AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“That kind of evil rarely dies young,” Jonas stated as he poured himself another cup of coffee and paced to the window of the kitchen.
Cabal watched as the director frowned out the window, staring into the snow-laden dawn.
“Evil rarely dies young, period,” he finally said as he turned back to them. “And what we’re dealing with here is a Breed that’s trying to change that. I want him caught, but I’ll be damned if I’ll force a human’s justice on him.”
“Murder is murder, Jonas,” Cabal reminded him. It was something Jonas had preached at them often enough when it came to a Breed’s death.
“There’s a difference between murder and survival,” Jonas snapped back at him. “We’ve managed to cover up these deaths to this point, and I’d like to keep it that way.” His eerie silver eyes flickered in anger. “And need I remind you the hell these men visited on Breeds in the past? They didn’t just capture a few and return them to the labs. They sold them for research. Research that if our information is correct was more horrendous than anything the Council did. They deserved their deaths.”
Cabal couldn’t argue that point. The information they were slowly amassing against Brandenmore and Engalls was enough to give even a Breed more nightmares. If they could manage to acquire proof, or a single witness to those horrors whom they could force to talk, then the two men that headed one of America’s largest pharmaceutical and research facilities would be subject to Breed Law. And Cabal had no doubt in his mind that Jonas would push for the limits of punishment where the two men were involved.
“Now figure out how to catch our Breed,” Jonas ordered him. “And while you’re at it, see if you can’t figure out why the hell the bastard doesn’t have a scent.”
“Possibly because he’s hiding it.”
They all turned to the door. Weapons cleared their holsters and aimed at the nosy little reporter poised at the entrance to the room, as Cabal jumped in front of her, his heart racing in horror at the threat those weapons posed.
She didn’t flinch; she didn’t back away. Her long hair lay in tangled waves against the material of one of his shirts as her bare toes peeked out of the hem of her jeans.
She looked like a little girl playing grown-up games. Games that could get her killed.
As he shielded her body, several things registered at once. She had managed to slip up on them, something that should have been impossible. Unless she had no scent. His nostrils flared as he tried to draw in the essence of her, just as he knew the others were doing.
There was nothing there. No mating scent, no arousal, no smell of his lust on her body. It was as though Cassa were a ghost, with no substance, with no scent.
He turned, gripped her arms and stared down a
t her in shock as he fought to smell the woman he had just spent the night spilling his seed into. There should be some trace of a scent. Any scent.
“What the fuck,” Lawe muttered to his side. “Jonas?”
Behind him, he felt Jonas shift, move. He knew the other Breed was doing exactly what Cabal was doing, trying to find a scent so elusive it didn’t exist.
Cabal narrowed his eyes on her, searched her face and realized the implications in a single heartbeat.
“Gentlemen, here’s your killer’s secret.” She lifted her hand and in the middle of her silken palm was a small white pill. “A scent blocker. Sent to me by the killer, reportedly created by Brandenmore Research. This is how your rogue Breed is getting by you.”
? CHAPTER 15 ?
Cassa watched Cabal’s profile several hours later as they made the trek back down the mountain in the all-terrain Raider he was driving.
He was still angry. His profile was hard, his expression cool, and she’d noticed that the amber glitter in his eyes seemed duller. That was rage, because the dark green was more brilliant and seemed alive with the anger surging through him.
Panic had threatened to overwhelm her ever since morning, when she had given Jonas one of the small pills that had been sent to her, and explained just how well they worked. Jonas hadn’t been happy that she had eavesdropped on his conversation with Cabal the night of the Coyote alpha’s wedding reception. Cabal seemed even less pleased with her.
She remembered her first, ill-fated marriage. Whenever Douglas had become angry, she had carried the bruises, sometimes for weeks at a time.
Now, more than a decade later, she was sitting in a vehicle with a lover whose anger swirled in the air around her. There was an edge of fear, uncertainty. She hadn’t allowed herself to ever be placed in a position again where she had to worry about a lover striking her. She was beginning to wonder if perhaps she had bit off more than she could chew with Cabal. If she thought Douglas was dangerous, then her Breed lover was a hundred times more so.
He was angry with her, and what made the situation even more precarious for her was that she wasn’t certain why he was so furious.
Her interruption of his meeting that morning could be the cause, she thought. It had been a rather dramatic entrance. She had taken the pill when she had heard the Raiders advancing up the driveway, not long after Cabal had left the bed.
She’d had every intention of telling Cabal about the drug. It was too dangerous to hold secret for very long. If the Breeds’ enemies got their hands on it, then Sanctuary or Haven, either one, could be breached easily by the Council’s Coyotes and soldiers. No Breed mate would ever know a moment’s security, and every Breed child born would be at risk.
“Your attitude is starting to irk me.” Cassa forced herself to go on the offensive. “If you’re pissed off, then you could do me the courtesy of telling me why.”
He shot her an irate glance. An irate Breed was really rather commonplace, she assured herself.
