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To kill her?
Or did he have other plans? Plans Cassie feared would destroy her, her family, or the Breeds she fought to protect.
“Come, my dear,” Dane urged her. “Back inside, before the shadows trap you within them and hold you forever.”
Hold her forever? She rather doubted that.
She could only get so lucky. “Dane, do you ever wonder if perhaps not all Breeds really have a mate chosen for them?” she asked him as he escorted her back into her room, pausing as he closed the balcony doors and then turned to her slowly.
He really was quite handsome, she thought. Far older than he appeared; at least sixty, she’d heard whispered in the past few years, though he refused to tell anyone his true age.
His dark blond head tilted to the side, dark green eyes with tiny specks of amber that were rarely visible, now glinting within the iris. “I believe there’s a mate perfectly suited to each and every Breed, whether they were born or created,” he finally
answered softly as he leaned indolently against the wall, sliding his hands into the pockets of the dun-colored slacks he wore. “What would make you ask such a question, Cassie?”
She shrugged. It wasn’t always easy to explain her own feelings, her own fears.
She was a Breed, a tri-species, she’d heard herself called.
Human, Wolf, and the still feared Coyote. The Coyote DNA was the one she feared the most, just, she suspected, as her parents did. As many of the Breeds did. They all seemed to. She could sense it, feel it. At times, God, she could even smell their fear.
“Surely you’re not frightened that there’s no such future for yourself?” The South African accent was almost mesmerizing. Cassie often found herself concentrating on the cadence of it, rather than the meaning behind whatever questions he was asking her.
“It could prove difficult.” Tucking her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, she wandered to the wide, shaded glass of the bay window on the far side of her room and stared at the place where she knew her assassin hid. “I’m not human, nor am I a Wolf Breed or Coyote. So far, no Breed has mated outside his or her own species with the exception of the human pairings. Wouldn’t that make it rather hard for me to find a mate?”
He watched her closely. Too closely.
He had that habit. Dane wasn’t a man one could often hide things from. Nor was he man that anyone would want to try to lie to or in any way deceive.
He could be a brutal enemy.
“What do your guides tell you, Cassie?” he asked her softly, the question causing her to freeze as a hard chill raked down her spine.
Dane was the only one to have ever, at any time, acknowledged that more than just intuition had guided her throughout the years.
How could he know? Could he know? Could he sense that the beautiful, once comforting presence that had followed her throughout her life had now deserted her?
She turned to him slowly, their gazes locking as she stared back at a Breed that none could read, not even the most intuitive of their species. Even she, the one who seemed to draw the inner demons and broken spirits of the Breeds from their hiding places, had never convinced the protective spirit that always hovered close to him to reveal itself. Or to reveal his secrets.
“She doesn’t visit as often as she once did,” Cassie finally admitted softly.
“And you’re not yet confident enough in yourself to use what she taught you.” He nodded.
Cassie could only shake her head. Her father had asked her that same question.
Perhaps she just hadn’t been smart enough to learn.
As she considered the subject, a brief knock at her door had her turning away from the hybrid to glance at the barrier before turning back to Dane.
A grin tugged at her lips.
Just that quickly, Dane was gone.
Back to his own room, no doubt, where she had no hesitation in guessing he was plotting world dominion. And if he were, he would succeed.
Breathing out wearily, she answered the summons with a brief, “Yes?”
The door opened several inches as one of the Reevers’ maids peered around the door. “Ma’am, your father and Mr. Reever asked that I let you know Mr. Reever is putting steaks and ribs on the grill for the evening meal. He says you’re especially fond of them.”
