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“Cat . . .” He injected a note of warning in his tone, one she ignored. He hadn’t really expected her to pay attention, he had just hoped she would.
“You stole that little bear from me when you left the labs,” she said then, surprising him. “What did you do with it?”
The bear? What the hell did that bear matter to her now? It had been thirteen years and she wasn’t a child anymore. Besides, it was his now, the last reminder he had of the trust she once gave him.
“Why?” Watching her warily, he wondered what she was going to come up with next.
“Because it was mine.” Her voice was laced with steel but for a second a flash of something lost and lonely gleamed in her dark eyes. “It was something I loved. You threw it away, didn’t you, Graeme? Just like you threw me and Judd away when you were done with us.”
The brutal snarl that snapped from his lips wasn’t an accident. The alpha command was one she would of course ignore. She might deny his place as her alpha but she didn’t want to push it, especially right now.
Bitter cynicism curled at her lips. “I don’t acknowledge you as my alpha. I barely acknowledge that mating bullshit. But then, you have only yourself to blame if I don’t show the respect you so obviously want.” Flipping the sheet back and rising naked from the bed, she threw a hard look over her shoulder. “You made me what I am, remember, Graeme? Your experiment.” Her expression hardened but he sensed the pain burning inside her, sensed the anger and the grief. The grief he hadn’t sensed until this moment. “Now you can live with it.”
Turning her back on him, she took her clothes and strolled with no apparent haste to the bathroom, where she closed the door softly behind her. He heard the smothered whimper that escaped behind the closed panel, though, scented the emotions she fought so desperately.
Fury slashed at the control he was struggling to keep and, for the first time since the monster had made an appearance, it wasn’t someone else it was lashing out at in defense of her.
It was Graeme.
Her pain had always destroyed him. The sight and scent of it had never been bearable.
There was so much she didn’t understand, so much she didn’t know and so much he couldn’t tell her yet.
If she thought she hurt now, then the truth she hated him for not giving her would only hurt her more. He knew his Cat and he knew the sense of guilt she would feel if she learned why the monster existed. If she knew the unreasoned hell he’d experienced, it would destroy her. He didn’t want her to come to him, to trust him, out of guilt. It had to be out of love, or the tigress he was determined to fully set free inside her would never have a chance to emerge as it should. Cat was holding parts of who and what she was restrained, and he couldn’t bear it.
• CHAPTER 14 •
Two days.
So far, she’d made it two days, Cat assured herself as she paced her bedroom, all but growling in irritation. Because she wasn’t going to make it much longer.
There wasn’t a chance in hell she’d make it three days, and with the damned reporters camped across the road from the gates, escaping the grounds for any reason was out of the question.
They were like vultures. Scavengers. They were the worst of the lot. The tabloid reporters who wrote more lies than truth in their race for sensationalism.
A written statement, supposedly from her, had been sent to the press, causing many of them to pull up stakes and head to Window Rock in an attempt to catch sight of Raymond, Maria or Linc instead.
She wished them luck. The Breeds had Raymond locked in an undisclosed location, while Maria was confined to the Martinez mansion until the inquiry into Raymond’s crimes was completed and his sentence set.
Linc was keeping the reporters busy moving around, though. His “no comments” only had them hungering for more.
And Cat was watching it all on the television whenever she turned it on. She’d grown bored with it in the first few hours, though. Now she was also growing bored with the house, the grounds and the enforced isolation.
Escape was a thought, after she took care of the burn heating her from the inside out.
Damned Bengal. She was also convinced he’d done this to her deliberately. She just hadn’t come up with a reason yet.
“It would appear your Bengal has finally set his mark upon you fully. Does this mean you’ve forgiven him?”
“Keenan.”
Swinging around to the sound of the voice, she really didn’t expect to see the leader of the small sect of winged Breeds that hid in the jagged cliffs of the nearby mountains.
“What are you doing here?” The anxious hiss as he stepped into the bedroom from the balcony doors was followed by an anxious look toward the bedroom door.
Wild brown and gold eyes filled with amusement as the feathers on those huge wings ruffled with a restless sound.
Keenan stood over six feet tall himself, but those wings were even taller. Rising at least a foot above his head before curving down and trailing a good foot behind him like a living cape in myriad dark colors, the power—and sheer beauty—of the wings he’d been created to bear was exceptional.
