sensitive equipment that didn’t require the warmth Ria did. She sat on the gurney, forcing herself to relax as Mercury leaned against the wall and watched her silently.
Alaiya had demanded that the mating tests be completed quickly, mostly because her tenure in the Bureau of Breed Affairs was being reconsidered. She knew she was on her way out. Not out of Sanctuary perhaps, but out of the upper levels of Breed hierarchy. She had ignored her commander’s orders. Defied him. And she had lost control of herself during that last confrontation with Ria.
Breed Enforcers had to always maintain control, until the full phase of mating heat was established. Hers hadn’t been established.
“You’re mates.” Elizabeth stepped from the office she was using while overseeing Ely’s duties at Sanctuary.
Elizabeth Vanderale was in her element here. Working with Breeds, adding to her knowledge and experience as well as Ely’s.
“And Alaiya?” Ria knew she was Mercury’s mate, there was no doubt in her mind, and she had no intention of releasing him. No matter the outcome of these tests.
“Well, she’s definitely mated someone, but hers doesn’t match the heat in your and Mercury’s systems.” She frowned, shaking her head. “Someone altered the tests Ely had done. They’ve been altering them for months, in several Breeds she ran tests on. She didn’t catch it because the drug had already begun infecting her mind. Charles, one of her lab assistants, would tell her not to look for the anomalies, and she didn’t.”
The information had been easy to find over the past two days. Months’ worth of altered tests, coded transmissions and attempts to drug other Breeds.
The two lab assistants, Charles and the older nurse, Maydene, had been working for nearly a year for Engalls and Brandenmore. But they had been smart where selling the information was concerned. They slipped it out, but then refused to supply the code to unlock it until they’d received full payment.
Something they would never see now.
“Does Alaiya know?” Mercury asked.
“She knows,” Elizabeth breathed out heavily. “But she isn’t accepting it yet. She swears Mercury is her mate and that I’m the one altering the tests. She will be best avoided for a while.”
“I don’t have time to avoid her.” Ria slid from the small cot and glanced at Mercury. “I’ve already told Leo. I’m not returning to the main offices when the two of you leave. I’ve taken a position here, with Sanctuary. They need someone they can trust in Security Control, someone who can understand the systems they have and how to monitor any further attempts to break them. Leo’s going to turn one of the newer satellites over to Sanctuary control, and Dane will never rest if one of his babies isn’t being watched over.” She grinned at that. Dane loved technology. Especially Vanderale technology.
“I already assumed that.” Elizabeth smiled gently. “Leo and I will be staying awhile anyway. I want to continue to watch over Ely. She’s coming along nicely, but once the drugs are out of her system, she’s going to have a hard patch to overcome.” She glanced at Mercury. “You’re her friend, you know. She’s desolate over what she nearly did.”
“She’s still a friend.” He nodded sharply. “I’ll be assigned permanently to Sanctuary now. I’ll be heading the security detail we’re reworking for the labs and for Ely. She’ll be taken care of from now on.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “They may have destroyed her. Bringing her back from this won’t be easy.”
“We’ll bring her back.” Mercury was arrogant, certain of himself. Ria grinned in pride.
“So, mate, ready to go home?” she asked him. Their cabin was prepared, one within Sanctuary’s secured walls, but also within the heavily forested mountain that surrounded the estate.
Mercury’s gaze fired, artic blue eyes that burned. She loved those eyes.
She loved him.
With a smile, he escorted her from the labs and to the main floor, urging her to walk faster as he whispered in her ear exactly how he intended to please her.
“All night,” he growled as she fought to restrain her laughter. “Couch. Chair. Floor.”
“We have a bed,” she reminded him.
“I was getting to that.” He nipped her ear in retaliation as they entered the foyer.
And Alaiya stepped in from another room.
She wasn’t in uniform. She wore cotton leggings, flat boots and a T-shirt. She was ready to fight.
“Keep going,” Mercury growled when Ria came to a stop.
Running had never been the answer. Ria had run her all her life—from who she was, from what she was. She wasn’t running any longer.
She read the challenge in the other woman’s face, in her eyes. Alaiya hadn’t accepted that she had lost Mercury. That he wasn’t her mate, and that he never would be.
“You don’t want to do this here, Alaiya,” Ria warned her.
“Better here than anywhere else,” Alaiya sneered, glancing back at Mercury as he growled his warning at her. “Is your false mate going to protect you? Does he fight your battles for you? Does he know you’re nothing but Dane Vanderale’s whore?”
Ria backed into Mercury as he moved to intercept Alaiya, anger tensing his body. Ria turned her head, glaring at him.
“It’s my fight.”
“The hell it is,” he snarled. “I warned her.”
“You warned her, but only I can convince her.”
Animal to animal. She turned back to Alaiya, hissed, and they charged.
Ria was a Breed. She had trained with the strongest, the most merciless Breed ever created or trained, and she was fighting for everything that had ever belonged to her.
Mercury leaned against the wall, crossed his arms over his chest and fought against the overpowering urge to step in and shake the hell out of Alaiya.
He winced as Ria grabbed a handful of Alaiya’s hair and gave her a hard shake for him.
Ria took a punch to her hip when she jerked to the side to avoid a midsection punch. The flat of her hand slammed beneath Alaiya’s chin, driving her back before her leg sliced up in a kick that threw the other woman against the wall.
Alaiya came back snarling.
Mercury growl
ed furiously as Ria caught a fist to her chin; then he smiled in cold, hard satisfaction as Ria’s elbow slammed into Alaiya’s kidney and a kick sent her to the floor, sliding.
Alaiya was slower getting back up, but no less vicious as she came back at Ria with a hard kick.
“Mercury, your mate is fighting in my foyer,” Callan told him as he stepped from the dining room.
“I think she’s winning too,” Kane stated.
“Shouldn’t we stop them?” Jonas eased around, watching the display as Breeds were drawn to the foyer.
“Let her alone.” Dane grinned from the doorway. “She’s just playing with Alaiya right now. Just wait till she starts fighting dirty.”
Alaiya snarled, her teeth sinking into Ria’s arm. Time seemed to stand still. Dane and Jonas grabbed Mercury before he ripped Alaiya from his mate, about the same time Ria smiled.
Blood dripped down her arm. She lifted it, slammed Alaiya’s head into the wall once, twice, and broke the bite; then she got dirty. A fist to the other woman’s face had blood pouring from Alaiya’s nose. A high, hard kick to the head, another to the knee, and Alaiya was down.
Ria tangled her fingers in the other woman’s hair, bounced her head against the floor and then hissed.
“He’s mine. Do we understand each other?”
Alaiya moaned.
“Answer me.” Her head bounced against the floor again. “Do we understand each other?”
“Yes,” Alaiya cried out, surrendering, submitting as she stared back at Mercury. “He’s yours.”
Ria jumped back from her. There was no triumph in her face, no smug satisfaction. There was a faint light of regret in her eyes, and one of compassion.
“Find your own mate, Alaiya.” Then she turned and stared at the crowd watching her.
Her brow arched at the male Breeds, more than two dozen now, watching for the sheer satisfaction of watching women fight.
“Men.” She shook her head. “Breed or human, you’re all perverts.”
“That makes me your pervert, I guess,” Mercury laughed. “Come on, mate, let’s try that theory out. We’ll see how you fight me.”
He pulled her to the door, her laughter sliding through his senses, stroking them, reminding him that he was mated. And he was loved. And his mate was his greatest treasure.
EPİLOGUE
THREE WEEKS LATER
Jonas opened the door to the confinement cell and entered it slowly, his chest aching as he stared at the huddled form of the doctor he had really grown quite fond of over the years.
Her hair was mussed and lay over her pale face. Her tiny body was curled on the mattress in the padded room, and she looked fragile, incredibly breakable, as he crouched down beside her and watched her for long, long moments.
“We were all played with in the labs,” he finally said softly. “The drugs, for many of our females the raping of their minds and their bodies. Do you believe that what happened to them was their own fault? That they deserved such horror because they allowed it?”
She was silent for so long that he wondered if she was even going to answer him.
“No,” she finally whispered, her voice hoarse as she continued to lie with her back turned to him.
She was dressed in clean clothing. He had made certain she was kept clean; she would have never forgiven him otherwise. Ely was particular about her appearance. Though she might never forgive him for the fact that they had sedated her to make certain she was bathed and dressed before the madness took her again.
“Then it isn’t your fault, what happened,” he told her as he sat down on the padded floor and leaned against the wall behind him. “It happened because we were all not diligent enough. We had grown complacent in areas we believed were secure. It won’t happen again.”
He would make damned certain of it. He would have nightmares for years to come of Ely’s breakdown and the near loss the community as a whole had suffered when they thought they would lose her.
“It wasn’t you,” she whispered, still refusing to turn to him, but he could hear the tears. “They didn’t do it to you. They didn’t make you do those things.”
She broke off, and Jonas had to blink back the burn in his eyes, swallow past the thickness of his throat. Ely was such a proud little creature. With her velvet dark eyes and her pointed little chin that held such stubbornness. Even her sometimes contrary nature was little more than a woman’s pride as she fought to make decisions too heavy for her fragile shoulders.
“But it could have easily been me,” he told her. “Or Callan. Or even Kane or Tanner. Would you have blamed them, Ely? Would you have turned your back on them and ever blamed them for something that you realized you shared the blame in? We were arrogant believing the labs so safe and our greatest treasure invincible. It was our fault you were touched by that evil, not yours. Your job is to protect us when we’re brought to you. Ours is to make certain evil never invades your domain. The failure was ours, little cat, not yours.”
She sniffed and shook her head.
Ely hadn’t known the horrors of the labs. From birth, she had been the star child of the scientists who created her. The finest, most intelligent genetics had gone into her creation, and she had been treated with the utmost care to ensure she was never damaged.
She had seen the horrors. She had been horrified by them and fought to protect the Breeds she had been created to torture. But she had never experienced that pain herself. It had never been hers before now.
“You can’t look me in the eye and allow me to apologize, yet you so easily punched me in the face and called me a ‘fucking girl pussy,’” he chided her. “Really, Ely. Where’s the fairness in that?”
A tearful laugh escaped her lips.
“And I’ll never, as long as I live, forget the look on Jackal’s face when you grabbed his crotch. You know, Ely, that man has seen everything, done everything, but I do believe you nearly brought him to his knees.”
She moaned and covered her head with her hands. And perhaps others would call him cruel for reminding her of what he knew mortified her. But Ely was made of sterner stuff than that, he assured himself. Besides, others would never allow her to forget it, and preparing her now was for the best.
“Bastard,” she whispered tearfully.
He sighed. “FGP,” he told her. “Fucking girl pussy. You are aware that title is now being whispered behind my back, aren’t you, Ely? You really need to drag your ass off that mattress and get back to work so I can get a little strip of your hide in return.”
She almost laughed; he felt it.
“Ely.” He said her name softly. “Look at me, just for a moment.”
He waited patiently. Finally she pushed her hair back and lifted herself enough to turn and look at him. And he opened his arms to her. “Please, Ely. The guilt is killing me. I didn’t protect my favorite girl. Forgive me. Please.”
And her tears came now. From eyes bruised with fatigue and pain, as dry lips parted and the cries came. She burrowed into his arms, against his chest. She pulled her legs tight against him, and he wrapped her in his arms and fought his own tears.
Sweet Ely. How could he ever look himself in the mirror after what he had allowed to happen to her? If he couldn’t protect her, how could he ever protect anyone else?
He rocked her; he crooned to her, kissed her forehead gently.
“Never again, little cat,” he promised her tenderly. “Never again. I swear it.”
Turn the page for an exclusive look at
the next title in the Feline Breeds series
COYOTE’S MATE
Coming soon from Berkley Sensation!
Anya was where she was supposed to be, but things weren’t going as planned. Nothing had gone as planned. When she returned to the labs that evening, within hours, the attack came.
There was no warning. There was no call. Security alarms were blaring, cell doors were opening as safeguards were overridden and locks on the weapons rooms deactivated.<
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She pushed the scientists into a secure, hidden wall she had found the month before. They hadn’t been here long enough evidently to know all the secrets of the labs. Dr. Chernov had replaced the aging scientists ten years before and brought his protégé, Sobelova, a much younger female scientist, along with him.
“Don’t leave. Don’t move,” she ordered them. “Stay here until you hear only silence.”
Pale, shaking in shock, the two scientists did as they were told, huddling in the little room as Anya slid the secured door closed and rushed to the exits that led to the cold, desolate land above ground.
“Anya, get out of here.” Sofia Ivanova, one of the administrative assistants gripped her arm and dragged her down another hall. “Go that way.” She pointed to the stairs. “They’re free. I’ll cover you.”
Cover her? Anya stared behind her as doctors raced from labs with weapons drawn. They were firing on personnel? Shock rushed through her, tore through her mind. She knew those men and women. Knew them well. And they were firing on the personnel attempting to escape?
“Run damn you!” Sofia pushed her to the exit. “Get out of here before I have to shoot you.”
Anya ran. As she ran, fury fed the fear and the shock coursing through her adrenaline-laced mind. This was the exact plan she had given Del-Rey for the rescue. Had he not trusted her? He had attacked only hours after her return, giving her no time to ensure her father and cousins weren’t here?
No, it had to be something else, she decided in desperation as she raced up the stairs. She gripped an older woman’s arm, one of the secretaries, and pushed her ahead.
“Hurry, Marie,” Anya urged the other woman as she sobbed and nearly fell. “We must hurry.”
Other personnel were racing past them as Anya grabbed Marie’s arm and all but dragged her up the steps. Marie had children, grandchildren. A husband that was ill. She was needed. And besides, she always brought the Breeds cookies. She was kind and gentle.
The door was broken from its hinges above, lying on its side as security forces were waving personnel through, urging them to hurry, to rush. Masks covered their faces to protect them from the cold. It was bitterly cold outside, and Marie had no jacket, no coat to wear.
“Run for the barracks,” she told the other woman. “It will be warm there and safer. We’ll hide there.”
She ran into the cold, aware of the gunfire, the yelling voices, the clash of forces. Then she was only aware of the hard arm that wrapped around her waist, jerked her against a broad chest and the knife that lay at her throat.
She could feel the cold blade pressing into her throat, pinching the flesh, within a breath of actually cutting her skin.
“Kobrin, I have your daughter.”
Loud, echoing through the valley, she knew that voice, knew the growl that sounded in it and felt the sob that tore from her throat.
Betrayal. He had betrayed her.
Agony tore through her with such pain she could only gasp at the reality of it.
The sound of gunfire faded away. Personnel were no longer rushing through the doors. She could hear them at the entrance though, feel the tension that thickened the air.
Del-Rey. She felt the first tear fall. Oh God, she had trusted him. She had trusted him so much.
“We’re lowering our weapons,” her father called out. “Take the Breeds. Go. We’ll not stand in your way, but let Anya go.”
She stared back at her father’s pale face, at her cousins moving with him. All four of her cousins were on duty tonight. Her friends were here, those who would have helped her had she asked, but she hadn’t.
A shot fired out and her first cousin fell, gripping his leg and screaming out in pain. Three more shots in rapid succession had the other three writhing on the ground.
“Stop it!” She screamed, her hands clawing at the arm wrapped around her waist. “No. No. Don’t do this.”
Fury and pain gripped her. She stared back at her father miserably, sobbing with the shame of what she had done.
“Transport’s landing in sixty seconds, boss.” That was the one Del-Rey called Brim. Sometimes he had called him Brimstone.
They had all betrayed her. The small team of men she had become friends with, that she had trusted her father’s and her cousins’ lives to.
“How can you do this?” She sobbed. “Damn you, how can you do this?”
“Anya, be still child,” her father cried out. “Remember your control, daughter. Your cousins live.”
“For now,” Del-Rey called back in a lazy drawl. “Tell me, Kobrin, you’ve been here since the first Breed was created, did you ever think to aid them?”
“They live,” her father called back. “I have killed none. This was not a slaughter house.”
Del-Rey chuckled behind her. “I think I will take your daughter with me, Kobrin. Insurance, I believe. You will not notify your Russian air force; you will notify no one of what