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“Isn’t that what I said?” Jonas stated calmly. “The memo attached states that one Cabal St. Laurents seems to have ‘mated’ the Breeds’ favorite reporter.” There was a short, tense silence. “We have a problem here, Cabal.”
Mated. The very fact that the word had been used was cause for alarm. So far, they had managed to ensure that exactly what mating heat was remained hidden, and the term “mate” wasn’t something used lightly. Someone knew. Which meant Cassa could be in danger. The Council would love nothing better than to get their hands on a Breed mate. Especially the mate of a Bengal Breed.
“We have a Breed watching us,” Cabal stated. “Have you checked out Dog’s interest in the area?”
“This isn’t Dog,” Jonas replied, his tone certain.
“Is Dog here at your request?” Cabal asked then, knowing the machinations that the Bureau director was often involved in.
“He’s not there at my request, but neither is he considered a danger at this point.”
That told him more than he wanted to know, Cabal thought. Dog wasn’t under Jonas’s control, but the reasons he was here benefited Jonas or the Breeds in some way. With Jonas, it was all about the Breed society, something most people rarely understood when it came to his games and calculations.
“So what the hell do you want me to do?” Cabal finally growled. “You have pictures and a message that she’s my mate. Our killer is a Breed; there’s every chance he well knows what a mate is.”
“And every chance that he’s deliberately pulled in the one person that could distract you,” Jonas pointed out. “Which means he has some connections into the community.”
“We’ve gone over this ground,” Cabal sighed. “I know she’s being watched. We already suspected she had been deliberately brought in, now we know why.”
“Now we know why,” Jonas agreed. “Have you mated her?”
Jonas was always inordinately curious when one of his enforcers or, in Cabal’s case, one of his covert enforcers mated. Strangely enough, he kept up with them, even after the mating, even after the initial danger. Cabal bet Jonas could name every mate, every potential and suspected future mating, and list a
ny variances in the mating heat that showed up on the scientists’ tests.
“She’s my mate,” Cabal affirmed. “That’s all you need to know, Jonas.”
“Her file shows Ely’s had her on the mating hormone for the past five years. Were you aware the effects had progressed to the point that she required the treatments?”
He hadn’t. Cabal turned and paced back to the end of the hall, where he moved to the wide window that looked out over the Gauley River.
“I didn’t know,” he finally admitted.
“She told Ely there had been no physical contact other than the night of your escape from the facility. She stated she tasted your blood.”
Cabal closed his eyes as a wave of agony swept through him. Emotion. Regret. He remembered the scene clearly. Tears had poured down her face, saturating her features as her body shuddered with her sobs. Trembling lips had opened as her fingers shook, touched the blood on his face, then touched the tips of those fingers to her tongue.
She had tasted his blood.
“Hell,” he muttered. “There were no signs of heat then.”
Jonas grunted at that. “Snarling that you owned her didn’t count, huh?”
“Reflex,” he growled.
“Or instinct,” Jonas suggested. “Tell me, Cabal, have you told her yet that the man she believed was her husband is still alive?”
Cabal froze. A sense of predatory rage built inside him until the growl that came from his throat was more enraged animal than furious male.
“I’ll take that as a no.” Jonas’s tone was coldly disapproving.
“As far as she’s concerned, he’s dead,” Cabal snarled. “He can rot in whatever prison he’s sitting in.”
A heavy silence filled the line. Cabal understood it. His boss was giving him the chance to reconsider the decision. There was nothing to reconsider. The moment he had learned that the marriage Douglas Watts had perpetuated between himself and Cassa hadn’t even been legal, he’d made the decision for her.
He’d be damned if that bastard would ever shadow her life again. He wouldn’t have it.
“Cabal, you could be making a mistake,” Jonas warned him quietly.
