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Above all else though, he had wanted to save her from the truth of what was going on here, the truth of her own past and the parts that were not as dead as she had believed they were.
“In here.” Jonas led the way into the suite he had taken.
The meeting room was still set up from earlier. Pictures were displayed on a holographic board while several holographic vids still played of previous hunts the Deadly Dozen had been on. The videos had been saved from Council archives that had been discovered in some of the labs that were rescued over the years.
There weren’t many of them, but there were enough to show the horrifying measures the Dozen had taken in catching their prey.
Cassa stopped inside the room, her gaze on the images displayed across the electronic board.
The Deadly Dozen had been rumored to have taped some of their hunts. It was how they sold their services to the Council and the individual labs seeking to reacquire their escaped Breeds.
Actually seeing proof of it was horrifying though. Seeing the Breeds as they fought to run, to hide, to escape a dozen hunters that had lain in wait for them.
She heard the door close behind the four men, and she was aware of them moving around her, watching her as she stared at the images on the screen.
“They were too good,” she whispered as she watched the video for long moments. “There was a Breed with them.”
“Two. They weren’t part of the Dozen,” Jonas stated quietly. “That was always part of the deal. The labs would loan them two Coyotes to help track during the hunt.”
She shook her head slowly. “The
y led them where they wanted them to go. They watched. Waited.”
“Some of the hunts lasted for weeks, a few months at a time,” she was told. “They stalked their prey.”
Like a safari hunt, she thought. They knew what they wanted, where it was. They knew their prey’s habits and how they tracked, hid. As she watched, she could see that. They knew their prey intimately.
“This particular hunt was one of the first,” Jonas told her, and she felt Cabal moving behind her, his hands settling on her hips, pulling her against him.
The clasp was intimate rather than sexual. Comforting rather than arousing.
“We found this one in a lab in New Mexico,” Jonas continued. “The hunt took place approximately twenty-seven years ago. The Breeds they were hunting were a male and two females from that particular lab. They caught the first female a week before this hunt.”
She sensed what Jonas wasn’t saying. That she didn’t want to know the particulars of that capture. She probably didn’t want to know this one either.
As she watched the footage, she caught a few glimpses of the hunters themselves. Black-masked and black-clothed. It was impossible to tell who was who.
The dark landscape was illuminated by the thermal and night-illuminating capabilities of the video. She could see the male Breed, a Lion Breed if the brown eyes and tawny-colored hair were an indication, as he attempted to keep the female in front of him.
Both Breeds were cunning and swift, but the hunters had them surrounded. They played with them. They built the rage in the male and the fear in the female until the first shot was fired.
Cassa flinched at the sound and the sight of the bullet as it impacted the male’s back. There was a moment of stunned agony, of resignation on his face, before he went to the ground.
The female raced to him. Tears tracked down her face as a roar of rage tore from her lips. Her canines flashed in the darkness as the hunters advanced on her, their laughter echoing through the night.
“She’s a pretty sight,” one of them called out.
“Let’s not damage her too bad quite yet,” another suggested and Cassa nearly cried out in agony at the familiar tone. “I have a few plans for her.”
Another jeered. “I still say it’s like fucking an animal.”
“It’s like fucking a wildcat,” Douglas laughed back as he moved toward her. “Let’s get her down. He can watch while I fuck his pretty little pussy.”
Cassa tore herself out of Cabal’s grip, turned her back on the video and had to fight to hold in the sickness rising in her gut.
She was trembling, shaking her head as she cupped her hand over her mouth and swore to herself she wouldn’t throw up.
Behind her, the sound cut out. There was silence in the room, but all Cassa could hear were the screams as the hunters tried to pull the female Breed from her mate.
