by Lora Leigh
t it was like to understand a man's touch? Do you think your brother didn't watch men and women screaming in agony as their organs were cut from their living bodies so some fat, diseased bastard with enough cash to buy their lives could live another day?"
"Stop." She jerked away from him, her face pale, her eyes like deep, dark bruises in her pale face. "You don't know what you're saying."
"Your da kept you out of the labs, didn't he, Storme?" he yelled back at her as she retreated across the room. "Your brother kept you from the trainers and the soldiers, didn't he?"
She shook her head, but he knew they had. It was one of the few things he truly respected the Montague men for.
"They kept you out of those labs but for the rare times that they had no choice because of orders from the Directorate," he snapped back at her. "Children were always shown only certain areas of the labs. The ones where the Breeds were little more than animals, so out of their minds with fever and pain that they had no concept of reality, and therefore those who knew no better had no concept of them as human. Deny it, Storme, I dare you."
She shook her head. There were no tears on her face, no horror in her eyes. Hell no, she had to know by now, had to have realized the reality of what she had been shown.
"We don't pretend to be saints." He stepped back from her, the scent of her pain far more than he could bear. "We're strong enough to protect ourselves, able enough to create our own lives and to live in peace, with an assurance of some measure of justice, and I swear to God I think you'd send every one of us right back there if you could."
"No." Instinctive, horrified, her voice slapped back at him. "I just want to be left alone. By the Breeds as well as the Council. That's all I want."
"Then give me the location of the data chip," he said wearily, knowing he could never keep a vow to release her. Even now, with the mating not even fully in effect, he couldn't bear the thought of watching her walk out of his life. He would gladly lie to her, give her any promise she asked for to ensure that Jonas could never touch her with Breed Law and that the Council could never harm another person, especially his mate, with whatever experimentation they had been researching in those labs.
"Give you the location of the data chip," she said, mocking him bitterly. "Just give you what you want." Disgust filled her expression. "You're no better than the Council, Styx. Just give you what you want and I can have my freedom. Maybe I don't like being locked away any more than you did."
"At least you have comfort," he stated as he forced back the fury threatening to claim him. "You're not held down daily and raped by whichever soldier walks past your door. You're fed well, kept in pleasant accommodations, and you're allowed to wear fucking clothes," he sneered back at her. "So I'd say I'm a hell of a lot better than those fuckers and I'd dare you to even suggest otherwise ever again."
Storme stared back at him, her chest tight with the fear and ragged pain she had fought since the night her father and brother died.
True, Coyotes had killed them. Coyotes who were controlled by the Genetics Council. But Wolf Breeds had been escaping; they had to have known her father and brother were in danger, and they had let them die.
She knew they had. She had heard their howls outside the house even as James's throat had been ripped out. They hadn't cared about the two scientists who had worked to save them. They hadn't cared about the fourteen-year-old girl who had been terrified and running for her life.
All they had cared about was their freedom and she couldn't forget it. She couldn't forgive any of them for it. Only animals cared only for their own safety and nothing for the innocents they left behind.
"Think what you want." Her voice was ragged, the tears she refused to shed trapped as always in the dark, nightmarish vacuum inside her soul. "I have nothing that belongs to the Breeds, and I have nothing that belongs to you, or to Jonas Wyatt."
"And what of his child?" he bit off. "Do you think he wants that information to satisfy his own fucking curiosity, Storme? That research could save his wife's infant daughter. A daughter injected with a genetic virus by a human sweetheart. One who thinks he can play God and cheat death."
She felt the breath leave her chest for precious seconds. For a moment, she was fourteen again, running through that darkened tunnel as the nightmarish images of her brother's death replayed itself over and over again. She was alone, cold and praying it was all a dream.
Storme shook her head desperately then. "They destroyed all their files," she whispered. "I watched them do it. I saw them destroy everything. I saw them die because that research wasn't there when the Council henchmen and their Coyotes came to collect it ..."
"It was there before he copied it all to a data chip and gave it to you," he amended softly. "That's why the Council repeatedly sends those bastards after you. That's why the Breeds have busted their asses since you were eighteen to keep them off your back until you grew up enough to realize who the fuck the bad guys are, Storme." The look he gave her was one filled with disappointment. "And you still haven't grown up, have you?"
Before she could fight, before the anger inside her could light a fuse to the temper she could feel raging out of control inside her, Styx jerked her into his arms.
Almost as though he were helpless against the need that suddenly flamed in his eyes, helpless against the situation and the sense that there would never be a way to resolve it.
A hungry groan tore from his chest as he pulled her head back and covered her lips with enough fiery lust to blaze out of control.
She couldn't fight him. She couldn't fight the pleasure, the anger or the pain. She couldn't fight the need to be in his arms, or the futility that seemed to shackle her.
She could give herself to this though. To the inferno of pleasure and hopeless longing, for just a few seconds.
It wasn't as though he gave her a choice. His arms wrapped around her, lifted her to him, and his tongue sank inside her lips to find hers.
Here, she wasn't alone. There were no conflicts, there was no danger. Here, Storme could forget that everyone wanted the very thing from her that she was terrified to give. At this moment, all Styx wanted was her kiss and her touch. And at this moment there was nothing more in this world that she wanted to give him.
"Don't stop." The cry that tore from her lips as he pulled back shocked her.
The sound was rife with desperation, with needs and desires she didn't dare look too deeply into.
"Storme, sweet lass," he sighed against her lips before pressing a soft, gentle kiss at the corner. "If only this could break down the barriers in your mind so easily."
She shook her head. "Don't, Styx. Please let this go. I'm begging you."
"Please let you go?" His lashes lifted, revealing eyes so blue that for a moment she feared she would drown in them.
Her lips trembled. "Kiss me again first."
She was desperate for the taste of him. So hungry for him she felt as though she were drowning with it. Her flesh was sensitive, her pussy heated and wet, her clit so swollen and throbbing with such a need for release that she felt tortured by it.
"Fuck you first?" he asked, his expression drawn and tight. "Give you one last taste of being with an animal before you return to whatever human lover you'll have after me?"
"No." She shook her head fiercely, her eyes widening in shock that he would say something so horrible. "No, Styx. Because this is the only place in the world I've ever been able to find peace." Her lips trembled. "Just in your kiss."
"Ahh, lass." He pushed her hair back before laying his forehead against hers and staring into her eyes. "And what peace does it leave me? To know the woman I would claim as my own will take my body, but refuses to accept my heart, or the part of me that isn't so human?"
Confusion filled her, rocked her entire being. "Claim me?" She could barely push the words from her lips. "Why would you want to even think such a thing, Styx? That's not how it was supposed to be."
If he wanted to claim her
, then there were emotions. Ties were forming. Bonds could be building. She couldn't have that. Her future was too dark, too uncertain. There was no place in it for promises.
Struggling, pushing back, she tore from his arms and stared back at him in panic. "This isn't a claiming, Styx. We didn't discuss that. That's not what this is supposed to be."
"Ah yes, how remiss of me," he drawled, his tone rougher, darker as she watched his gaze begin to burn with anger. "I guess I should have paid more attention to Jonas when he advised me that you would never see a Breed as anything more than a pet at best." Cold derision filled his expression. "I guess that's why he made certain I understood exactly how you felt about a Breed."
He didn't give her time to argue. He stalked from the house, the door slamming behind him and causing her to flinch at the violent sound.
"No, Styx," she whispered into the sudden silence that filled the house. "That's why Jonas told you how I should feel."
She wished he would tell her now, because she had no idea what she felt, or what she was supposed to do with the unfamiliar emotions and the raw, burning pain inside her chest.
Jonas should have kept his mouth shut. Nothing else mattered to Jonas but getting what he wanted though, just as reports suggested. Yes, he had kept Breeds on her ass for ten years. He had chased off Council Coyotes and soldiers, but the only reason he hadn't captured her before now was because he'd known he couldn't force that information from her.
Just as the only reason he had reminded Styx of how she felt about Breeds was to ensure that Styx felt no loyalty to her.
Breathing in deeply, she moved to the back door again, staring into the courtyard with narrowed eyes.
She had to get out of here before she lost her mind. Before this need, before these unfamiliar emotions, destroyed her.
But how did one escape from a highly secured Breed compound?
The front of the cabin was watched diligently. At any time day or night she could look out and see a Breed stalking the area.
Here though, in the courtyard where they all gathered to play and to socialize, security was much lighter. There had been two Enforcers conducting rounds in the past two nights. They had mostly spent their time beneath the wooden canopy where the food was laid out each evening. They were a little less on guard here, trusting the Breeds on perimeter patrol to alert them of any danger.
She could slip through the courtyard and out the other side. Getting past the sentries wouldn't be easy, but she could pull it off. If she took the last scent-neutralizing capsule hidden in her bag, then as long as they didn't see her, they would never know she was there.
Some of her stuff had been brought in that morning before the doctor arrived. Her jeans were in the bag she had been forced to leave in the hotel, and no doubt the Coyote soldiers who had trashed it had taken the bag just to be certain what they wanted wasn't there. But her car had still been in the parking lot, and the small duffel bag with her boots, socks and winter jacket was still stuffed in the trunk. The tiny compartment built into the hole of that boot still held her last scent neutralizer. She'd checked just to be certain.
It would last twelve hours. Long enough for her to get the hell out of Haven and halfway to the nearest town. If she were lucky, she might be able to contact the only friend she had ever been able to depend on and hitch a ride clear out of Colorado.
She was going to have to escape. She needed to figure out what to do with that data chip, and the best way to keep it out of both Breed and Council control.
She should just destroy it.
She played with the ring on her finger, her thumb rubbing over the sapphire set within the ring of diamonds. The gem looked real, the outer shell actually was real. What lay beneath it was the true value of the jewelry though. It was there that her father had hidden the chip filled with information on Project Omega.
Only God knew what it said, or what was actually in the files. She couldn't decrypt them, and she had tried countless times over the years.
One thing was for certain--she was going to have to do something. Getting out of here was imperative. Even more imperative was figuring out who to give that chip to.
She couldn't give it to the Council. They had killed her father and brother, given the order to the Coyote to rip her brother's throat out. Nothing on Earth or in hell could convince her to give them the information they wanted. She would destroy it first.
Giving it to the Breeds was just as dangerous. She had no idea what the information was or what her father's research entailed. She knew though that he considered it so dangerous, so lethal in the hands of the Council that he and her brother had died to protect it.
He had promised her someone would come for the chip, but no one had ever come to her to tell her that he was the one her father had sent.
The Council demanded it. Coyote soldiers fought to capture her and to force the information from her. Breeds shadowed her as though she would turn around and pass it to them in the shadows.
But no one had simply said, "Your father told me to come to you."
Running at fourteen hadn't been easy. There had been days, weeks at a time when she had hid in the deserts of the Southwest, trying to ensure no Breed caught her scent, trying to figure out how to survive.
It didn't matter where she hid though, she was always found.
On a snowy, frigidly cold night the year she turned eighteen, she had been at a breaking point. Dirty, sick, cold and hungry, she had huddled in an alley behind a loud, popular restaurant and nightclub. She couldn't have gone any farther. She couldn't have fought so much as one more battle.
Gena Waters, a rough-talking, tattooed biker, had found her. She had pulled Storme up and urged her to come to the apartment she rented over the restaurant. She'd helped her bathe, fed her, and given her a place to hide.
Over the years, Gena had pulled her ass out of more fires than Storme could count. Fires they had assumed the free Breeds had begun and Council Breeds had tried to follow through with.
Gena had asked for nothing. She'd always been there.
Even when Storme hadn't called her.
That thought pierced her mind, causing her to pause now as it had in the past, as she wondered how Gena had known she was in danger those times.
God, she was becoming so suspicious.
Moving through the house, she began to plot the best course out of Haven and the best way to contact Gena.
Sometimes it took a day or two, but she always managed to find a way to help Storme when there was no other recourse.
It was Storme's only option. Because God knew, if she stayed here much longer, then she was going to lose her mind. Or even worse, her heart.
CHAPTER 10
Lips thin, Styx stalked to the guest house Jonas and his mate had taken while in Haven. The heli-jet had landed within the secured gates of the Wolf Breed community, which was rare. Normally, unless medical care was required, the heli-jet landed just outside the gates, on the three-story-high helipad, which housed a secured entrance into Haven.
Enforcers had reported that the heli-jet had arrived with Jonas and Rachel's infant daughter, Amber.
The child was human, she wasn't Jonas's child by blood, but Styx knew that sometimes blood wasn't all that mattered. Jonas would be more protective now, most likely even more determined to force Storme into giving up the information she had. Unfortunately, Styx had a bad feeling Storme would fight to the death, or the last measure of strength, to hold on to whatever her father had given her to hide.
Stepping to the wide front porch, Styx laid his knuckles to the wood door and waited.
Jonas didn't make him wait long.
The door opened to the hard, savage expression of the director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs.
"We need to talk," Styx informed the other man.
Jonas blinked once before stepping back and allowing Styx to move into the house.
"I've already received Dr. Armani's report." Jonas's voice was graveled, h
ard. "I've requested a second set of tests to be run."
Styx gave a short nod.
He knew the results as well. Just as he knew Nikki was presently in her lab scratching her head, cussing and trying to figure out how a Breed could be an "almost" mate.
The hormone was in his system, there were minute amounts in Storme's system, and the mating compatibility had been established between the two of them. Nikki had pulled off the impossible and gotten him just enough evidence to ensure that Jonas couldn't move to pull Storme from Haven without the express permission of the alpha.
Mating compatibility was high. The hormone in Styx's and Storme's blood was even higher. Saliva and semen were showing a marked increase in the mating hormone, and the glands beneath his tongue were enflamed just enough to make him aware of it.
All the proof was there, but something held back the full, burning effects of the biological bonding between mates.
"I need you to back off, Jonas." Styx got straight to the point as the director led him into the modest office off the large living room.
"I'm sure you do." Jonas moved to his wide, old-fashioned wood desk and sat down in the leather chair behind it.
"There's enough evidence to support the request for examination that I've submitted with Wolfe," Styx informed the director.
Because the other man was his director, Styx felt he deserved the warning that Styx wasn't going to stand back and allow Jonas to run over his mate.
"A request for examination is not a mating, Styx," Jonas said and sighed. "All this will grant you is, at best, six weeks. If mating heat hasn't been established yet, then it isn't going to be. You're wasting your time, and your emotions, my friend."
There was an edge of weariness in Jonas's voice that sliced at Styx's feelings of guilt.
"How is the babe?" he asked, knowing Jonas's desperation to find a way to neutralize the threat Brandenmore had brought to the baby.
"She's all smiles and wonder." Jonas sighed as he shook his head. "But there's a difference to the baby scent of her. Something no one within Sanctuary can put a finger on. I've brought her here with Amburg and Dr. Morrey to consult with Nikki and the Coyote Breed specialist Del Rey has in the mountain. Hopefully, tighter, they can figure it out."
"And Brandenmore still isn't talking?"
"He still isn't talking," Jonas agreed. "Half the time he's not even in his right mind. Whatever he injected himself with has begun affecting logic and memory. He's currently confined to one of the cells the scientists had built in Sanctuary for Breeds suspected of having feral fever."
A small, padded cell reinforced to ensure the captives held there couldn't hurt themselves.
"There have to be files, Jonas," Styx urged him. "Like Montague, he wouldn't have destroyed them."
"Unlike Montague, Brandenmore was a paranoid nut-case before we ever managed to capture him," Jonas cursed. "Whatever he's been taking to mimic the hormone that slows down aging in mating heat has literally begun rotting his brain."
"I believe Storme will give up the information she has, Jonas," Styx stated, as he wished he could give Jonas more to believe in. "I don't believe Storme is holding the data chip back out of malice. Fear perhaps, but not any true desire to bring harm."
"Whatever the reason, she is endangering Amber," Jonas growled, his silver eyes flashing in momentary rage before it was hidden once again. "How much longer do you believe I will tolerate this, Styx?"
Styx fought back the challenging snarl he would have emitted with any other Breed making such a statement of intent.
"Do you believe I'll tolerate a threat to her, Jonas?" Styx asked, his tone smooth, dark. "Never doubt, I will not. But I am willing to work with you on this. If you can work with another refusing to obey your every command that is." The last words were mocking, doubtful.
There wasn't a Breed or human that knew Jonas who wasn't well aware of his penchant for insisting on giving the orders.
Jonas stared back at him silently for long moments before saying, "What do you have in mind?"
What he had in mind might not be possible. He could be counting too much on a heart Storme might well not possess.
"She's stubborn," he finally said and sighed. "It's her loyalty and her fear that are making her hold on to this. She has heart, Jonas. I want to find that heart. If I can convince her to accept the need to give us the location of the data chip, then I think it may solve the problem of a mating that isn't."
It was only a thought, a feeling. Styx was well aware he could be grasping at straws here, but he was willing to try anything at this point.
Jonas narrowed his gaze back at him. "Explain," he commanded, his voice low.
"Storme is fighting a battle within herself, Jonas," he said. "I gave her something she never believed she could find with a Breed. Safety, and warmth. Storme is a woman who fears the very thing she craves."
"You," Jonas stated.
Styx gave an abrupt nod. "Me. What she's finding with me is something I believe she is fighting even as she's drawn to it. If I'm right, until she accepts it, then the mating heat won't fully begin."
Jonas stared back at him almost blankly for long moments before his gaze flickered with a sense of recognition. "Your hypothesis is that mating heat begins with love, not the other way around?"
Styx nodded. "Hormones, pheromones and chemical reactions have been proven to contribute heavily to the state of love. All the ingredients for it are there, Jonas. I believe fear is holding her back. Fear and whatever emotion keeps her holding on to something so dangerous as that damned information."
"You could be wrong," Jonas warned him.
Styx blew out a hard, heavy breath. "And I could die tomorrow, but she's worth it."
"Is she?" Jonas leaned forward slowly. "She hates Breeds, Styx. We're animals to her, nothing more. As far as she's concerned, we have no right to our freedoms and no right to our lives."
Styx shook his head as he allowed a small smile to tug at his lips. "No, Jonas, that's what comes from the fear and the anger that fills her. That's not what Storme feels. If she felt it, then I would never hold her in my bed each night."
"You're setting yourself up, Styx." Jonas sighed then. "The steps you're taking will place your status here at Haven, as well as your life, in jeopardy when she betrays you. If a single Breed dies from her actions, then you'll be under Breed Law along with her."
The laws listed in the public archives and law books were discreet, not easily discernible. Those that every Breed and human signed before entering to work in Haven or in Sanctuary were clear-cut and concise.
In this area, mating law ruled every Breed that had mated, especially those who had mated a human. If that human was proven to have deliberately betrayed either community or a Breed of the human's own free wi