As they slept, the monster that had awakened years before to protect the mate eased from sleep and kept watch. Ever vigilant, ever searching for enemies, cunning and far too primal to ever exist alone, it ensured survival by ensuring the safety of the mate.
The boy might not have known what he held when Brandenmore gave him the babe, the animal may not have sensed it, but the instinct that created the monster had known, just as it had known that the babe’s survival depended on ensuring all the facets of what made the Breed Gideon, became one hardened being rather than human and animal struggling for balance. It melded the two, infused them with the savagery of its primal strength and ensured the babe would live, mature, and become a mate strong enough to soothe the often volatile strength and intelligence of the breed whose soul she would possess.
The monster had known, just as it had known other monsters existed as well. Some slept, some waited, a few battled, but all existed for one purpose: the mate it was sworn to protect.
• CHAPTER 23 •
Cat came awake slowly, her lashes lifting as she turned her head to stare at the mate sleeping next to her. He slept, deep, but a part of him never slept, she knew that, had sensed it before with a vague trepidation, and accepted it now with thankfulness. Whatever that primal, fiercely intelligent part of Graeme that existed actually was, she wasn’t certain. But she knew without a doubt that it would ensure Graeme’s survival, as well as her own.
As Graeme slept deep beside her, that part of him was intensely vigilant, focused on her for the moment, watching, waiting to see her response to the primal awareness she now sensed.
When she did nothing more than allow a small smile to tip her lips as recognizing what she was certain Graeme was unaware of it, she could almost feel the focus shift from her to ensure once again that no threats were present.
Perhaps it was an instinct all breeds had to some point. That extra sensory perception that awakened them when danger neared, or warned them of danger. The subconscious, though in Graeme it seemed highly adept.
Whatever it was, monster as he called it, instinct as she thought of it, it had come awake with a vengeance at a time when Graeme would have certainly died otherwise.
That thought sobered her and reminded her of the past night and events that were still far too hazy in her mind while other sensations and knowledge were finally clear.
She’d fought, she’d endured another woman’s life, endured the unquenched need for freedom for this, for the need to hold the man, the Breed she knew she belonged to. The one she knew belonged to her.
That moment of realization had come at the very second she’d felt her spirit being torn from her body, in that striking heartbeat between life and death. Drifting, alone, aware and yet disconnected, Cat had seen her life, her past in such vivid detail. Even her photographic memory couldn’t have processed the information her soul had stored and released in that blinding moment.
The moments of connection with Graeme, those seconds where the animal senses they possessed met and merged, she’d blocked all she’d seen inside him, all she could have known about the Breed she loved with her entire being.
He hadn’t deliberately marked her as his mate, he’d marked her with Bengal DNA because of the unique strength and wildness of both body and spirit that those creatures possessed. DNA he’d believed was superior to any other and better fitted to ensure her life.
She saw the moment Brandenmore laid her in the arms of the boy Graeme had been, felt the spirit of the creature known as Gideon fighting for freedom, enraged with the confinement he endured. There was nothing to fight for, no chance of escape or of life within the cages he’d known all his life. Until a four-day-old infant was placed in his arms. The animal inside him stilled, the savage impulses quieting and pure cunning overtook him.
Brandenmore had given the young creature he subconsciously feared the key to destroying him. The child the animal inside him recognized as intrinsic to his survival. There was no thought of mating, no sexual impulses, just a knowledge that she was his now and she was too helpless, too sick and frail to fight for herself. The savage nature, the monster strengthening inside him knew she had to live though. For the boy to live, the child must live.
Cunning intelligence, far more advanced than even his creator guessed, became stealthy, manipulative and deceitful. The emerging creature he called his monster stepped back and allowed the human and animal to meld completely within his senses and the intelligence he possessed only multiplied, amplified.
The creature Dr. Foster had envisioned had far surpassed his dreams, she realized. At any time after that moment Gideon could have escaped. He could have slipped from the research center and disappeared entirely, but to do so, he would have had to leave Cat behind. His brother was strong enough to follow him, but his Cat wasn’t. And later, once Bennett arrived and sensed the threat the Bengal alpha could be, he ensured there was no way Gideon could escape without the chance of weapons discharging. Graeme had refused to chance Cat’s survival in a firefight.
Once he’d managed her release and escape, she and Judd had forced the transfusion to save him, to ensure a survival that would have occurred far more slowly, possibly ensuring his recapture much quicker, his animal senses as well as human responses rioted. The mating hormone had already been found in her system, though not in Graeme’s despite the tests that affirmed their match. Once her blood met his though, Dr. Foster had feared it would take hold of Graeme and create needs and desires Cat was far too young to face, and Graeme was far too honorable to tolerate. It would destroy him.
Repulsed by such visions of what his future could be he’d lashed out at her, intending to make her hate him, to drive her from him and ensure she never came searching for him, never tempted what he feared could happen until he returned to her once she’d reached an age he believed allowed her the maturity to deal with it.
He’d wanted her to have a life first. To be free. That need he’d had for her had been clear, so much a part of him she wondered how she could have not sensed it before that moment her soul had met his.
Through the years after she’d escaped to New Mexico, believing she was living that life of freedom, Graeme had begun a game of such masterful cunning that it amazed her. His animal instincts, the mating hormone in his system, and the animal’s push to find Cat when Graeme still felt she was too young had distracted him at a time when the soldiers the Genetics Council had sent out for the research center, were too close though.
That recapture, what she felt and saw with the knowledge she’d blocked from those moments she’d been a part of him, showed her the Breed she’d refused to see. He’d endured death, three times. Surviving Bennett’s cruelty would have been impossible if the monster he harbored inside him hadn’t pushed forward with superhuman strength. That will to live, to survive and to ensure her safety and survival had been all that saved him. And it had remained contained until the research scientist had ordered a renewed search for the woman possessing the hormonal influences he believed were the key to Gideon’s ability to survive each of the living dissections.
In that moment, Gideon had ceased to exist. The monster had surged forward, overtaking him, filling him with the strength, the ability to heal, to hunt, to kill, unlike anything man or beast had ever known.
His life after that moment was hazy, even to him. Years of cunning intelligence and instinctive calculation was all he remembered. The strength of the hold the monster had on him had been brutally determined to see to an ultimate goal. Ensuring Cat’s safety. He’d collected debts for Gideon to eventually cash on. He’d searched out those Breeds and humans he sensed would mark her world and ensured they owed the Bengal in ways that ensured he would never be revealed to those that could be a danger.
Years of blood, savagery, plotting and the execution of goals that reached years into a future he’d instinctively sensed would evolve. He’d lived, a prison himself of such primal instinct that who and what he was became all but oblit
erated. Until she sent the email begging him to come to her. And he had come to her as she slept. Kneeling at her bed, the stripes easing, the savage neon amber of his eyes becoming a wild green once again, the pupils returning, the whites of his eyes once more present. Only in that moment had Gideon returned.
Thirteen years of hell that they’d both endured to bring them to that moment. To the second her eyes had opened, the animal she kept caged within her rising as she slept to stare up at him, to lift claw-tipped fingers to touch his face, a little purr rumbling in her chest.
“I’m scared, G,” she whispered, her voice trembling and filled with pain.
Even she hadn’t realized the fears that haunted her until she felt them, smelled them through his memories.
“I’m here, my little cat,” he whispered to her. “Be strong for me, just a little while longer. Hold on for me.
Because he’d known what she hadn’t. The animal’s rage at Claire’s presence and the inability to meld both human and animal senses completely without destroying the spirit that protected Cat’s identity.
He’d known the battle being waged inside her spirit, one even she hadn’t sensed.
“Hold on for me . . .” His hand lifted to hold her palm to his face, then to his lips as he pressed a kiss to it. “As I’ve held on for you.”
“Hurry, G,” she’d ordered, her expression tightening stubbornly. “I’m tired of waiting for you. Do it, now.”
And he’d smiled. “You’ll be angry with me.”
“That never stopped you before. Wait much longer and I’ll give up on you. I’m giving up on you, G. I’m giving up . . .” As her eyes had closed once again the monster had surged forward, amber filling his eyes, a growl rumbling in his chest.
He’d be damned if she would give up. She wanted him to hurry, she’d demanded he hurry, she could accept the consequences later.
Except she hadn’t accepted them. She’d fought him, raged at him, nearly hated him for not revealing truths that he feared would overshadow love with pity. He would have her love, he would have the mate he’d sensed the night he knelt by her bed, realizing in one blinding second what Cat had always known. She belonged to him, totally. His life, his heart, his mate.
And once again, her determination to have him in her life had distracted him from other goals. This time, plans he’d had to ensure not just her future safety, but her happiness. She clearly saw how he planned to bring her parents back into her life in a way that would ensure Cat didn’t suffer any doubts on her parents’ part. He’d wanted to wait, to tell her of those years he was lost inside the monster. He’d wanted to do it at a time that she was secure in her love for him, at a time when pity wouldn’t influence her emotions.
He’d wanted everything safe and secure for her, no matter the cost to himself.
“Sometimes, you see too much,” he murmured at her side, eyes still closed, though his voice was resigned. “Stop thinking so hard, Cat, you’ll give yourself a headache. Then you’ll give me a headache.”
She gazed at him thoughtfully for long moments.
“How long have you been able to read my thoughts, Graeme?” she asked softly, reminding herself to kick his ass.
One eye opened, peered at her for a moment with male irritation then closed once more.
“Not long,” he finally sighed. “The night you were injected with that paralytic you were in so much pain it was easier to read you. The Breed mind is far harder to sense than a human mind, and even with humans, some of their blocks are incredibly strong.”
“But you’re reading me now,” she pointed out suspiciously.
He grunted at that. “It doesn’t work like that, sweetheart. The telepathy is more a highly developed impression. I can sense you saw far more than I’m comfortable with during the mating. I knew when I felt that merging you would know me, inside and out. And I’ve always known when you’re thinking too hard. My head tightens in warning.” The amusement in his voice earned him a moment’s glare.
“That’s not nice, Graeme,” she sighed. “I was really looking forward to kicking your ass for hiding so many things from me. Now I can’t, because you were right, throwing any of that information at me would have been too much considering everything else I was dealing with.”
“Separating you from Orrin and Terran and the cousins was the hardest part,” he said regretfully. “You love them, and they love you, separate from Claire. Claire drew strength from them.”
She swallowed tightly at the mention of Claire.
“She’s gone,” she whispered then, feeling his arms surround her as he pulled her tighter against his chest. “Completely gone.”
His hand stroked over her hair as his lips pressed against her forehead. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.” And that sorrow was there in his voice.
Cat sat up slowly, feeling him follow her, the power he carried so effortlessly reaching out to her.
“What happened, Cat?” he finally asked as his arms pulled her to him once again, holding her close. “I felt you die.” The agony of that sensation filled his voice. “I felt it. How are you here now?”
Cat swallowed tightly before pushing away from him enough to turn to him, to allow him to hold her gaze. “I don’t know.” And she didn’t.
Frowning, she fought to remember more than the vague impressions she’d awakened with.
“I felt my spirit leave my body, but I wasn’t dead.” She shook her head, shaking her head tightly. “Claire didn’t want to go, she was certain it wasn’t time. It was like being half asleep, not certain if you’re dreaming or not, words didn’t penetrate wherever I went, just the certainty after a while that everything was going to be okay. When I woke, I was in a sweat lodge similar to the one where the first ritual was performed when I was twelve. Orrin and Terran were there, and Honor.” Her eyes widened. “Honor was there and it was just Honor. Liza wasn’t part of her any longer. Four of the Unknown helped us up and led us to another building, where we were given water and some kind of soup they said would help us regain our strength.”
“I don’t believe I can see Terran, Orrin or Lincoln without killing them,” he warned her gently. “Forgiveness will be a long time coming, Cat.”
“Orrin said you would feel that way.” She nodded, still fighting the fog that filled those memories. “I felt something else there, Graeme.” She stared back at him, that sense of knowledge so strong she grew frustrated with her inability to remember. “I don’t know what it was, but something else was there.”
“Cat, whatever it was, it will come to you once your senses have worked it out,” he promised her. “You’ve spent too many years with your Breed senses trapped in a way, unable to fully stretch out and learn to process information correctly that it will take time for them to strengthen. Once they do, those impressions will strengthen.”
Maybe he was right. Settling closer against his chest, one hand over his heart, she forced herself to let the inability to remember what had happened ease.
“There’s so many things to talk about, and so much I want to do,” she said then. “Honor’s parents will be facing Jonas and Rule, most likely today. But Honor was desperate to contact Stygian and then her parents.” The question of her own parents she held back, uncertain what to say.
“Helena and Kenneth are scheduled to arrive in Window Rock next week,” he told her, holding her in place when she would have turned to face him once again. “Dr. Foster has been in hiding as well since he left the research center, just before Bennett arrived. But he went to the Graymores, your parents, because they were familiar with him when you were born, and he’s explained what happened and why it was necessary to hide you. They’re very anxious to see the daughter they never forgot.”
Her parents. She was suddenly so frightened of seeing them that she instantly rejected a meeting so soon.
“We should wait . . .”
His arms tightened around her. “Cat, they love you. They will see nothing but beauty and light when they s
ee you, because it shines from you like an inner flame. Never doubt that.”
She doubted it, highly. But she knew Graeme. He’d made the meeting, it would take more than her objections to sway him now.
“Let them love you, Cat,” he whispered then, turning her to face him, staring at her with wild green eyes and such love it immediately warmed every part of her. “No one can love you as deeply as I do, nor belong to you in the ways I belong to you, but parents center a female, even I know that. It’s a center no man or mate can give to his woman when she’s loved by those who gave her birth. Let yourself get to know them, to love them. They’re good people, I promise you that.”
Tears filled her eyes. “I should have trusted you more . . .”
Two hard fingers pressed to her lips as a rakish grin tilted his lips. “That goes without saying. I’ll remind you of it in the future, I’m certain. Trust me now, Cat, you have nothing to fear in your parents. I promise you this. If you believe nothing else, believe in that.”
“I believe in you,” she whispered as his lips slid away and she let her lips touch his. “I always believed in you, G.” Even when she wouldn’t admit it to herself, she knew, she’d always believed in him, always loved him.
He was her G. Her love and her life. With him, all things were possible . . .
• EPILOGUE •
She had to remind herself of that, many times, a week later as she and Graeme flew into Window Rock, courtesy of the Bureau of Breed Affairs secured heli-jet.
Security was still a concern, as were the journalists as Raymond’s tribunal hearing neared and news had been leaked that his daughter Claire Martinez had actually died years before, and a Breed female had been given her identity in a desperate act to save the escaped feline female. The Bureau’s head of public relations had released the information along with Raymond’s crimes and his many threats against Cat over the years to reveal her identity, culminating in his attempt to torture her before turning her over to the Genetics Council’s Jackal team the night he was taken into custody.
The revelations had prompted a firestorm of media coverage and the renewed awareness of the atrocities still being inflicted on those Breeds rumored to still be held and experimented upon. The strengthened awareness of the Breed plight, weakened the arguments protesting groups waged against Breed freedoms and rights, with several new laws in Breed protections passing quickly by lawmakers eager to gain political points with what appeared to be a steadily growing movement still in favor of the mutated humans, as they were now being called.
The furor had been ignored by Cat in favor of Mating Heat and learning as much as possible about the parents she was about to meet.
Helena and Kenneth Graymore were strongly in favor of Breed awareness and rights. Kenneth, CEO and majority shareholder in a company deemed a family legacy spanning generations of Graymores, was not just a heavy contributor to the Breeds but also one of their biggest clients. The Breeds’ reputation for providing reliable, loyal protection and security personnel was unsurpassed and highly depended upon in the Graymore businesses.
Helena Graymore had stepped into fighting for the rights of Breed children and the Breed community’s refusal to subject the few offspring and living Breed children freed from the labs from further research or experiments labeled as evaluations. She’d recently taken her fight to Europe, where Breeds were denied visas to travel and forced to submit to “evaluations” periodically, which were rumored to be as invasive as the research done before they were freed from the labs.
In past years the growing tensions between America and its allies over America’s laws of providing unquestioned Breed asylum had been growing slowly and stories of the steadily increasing cruelties in the evaluations were strengthening. Helena Graymore had even been accused of providing such Breeds safe transportation from those European countries and secreting them into America.
Those accusations were vehemently denied, but Graeme assured Cat they were indeed true.
Now landing atop the temporary offices of the Western Division of the Bureau of Breed Affairs, Cat had to tell herself once again, that Graeme knew what he was doing. Her parents couldn’t help but love her, he’d sworn.
• • •
She’d prayed that was true, because in learning she had parents, she already loved them. It would be devastating to learn she was a disappointment to them in any way.
• • •
Kenneth Graymore wanted to pace the office that Director Breaker had shown him and his wife to. The richly appointed room was more of a large sitting room. A comfortable sofa and two wing-backed chairs sat facing a radiant fireplace that would give a real wood fire a run for its money in ambiance and warmth. To one side of the sitting area was a dark wood dining area and food-warming station. To the other side a pool table as well as several video game stations.
Soft, thick carpeting covered the area and heavy specially developed curtains one of the Graymore companies had produced to protect against electronic intrusion were pulled firmly over the large windows that looked out over the desert behind the third floor of the renovated warehouse.
Sitting with his wife on the sofa, his arm curled firmly around her shoulders he stared at the picture she held of the young woman they were about to meet.
Helena had cried and raged for weeks after Foster had come to them, a friend they had believed dead for over a decade, to tell them the story of the child they believed died and the experiments that ultimately saved her life and endangered it further.
She looked like her mother. Catarina and Helena could have been sisters, nearly twins, they looked so much alike. She was the mini-me Helena had laughingly called the baby before her birth. The horrifying truth that their pediatrician had known of the genetic defect their baby carried and hadn’t treated it as it could have been treated in vitro, enraged him. That particular problem could be cured before birth if caught in time, but not after birth. To enable Phillip Brandenmore to acquire a child with such a problem and experiment upon it, the defect had been covered up in the fetal tests and hidden as though it hadn’t been detected.
Dr. Foster hadn’t hid the truth from them when he came to them. He’d given them the files, answered their questions directly and his own tears had fallen when Helena had collapsed into horrified cries at the knowledge of the pain their baby had suffered. Had it not been for the two Wolf Breed bodyguards that accompanied, one he claimed was his wife, Kenneth would have killed him with his bare hands.
Benjamin Foster hadn’t been a friend, more an acquaintance, but he too had conspired with Brandenmore, albeit by force, but still, he’d never warned them or in any way tried to let them know their child was alive and suffering.
“She’s all grown up,” Helena whispered, not for the first time. “They changed her, Ken, made her a Breed. What if she doesn’t like us now? What if she thinks we’re weak?”
Their pride in her and her ability to survive knew no bounds. That baby that had stared at him so imploringly in those first days of her life, so weak and ill, in pain and looking to him to fix it, would have to fault him now for the horrors she’d faced. They had accepted the news that she had died. They had taken a lifeless babe whose face had been covered with a likeness of their own baby, and buried it as their own. They hadn’t questioned it. They had trusted their doctors, trusted their own senses when their baby supposedly died in their arms.
“We love her anyway, Helena.” He knew they did, they always would, no matter what she felt for them. The grief would be unbearable. The weight of it would be crushing, but they loved her, no matter what she might think of them.
“She’s suffered so much,” Helena said then, once again, not for the first time. “We didn’t protect her. She would have to blame us for not protecting her.” The sob that escaped her and the tears that fell down her face broke her heart.
“Helena, all we can do is love her,” he repeated his answer, just as he had for the past week. “She’s still our daught
er, a part of us, and we love her more for her incredible strength and will to love. She has every right to blame me, protecting her was my responsibility, not yours. A daughter always loves her mother though. She’ll love you, sweetheart. She won’t be able to help herself.” He kept his tone encouraging and confident, filled with that inner strength he knew she responded to. This woman was his rock, she always had been. Without her, he would be completely lost within the world.
How Catarina would feel about him, he wasn’t so certain. She had every right to hate him, to blame him for not seeing the truth. There had to have been signs. Something he had missed that he should have seen, simply because she was she was his and Helena’s child, a part of his heart and soul. When they had lost her a light that could never be replaced in their lives had been extinguished.
“Oh, Ken.” Helena turned to his chest, one arm circling his waist to hold him closer. “None of this was your fault, and no one has the right to blame you. It’s just been so long, and she doesn’t know either of us, she believed she had no parents at all. And now she’s so strong, a part of history in a way. I think I fear she won’t see us worthy somehow. Won’t see me worthy.”