by Vyne, Amanda
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Loose Id Titles by Amanda Vyne
Amanda Vyne
Arcane Crossbreeds 3:
MORE THAN TRUTH
Amanda Vyne
www.loose-id.com
Arcane Crossbreeds 3: More than Truth
Copyright © August 2013 by Amanda Vyne
All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
eISBN 9781623004002
Editor: Kierstin Cherry
Cover Artist: Anne Caine
Published in the United States of America
Loose Id LLC
PO Box 809
San Francisco CA 94104-0809
www.loose-id.com
This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning
This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Loose Id LLC’s e-books are for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.
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Dedication
For Dad, who always insisted my knight in shining armor was out there; for Mom, who taught me to wield a sword and shield all by myself (just in case); and for Jason, who will slay dragons for me but doesn’t mind when I want to wage battle on my own. It’s because of you guys that I can write about true love.
Acknowledgment
Behind every good book (I like to think this qualifies) there is more than just an author. There is a whole crew of dedicated people. I just want to take this moment to give props to the editors who have helped me make this book and the books before as kickass as possible. Mary Harper, who first introduced me to the fine if painful art of tearing it down to build it up; Kierstin Cherry, for taking on my obsessive repetition twitch over and over again; and most of all to Christy Lockhart for her all-around awesomeness.
And to the Sirens, a very talented group of writers in their own right. Thanks chickies—I wouldn’t even have gotten this far without your support.
Chapter One
The kiss was meant to be a distraction for him—not her.
And Dr. Britony Mahoney was very distracted by the wet press of Tag’s full lips and the erotic thrust of his tongue into the depths of her mouth. A shiver worked through her body that had nothing to do with the cool air in his apartment at Incog. Desire settled low in her belly until she throbbed with it. His massive hands clenched her lab coat, and he jerked her closer even as his mouth covered hers, devouring her.
She almost forgot to inject him with the needle—the entire reason she’d initiated the kiss in the first place.
At the initial prick of the hypodermic needle, he stiffened against her, but it was another heartbeat or two before he let her come up for air. Even then he didn’t immediately release her. In fact, his arms tightened around her, and he pulled her with him as he staggered back a step. He angled his upper body to look down at her, brows low over those rusty hazel eyes.
“What the fuck have you done, Doc?”
Although the telepathic words were dull in her mind from the special sedative she’d just shot him full of, the surprise and pain that underscored those words were sharp, and they slashed through her. She hadn’t expected to feel remorse, at least not this much.
Bracing herself, Brit held on to him as he staggered again, and whispered, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”
Why had she said that? She used logic to make all her choices, and she’d never felt the need to defend them. But this didn’t feel like logic. It felt like betrayal, and she hated that. For the first time she didn’t know what to do and time was running out.
“Fuck.” His curse came out in a thick growl against her temple as he teetered to the side, and too late Brit realized nothing short of a hydraulic lift was going to stop his big body from going down—hard. Despite barely clearing five feet, she tried to soften his landing anyway. She dug her fingers into his shirt and pulled for all she was worth, but his head still slammed into the hard wood with a sickening thud.
Dammit. Brit pushed to her knees next to him and gently ran her hands over the back of his skull, the sheared black hair soft against her fingers as she assured herself there was no real damage. For once she actually appreciated his hard head. The plan was to maneuver him closer to the couch before she injected him, but that kiss completely leveled her thoughts. Leave it to Tag to approach a simple kiss with the same aggression and focus that he committed to every other aspect of his life. Her heart still slammed against her ribs as she knelt there next to him and pressed her hand to the solid heat of his chest. His heartbeat was steady beneath her palm. Her relief was short-lived. Tag shot his arm up and wrapped his hand around her wrist. He pulled her hand to his chest. Startled, she met his intense stare, pulling against his firm grip.
“Doc. Don’t.” His words were slow, slurred, but she could easily read his emotions in his gaze, clinging to hers. Intent. Pleading. She knew what he was trying to tell her. If she did this, then she would lose everything she’d built here. She’d lose him.
The truth of it hurt. There would be no coming back from this, and it was all her fault. She had been terribly naive to believe the horrible genetic research she’d participated in all those years ago would stay buried. She’d wasted years pretending it never existed when she could have been working on a way to counter it. Now a woman was dying, and if Brit didn’t do something about it, that woman would take her mate and unborn child with her. Brit just couldn’t be responsible for another death.
“My misdeeds have caught up to me,” Brit whispered, “and there’s no running this time.”
His lips moved as though he wanted to argue, but his eyes rolled and he went slack. She blew out a shaky breath and lifted her equally shaky hand to her pounding heart. Tag was too honorable to forgive her for this.
Brit b
rushed one finger over the shallow crease between his dark brows. Unconscious as he was now, he didn’t have that ever-present deep furrow between his eyes that signaled his irritation with someone, usually her. Despite her complaints to the contrary, she had come to anticipate their arguments over his imperious security measures in her lab. It had come to be a bit of a ritual for them. She would blatantly disregard his rules, and he would come growling to her about the importance of them. Maybe she did it because she knew he would come, and she needed that much from him, even if it could never be more.
Now his fury would be real. Tag was as strong in his emotions as she was reserved in hers, and he would take this betrayal hard. Regardless of her intentions or how she tried to mask them with semantics, this was a betrayal, plain and simple. She regretted that—regretted the necessity of deceiving him—of deceiving everyone at Incog. But the truth was worse.
Brit rose to her feet and stared down at his face, the hollows of his cheeks rough with a day’s growth of black hair. Regret was a destructive beast roving through her, threatening her resolve. For one terrifying heartbeat, she wanted to lie next to him and wait for the sun to rise. She wanted to look into his brownish-green gaze and confess the sins of her past and her fears for the future, to put it all out there instead of drowning in the truth alone. Right then, Brit would have given anything to have someone share the burden of this fear, to have one other person in the world understand, to hear someone tell her it would be okay even if it wasn’t true. To hear Tag whisper he had faith in her.
She clenched her fist around the syringe so hard her hand shook and her knuckles turned white. Her heart tightened and pushed blood hard into her head, making her feel faint. Her lips throbbed. His taste still lingered there, burning her, and she couldn’t resist the urge to run her tongue over them to gather it—savor it. Closing her eyes, she let the resulting tremor rage through her. She hunched forward around the overwhelming yearning to let him shoulder some of her burden.
Tag was a man who saw life in black and white. His ability to differentiate between right and wrong was an integral part of him, one that he clung to as desperately as she did her control. His sense of loyalty and honor defined who he was. If she involved him in this, it could compromise everything that defined him.
Brit could never let that happen. She was alone in this.
For over ten years, she’d worked with Tag at Incog, the independent security firm that helped the not-so-human aspects of society with their not-so-human problems. For over ten years, she’d carefully navigated the desire between them, selfishly keeping him just close enough to feel the bite of it.
Taking in a deep breath, she studied his big body sprawled on the floor, so still. The calculations she’d used to create the serum were flawless. She’d been very careful to ensure there would be no serious threat to his health, but the urge was there to check his pulse to be sure.
Brit forced herself to retreat one step and then another, putting space between them. She wasn’t a complete fool. She knew if she touched him again, let his heat warm her, she’d lose what little control she had left. Control was more than everything. For her it was the only thing.
She was of the Arcane species. Homo Arcanus. Evolution had favored them over their human cousins, making them more advanced. Most of them anyway. Unlike almost all other crossbreeds, Brit didn’t inherit any of their evolved genetics. She presented completely human, no special ability or enhanced strength. Just her inexhaustible intellect. Her parents had realized right away that she was different from her sister, from all other crossbreed children. They just hadn’t realized how different. They hadn’t understood her often painful hunger to disassemble every component of life so she could understand and categorize it, but they tried to facilitate her, to satisfy her need to learn.
Brit frowned down at the syringe in her hand and smoothed her thumb over the plastic casing absently as she let her mind slip to the past.
At ten she’d attracted the attention of the Triumvirate, the three corrupt witches that governed the Arcane. As a rule they hunted crossbreeds, but they had offered Brit something different: a new life in science and a means to assuage the excruciating craving to learn. She exhausted and discarded every brilliant scientist they brought in to teach her. By sixteen she was obsessed with genetics—the infinite possibilities a perfect playground for an intellect that never stopped. She’d just been too naive to understand the direction the Triumvirate had neatly led her—until it had cost her everything.
Brit flinched and wrapped her fingers around the syringe. Back then she’d been so idealistic and passionate, so sure she could make the world better—stronger. Unfortunately, in a lab, weakness could be manufactured just as easily as strength, and the line between the two was often too faint to see until it was too late. Her mind was more powerful than any physical strength of any species of the Arcane, and her volatile emotions were an easy way to manipulate her. So she was forced to keep total control, to stay separate, view the world from a clinical perspective to protect not only herself but everyone else.
Brit turned to cast a look over her shoulder at the looming floor-to-ceiling windows lining one wall of Tag’s apartment, where he had been holding her while Incog’s team decided what to do with her. The horizon beyond the San Francisco skyline was lightening. Sunrise was only a few minutes away. A Drachon, Tag needed regular exposure to sunlight to maintain his core body temperature and metabolism. Once he began to absorb the ultraviolet radiation from the morning sun, his body would quickly break down the serum, and he would wake up. She needed to be gone by then.
She had to be gone by then because she knew…she knew if he caught her, he wouldn’t let her go again. And she couldn’t be sure she’d have the strength to fight him.
She shook herself to focus her mind and moved quickly to the sink in the kitchenette and flushed out the syringe, careful to be sure none of the serum remained. She scrubbed out the basin of the sink and rinsed it. This serum was too dangerous to risk even a minute amount being recovered. She should never have duplicated it, but she’d known it was only a matter of time before they discovered what she’d done. So she’d created the serum and had it hidden in the pocket of her lab coat when Tag came to escort her to his apartment at Incog.
Brit rushed back into the main living area and set the syringe on the coffee table where Tag would find it when he woke. She didn’t dare take it with her, but Tag would know to destroy it when he woke. Brit scanned the myriad of digital screens positioned on one wall, checking to be sure her path was clear. Tag managed most of the technical needs of Incog as well as maintained and monitored the security. She should know. The Neanderthal had become increasingly invasive in her lab with his security cameras.
And in her life with his overbearing protectiveness.
She hadn’t asked for it. She didn’t want his attention, but too often of late she found herself craving the sound of his voice rumbling in her mind and secretly reveled in the feel of him. It was a weakness she knew better than to encourage.
Emotion only made her vulnerable to manipulation, and that she would never allow again. Too many people could be hurt, killed. Too many had already suffered because of her. Too many deaths weighted her conscious. She’d sacrificed everything to ensure her research for the Triumvirate was destroyed, but recent events proved it had been continued—even advanced. Now it was being tested on members of the Arcane with disastrous results. Until she discovered what went wrong, it posed a threat to all the Arcane, specifically some of the crossbreeds under her care here at Incog. People who had taken her in as one of their own.
She couldn’t let them down, even if they assumed she already had.
One final glance at Tag strengthened her resolve. They all believed she’d betrayed them, and she mourned the loss of their trust, especially Tag’s, but if she didn’t collect the rest of the data, someone would die. Not for the first time since she’d confirmed her horrible suspicions, she wondered
if the Triumvirate wasn’t using her research as a way to draw her out, to once again use her emotions to control her. This time she wasn’t alone, not in the strictest sense. Incog would come for her, if only to neutralize what they believed to be a security risk.
The halls of Incog were quiet and empty, and she swiftly navigated them. She had until dawn to reach the rendezvous location. There, one of two things would happen—her contact would help her by getting her the data she needed, or he would take her back to the Triumvirate. She was never certain which side of the line Irial would walk. Either way, the Incog operatives would be no more than two or three days behind her. It was a risk and an incredible long shot, but the alternative was the loss of three innocent lives.
Sirens echoed through the city, and the moist, chill air wrapped around her as her conservative flats met the sidewalk. She didn’t stop moving, and, as though on cue, a sleek black vehicle met her at the curb. She opened the door and slid onto the cool leather seat. It wasn’t until the vehicle pulled away into the sparse traffic that she finally looked back. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath, but it burst out in a relieved gust as she looked up at the Incog building outlined against the pinkening sky.
The driver didn’t acknowledge her, and she studied his profile. He was human. And humming to the low sounds from the radio. Oblivious. She envied him that. With a sigh, Brit sat back against the seat and stared out the window as the streets of the Bay Area rolled away behind them and the Golden Gate Bridge loomed ahead. By the time they arrived at a remote airfield, she was once again coolly in control of herself.
There was a small plane on the tarmac and a nondescript sedan idling nearby. She studied it impassively as her driver exited and circled the car to open her door. He silently climbed back into his vehicle and drove away, leaving her standing there. A frown marred her forehead as she watched his taillights fade into the predawn light. It was too late to have second thoughts or any thoughts save those that would get her closer to a cure.