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Forcing her arms beneath her, she struggled to sit up.
“You could help,” she muttered.
David frowned a little. “You smell like Uncle Tanner when he’s really mad,” he pointed out. “I aint touchin’ you for nothin’. ”
“Not touching me for anything,” she automatically corrected him.
“That’s what I said. ” He chewed at his lip worriedly, sharp little incisors poking out. “But we got to go. We’re too close to the boundary. ”
“Okay, we have to go. ” She nodded.
“Uncle Tanner will turn the lions loose when he knows we’re gone. Uncle Kane will have his soldiers out on the motorcycles. If we can get close enough, then we’ll be okay. Uncle Tanner says the lions only eat people that are too close to the boundary. ”
“Oh great. Let me guess, they only eat my kind, not your kind. ”
He paused as she wobbled to her feet, his frown deepening as he stared back at her with a hint of hurt confusion. “Aren’t we the same kind?”
Scheme winced as she tried to smile in agreement. “Yes, David, we’re the same kind. But Breeds have a different scent from non-Breeds, just like a male smells differently from a female. ”
“Oh. ” He moved around her, nodding thoughtfully before he picked up a thick stick lying on the ground and handed it to her. “Here. We better hurry. I can feel a chopper in the air, and I know our heli-jet isn’t in Sanctuary right now. ”
“Great,” she muttered. “How far away is it?”
And it was dark. Cold. The moon was full, the canopy of trees above them was pretty thick.
“We need to hurry. ” He hitched his jeans up on his lean body and moved ahead of her. “Uncle Jonas says the sound of a heli-jet carries for a ways for a Breed. But we can’t stay here. ”
“Uncle Jonas, huh?” she asked.
“Yeah, he smells kinda like Daddy, but Daddy doesn’t like it when I say that, so I don’t tell him. ” He shrugged his thin shoulders. “I can hear the lions. Let’s go this way. ”
Lions. They eat people. Scheme whimpered. She was not having her best week here at all. Just not at all.
CHAPTER 29
“Tanner, we have a heli-jet on radar coming over Buffalo Gap and moving in fast,” Kane reported over the earwig Tanner wore. “We’re putting the chopper in the air, but it’s not going to be much defense against it and our heli-jet is currently unavailable. ”
“We caught their trail,” Tanner shouted above the din of the dirt cycle’s motor as he raced behind Dawn and her Lionesses. “The lions are moving in fast now, so we believe they’re stationary. ”
He gunned the dirt bike harder, skidding around fallen logs as he raced up the incline of the old logging road that cut through the mountain.
In the distance he could hear Sanctuary’s armed chopper lifting into the air and he prayed. He had been praying since the moment he realized Scheme was gone. Praying like he had never prayed, even during those horrifying years in the labs.
“Tamber’s tracker was deactivated, as was David’s,” Kane barked in his ear.
Callan’s snarling voice cut across the line. “The lions will find David. ”
Callan, his pride brother, Taber and Jonas were just behind him, gunning their bikes just as hard as Tanner was his. They hadn’t spent the hours riding these mountains that Tanner and Dawn had. Tanner would get there first, and when he did, he would kill Tamber.
It was almost impossible to believe that the quiet, soft-spoken Lion Breed female had been part of Tallant’s organization. The lab she had been rescued from had been one of the worst. The conditions had been horrid there for the Breeds. The Coyotes that oversaw them were some of the most vicious, the scientist depraved.
Tamber had been rescued as a teenager; she couldn’t be much more than twenty-five now, and she had been betraying them all along. Her position in the communications shed, given complete trust simply because she was a Breed, would have given her all the access she needed to keep Tallant apprised of every move the Breeds made.
Tanner’s hands clenched around the handles of the cycle, one wrist bending back, giving the cycle more speed as he raced up the logging road.
If they didn’t get to Tamber’s jeep before the heli-jet reached the boundary of the property, then Scheme and David could be gone forever.
“The lions are catching scent,” Dawn called out on the channel. “We’re moving in. The alpha is roaring his challenge now. We better hurry. ”
