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“Like hell they are,” the monster growled. “They’re here and they have her.”
The monster was free. Power flooded his body, shaped it, poured through his senses and sharpened each detail, each sight and scent that filled the night. And then, the smell of them, so subtle, barely there, reached him.
The winged Breeds had taken his mate.
A savage, enraged roar filled the night.
He’d kill every damned one of them.
• • •
The thrill of flying with the winged Breeds would never grow old, Cat thought as Keenan landed with her on the desert floor next to a Limo series Desert Dragoon. The larger, expanded Dragoon with its luxury appointments inside and additional armor and weapons on the outsi
de was quickly becoming adopted as the perfect defense vehicle in the Southwest.
Around the vehicle were four other winged Breeds with one inside the vehicle with the human couple. Reaching forward, Keenan opened the passenger-side back door and allowed Cat to slide inside.
The lighted interior had been hidden by the dark windows, but when she faced the couple, she could clearly identify where Honor had gotten many of her features. The general’s hair was graying now, as was his wife’s, but the attractive, almost aristocratic features made them look years younger.
They stared at her in shock, both the general and his slender wife silent, their gazes wide as they watched her. She flashed them both a grin as she pulled a leather-bound sheath of papers from the deep pocket on the thigh of her snug black pants.
“What were you expecting?” she asked, amused at the looks. “You knew the winged Breeds were flying me in.”
“I wasn’t expecting you,” the general almost whispered. “Sweet God, Catarina, we thought you were dead.”
She kept her expression amused, didn’t deviate an iota from how she watched them, though inside she stilled at the name. Catarina? Who the fuck was Catarina?
“That was the idea,” she answered. “If knowledge that I was still alive reached the Genetics Council, then I wouldn’t have been alive long.”
General Roberts shook his head. “So many years. You contacted us but not your parents? They still grieve terribly, despite the fact that they believe you died as a baby.”
Everything in Cat was freezing. She was amazed she was still breathing. She had been told she had no parents. That her mother had died from her refusal to treat the AIDS she’d contracted and had passed the disease to her daughter. She’d been told that the woman had sold her child to Brandenmore for enough money to ensure she was buried properly rather than cremated as hospital property.
And Graeme had never told her any different.
Yet, she knew General Roberts wouldn’t lie, and he would never speak of something he wasn’t certain of.
“Tell me about them.” She finally managed to force words past her lips. “I never learned who they were.”
General Roberts shook his head as his wife’s eyes filled with tears.
“They are our dearest friends,” Annette Roberts whispered, tears filling her eyes as she stared at Cat in amazement. “Your mother, Helena, has been my closest friend since I was three. My God, you’re the image of her, though I can see your father’s stubborn jawline.” A trembling smile pulled at her pale lips. “Helena still cries for you each year on your birthday and Kenneth still adds a single piece of furniture to the dollhouse he made for you before you were born.”
Oh God.
They were killing her. Cat could feel her soul being shredded as it never had been before. It was being ripped from her one small piece at a time. She had parents? She belonged? And Graeme had never told her?
“How could you not know who they were?” the general asked then. “The Breed that came to us earlier this year, Graeme, gathering information on them, told us he intended to inform you of the lie Brandenmore had told of your birth.”
“And you knew Brandenmore lied about it?” Cat asked, fighting to understand such deliberate cruelty. “The years Honor was at the center and you never told me?”
Regret and grief filled his expression as he reached out for her, sighing when she jerked back from his touch.
“How could I tell you?” he asked gently. “They held my child’s life in their hands. Brandenmore could have killed Honor as easily as he cured her. I didn’t dare let any of them suspect I was less than the good little Genetics Council follower. Then, just when I thought I could keep her safe, and could go to your parents, I was told you’d died in the labs when one of the Breeds there escaped. I couldn’t find any proof otherwise and didn’t dare add to your mother’s pain.”
“She never had more children?” Cat asked numbly.
“The genetic defect you were born with had something to do with an incompatibility between her and Kenneth’s genetics,” the general told her. “They didn’t dare risk it. Losing another child would have killed Helena.”
