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Cassandra Sinclair had had a visitor as she lay in a near coma state, surrounded by Wolf and Feline Breed guards. Someone had managed to cut a hole into a window more than twelve stories above the ground, slip into her room and send her into screams of hysteria.
The last Del-Rey had heard, she had no idea who or what had been there with her.
Del-Rey clenched his jaw as the Wolf Breed looked back at him expectantly then. Each time he had arrived at Haven, always secretly, always under the cover of night, the Wolf Breeds watched him with the same expression. As though waiting for him to ask the question he had no intention of asking: How was his mate?
“Here we are.” The elevator shuddered to a stop depositing them in another steel-and-cement corridor. Water, electrical and various other pipes ran along the walls. Monitors displayed general orders and Breeds—Wolf, Feline and Coyote—moved with an array of humans that had aligned with them.
Some with clipboards, some chatting with companions—they were all heavily armed and prepared.
Del-Rey, Brimstone and Cavalier followed behind their escort until they came to a door, the same gunmetal gray color as the rest of the operational base.
Stepping inside the entrance alone as it slid open, Del-Rey motioned for the other two to wait for him as he faced the Wolf Breed Cabinet that had come together.
There were six of them. Just as there were six in the Coyote Breed Cabinet, six to the Feline Breed Cabinet. Dash Sinclair; the Wolf Breed Alpha Wolfe Gunnar; Aiden, a class one enforcer; Jacob, Haven’s head of security; Faith, Jacob’s wife and liaison to the other packs; Hope Gunnar, Wolfe’s wife; and the lupina, second-in-command of Haven.
“Del-Rey, welcome back.” Wolfe and the others rose from the table, hands extended in greeting.
Once the preliminary meet-and-greet bullshit was over with, Del-Rey took his seat and slapped the file he carried with him in the center of the round table, in front of Wolfe.
The pack leader’s expression tensed as he opened it and read the report Del-Rey and his men had put together with the help of the Bureau of Breed Affairs, the Feline Cabinet, and the investigations he and his own men had done into the subject.
The file was passed around the table, each member going over it carefully, their expressions telling the same story. Disbelief and anger.
“Will it ever stop?” Jacob murmured, his low voice harsh as he finished the file while his wife read over his shoulder. He slid it on and waited.
Del-Rey watched as Faith laid her hand on her mate’s shoulder, her cheek against the top of his head. The connection, the bonding between them ignited a flare of rage in him that threatened to spark out of control. They were mated. The scent of their bond, their emotions and need for each other was an affront to his senses. An insult to everything that he had been forced to walk away from.
When the last cabinet member, Dash Sinclair, closed the file, Del-Rey felt the tension as it began to ratchet up through the room.
“We’ll need to convene the full cabinet together,” Wolfe said heavily. “This is a risk to all of us.”
The full cabinet was something even Del-Rey had never seen. Each species of Breed had their own cabinet. The twelve-member tribunal he had faced eight months before was a selected mix to deal with smaller issues that concerned the society as a whole. Such as when Anya Kobrin had demanded separation from her mate.
The full cabinet was another story. Six members of each species. The Wolf and Coyote packs as well as the Feline pride. Added to that was the six-member board selected from within the Bureau of Breed Affairs, comprised primarily of humans except for the director of the bureau, Jonas Wyatt.
The full cabinet was twenty-four members in all, and Del-Rey had a feeling its meetings wouldn’t be as social and well conducted as the few pack meetings he’d been called to.
The risk in not calling together the full cabinet was growing by the day.
“There’s not enough evidence to prosecute the pharmaceutical company or the research and development arm that’s conducting the experiments,” Del-Rey stated. “No evidence that they’ve used Breeds in that research, either willingly or involuntarily.”
Wolfe ran his hand wearily over his face as he pulled the file back to him and reopened it. Del-Rey knew what he would find there. In the past four weeks the Feline Breed scientist Elyiana Morrey had nearly died from the drugs that had been used to attempt to force her to destroy a Lion Breed known to have an anomaly in his blood suspected to induce a primal strength and rage known as feral fever.
Mercury Warrant had developed feral fever in the labs where he had been created and trained. At the time of his rescue the scientists there had developed a drug therapy which, in essence, controlled him, locked the animalistic power inside him and forced him to obey the commands given to him by his trainers and creators.
A variation of that drug had been used on the scientist. The lack of the feral hormone for the drug to attach to in her blood had created far greater, nearly fatal results. It had almost destroyed her mind. Now there was evidence that Breeds unknown to the Breed community were being captured or somehow convinced to participate in the experiments with this drug.
Three Breeds had been found just within the past week, their brains fragmented by the pressure that had built within them. One had nearly killed a human, and keeping that one covered up hadn’t been easy.
“This drug could become our personal nightmare,” Del-Rey told them. “It doesn’t just have the power to steal our will; it also has the power to make us killers and nothing more. The Bureau is working to get more information but their contact within the companies has disappeared. They suspect that person won’t show up alive.”
“They’ve found a way to create the killers th
ey always wanted.” Hope’s horrified whisper filled the room.
“Not entirely,” Del-Rey stated. “There are symptoms when the drugs are being slipped into the victim. Our concern is the rumor that the research company has managed to find volunteers. Breeds who were led to believe that this would recess their Breed genetics.” He leaned forward slowly. “The Breed that nearly killed the police officer was younger, unknown and unlisted with the Bureau of Breed Affairs. We know there are still facilities holding many Breeds captive, moving them often. He could be one of those, or a volunteer. Whichever, we have a problem on our hands.”
Faith spoke up. “Dr. Morrey was given the drug by Breed assistants in her lab. Breeds that showed no signs of being under the drug themselves. Greed.”
