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“Have her restricted to quarters for twenty-four hours,” Callan ordered. “We can’t risk her confronting Mercury during the party tonight.”
Mercury stared at him in surprise. “I wasn’t assigned to security for the party.”
“No, you’re ordered to attend the party in full dress uniform,” Callan growled. “You and Ms. Rodriquez. Both Engalls and Brandenmore will be in attendance. I want all eyes on them, and I want Ms. Rodriquez there in case any transmissions are suddenly logged as incoming or outgoing. I want this stopped, Mercury. Now. Before I have to ignore Breed Law myself and kill the bastards.”
With that, he turned and stalked from the hallway, leaving Kane and Jonas both to breathe out in surprise.
Callan never disregarded Breed Law. He had helped to fashion it, to lay in the framework for the rules that would govern the Breeds and allow them to work within society. To even hint that he would ignore one of those rules . . .
“I wasn’t anticipating a party.” Ria sighed, but Mercury could hear the acceptance in her voice. “Dane is always doing this to me.”
“Dane didn’t request your presence, I did,” Jonas bit out.
Mercury caught Ria’s smile, though he smothered his own.
“There’s a difference?” she asked with false innocence as she moved past Jonas and headed for the front of the house. “Strange. I haven’t found one yet.”
Ria pulled her coat around her and stepped into the limo, keeping her expression composed until the door closed and the window rose between them and the driver.
“One of these days, someone is going to kill Jonas,” she told Mercury.
Mercury snorted. “Yeah, someone’s been trying for months now. Those windows in his apartment you mentioned when you first arrived?”
“Were shot out.” She nodded. “I can understand the need, I truly can. I wanted to shoot him myself. Why hasn’t he forced Ely’s testing by now? My investigation into her lab files as well as her Sanctuary files doesn’t even hint at the irrationality she’s showing. The woman is obviously on the edge of some sort of breakdown.”
“It isn’t that easy.” Mercury shook his head as he moved to the seat across from her, then leaned forward. “Breed Law, everything in it, every value Callan and Jonas have attempted to see put in effect for Breeds, is based on one simple ideal, Ria. Breed freedom. You wouldn’t force a non-Breed into testing for acting irrational. If we allowed a Breed to be forced into it, then Breed Law would become null and void, and we’d be animals again in the sight of the world.”
Ria crossed her legs and stared back at him, folding her hands carefully in her lap as she let herself consider that.
“Breeds and humans are different sides of the same coin,” she reminded him. “You are not fully human, Mercury. You are extrordinarily human. And you’re still learning what your bodies, your hormones, are capable of. In such instances, there should be a safeguard put in place.”
“There is.” He nodded. “But only if we show ourselves to be a danger to ourselves or to others. It doesn’t matter which side of the coin our humanity places us on, we’re still entitled to the same rights and privileges of freedom. We can’t ignore an anomaly in my case and force testing on Ely in hers.”
Dane would have, easily, even it meant kidnapping the Breed in question. But Ria had disagreed with many of the decisions she knew Dane had made, for whatever reason.
“She’s too focused on you,” she finally told him, concerned at the doctor’s continued erratic behavior. “Fanaticism is possible in Breeds, just as it is in humans. And it’s just as destructive, perhaps more so. She’s intent on pulling you into confinement, no matter what it takes. No matter what she has to do to achieve it.”
Mercury stared back at her, knowing the truth in her words. He knew that was exactly Ely’s aim, and the betrayal that filled him at that thought bothered him.
“Did you smell anything that could indicate she was drugged?” Ria frowned back at him, her gaze direct.
“What makes you think I could smell it if she were?” he asked. “The drugs for the displacement wiped out those senses, remember?”
She regarded him with haughty amusement. “Really, Mercury, you should try a little harder to lie. That one was so easy to see through it may as well have been cellophane.”
His lips twitched.
“I felt you inhaling. Very slowly, very deeply,” she informed him. “What did you scent?”
He finally shook his head. “Anger. Fear. And it was very heightened, more than it should have been. She believes in what she’s saying. She believes the feral displacement is returning, and it’s impossible to control.”
Ely believed he would suddenly lose his mind and destroy the very people he had lived to protect for over eleven years now.
“And what do you think?” She tilted her head and watched him, her gaze soft. There was no fear there, no suspicion, almost as though she had formed her own trust in him, and had no intention of backing down on it.
He reached out and touched her cheek with his fingertips then cupped it with his palm. The need to touch her was overwhelming. As he did so, her fingers curled over his wrist, holding him to her. Trust. Complete trust. Something he had never felt with anyone else. Not even long ago with the Breed that could have been his mate.
“I think I would rip apart anyone who dared harm you,” he finally told her softly. “There would be nothing on the face of this earth, short of death, that could control me.”
