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He pushed his fingers through his hair and did as she’d asked. He straightened the couch, he sprayed her detestable air freshener. But unknown to her, that wasn’t going to do anything to cover the scent of their sex. And he refused to wash her scent from his body.
He needed her scent on him, soft, delicate, merging with his to create something that, when he breathed it in, seemed to comfort the rage building inside him.
Belonging. It was something it seemed would be forever denied him. Callan had revoked his rank within the enforcer hierarchy when his weapon and uniform had been confiscated. He had backed the safe path rather than an individual Breed, and logically, Mercury couldn’t even blame him for it. The Breed community as a whole was of more importance than a single Breed. Even one whose need to belong was like a hunger in his soul.
He sat down on the couch, close to Ria’s scent, and breathed her in, knowing she was in that shower, washing his scent from her body. It infuriated him, knowing that it took no more than soap and water to wash the smell of him from her flesh.
Mating changed the scent of each mate. Their scents combined, created something unique that couldn’t be washed away. It wasn’t like the scents that mingled on his flesh now, both of the them together, because he could still distinguish between her scent and his.
He paused, staring down at his hands in confusion. His sense of smell was sharper than it had been. That knowledge sent a pulse of wariness tearing through him as he inhaled, and frowned again. Perhaps it was. He shook his head. What he thought he had smelled moments ago was gone. There was no combined scent, just the smell of sex, of the pleasure they had shared.
He had lost the ability to distinguish smells as other Breeds could in the labs. When the drugs killed the feral rage inside him, they had killed the animal that lurked beneath his senses as well.
Once, he had known himself as two halves. The man and the animal. They existed together, complete, until the animal had fought for supremacy. A form of madness that normally meant instant death when it showed itself in an adult Breed.
The scientists in the labs he had been created within had developed a drug instead. One that killed the animal instinct to dominate the human. But he had also lost those extraordinary powers to see in the darkness, to smell the slightest scent, to touch, to taste. He had become more merciless, more cunning, but he had lost the animal instincts inside him to the point that he was only slightly better than a non-Breed.
The Breed with the face of a lion, and the instincts of a normal man. It was laughable.
He pushed himself from the couch and paced to the kitchen. Opening her cabinets, her refrigerator, he found nothing more than coffee and beer and a few old Danishes. Good God, how did that woman survive eating as she did?
He shook his head and moved to the phone. Five minutes later he had an order in to the local grocery store, whose owner he often went hunting with.
He couldn’t fix coffee worth shit, but he was a mean cook. He was tired of starving to death in this dark little cabin where she existed after work. And he grew tired of pizza fast.
Ria wasn’t his mate, but his mate was dead. She was taken from him before he had even had a chance to realize what being mated meant. It didn’t mean he was dead. It sure as hell didn’t mean there were no emotions lurking beneath his odd appearance.
He had emotions, and those emotions were tightening, building within him and centering on one contrary little woman. A woman with an intelligence that often amazed him as she stood back and watched people. She watched and she listened. And what she saw, he sensed, was often much more than others did.
Such as her determination that there was a power play being orchestrated in Sanctuary. The more Mercury thought about it, the more it concerned him, and the more he realized how incredibly difficult it would be for him to investigate it.
He wasn’t an enforcer any longer. He couldn’t just walk into the secured areas of Sanctuary and begin investigating the oddities he was beginning to put together for himself.
Something wasn’t as it should be. He could feel it, he could sense it, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.
He moved to the front door and stepped outside, ignoring the Jaguar female that hissed at him as he stepped out the door.
“It’s damned cold out here,” Shiloh grumbled. “And listening to you have fun in there is not fun out here. Do you realize I had to spend the better part of the damned hour in the woods, to escape the sound of her caterwauling?”
He turned and arched his brow. Most Jaguars possessed darker skin tones and black, silky hair. This Jaguar Breed was an anomaly. The rich auburn highlights in her black hair and her creamy complexion gave her a unique look that never failed to draw stares.
She was a bit shorter than most Breed females, barely five-five, and for some odd reason the scientists that created her had allowed her to have a temper.
“Shi, you’re going to piss me off,” he warned her, hiding his smile, knowing she wouldn’t, unless she really wanted to.
“Do you hear my knees shaking?” she growled as she pulled her jacket tighter around her.
He grunted at that. “The grocery from town will be delivering supplies soon. I need to talk to Rule and Lawe. Make certain when the owner arrives that he doesn’t enter the house. Take the bill and I’ll collect it when I come back.”
“You’re going to cook!” She accused him with a hint of disbelief. “While I’m stuck outside? Mercury, that’s not fair.”
“Take it up with Jonas.” He shrugged as he left the small porch and headed toward the tree line. “Maybe he’ll send you back to Sanctuary.”
Mercury doubted it. Once he had a chance to talk to Jonas and lay out his suspicions, he knew the director would begin shifting his own people, keeping those in place that he trusted and shifting back those he didn’t.
Most would have suspected Jonas of heading a revolt against Callan and the Ruling Cabinet, but Mercury couldn’t see it happening. Jonas was a sneaky, manipulative son of a bitch, but Sanctuary and the Breed community were his primary concerns. And Mercury had spent enough time as the man’s personal bodyguard to know Jonas didn’t have revolt in mind. Driving everyone insane with his games, yeah, Mercury could see that one coming where Jonas was concerned. But a strike against the security of the community? That wasn’t going to come from Jonas.
Jonas had no desire to rule. He liked playing puppet master, and he loved poking his nose in where it wasn’t involved, but he didn’t have the temperament to play the games it took to weave such a play for power.
