• CHAPTER 20 •

Cassie sat across the room watching the scene playing out before her as she flipped the knife absently, glaring at Dog, Rule, Jonas, Rhyzan and her father as they more or less interrogated the senator.

Cat, Chelsea, Cullen and Graeme had rounded up the security personnel. They were currently locked in the closet behind her as the two women talked quietly, leaning against the wall, discussing dresses of all things.

Graeme stepped back into the room after briefing the enforcers Jonas had flown in with him. Twelve Breeds were now tasked with securing the estate until they left.

She spared a glance for the insane Bengal. The stripes were gone, as were the claws. The whites of his eyes were normal now, the tilt less feline.

Bastard. He’d contacted Jonas somehow and she knew it. As though they needed him. She hadn’t needed him to come riding in with the cavalry. She was handling her mate just fine without any help.

Dirty damned Coyote.

She spared him another look, receiving another of those cocky grins he was famous for as he blew her a kiss. She bared her teeth at him before turning away.

Let him enjoy the escape for the moment; her time would come. A time when he didn’t have help.

A soft male chuckle had her shooting Graeme a hateful look as he plopped into the chair beside the low stool she sat on.

He was crazy.

Really. Teetering on insanity.

The only thing holding this Breed on the right side of rational thought was the mate who watched him with pure adoration.

Their bond was secure. They’d given to each other. This hard, savage creature had opened his soul and let his mate inside.

Unlike hers.

She flipped the knife, burying it in the wood floor with a hard whack as fury shot through her once again.

He could say he’d done what he did to protect her until hell froze over. It didn’t change facts. The fact that any Breed alive could sense the soul-deep mark he’d placed on her, but he carried no similar mark.

“You’re an interesting little thing,” Graeme remarked quietly, quite seriously, as she stared at the depth the blade had sunk into the hard wood.

“How’s that?” Resentment rose inside her in a wave.

He shouldn’t have contacted Jonas.

“I really didn’t think a female Primal was possible,” he told her. “I can’t wait to get back to my lab and figure out if the Primal instinct awakening was due to your Cross-Breed genetics or if it was carried by one or the other and simply mutated.”

She glared at him from the corner of her eyes.

“You have a lot to learn,” he sighed. “When the creature isn’t so close to the surface, it will become easier. Your mate will help. He’s actually learned a rather unique way of handling his own without the savagery taking over. I still struggle with that myself at times. Not that the beast is any less effective. Just different.” Pure arrogance filled his expression. “You’ll learn that as your mate guides you …”

“I have no mate,” she gritted out. “I was disavowed, remember?”

He chuckled at that. “A piece of paper.” He waved it away. “Sent to ensure you weren’t endangered by his actions. I rather doubt Rule even notated it in the database.”

“Doesn’t matter.” She lifted her shoulders negligently. “You can’t miss it, Bengal. I carry his mark, but he doesn’t carry mine.”

Grief threatened to swamp her.

“Ah, Cassie.” He sighed, shaking his head. “You’re wrong. That Breed carries your mark to his very spirit. The moment you put that Coyote on his ass with your knife to his throat, even I felt that bond between you snap in place. If he’d kept you out before, in that second, he opened his soul and let you flow inside him. When you’re fully rational again, you’ll realize it.”

“I am fully rational.” She gritted her teeth, pushing the words through them.

He chuckled again. “Come here.”

Cassie growled as she gave in and rose to her feet, following the Bengal as he led her to the ornate mirror positioned over a sideboard.

“Look, little Primal,” he urged softly. “Look at your eyes.”

She looked up and froze. The whites were gone, her blue irises almost glowing, filling her eyes and sparking with fury within her face. Her hair framed her face, unbound, curls rioting over her shoulders and down her back, giving her an otherworldly, witchy look.

“Dog told me once his mate was a siren. That her voice could make grown Breeds weep, that her eyes could mesmerize, and from the moment he’d set his sights on her, she ensured he didn’t slip into that black void his soul was becoming. Primals ride the edge of madness, or at least, it seems the males do.” His head tipped to the side as he regarded her through the glass almost quizzically. “Perhaps you’re simply an anomaly.”

She leaned closer, staring at her eyes. “How do you make it go away?”

He sighed heavily. “The Primal never goes away, but it rests. You awaken it; it doesn’t awaken itself. When you know the danger of losing your mate is over, then it will sleep. It won’t awaken again until you call it forth. And it gets easier to awaken it without that phenomenon. Though you’ll learn how much sharper your senses are when it’s fully awake within you.”

Pulling back, she lowered her head and moved back to the low stool she’d claimed. She jerked the knife from the floor and tucked it in the sheath at her thigh once again.

Graeme settled back into the chair next to her and relaxed with a heavy sigh.

“Will you give me more blood when I need it?” he suddenly asked. “I have quite a few tests to run. I’ll need more.”

She rolled her eyes. “Why the hell not.” Resting her elbow on her knee, she propped her chin in her hand and breathed out heavily. “When are they going to just fly him over Jonas’s volcano and be done with it?”

Graeme suddenly leaned forward, looking at her with almost excited interest.

“So, that rumor’s true? Do you know where it’s at?” he asked almost gleefully.

“Restrain yourself, darling,” Cat laughed, pushing his shoulders back and perching on his lap. “You’ll frighten Cassie off if you’re not careful.”

The powerful Breed almost pouted, but his arms went around his mate, his chin resting on her shoulder. “Want to slip away?” he suggested, blowing in his mate’s ear. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

“You will anyway. You’re so easy, Graeme …”

Cassie tuned them out, unwilling, unable, to listen to their banter. She was still too raw, too ragged inside.

Rising to her feet, she decided she’d had enough herself. It was time for her to return to the Bureau. She’d had enough of this house, the stench of hatred and corruption.

How the hell Dog’s father had survived here as a child and young man she couldn’t fathom.

“Cassie.” Jonas stopped her as she reached the doorway.

“I’m leaving, Jonas,” she snapped, aware of Cullen, Graeme and their mates shadowing her.

Throwing her hand up in farewell, she passed through the doors and strode through the house, heading for the foyer. There were no less than three heli-jets parked on the lawn now. She could be back at the Bureau in a matter of hours and send it back when they dropped her off. Jonas would no doubt be here for a while. And she was tired of sitting, waiting.

She had things to do.

 • • • 

“You got this?” Dog snapped out the question to Jonas as Cassie left the room, heading, he knew, for one of the heli-jets outside.

“Go,” Jonas agreed. “I’ll call another transport from DC. It can be here in less than an hour.”

“Dog.” Dash stopped him before he could get away. “What happened in that garage …” He grimaced, his expression tightening at the memory of it. “Whatever’s tearing her apart …”

“I know what happened to her,” Dog assured the other Breed, the lashing guilt he felt over it impossible to let go of for the moment. “She’ll be fine, Dash. I swear it.”

There was no other comfort he could give the father who hurt for his child, who hurt with her, struggled to protect her.

“I’ll hold you to that.” The Wolf Breed nodded abruptly. “Make sure she is.”

 • • • 

The sun was coming up when Cassie stepped back into the apartment at the Bureau. She shed the lightweight black jacket she wore in the living room, paused at the door to the bedroom and kicked her boots off. The snug tank came off next, dropped carelessly just inside the bedroom door; the pants were shed just inside the bathroom.

She wasn’t wearing panties.

Dog leaned against the door frame and watched as she adjusted the temperature, then stepped beneath the shower, her head lowering to allowing the steamy spray to saturate her hair.

She hadn’t spoken on the flight back, despite several attempts by the others to engage her in conversation. She’d withdrawn so deep inside herself that Dog had felt the beast rising inside him again, desperate because he couldn’t sense her.

It had been Graeme’s quick response, a cautioning shake of his head and the warning to wait, that had allowed him to find the control and ease back. That crazed Bengal carried a beast inside him unlike any Dog had ever sensed. If anyone understood the enraged fury consuming Cassie, then it would be him.

The sheer wild agony he’d felt echoing in his soul until that second he found himself flat on his back had eased. It wasn’t comforting, though, because the sense of aloneness he felt was worse. She’d pulled so far away from him that he could barely sense the emotions she was struggling to contain.

He’d been ten when the creature rose inside him. Ten when it had torn free. It had taken three days for it to retreat, to allow reason, sanity, to return to the boy he’d been. He’d be damned if he’d give Cassie three days. No way in hell would he let her drift in that black void alone.

Stripping and dropping his dirty clothes in the basket he’d always seen her use before, he activated the additional showerhead and stepped in with her. The little growl of warning and impending violence that sounded from her throat had him grinning.

“Savage little halfling,” he teased her, soaping his hair as she glared up at him before turning her back.

Her eyes were still that amazing neon, burning like flaming gems within her pale face. Once the Primal, as Graeme called it, retreated, exhaustion would claim her. And he intended to by God have this settled before her system completely shut down on him.

“Pissed at me, are you, baby?” Filling his palm with her scented shampoo, he buried his hands in her hair before she could avoid him, tightening them and holding her in place as a snarl escaped her lips.

Savage little beast she was.

He was filled with regret at the reason, but almost overwhelmed by pride as well. That enraged little creature had done what grown Breeds couldn’t. She’d put him on his ass, her blade at his throat, and he’d seen the threat in those raging blue eyes.

“Yeah, you’re pissed,” he sighed, working the shampoo through the lush curls that rippled down her back to her hips. “Not that I blame you. You have every right.”

What he’d done to her threatened the very core of the mating, and he knew it. He had not just allowed but ordered another Breed to lay his hands on her, to restrain her as he drove away. He’d legally disavowed their mating, separated himself from her at a time she felt she should have stood at his side.

What he’d done was unforgivable, and he knew it. But she would forgive him; he couldn’t allow her not to. She was his heart, his soul.

She was stiff, unresponsive, as he caressed her scalp with firm motions, working the shampoo through the curls. She refused to relax against him, to still the anger coursing through her.

“You were outside that room, you know what happened, you know why it happened,” he told her quietly. “You can be pissed, Cassie, you can be hurt, you can rage from now to hell and back, but it won’t change a damned thing, baby.”

He continued to work the lather through her hair, rubbing the strands between his fingers, bunching them, massaging her scalp.

“If it would take away the pain I caused you in that garage, I’d let you slice my throat a thousand times over,” he told her then and felt the almost imperceptible shudder that raced through her. “For as long as I live, I’ll know what I did to you, I’ll live it in my nightmares, because I felt every second of it shredding my own soul.”

She tried to jerk away from him, rage echoing in the low, furious growl that filled the shower. His fingers held her firm, gripping her hair with one hand, the opposite arm wrapping around her hips to jerk her back against him.

“There wasn’t a second, not an ounce of your pain that I didn’t fucking feel,” he snarled. “Let go of your anger long enough to sense the truth of that.”

She stood as stiff as before, the water coursing over them, brilliant white suds rinsing around them, silky soft, but not as soft as the long strands of hair caressing his body.

He could feel that rage still whipping through her, destroying both of them. Resting his forehead atop her head, he breathed out heavily, fighting against the devastation he remembered sweeping over him.

“Mutt didn’t want to stop you,” he whispered, feeling the flinch that raced through her body.

His eyes closed, remembering the sight of the other Breed’s hands on her bare arms, hearing her screams of pain and feral fury.

“I couldn’t risk you, halfling,” he whispered. “Ryder had his own son murdered, the woman his son pleaded for him to accept so she’d be safe, so their child would be safe. He hunted them down like animals and the only thing that saved me was his uncertainty at the time that I existed.” He could never understand the evil that blackened men’s souls. “I hid for three days in a burrow with a coyote mother and her pups, huddled against those tiny creatures for warmth, and I swore I’d never allow anyone else to suffer at his hands …”

“You betrayed me.” Ragged, torn with pain, but still the most beautiful voice he’d ever heard in his life. “You let him touch me. Disavowed me. You left me.”

She tried to jerk away from him again, nearly managing it before he caught her hair again and jerked her around.

He should have kept her back to him. The creature that had risen inside her was once again dormant. But the sight of that creature spilling into her eyes was better than this. Gem bright, overflowing with tears, and filled with pain.

“Look at me, Cassie,” he whispered, framing her face with his hands, knowing he couldn’t hide from her now; all she had to do was look. “Do you hurt alone? Did you suffer alone? Would I have ever done any of those things for any reason other than to save you?”

Fury erupted in her eyes. A woman’s fury. A mate’s rage.

“I’m your mate,” she cried, her finger stabbing at his chest as the scent of her reached him then, sweet, pure, on fire. “It’s my place to face whatever you face. You can’t save me from your actions, you moron,” she all but screamed. “You took all of me and left me with nothing.”

“Look at me!” he yelled, gripping a handful of sodden hair and forcing her head back. “Look at me, Cassie. Do you believe you don’t have all of me? For even a second?”

She owned him.

“I will skin your ass out, hang your hide on my wall, and I swear to you, I’ll find such a bad-ass Breed to mate that you’ll cringe every second in hell if you pull this shit on me again.” She was shaking, but with anger rather than that feral, primal rage that had filled her before.

“One mate,” he snarled, unable to believe she’d make such a threat. No, as he stared down at her, he seriously feared that was more than a promise. “Get rid of me, halfling, and there is no other.”

A snarl curled her lips, a feminine growl of power vibrating in her throat. “Fucking bet me.”

By God, she meant it. She’d actually try.

She wouldn’t succeed, but she’d try. The very thought of it was terrifying.

And he was a sick bastard, because his cock was harder than hell, fully engorged and throbbing with something so far beyond lust that he had no name for it.

“Fucking test me.” He jerked her to him, lifting her from her feet until her face was level with his. Her knees gripped his hips, the lush, heated folds of her pussy teasing the head of his dick. “Even consider attempting another mate for any reason, I’ll show you exactly how I’ll deal with it.”

She bared her teeth at him, eyes narrowing. “I dare you.”