Bengal's Heart

by Leigh, Lora

  The guilt that weighed him down was heavy. It stacked on his shoulders until there were days he felt as though he would collapse under the strain.

  God help him, it had been too long, too many years that he had lived as a shadow, waiting, watching.

  “We should take her before he arrives.” Danna’s voice was thick with unshed tears, her scent was thick with a pain she never allowed free.

  Death shook his head. He felt the breeze as it moved around him, feathered through his hair, and suddenly the memories were so clear, so crisp. The feel of soft hands rubbing at his scalp, the whisper of her kiss, her laughter. The knowledge that she had betrayed him.

  So much betrayal. His life had begun in betrayal, and it would end with it. He had known that for far too many years. Had accepted it.

  Serena had died by the hand of those she had betrayed him to, and their child was paying the cost, even now he feared. The child they had cut from her body.

  Pain fueled rage. It bit inside his soul with sharpened fangs and tore at his guts with rapier claws. Damn her to hell. She had thought she would be safe, that the bastards that searched for them would keep their word to her. She had never paid attention to the blood they had spilled or the proof of those that had already been betrayed.

  Where was the child? Only Watts knew the answer to that. He had taken the baby with him. The Council had never known of the child that disappeared that night. But Watts did. Death demanded its due. The child was all he had left to live for—the child, and the deaths to come.

  “Rick, we have to get her away from them before Watts arrives,” Danna argued. “She’s what he’s coming for.”

  He shook his head. “That’s what he wants us to think. That he’s coming for her. That he’s coming to take back what belongs to him. Watts has no feelings for this woman, and he doesn’t care one way or the other who she fucks or mates. No, he’s coming back here to save his own ass, Danna, and we both know it. He’s coming here to kill me. Because he knows he’ll never be safe as long as I live.”

  And now that he was free, Watts would want to ensure that freedom. The only way to ensure it would be to kill the one man he knew he would never escape.

  Patrick Wallace. Death.

  “Cassa walked into this with her eyes open,” Danna snapped. “She knew she would be facing a killer.”

  “She doesn’t deserve to die,” Myron argued heatedly. “For God’s sake, Danna, we’ve both lost mates. Do we really want to force another to live as we have?”

  “Did they care when we lost our mates?” Patrick kept his voice low, commanding. “We’re still at war, Myron, don’t let propaganda tell you any differently. We use the weapons at our disposal, and that is all Ms. Hawkins is here, a weapon against Watts. How or if she survives isn’t my concern. Finding my child and killing that bastard is my concern.”

  “Will it bring them back?” Myron was the one Patrick had always known would falter at this point. He would falter, but he wouldn’t betray them. For that reason he was still alive.

  “Nothing can bring them back,” Danna whispered, and they both looked to him, as though he had the power to turn back time and return the laughter to them.

  “Nothing can bring them back,” he told them. “All we can do now is make them pay. With each one we kill we learn more. There’s four left to go besides Watts. I want them all dead. Every one of them.”

  He would never live to see that final closure. The Breeds would stop him; Jonas Wyatt would eventually figure out who he was. The pills Danna had managed to steal from Brandenmore’s labs wouldn’t last forever.

  Patrick had taken a risk in sending the pills to Cassa Hawkins. It had been a calculated risk, but it had drawn her here. She was now distracting the Bengal he was having problems with, distracting Jonas, and soon she would distract Watts. That was all he needed. Just one moment of time to strike.

  “If we kidnap her before he arrives, before Jonas has a chance to throw a net around her, then we can draw Watts straight to you,” Danna argued. “If we wait, we could lose out on the goal we’ve been fighting for.”

  He stared back at her, his heart heavy. How much she had lost. Not just her mate and her child, but her very soul. Sometimes he felt the vacancy within her, and knew the pain this would have caused his treasured baby brother.

  How Raine had loved this woman. His first smile had been because of her laughter. His first night without nightmares had been because of her presence in his bed. His first tears of joy had been the day they had learned she carried his child.

  The night Raine died, a part of Danna had died as well. The night those bastards had held her down and the Reaper had stolen her soul, and the life of her child, Danna had ceased to exist as a woman. She had emerged from that hell broken, irrevocably damaged and without the mate who could have eased her spirit.

  They had buried Raine without his head, but Patrick had known they had buried Danna’s soul with him.

  “Taking her before Watts arrives would be a mistake,” he finally ordered them both. “We wait until he’s here.”

  “The risk is too great,” Danna bit out fiercely. “Rick, they’ll be ready for us then.”

  “They’re ready for us now.” He shrugged. “They’ll be more distracted once Watts arrives and so will she. We wait.”

  He moved away from them, heading up the hill, using the trees to hide his presence, knowing he would blend into the forest in a way that even another Breed couldn’t track.

  He was good at hiding. He was damned good at what he did. He was even better at it than he’d been twenty-two years before. And he had been good then.

  He should have followed his first instincts that night and taken that Coyote youth through those mountains alone. He shouldn’t have listened to his own mate. He should have left her safe at their farm, he should have known it was a trap.

  The youth was wounded, in pain, desperate to reach the location where he knew he would be safe, where a litter mate had promised him haven.

  He was also one of the Council’s prized creations. One of their most advanced engineered Breeds.

  He hadn’t listened to his instincts though, and because of that, so many had died. And still suffered.

  “Rick, don’t walk away from us.”

  The hold that materialized on his arm drove him into action. A snarl tore from his lips, vicious and primal, before his fingers wrapped around Danna’s throat and he was pushing her into the heavy trunk of the bare oak tree behind her.

  The smell of fear and submission filled the air, though it was tinged with anger and pain. She gazed back at him furiously, her eyes watering with tears, and suddenly he saw her sister. Sweet, soft Serena. The betrayed and the betrayer.

  “Back off.” He pushed away from her, enforcing his calm, enforcing Death rather than the man that wanted nothing more than to lie down and give up the fight that he knew was never ending.

  Rick. Patrick. Patrick Wallace. Death. He was a man without a soul, pretty much as Danna was a woman without her own.

  He had hoped at one time that they could console each other, but it had never happened. There was no touch but Raine’s that she could tolerate. And for him, there was only the memory of the woman he had thought Serena was.

  “You can’t just walk away,” she argued, grabbing his arm even as he tried to do just that. “We have to decide now what we’re going to do.”

  “We aren’t going to do anything,” he snarled back at her. “I will kill Watts, just as I killed the others. That simple.”

  “Not this time,” she cried out. “I have the right to be there. Myron and I both have the right.”

  They had the right, but he had the authority.

  “You forget one thing, little cat,” he bit out coldly. “I give the orders here. Not you, not Myron. I’ll take care of Watts.”

  Neither Danna nor Myron had any business being any further part of this. Their hands weren’t stained with blood yet; he wouldn’t have them stained wi
th Watts’s blood. That was his responsibility, just as it had been twenty-two years before. He had failed then, he wouldn’t fail now.

  “I have the right.” She glared back at him, her eyes stone hard. Eyes like Serena’s, the same color, nearly the same face. But she wasn’t Serena. She wasn’t a betrayer. She was the one that had loved, that had lost and that had suffered through the years after that loss.

  “Little cat.” He sighed the endearment. Her mate was pure Lion. Raine had been as wild as the wind and just as impulsive. “Let me take care of this.”

  “Like you took care of that damned Coyote,” she suddenly sneered. “You just had to save him, didn’t you, Rick? Just had to help him. You knew the whole fucking pride would follow you, and you just had to do it.”

  He shook his head. “As I would have any Breed, Danna. You know that.”

  He wouldn’t excuse it. That was his responsibility as well.

  “A Coyote,” she cried. “A dirty fucking mongrel that didn’t have the right to live.”

  “We all have the right to live.” He removed her fingers from his arm and stared back at where Myron watched, his gaze filled with such pain, with such regret.

  Even the love of his wife Patricia hadn’t been able to dim the pain that festered inside him. That love had eroded over the years because of something Myron had been unable to help. Because of an affection he couldn’t give the woman who had given him her heart.

  So much waste. And he accepted the fault for it. It lay on his soul and he had learned to live with it.

  “I’ll take care of this,” he told them both then. “Then I’ll take care of the others. The Breeds might have been unwilling to kill Watts by using the truth serums on him, but I have no such fear. I promise you that.”

  He would get what he needed, and he would watch the man die. Slowly. Patrick wanted to savor his death. He wanted to watch each labored breath until Douglas Watts took his last and then no more.

  He lived for it. Ached for it.

  Turning from them, he left them where they stood, though he wasn’t confident they would obey the order he had given to stand down. He needed Watts alive for just a little while, just long enough to get the names of the final members of the Dozen. Names that those who had died previously were unaware of. It seems they hadn’t even trusted one another. Not all of them. None of the men knew exactly who all of their hunting party was. They weren’t disguised just on hunts, but at other times they’d met as well.

  They had been paranoid about their protection, but not paranoid enough. Elam March had trusted Ryan Damron. Ryan Damron had trusted Aaron Washington, and so on. Now he had only four other names to acquire. Once he acquired those names, his job would be done. His life would be done.

  What was there left? He doubted his son still lived, but he had to be certain. They had killed Serena and cut their child from her while he had been with his pride escorting the Coyote through the forest.

  Beautiful, lying Serena. Sweet, sweet Serena.

  He still didn’t understand. He doubted he ever would. He simply lived with the consequences of her actions. And he would die with them.

  ◆ CHAPTER 22 ◆

  Cassa sat through the rest of the meeting Jonas had with Cabal, Lawe and Rule. They laid out their plan for keeping up with Watts and identifying their rogue. They also named those they believed were possibly involved in helping the rogue.

  Walt Jameson, Myron James and Danna Lacey.

  That explained the tension that had poured from Danna when Cassa and Cabal had met with her. Danna had been part of the Breed Freedom Society all those years ago. And according to Jonas and his Breed senses, Danna had, at one time, been mated.

  “The scent is barely there,” he revealed. “Nearly undetectable except in periods of stress. She’s obviously been without her mate for some time, just as James has been.”

  “Myron is married. He has children,” Cassa interjected. “I thought that would be impossible if he had mated.”

  Jonas shook his head. “We don’t know that for sure, Cassa. We’re less than twelve years into researching mating heat. Our doctors and scientists still don’t know what the hell they’re dealing with here.”

  And neither did those who were mated or would be mated in the near future.

  She sat back, watched and listened as they went over their plans. To watch Douglas, make certain he had no chance to get to Cassa, simply because they thought that would piss him off, make him mess up.

  It was too clichéd. Douglas didn’t give a damn about her one way or the other. He was after something else here. There was something else, someone else, he was after rather than Cassa. She just had to figure out who it was and why.

  She knew Douglas. He hadn’t loved her. She hadn’t even truly been a possession to him. She had been the means to an end, nothing more.

  He wasn’t here for her. She just had to figure out what he was here for. Unless he knew who the killer was.

  He had to know who the killer was; he wouldn’t be headed here otherwise. If he didn’t know who and what he was facing, then he would have stayed where he was safe. Douglas would be more concerned with eliminating the threat to his own life, and the lives of those who could help him now. Namely, the Deadly Dozen. She would be nothing but an afterthought, and then for amusement only.

  He was alive though. All these years she had believed herself free of him, of the part he had played in her past. Only to learn he was still alive, and he was still determined to kill the Breeds.

  As the meeting wound down, the information was stored and Jonas rose from his chair to stretch lazily. Cassa’s gaze drifted back to Cabal. He had watched her through the meeting, his gaze lingering on her for long moments before his attention would return to the information scrolling on the holoscreen.

  She could see the heat building in him. She could feel it. Just as she felt it building in herself.

  Anger. Fear. Emotion of any sort affected the hormones that ruled the mating heat. But Cassa realized that something more was driving both of them.

  The earlier confrontation. Her insistence on meeting with Dog had broken through a barrier she hadn’t known existed between them. She didn’t even know what that barrier was; she still wasn’t certain.

  But it was as though something had been freed within her, a part of her that she hadn’t known existed and that had nothing to do with the hormones he had infected her with.

  This was pure defiance.

  How dare he keep this information from her. How dare he, for all these years, ignore what he knew was between them while keeping these secrets. And then, to push her so effectively from an investigation that she was so much a part of?

  Hell no. This wasn’t happening. It would never happen again.

  Her head lifted as her gaze met his, eye to eye, defiance meeting pure male arrogance. He might be a Breed, but she was his mate, and those who had drafted Breed Law regarding mating hadn’t done so without an eye to the pure stubbornness that epitomized Breed males.

  She had her own rights. Rights she hadn’t enforced or threatened him with. This changed things. Never again would she be made to cash in on a valued favor because he wanted to play the protective, silent male.

  If he wanted to continue playing with Jonas, then by God he would do so under a new set of rules.

  “Gentlemen, be prepared,” Jonas finally sighed. “We’ll receive word several hours before Watts hits Glen Ferris. I want everyone in place and prepared.” He looked to Cassa. “We know where he’ll focus, so let’s keep our attention there.”

  Watts wasn’t focused on her—not that they were willing to see that. Because Breeds focused so highly on their women and their mates, they sometimes forgot that humans weren’t nearly that loyal. Not even close.

  She had faith in them though. Give Jonas a little time—if he hadn’t figured it out by now, then he would. Cabal no doubt already had his suspicions. She had watched his face through the meeting. He knew. Just as she kn
ew. Or at least, she hoped he knew. If he didn’t, then he wasn’t as intuitive as she thought he was.

  She rose silently from her seat, collected her pack from the floor and headed to the door, eager to return to her room. She had some research to do herself, some answers to find. Now that she had a bit more of the information that she needed, perhaps she could get her own line into this. There was even a slight chance that she could figure out at least one or two of the missing members of the Deadly Dozen.

  She might even have an idea where Douglas would head. One thing was for sure: If she was on his list, then she was last on his list.

  As she left the suite, she was aware of Cabal following her and the tension emanating from him. As though there were a wire connecting them, tuning them in to each other. The closer they came to the elevator, the tighter it became.

  She moved into the cubicle, standing close to the rear as Cabal stepped in and punched the button for the lower floor. The doors slid shut. Cassa blinked.

  The next thing she knew she was in his arms, plastered between his body and the wall of the elevator, as his lips closed on hers, pushing into the suddenly hungry depths of her mouth.

  The taste of him. It was nectar. It was spicy and sweet, cinnamon and sugar. It was a fire in the middle of winter and seared her to her soul.

  Her arms wrapped around his shoulders, the once muted desire flaring to an open flame, spreading through her body, blistering her senses.

  The mating hormone she had been taking for so many years had kept it repressed, did keep it repressed, until he kissed her. Then it was like a hunger that had waited too long. A starvation that flared to life and overwhelmed.

  “Damn you.” He nipped at her lips, licked over them. “You make me insane, Cassa. Like a madman that can’t get enough of the madness.”

  He would have kissed her again. She knew it was coming, she was reaching for it, when the electronic beep of the elevator indicated their floor.

  He drew back from her, took a hard breath, then gripped her hand and pulled her into the hall.

  “Impatient?” she gasped.