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Dressed in dark silk slacks, a white silk shirt, sleeves rolled up and barely wrinkled, he didn’t look as though he’d been carefully following her since she’d left the enclosed grounds of the guesthouse.
He was a fucking magician or something.
A smile quirked at his lips as he moved into the shelter created by the boulders before easing down to sit at the base of the tower. Leaning back against the cool stone he looked out between the boulders, obviously enjoying the same view she’d claimed as her own.
“I knew you wouldn’t be at the house this morning,” he told her, snagging her pack before she could stop him.
Digging inside, he pulled out a bottle of water and one of her apples. Taking a bite of the crisp fruit, he glanced at her in appreciation before seeming to relax as he made his way through the fruit.
She waited.
She’d learned in the research center that pressing for explanations and answers made her seem weak. She wasn’t begging him for a damned thing, and she didn’t owe him a damned thing.
Finishing the apple and tossing the core outside the shelter for scavengers, he opened the water, took a long drink then capped it. Holding it loosely between his fingers and bending one knee to rest his arm, his gaze narrowed on the desert below the boulders.
Cat just watched him.
Not enough people spent enough time watching this man’s face and eyes, she thought. Not that he often gave anything away, but watch him long enough, pay enough attention, and sometimes hints of what he felt or knew would flash in his eyes or his expression. A time or two, she might have caught a scent of emotion, of regret.
“I don’t feel superior to your genetics because of my creation versus your additions. What you sensed at that meeting is something difficult to explain, and your accusation of prejudice may not have been entirely unfounded. For that, I sincerely apologize,” he said softly, still staring out at the desert. “I would like to mark it down as a moment of human weakness that has since been eradicated.”
He turned his eyes back to her and the ice that normally filled them, that emotionally blank gaze he normally gave the world, was absent. Jonas had lowered his defenses, allowing the Breed and the man to be revealed to her uniquely strong sense of smell.
Regret, sincerity and perhaps even a hint of uncertainty. He couldn’t predict whether she would accept his apology or not.
“Apology accepted.” She shrugged, still watching him closely, aware of the emotions he tried to stem, or make sense of. He was a Breed that rarely allowed others close to, and trusted even less.
“Amber is as much my child as any Rachel will conceive from our union,” he told her softly then. “She is flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, and I want to know how Gideon made that happen.”
Cat couldn’t hide the flinch of shock at his words.
“What? What do you mean?” She shook her head, confusion filling her.
Jonas turned his gaze to her, the brooding intensity in it focusing on her completely.
“For six months, at the very least, he was slipping past every security protocol I used to alert me that he was there, and he was injecting my little girl, the child that came to me as a stepdaughter, with that evil that Brandenmore created. The files he left explained everything, but how Amber is slowly becoming a Lion Breed isn’t explained. One with my genetic markers. And I want to know how he did it.”
With Jonas’s genetic markers? Graeme knew how to adjust the serum to mark the Breed genetics with familial coding and he hadn’t marked hers in such a way? Was it something he’d learned only after leaving the labs? Or something he’d learned with his recapture?
“I don’t know how he did it.” She shook her head, staring back at him and allowing him to sense that inner part of her where truth or deception lay.
“I never imagined you knew how he did it,” he acknowledged. “It’s something I have to know, though. He’ll return, Cat. He’ll come back to you, he won’t be able to help himself. You’re his mate. You belong to him and we both know he’ll never be far from you. That endanger
s you and it endangers him. The only protection either of you will have is me.”
Oh, she could see where this was going now and the futility of what he wanted was almost amusing. Did he really think she would hand Graeme over to him so easily? Did he really believe he could control Graeme so easily?
“Jonas, you don’t want to ever capture him.” She sighed. “You don’t want to ever attempt to force anything from him.” The painful regret that filled her, she didn’t even attempt to hide. “Don’t you know by now, he’ll give you whatever he can give. But you capture him and he will kill you. You and everyone who stands in the way of his escape.”
Graeme would never allow himself to be imprisoned again. That creature that rose from all the inner rage amassed inside him would create a trail of blood unlike anything Jonas had ever seen before.
“He’s not Superman, Cat,” he informed her gently. “He can’t leap tall buildings or deflect bullets. He’s just a Breed, albeit a very intelligent Breed.”
Cat shook her head and leaned forward slowly. “You are wrong, Jonas,” she whispered painfully. “You are so very wrong. No, he’s not Superman. He can’t leap tall buildings. He can’t deflect bullets. But he can sense what lies in wait in that building. He can sense the bullet being fired and avoid it. He can see past every mental shield you put up against him into the very spirit of who and what you are. And if you stand in his way, then he’ll use every iota of information he has against you. Whatever Dr. Foster created when he created Gideon, the serum he was given in that research center amplified every human and Breed strength he possessed while wiping out any weakness you could possibly detect. And all that saves the world is that somehow, someway, he managed to retain enough compassion to keep the evil of humanity from overtaking him.”
“Cat, do you really believe that bullshit?” Curious disbelief filled his expression. “Gideon is not a super-Breed.”
“Leave him alone, Jonas.” She would beg him for this if she had to, though it would do no good. “He left two Jackals living for you to interrogate and somehow convinced one to actually cooperate with you . . .”
