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She eased back, her gaze still locked with his, eyes narrowed, her body almost trembling with anger. Anger and arousal. Hell, the subtle sweet scent of her pussy was making him crazed with the need to have her. To taste her.
“This conversation is finished,” she informed him imperiously as her delicate little nose lifted, nostrils flaring in feminine offense. “You can leave now.”
Oh, could he now? As though he were a dog to be ordered outside for disobeying its mistress? It so didn’t work that way for a feline Breed. At least, not for long.
He knew her. He knew her expressions, her moods, her laughter, and her teasing. Until now, he hadn’t really known her anger, and he couldn’t say he was comfortable with it, but he could handle it.
“Don’t push me, sweetheart,” he warned her softly. “Don’t force me into something we’ll both regret.”
He had no doubt in his mind she wouldn’t hate him for life if he forced her into the mating heat, and he sure as hell couldn’t warn her about it first.
Turning on his heel, he stalked from the bedroom without saying more. The problem was, he was so damned close to tasting her he couldn’t trust himself. He wanted nothing more than to jerk her into his arms and take her lips in a kiss he knew would only fan the flames burning between them.
Hell, he hadn’t expected to find his mate here, of all places.
The Engalls princess? Heir to a pharmaceutical company that had worked with Phillip Brandenmore to create a line of drugs potentially fatal to Breeds?
Brandenmore’s scent blocker had made its way into the hands of pureblood societies and the Council-loyal coyote Breed soldiers still desperate to capture the mates of high-ranking Breeds or, God forbid, one of the hybrid children that had been born.
Especially the hybrids born of the wolves. The hybrid wolf-coyote Cassie Sinclair, as well as the child of Aiden and Charity Chance and the son of Dash and Elizabeth Sinclair. Children were so rare within the wolf Breeds that the Council scientists still operating would take any risk to acquire one.
Added to that was the drug therapy created to control a Breed mind. Horrific, destructive, it had nearly driven Elyianna Morrey insane even as it allowed her traitorous lab techs to steal and manipulate valuable mating heat data in an attempt to sell it, to Phillip Brandenmore and Horace Engalls.
Making his way back downstairs, Creed began moving to protect the delicate woman he suspected was his mate, especially from herself. She was in more danger than she knew.
In past weeks Creed had found signs of someone watching the house, but he could detect no unusual scents. Her father was acting strangely out of character, and there were rumors that the pureblood societies were looking to Kita to force Engalls to turn over information he had on the drugs his brother-in-law had given him to manufacturer. Those sample drugs and the ability to produce them on a large scale had been destroyed in an as-yet unexplained explosion at Engalls’s manufacturing facility.
The Breeds hadn’t done it. The information they had gathered said the pureblood societies hadn’t done it either. That left but a few suspect paramilitary groups, but the Breeds had no sources within those organizations who could help them reliably finger those responsible for the explosion.
One thing was for certain: there were too many people looking to use Kita as leverage against her father. Get the girl, and the research could be theirs.
The Breeds desperately needed that research to go along with information provided just weeks before by the daughter of a Breed scientist. Storme Montague had hidden certain research on mates, primal fever, and a vaccine created in a little known lab in the Andes before the Breed rescues had reach that area. The vaccine mimicked one created in Russia for the coyotes and the men and women who worked with them. The vaccine, originally intended as an anti-body against a feared contagion associated with feral fever, was now revealing itself as a much-needed component in the mating and ability to conceive within the Breed community.
Piece by piece they were gaining answers to their questions about their own biology and the mysteries surrounding their creation and their abilities to procreate. They couldn’t afford to lose what little research hadn’t been destroyed because they hadn’t realized the danger it could later represent.
And Creed couldn’t afford to lose the only woman who had made him feel. Who made him realize he was more than just a Breed. She made him realize there might be a chance, however small, that he could be a man as well.
THREE
She managed to slip away from him.
A growl slipped past his throat as one of his human partners gave a loud, exaggerated cough before turning to stare at him in shock. They were standing in the center of Kita’s bedroom as her father braced his arms on her opened balcony door.
“I paid you to keep this from happening.” Horace Engalls turned on them as though it were their fault she had escaped. “You were to protect her.”
“We were hired to keep anyone from getting to her. You didn’t inform us she would end up running away,” Creed pointed out.
“She’s always slipping out,” Horace snarled back at him, his brown eyes flickering with red rage. “You knew that.”
“And we’ve always been aware of the nights that was happening,” Creed replied with far more calm than he felt. “She’s obviously far quieter than her friends have been when they’ve picked her up.”
When it came to stealth, those women were like children in a candy store. All big eyes, giggles, and feminine charm.
“She’s been taken then.” A tremor vibrated through Horace’s voice as he wiped his hands over his face. “God, they’ve taken her.” He lifted his head, his eyes damp now with a father’s tears. “Who could have taken her?”
To feel pity for this man went against everything Creed knew of him. Yet, the pity was there. In Horace Engalls’s face, his eyes, his scent, there was only love and fear for his child.
“We’ll find out,” he promised, knowing she hadn’t been taken. She had run.
