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“She loved the night,” Lincoln whispered wearily. “She always said the night called to her.”
“Why is she awakening?” Graeme focused his attention on Orrin. “She’s been sleeping . . .”
“Not always,” Orrin informed him with a hint of pleased pride in his granddaughter. “She and Cat, they were sometimes both awake at the same time. They would play within the world together, gaining knowledge and strength. If she came with a warning, then it’s because whatever Cat has planned will endanger her. She is Cat’s protector, Bengal. She is no danger to your mate, she will not replace your mate. She protects her. Until the time comes . . .” Orrin inhaled roughly. “On the night of the ritual, the winds whispered that with the awakening came death. I fear for both Cat and my granddaughter now. For I know the awakening nears. That time when the protection is no longer needed, and one spirit must pass on, nears. And I fear we will lose them both with it. I sensed years before that they had claimed each other as sisters. They now protect each other, a very dangerous development when the Awakening comes.”
The hell they would.
A vicious snarl tore from Graeme’s throat as he came to his feet, the monster he was inside moving swiftly through his senses.
“Listen close, old man”—primal, guttural, his voice echoed with the promise of death—“if she dies, then none involved will live. Hear that. What will be unleashed upon this desert is something you do not want.”
Compassion filled the chief’s expression, that and immeasurable sadness.
“So the winds have whispered,” Orrin agreed. “The beast will stalk the night and blood will run in rivers.” He shook his head in regret. “Go. Be with the mate that calms the monster you would be. And if the monster is set loose upon this land when the awakening comes, then it is what fate has decreed, and what the spirits have called.”
A roar shattered the night. The ferocity of the sound brought the warriors standing beyond the cavern racing inside as Terran and Lincoln moved quickly to their feet as though to protect the old chief staring up at him sadly.
There was nothing more to say. Merciless, intent, the creature facing them now had no compassion, no regret. It knew no right or wrong but that of vengeance and blood.
The monster had come into being to protect what Graeme lived for, for the mate that held the last remnants of the Breed’s soul.
Turning, he moved quickly from the cavern, the race to return to Cat suddenly desperate, filled with a certainty that a reckoning was rapidly moving closer.
The roar he released as the open desert surrounded him was a warning to anyone who dared to take her, to risk her, or to aid any willing to. It echoed through the chilly night, calling out to man and beast and those in between.
The monster wasn’t chained, it only waited for anyone so oblivious to hell that he would face it. Because the monster knew well how to bring hell.
• • •
Lincoln stared at his grandfather as his uncle helped the old man to his feet, his own knowledge, his own awakening abilities to hear the whispers in the winds assuring him that his grandfather knew much more than he was telling.
“Grandfather . . .” He would have demanded answers.
Orrin’s hand shot up in a demand for silence, the strength and purpose in his dark eyes as brilliant now as it had been for as long as Lincoln had known him.
“A price will be paid,” Orrin snapped. “That we cannot stop. What that price will be, I do not know. I know only that death will come, and that Cat will face a past that will bring that death. Claire was not fated to die, Lincoln,” he ground out, his conviction in that belief without doubt. “I saw her fate at her birth, and it was not death. The winds whispered her path would be one no other would want to walk, and her heart would know scars others could not comprehend. But she is to fly from the flames and become a voice all will hear. Death is not her fate.”
But even Orrin, who understood the whispers that drifted through the breeze of the desert better than any other, completely believed his granddaughter would never truly live. Lincoln saw it in his eyes, heard it in his voice.
/> Claire had lost her life but she’d been unable to find her peace. She protected a young woman who would have died soon after, had his sister not died. Her spirit protected that young woman now. Protected her in ways Linc had fought to understand for years.
He’d failed Claire; he’d been determined he wouldn’t fail in protecting Cat. But he had. He hadn’t realized the evil his father was in time, and Claire had suffered again alongside Cat.
He would kill Raymond if he ever faced him again, Linc feared. No man should ever face that within himself. But if he ever faced Raymond again, then the bastard would suffer . . .
• • •
The tiger’s roar shattered the silence of the night, jerking Cat from the diagram Keenan had laid on the patio table just outside the kitchen.
“That’s one pissed-off tiger.” The reflection in his voice, not to mention the understatement, was almost amusing.
“It won’t take him long to get here.” She sighed. “He’s incredibly fast when he gives in to the full primal abilities he possesses.”
Keenan gathered up the papers, folded them and shoved them in the leather vest he wore. “Did you see enough of the plans?”
She’d seen all of them. The maps and diagrams as well as the locations of the Reever security details. All she’d needed was one look, a glance at best, to imprint them on her memory.
“I saw enough,” she assured him. “We won’t have long before Graeme realizes I’m gone and manages to track me down. Let General Roberts know we’ll have to stick strictly to the plan. Any deviations and I’m out of there. For both our sakes.”
