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• CHAPTER 1 •
THIRTEEN YEARS LATER
WINDOW ROCK, ARIZONA
The world called her Claire.
Once, her legal name had been Fawn.
Neither was actually her true name.
Where it counted, to whom it counted, she was Cat, a carefully hidden, maturing, restless feline Breed ready to pounce. A tigress growing slowly impatient with those around her and the machinations being played against her.
She’d been growing tired of it for quite a while. The farce of living as a woman who had actually died as a young girl years before, of pretending to be quiet, studious, and without backbone, had worn her patience away.
She had backbone.
Once, a geneticist and a Bengal Breed named Gideon, one she had called G, had ensured it.
She had a backbone of steel and it was getting ready to lock into place.
“Claire should return to protective custody. With the proof that’s come to light of her father’s crimes against his family as well as the Breed comm
unity, she’ll become a target.” Jonas Wyatt, the director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs, addressed the group gathered in the conference room of the Navajo Suites Hotel just outside Window Rock.
He wasn’t wrong, exactly. What he neglected to mention was the fact that she had been a target since the tender age of twelve. It was nothing new to her.
For some reason, this Lion Breed had decided she was his favorite project, though. Since learning that her father, Raymond Martinez, had been behind his own sister’s abduction by the Genetics Council and later her death, the Breed was like a shadow she couldn’t shake.
Not to mention the fact that she was the only bait he had to draw out a creature he still had yet to learn was far too dangerous to play with in such a way.
Jonas didn’t address his concerns to her, though. They were addressed to Claire’s family members.
His freaky silver eyes swirled with concern amid the expression of sincerity that creased his sun-bronzed face.
He was about as sincere as the German shepherd that pretended to smile at her each morning. That bastard would take a bite out of her hide at first opportunity if she dared allow it.
Not that Jonas wanted to see her harmed, unless it was for the greater good. He was just more concerned with that greater good.
“It would seem to me that decision should be Claire’s.” The new director of the Western Division of the Bureau of Breed Affairs—a hell of a mouthful there—Rule Breaker, the real Claire Martinez’s uncle, spoke up at that point.
Claire had a Lion Breed for an uncle. Whoopee, wasn’t she lucky?
Lifting her gaze from her hands where she’d folded them atop the table, she directed it to the black-haired, blue-eyed Rule and wondered how much he suspected, how much he knew.
Quite a bit, she was certain, though she doubted he’d been told everything.
“I agree.” Her grandfather, Orrin, spoke up. “She’s the one who would be confined for the period of time required. She should decide if this is what she wishes.”
Oh, this was about to get really good.
Orrin never agreed with a woman making her own decisions about her protection. Not since his teenage daughter had disappeared over three decades before.
If she had needed confirmation that she was silently being pushed out of the Martinez family, then Grandfather Orrin had just given it.
The ache in her chest grew sharper, the heavy weight of grief sinking deeper inside her.
“I think Claire knows the risks,” Jonas suggested as though he could read her mind.
