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He claimed her.
She rose slowly from the chair.
“I would have thought you loved me,” she said softly, the pain that sliced at her more than she would have expected.
“What do I know of love, Cat?” he asked her then, drawing her gaze back to his as he watched her with a hint of confusion. “What the world calls love, I highly discount. There’s no loyalty in it, no drive to hold on to what they claim once that haze of lust dissipates. If that’s love, then why would you want it?”
“That isn’t love.” She had to force the words out. “No more than possession is love, Graeme. No more than Mating Heat is love. Without real love, what separates possession from obsession, and Mating Heat from biological rape? Mating Heat can begin without love, but like lust, it won’t bind mates without love.”
“And what makes you a fucking expert on love, Cat?” he bit out, pushing his fingers through his hair in frustration. “When did Webster contact you for the definition?”
“When you decided I was your mate,” she snapped back, one hand going to her hip as the dominance he displayed had her shoulders straightening and determination hardening her tone. “I’m far more an expert on it than you evidently, Graeme, because at least I recognize it when I feel it.”
“And just who did you recognize it with?” Pure fury lit his eyes.
First that wild green spread across his eyes, obliterating the whites, then within a heartbeat later the tiny flecks of amber gold began to fill it as shadowed stripes began marring his face and neck.
“With you,” she all but yelled. “Unfortunately loving you now does me about as much good as it did when I was twelve. And you include me in about as much of your life now as you did then.” Stepping closer, glaring up at him, she could feel the tips of her claws flexing, aching to emerge. “When I was twelve you pushed me aside to fight alone and left my protection to others, and now, other than when you need to fuck, you push me aside to fight with Khi or Lobo or Rule or whoever else you decide is strong enough to stand at your side. When will you consider me your partner rather than your damned fuck toy?”
“When I’m not in danger of losing my fucking sanity at the thought of a scratch on your soft skin,” he snarled back at her, head lowering until they were snarling at each other, nose to nose. “I taught you to fight to aid in your protection. Not to aid in my battles.”
“If I can’t fight with you, then I don’t want to fuck with you,” she sneered up at him. “Go on to your little meeting, Bengal boy.” She waved toward the main estate with a curl of her lip. “Go have fun with the big dogs. See how much good they do you when that hard cock of yours needs attention, because I won’t give you the satisfaction of taking care of it.”
Swinging around to stomp away from him, she found herself pulled up short by firm fingers snagging her wrist, manacling it and pulling her around to face him once more.
“You are my mate,” he reminded her, the gleaming brilliance of that fierce green swirling with glints of amber fury. “You can claim you’ll deny me all you want, but the heat will always bring you back to me, Cat.”
“Will it?” she asked tightly, her breathing harsh, anger and need and far too much love for such an arrogant beast raging inside her. “We both know exactly how stubborn I can be, don’t we, Graeme. Let’s see which is stronger. My determination or some biological lust that lacks any basis in emotion. Which one will win, Graeme?”
“Don’t turn our mating into a battle, Cat,” he warned her, his voice deepening to a guttural growl.
“No, you’re turning it into a battle, not me. Even worse, Graeme, you want to weaken me, you want to destroy what you made when you created the therapy to save me. And I’ll be damned if I’ll stand for it. I’ve spent too many years waiting for my chance to be free. I will not put my head down and pretend to be weak ever again. Not for you. Never for you.” She couldn’t bear it. The very attempt would kill her.
Jerking her wrist from his hold, she all but ran into the house and up to her room.
He had to go to his precious meeting, well, she had a meeting of her own to attend. She’d worked too hard for this day, when she could keep the promise she’d made to the girl who’d shared those cells with her. The promise that one day her parents would find her. Jona
s refused to allow it and Honor’s mating with a Wolf Breed placed her under certain constraints where the Bureau of Breed Affairs was concerned.
Cat wasn’t ruled by the Bureau, by Jonas nor by Graeme.
Honor still hadn’t fully awakened and the protective spirit of Liza Johnson that ensured Honor’s identity was hidden was still far too protective. Only one thing would ever force Honor to break through that dark labyrinth within her own mind to take control of her life once again. The parents who loved her enough to send her away rather than see her returned to the research center. Parents Jonas had yet to contact, and Honor had yet to awaken enough to remember fully.
Cat had never had parents. No mother who loved her and cried for her, no father who searched tirelessly for her or watched the faces of every female her age, hoping to see the child he’d lost.
This meeting, like all the battles she’d fought in the past years, she would do without Graeme. He couldn’t include her in even the plans or meetings regarding her protection or her life? What could even make her imagine he’d help her with this? He wouldn’t.
And if he did, the one thing she’d bargained with General Roberts for, she would never see. The files Dr. Bennett had submitted on Gideon’s recapture and the tests performed while he was there. Something had changed him. Changed him so drastically that, as he said, sometimes he felt he would drown in blood.
To understand her mate, to know why he’d become so much harder, she had to know what had happened when he was returned to the research center. What created the monster that had raged for years after his escape, and what had enabled him to regain his sanity?
She knew everything else. Every move he’d made since he’d disappeared the night he’d rescued her and Judd from the soldiers escorting them to the kill facility. Every move made in the past year, she knew about. But what had happened in the center for the year Dr. Bennett had held him, she had no idea. Jonas wouldn’t tell her. If Orrin had known, he wouldn’t tell her. But General Roberts could acquire that information. And she had something he wanted bad enough to ensure he brought it to her. The daughter he and his wife had never stopped waiting for.
The woman the world knew as Liza Johnson was the child Honor Roberts, the friend Cat had lost forever in a Navajo ritual that had stolen her memories, her very identity, for years—so many years, that who she was as a child perhaps no longer even existed. But who she had been to her parents, who her parents had been to her, would never be lost, Cat suspected. And possibly it was all that would enable Honor to step back into her own life and take her place, fully, with her own mate.
Cat only hoped that perhaps, at some point in the future, she could take her own place. That maybe Graeme would soften enough to realize that Mating Heat was love. Without one, the other could not exist.
• • •
