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“Think yourself my equal, do you, little cat?” he scoffed, the scent of his contempt, of his prejudice, so clear it nearly choked her. Prejudice. No different from that which the humans felt against the Breeds. She wasn’t a Breed created before birth as other Breeds had been created. Yet he forgot, it seemed, she wasn’t the only one.
She shook her head again. “You’ve always known who I was and what I was, Director. I knew that. Be careful how you handle this from here on out, though, because the day will come when your daughter may well draw conclusions you
don’t want in how you handle a female who was born human then made into a Breed, rather than simply created. I can smell your hatred of what I am. I hope she never has to feel it as well.”
Turning, she stalked from the room before his shock could turn to rage and the animal genetics surging beneath his human skin slipped free.
He could decimate her and she knew it.
His training, his strength, was far superior to hers. She’d always known that and she’d remained in the shadows because of it. Remained there, hoping to protect one who didn’t need her protection, and trying to deny the truth to herself.
G—Graeme now, rather—had deserted her years before. He’d left her and Judd to be run down like diseased dogs by the Genetics Council and their soldiers. Forced her to hide in a way that had only hurt her and in a way that left Judd completely alone.
Graeme was her alpha; he owed her his backing, his strength. Instead he’d abandoned her and was determined to destroy her. He’d left her to face maturing alone, without his guidance, to becoming a woman alone with no one to lean on, and he’d left her to face a life pretending she was someone she’d never been intended to be. She had fought alone for thirteen years, refusing to ask for help, and only one person realizing she sometimes needed help. The quiet shadow that slipped in and out of her room occasionally to deliver a healing salve, a splint for a broken bone, or a sweet treat when she’d felt lost amid the hatred she faced each day. He rarely spoke to her, she’d rarely known he was there until she awoke and found the gifts.
Dane Vanderale, Breed ally and supporter, the heir to a fortune that defied belief, an enigma, even to those he helped. Especially to Cat, because she’d never understood why he’d helped.
He’d done what her alpha should have done, what the Breed known as Graeme should have done. He’d been there when she needed help the most, and he’d helped rather than attempting to destroy her.
And that was exactly what Graeme was doing, destroying her. From the moment he’d found her, each move, each carefully calculated maneuver was to reveal who and what she was, to take every last vestige of protection she’d found over the years. To ensure she was as lost and as alone as she felt.
Once he’d learned through Jonas’s search for her that she was still alive, the maddened creature he’d turned into had been on the hunt. As long as she’d been left alone, as long as she’d remained hidden, he’d been content.
But she hadn’t remained hidden to everyone. The Genetics Council had begun the search for her, and they’d known the general area where she’d disappeared, but they’d never identified her, despite Raymond’s threats. Those heading the Brandenmore research center, even after the owner’s death, was hungry for her return, she knew that. Jonas Wyatt had done more than just focus on her last-known location though. He’d parked himself in Window Rock and began a concentrated search for a rabid Breed that he’d known wasn’t there, one he knew would draw the Bengal Breed there though.
Jonas had known that directing any search related to the Bengal once known as Gideon, would draw the Breed there and no doubt he’d known both Cat’s and Honor’s identities would be revealed as well, forcing Gideon to reveal himself.
He hadn’t revealed himself though. He’d found a way to hide in plain sight and then he’d begun stripping Cat of every defense she possessed.
He’d taken not just her protection though—he’d stolen her illusions, her belief in belonging, and in herself.
Her alpha may well want her dead. But at this point, she owed him the same coin. It was now just a matter of time before they likely destroyed each other.
• • •
“You don’t have to go.” Terran Martinez stood at the open door of the bedroom that evening, watching her with somber, dark eyes, his expression heavy as she packed.
He’d played the part of her uncle, even protecting her from the man who had sworn to treat her as a daughter. For thirteen years she’d let herself pretend she had a family, a place to belong, only to realize she had no such thing.
Terran didn’t ask her not to go. He didn’t tell her it didn’t matter that she wasn’t Claire, he only said she didn’t have to leave.
Once, she’d been a part of the extensive Martinez family. Her cousins, Isabelle and Chelsea, had visited often after she’d moved in with Terran several months before, after Raymond, Claire’s father, was indicted on crimes against Breed Law.
Claire’s mother, Maria; her father, Raymond; and her brother, Linc, whom Cat had been genuinely fond of, had turned their backs on her within days of the charges being officially brought by the Breeds and a date set for a hearing in front of the Breed Tribunal.
Maria and Raymond both had known she wasn’t really Claire. They had been there the night she had taken their daughter’s identity, had participated in the cover-up. Linc, though, she was never certain what he knew and what he didn’t.
“I know, Terran,” she answered quietly as she placed her clothes in the suitcases she’d bought after leaving the meeting with Jonas Wyatt. “It’s better this way.”
Not that Terran and Orrin both weren’t aware of who she had been all along as well. Everyone knew. But no one had wanted to admit that the real Claire was gone, despite their knowledge.
Terran had lost his treasured younger sister to the Genetics Council when she was only sixteen. He and his father—and, he’d believed, his older brother, Raymond—had searched for thirty years for her, only to learn of the horrific death she’d suffered while still a young woman and, with her death, the disappearance of several of her Breed children. One of which had been a girl. And he’d lost his niece, Claire, at fifteen to drugs and a tragic car accident.
This family had already suffered so much.
“Better for who? For you?”
His question surprised her. She paused in placing her jeans in the suitcase and considered it before turning back to him.
