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She was dying inside. Agonizing bursts of emotion were exploding inside her, ripping her apart with the force of them.
“And you say Graeme knew?” she asked.
The general nodded. “The Bengal boy that cared for you, Gideon I believe his name was, he knew as well. Once the genetic abnormality was being treated, Dr. Foster demanded to know who your parents were in case he needed further genetic information. The boy was there and I questioned his presence, though the doctor assured me he would never speak of it. I guess he didn’t.” He shook his graying head with sadness. “Damn, that kid loved you, though. There wasn’t a guard or doctor there who didn’t sweat whenever the therapies were given to you. Even Brandenmore walked cautiously around him where you were concerned. What they did to him later . . .” He drew in a hard breath as the scent of horrific disbelief wafted around him. “If they hadn’t threatened to reacquire you, he would have died during that last vivisection.” Horror flashed in his eyes and in Cat’s soul. “There were three. During the last one, Bennett gave the order to acquire you at all costs to see if you could survive the same experiments. God knew he deserved the peace after what Bennett did. I hope he finally found some measure of it.”
Three vivisections? They’d cut into him as he lived, exposed organs and inner flesh in an act that no other Breed was known to have survived? And they had threatened to do the same to her. There was no way he would have allowed that. Because of it, the monster that lurked inside him had risen like a demon of death to destroy anyone that dared threaten her.
This was what he’d hid from her, because it had been her fault. That transfusion placed her blood inside him, marked him with her mating hormone, and because of it Dr. Bennett would have been beside himself with glee at the thought of experimenting on a living, mated Breed.
“You brought the information?” The files detailing what had been done to him, why it had been done, and the birth of the monster they unleashed. That had been her price, she’d warned him, though she would have given him the information to find his daughter regardless.
“Had I known it was you, Catarina,” he whispered, “I would have tried to dissuade you from asking that price.”
From seeing what had happened to Graeme rather than briefly being told? What difference would it make, she knew now what Graeme had been trying to protect her from.
All the lies, his deliberate silence, his refusal to reveal she had parents, all of it had been his attempt to protect her, to ensure no one could harm her. The means was questionable, but the intent pure. That moment of insight broke what was left of her heart. She’d refused to trust him, even though she’d known, known in the deepest reaches of her soul that the man she’d known as a child would do nothing to intentionally harm her. “Graeme, the Breed that came to us some months back, said he knew where Honor was being hidden. He had yet to learn her identity, though.” Gray eyes hardened on her. “We haven’t heard back from him. We didn’t tell him we were already in contact with someone giving us reports on her.” Gratitude flashed in his eyes. “For that, we thank you. Living without her . . .” Moisture gleamed in his eyes as a tear slipped from his wife’s. “So many years lost.”
He handed over the flash chip to her. The information she’d bargained for was hers now, for what? To learn how far he would go to ensure her safety?
Cat in turn handed over the leather-protected sheath of papers, pictures and various flash chips she’d made of Honor’s life over the years.
“Is Honor happy?” Annette whispered then, a thread of fear, that her daughter might not need her in her life now, hidden in the hope.
“She’s with a Breed who loves her more than his own life,” Cat told her softly. “But she still misses a mother to confide in and a father to lean on. The couple that claimed her as a daughter are wonderful peo
ple, but she never became close to them.” Honor had never awakened as Cat had. At least, if she had, she’d never let anyone, especially Cat, know. “Take the information you have to Jonas Wyatt. He’s at the Window Rock offices of the Bureau of Breed Affairs. Make certain the director of that office, Rule Breaker, is present during your meeting. Confront him, demand to see her, and Rule will make certain it happens. Otherwise, Jonas will have the Breed she’s in love with move her.”
“She’s in danger?” the general guessed.
“For the moment,” Cat affirmed, still trying to hold in her shattered emotions. “Letting her see her parents won’t affect the situation, though. It may even help it.”
“Catarina.” Annette sat forward as Cat reached for the door to leave the Dragoon. “Whatever pain haunts your eyes could be soothed with a mother’s love. Go to your parents, please. Because I don’t know if I can watch her pain another year and not reveal the truth. And trust me, when I do, your father will go ballistic. He’ll raze through the Breed forces with every favor he’s amassed in his life and his father’s, and God only knows the destruction he’ll cause to find you.”
“The Bureau didn’t know about me. They didn’t hide me, nor did they know where I was hidden. If they had, I would have died long ago. Trust me, Mrs. Roberts, those who hid me—no one can find them unless they want to be found.”
“It won’t change anything, my dear,” the general warned her gently. “Kenneth won’t allow it to. Once he learns you’re alive, he’ll tear the world apart to find you.”
Cat stared through the window, watching as Keenan and his winged Breeds stood protectively around the Dragoon. Her world was no place for parents who had loved their daughter.
“I’m not the child they lost anymore,” she whispered, refusing to look back at them. “They’re better off not knowing.”
“Cat—” Whatever the general had been about to say was cut off by a vicious roar, nowhere resembling sane, that split the night and had the winged Breeds reaching for their weapons.
“Go.” Pushing the door open and diving out, she yelled the order to the driver. “Get them the hell out of here.”
The winged Breed jumped into the driver’s seat and was accelerating before Cat finished the order.
“Let’s fly,” she demanded, racing to Keenan.
The Eagle looked down at her with quiet contemplation as he shook his head.
“Better to face the beast here than to have him tracking us.” He sighed. “Hopefully I’ll still have some feathers attached when this is finished.”
“No.” She grabbed his arm, suddenly terrified as the roar sounded again, this time much closer. “I’ll deal with him. Let’s go.”
“Fly, bastard!” Enraged, guttural, the demand came as a shadow bounded from the darkness, crouched, maddened rage gleaming in hammered gold eyes. “While you have feathers to do so.”
Cat swung around to face . . . she wasn’t even certain who he was. Whatever Graeme had become, it wasn’t Gideon, and it wasn’t the face he wore before the world now. He seemed taller, broader, so powerful it was frightening.
