• CHAPTER 14 •

Stepping into his residential suite several hours later, Rhyzan closed the door slowly, all too aware that he hadn’t closed the curtains over the balcony doors when he’d left that morning. The lights were out, leaving the room nearly pitch-dark. Not that he needed lights, no more than the Breed sitting across from him in the large easy chair needed them.

Setting his briefcase aside, he walked to the bar and poured himself a drink.

“Drink, Director Wyatt?” he asked.

“I helped myself.” Jonas lifted the glass when Rhyzan turned back to him.

He’d known Jonas for a lot of years, had seen him in a variety of moods, and he’d thought he’d seen him at his most furious. It was possible he’d been mistaken in that, because what he was facing now went far beyond furious.

Sipping at his drink, Rhyzan stared across the room, watching the Breed carefully, all too aware that the low rasping sound was claws against the upholstered arm of the chair, the glow of those eerie silver eyes like pinpoints of light.

“Do you have a suicide wish?” The low, feline sound of wrath whispered through the room. “Sinclair may not care much for his daughter’s mate, but he is her mate. He’ll kill you.”

Yeah, he’d guessed that the day before when Sinclair tried to beat the hell out him. He’d taken that beating. He hadn’t struck back, because he understood, he even expected it.

“If I don’t beat him to it.” The rasp deepened, the sound of the primal, fully emerged, causing the hairs at the back of his nape to lift in warning.

“The request wasn’t intended as an insult,” Rhyzan assured the other Breed.

“You stank of your prejudice, your dislike and disgust toward her.” Those demon eyes flared as Jonas spoke. “You stood in front of an innocent young woman, one who has known nothing but danger, nothing but the risk of the horrors that could await her, since she was a child, and insulted her with such base disregard that every Breed on that Cabinet was thirsting for your blood.”

Yeah, he’d got that before he left. It would have been damned hard to miss. Unfortunately, it was exactly what he’d intended. He’d had no choice in what he’d done, though.

“The missing child—”

“There is no missing child.” The growl deepened; canines flashed along with silver eyes. “Kenzi told you she thought she heard the guards discuss a child. There might have been a child. You lied.”

Oh, there had been a child—Rhyzan had no doubt of that—but it really wasn’t the child who concerned him. His initial investigation assured him that the girl was safe, possibly better protected than any of them.

The girl was a weapon, nothing more. A weapon he needed to threaten the freedom of the Coyote Dog and draw out an enemy he’d been stalking for years.

“I lied,” he agreed. “But I’ll continue to lie if I must. If I have to, I’ll have Dog dragged into a cell in chains and his mate languishing beside him if that’s what it takes. I’d hate it,” he assured the animal tensing to attack. “Believe that, Jonas, it wouldn’t be a choice I made unless I’m left no other recourse. And all I can do is pray to God it doesn’t come to that.”

He wouldn’t have a chance against a Primal Breed without some hellacious luck, Rhyzan admitted silently. Jonas could move with incredible speed when that creature came out to play, and avoiding those claws would be next to impossible.

When Jonas didn’t speak, didn’t move, Rhyzan blew out a weary breath.

“The disrespect you and the Cabinet scented was forced,” he admitted. “I have the highest regard for Cassie and hated doing it. Just as I hated messing with the mating compatibility tests after she mated with Dog.” Grimacing, he felt the tension rising, felt the Primal gathering itself to attack. “I suspect his grandfather is one of the twelve who head the Genetics Council. And his spies are here, in Window Rock.”

Stepping across the room carefully, he strode to the safe inset in the wall, activated the panel that hid it and pushed in the digital code. Opening it, he retrieved the file he kept there and tossed it to the coffee table in front of the director.

“I’ve followed them for years,” he told Jonas as one claw-tipped finger flipped the folder open. “The grandfather, then Dog and Cassie.” There were pictures, many pictures.

“Sit,” Jonas growled, with a jerk of his head to the couch next to him.

Stepping to the couch, Rhyzan sat down and leaned forward as Jonas placed three of the pictures next to one another.

The first, an army officer, the second a navy SEAL officer, and the third, the Breed Dog. Lifting a fourth picture, Jonas laid it above Dog’s and sat staring intently at the collage he’d made.

“Light.” The growl was still a harsh rasp, but it no longer had Rhyzan’s hackles raised.

Reaching to the lamp on the table next to them, Rhyzan flipped it on, watching the glow spill over the pictures.

“Why didn’t you bring this to my attention?” Still rough, but easing a fraction more, the voice rumbled with displeasure.

“I would have, if I hadn’t needed your anger, as well as Sinclair’s, to lend credence to my supposed threat.” Balancing his arms on his knees, he stared at the pictures. “I found reason to suspect some of the Wolf Breeds here at the Bureau feared Cassie, that their prejudice toward her genetics was making her a target. When word hit that she’d mated Dog, a transmission was picked up from the Bureau to his residence.” He stabbed his finger at the army officer. “He showed up here at the Bureau yesterday, but before he arrived he met with the two Wolf Breeds Dog confronted outside her suite. He left when he learned Dog was back in town after having ran with Cassie.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw the claws tipping Jonas’s fingers slowly ease back beneath the perfectly manicured nails and had to fight a breath of relief.

“He’s a hybrid.” Jonas glanced to him, his expression thoughtful.

“He’s a hybrid.” Rhyzan nodded. “And he’s mated a hybrid. According to the belief many scientists share, hybrids will give birth to Breeds that can’t be identified even with the deepest genetic testing. There will be no way to tell them from a human, and no way to eradicate Breeds completely if that happens.”

“A true Cross Breed,” Jonas murmured.

“He was here, Jonas.” Rhyzan stared at him intently. “And the interest he’s showing in the accusations against Dog and Cassie isn’t normal. Just because he left doesn’t mean he’s going to let his grandson go.”

Rhyzan turned his gaze to the pictures. When laid side by side, it was impossible to deny they were related. Grandfather, father, son, and above them, a young, blond Coyote female.

“What happened to the parents?” Jonas asked.

“The Breed mother died from wounds sustained when they were nearly captured, just hours after giving birth to their son. The father disappeared, and the grandfather spent thousands trying to find him. Ten years later he was killed by a Coyote team that tracked him to Washington State. According to what I learned, they spent several weeks attempting to learn if he’d been seen with a child but found no evidence to support it.”

Jonas closed the folder slowly over the pictures.

“Anyone else know your suspicions?” he asked.

“No one,” he answered. “He’s slick. He’s on the Breed Ruling Cabinet, plays the Breed benefactor and manages to get information he should never have access to.”

“What proof do you have he’s one of the twelve?” Jonas pinned him with those eerie eyes again.

“The father.” Rhyzan gestured to the file with one hand. “He had a sister. When he disappeared, she managed to wire him a couple hundred thousand when he contacted her. About a year after his death, as the Breed rescues were at their height, she received a letter he’d had arranged to be sent if something happened to him. She was killed several months later, but her daughter recently found that letter and contacted me.”

A fucking stroke of luck. He’d been in shock for weeks after he’d met with her and she’d turned it over to him.

Opening the file, Rhyzan pulled the envelope free and laid it on top of the pictures.

“He knows Dog is his grandson,” he said softly, laying his finger against the envelope and staring at Jonas as the Breed turned his head slowly, their gazes meeting. “He has no heir now. He knows that hybrids can possibly breed a child that can’t be identified as a Breed. And he knows they’ve mated.”

“Cassie hasn’t conceived,” Jonas pointed out softly.

“Yet …”

Reaching out, Jonas once again closed the file. “Do you have digital copies?”

Rhyzan nodded in a short, tight movement.

“I’ll take this, then.” Picking up the file, he rose to his feet and walked toward the door. “Stay away from Cassie and Dog until I finish this, or I’ll kill you.”

The door closed quietly behind him.

Rhyzan rubbed his hands over his face, shook his head and rose to his feet to collect his briefcase. He’d file the requests to interrogate Dog. The last thing Senator Ryder would want was for his grandson to be convicted under Breed Law. That will draw far too much notice.

He didn’t care much for his granddaughter, according to the girl. He tolerated her, he’d raised her after her mother’s death, but she’d always suspected her mother had been murdered. She’d drowned in the family pool. An excellent swimmer who rarely drank, yet she’d been found facedown in the pool and the autopsy revealed a high level of alcohol in her system.

She’d loved her brother, worried about him. He was her big brother. The fact that he’d disappeared and ordered her not to tell their father he’d contacted her when he’d disappeared had led her to suspect her father was behind her mother’s death.

Senator Ryder. He’d bought his way into politics and used his influence and good ole boy façade to engender a level of trust, even among some Breeds. He played Breed benefactor without even a whiff of his murderous hatred for them. He was the ultimate liar, the ultimate monster.

And Rhyzan was determined to unmask him. With or without Jonas’s help.

 • • • 

“You want to tell me what the hell happened down there?” Dog closed the door to the suite he and his mate were shown to after the hearing, watching her as she paced across the room, rubbing at her arms as she stared at the floor.

During the time he’d sat and listened to Rhyzan’s bullshit, he’d decided he was going right out and buying a fucking cape and some goddamned blue tights, because when it came to sheer self-control, he was fucking Superman.

“I’m not quite certain.” She shook her head, her confusion genuine as she said the words, her bafflement growing.

Dropping her leather case on the chair next to the bar, he unlocked his jaw, a sound of pure aggravation rasping from his throat. Pouring himself a drink, he considered the liquor for a moment, tossed it back and promised himself he was going to get something stronger real damned soon.

“So we’re just going to stay here and let him serve me up to a few interrogators without so much as a protest?” He snorted at that thought, anticipation rising inside him. “I’ve not had a good fight in a while. Might be fun.”

He’d kill the bastards with his bare hands.

She was silent, not even protesting the threat. She stood next to the balcony doors just behind one side of the curtains and stared out at the sun-drenched landscape.

“Jonas won’t allow it,” she said quietly. “And even if he did, the Cabinet members wouldn’t.”

“You put too much faith in them,” he warned her, wondering what the hell that look on her face was all about.

It was the same look she’d gotten when Rhyzan had asked about that kid who didn’t exist. Haunted, almost fearful.

He narrowed his eyes on her, poured himself another drink and considered her for long moments.

He’d always known Cassie kept a lot of secrets locked inside her. It showed sometimes in the weariness of her expression, the haunted shadows in her eyes. He had a feeling that this time, though, the secret Cassie was keeping could burn both of them.

“Where’s the kid, Cassie?” He asked the question, wondering if she would lie to him.

She froze for a second, then with a heavy sigh, shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know where she is.”

At least she was honest with him.

“But there was a kid, wasn’t there? When that transport landed, Kenzi wasn’t alone.” He stalked across the room as she faced him, glowering down at her.

“I don’t know.” The barely smothered cry was filled with pain, with confusion. “All I knew then, and now, was if she wasn’t there when Kenzi was found, then she was safe, and where she was supposed to be. I don’t know anything else.”

As she pushed past him, the scent of all those bottled emotions, fears, unshed tears and pain lashed at his senses. Turning, he watched as she faced him again, her lips tight, her exotic eyes gleaming with moisture.

“How did you know about her and Kenzi to begin with? Who came to you?” Which spirit, ghost of whoever, whatever the hell it was?

When she turned back to him, he could see the torment on her face. “I’ve felt Kenzi for a couple of years, felt this coming. I didn’t know who she was, not until the night I contacted you. For years events have interconnected, always drawing me toward her. And I knew she was important. ” Her fists clenched as emotion tightened her face. “I didn’t know it was my sister.”

Cassie stared back at Dog as he stood near the window, watched his expression, the almost calculated look in his narrowed eyes.

“How did you know those events were connected? Walk me through this, Cassie. Make me understand it before Rhyzan hangs me out to dry here.”

And the assistant would do it too. Whatever he wanted, whatever he was after, he was more than willing to use her and Dog however he had to, to get to it.

When had it begun?

That summer on Seth Lawrence’s island, she realized. It was that first knowledge that the successful mating of Seth Lawrence and the cougar Breed Dawn Daniels was so integral to her future.

From there, smaller events, people who had come into her life, events and odd occurrences, until she’d found herself in Window Rock the year before accepting Jonas’s offer that she head the Breed Underground Information Network. The division of the Bureau was created to pull in information and track the movements of Genetics Council sympathizers and supporters and those groups that followed them.

Odd flashes of knowledge, a feeling of connection, of knowledge that someone so integral to her own freedom was waiting for her, that they needed her.

As she spoke, trying to find the words to make Dog understand that it hadn’t been a matter of something telling her, or even showing her. It was that connection. It was a sudden flash of intuition, a meeting, looking into someone’s eyes and knowing where they should be.

“The night you contacted me, you knew where that transport would be and when,” he reminded her. “How did you know?”

She licked her dry lips, knowing he’d ask that question. She’d known that question was coming.

“Chelsea Martinez, mate to Graeme’s brother Cullen was part of the Breed Underground Network,” she said faintly. “The day I met her, the year before, I knew who her mate was, and I knew she was integral to my freedom. When the emergency alert her bodyguard, Tobias, managed to activate the night I contacted you, sounded in the Network’s central command, I felt Kenzi slam into my senses, begging me for help.”

That sudden connection had nearly taken her to her knees. Cassie barely remembered rushing to her office, fumbling, fighting to find Dog’s contact information on her phone and send that message.

She’d been on the verge of sobbing in terror when suddenly the connection to her sister had severed just as quickly as it had come to her.

“The kid was there with her?” Dog was watching her closely.

Cassie nodded as her gaze slipped, drawn to the window behind him. Why her attention moved, she wasn’t certain. The sun-drenched desert was always beautiful, but it wasn’t the beauty that had her glancing from his eyes to the scene beyond. And it wasn’t the beauty of that tranquil scene that had the window popping, a baseball-sized fault suddenly appearing.

She heard Dog curse, felt him slam into her and take her to the floor as a steady pop-pop-pop could be heard just below the alarms suddenly screeching through the Bureau’s intercom system. Dog’s curses were ringing in her ears as they hit the floor, close to the door as it exploded open.

“Move!” the shouted order came as Dog dragged her through the door at the same time that the sound of the window shattering behind them could be heard.

She came to her feet, kicking off one shoe, uncertain what happened to the other as Breed Enforcers surrounded them and rushed them along the halls.

“Teams are heading out,” the Coyote Breed, Mordecai, yelled as alarms continued to blast through the halls. “Security has a location narrowed down; our enforcers are flying in.”

She could feel Dog’s arm around her waist as he raced down the hall, nearly lifting her off her feet at times as he kept her close to him. They pushed through the basement doors and within minutes they were on the basement floor and pushing through the doors to Information Command.

“Stay here.” Dog swung her around to face him, glaring down at her as he hurriedly strapped on a weapon, his gray eyes cold, hard. “Right here until I get back.”

“Make sure you come back, Dog,” she ordered him. “Don’t you leave me alone. Don’t you dare leave me alone.”

The very thought that he wouldn’t come back wasn’t something she could bear. She couldn’t face it.

“Not even for a heartbeat.” His hand curved around the back of her neck, his head lowering, his lips suddenly catching hers in a kiss that rocked her entire body despite its brevity.

And in that heartbeat, he was gone, pushing through the doors of the room and barking out orders. Savage, hard. Determined.

Her mate.

 • • • 

Dark had fallen before Dog made it back to the Bureau. They’d found the sniper’s nest, but the only scent to be found was a faint human scent and that of the weapon used. High-grade sniper rifle and matching ammo. The shooter had come on a dirt bike and left the same way just minutes after the satellite that watched over the Bureau began readjusting position.

Someone knew the right time to be there, and exactly where the teams patrolling the desert would be. It was just a matter of timing, but what made them think that bullet would penetrate a window rated to take a much more powerful strike?

They’d known the window would fail, which meant someone had already sabotaged the window’s high-grade electronics.

By time they returned to the Bureau, the Breed investigators had already gone over the shattered debris, found the corrupted electronics and had the evidence in one of the labs. Now the apartment he and Cassie were being given instead was being checked for similar defects in the windows and balcony doors.

And the question remained. Was it a strike against him or against his mate?

Stepping into Cassie’s former room, he came to a hard stop just inside the door, eyes narrowing on the two unfamiliar visitors. The two Wolf Breeds standing next to the window weren’t the investigators Jonas had assigned to go over the room and the window’s electronics.

“Can I help you boys?” he drawled as he stopped just inside the door and allowed Mutt and Mongrel to move around him, flanking him carefully.

The two Breeds, both tall, one with hints of auburn in his brown hair, the other black-haired with hints of dark gray and pale blond strands, tensed at his entrance. They faced him silently, their eyes moving from Mutt and Mongrel back to him.

“We were just looking,” the darker Breed assured him, quiet confidence echoing in his voice as his pale green eyes met Dog’s.

Dog’s brow lifted, his gaze dropping to the shards of the window beneath their feet.

“You’re not the investigators,” he pointed out.

“True.” The Breed inclined his head, the scent of confidence, of inner strength and control, never shifting. “Merely curious.”

Hmm. Curiosity was a Breed fault, he admitted, he had plenty of it himself. Still, this didn’t feel like mere curiosity; this felt more like an agenda to him.

“Satisfied that curiosity yet?” he inquired, moving farther into the room, drawing in the scents he found there as he kept his gaze on the two Breeds.

“Not really.” The Breed sighed and looked around slowly before meeting Dog’s gaze once again. “But we’ll go now. Pardon the intrusion.”

Now, who said Breeds couldn’t be polite? Not that they were, but this proved this one knew how to be.

Dog didn’t move. He remained in front of the doorway, watching as the Breed stopped several feet from him.

There might have been a gleam of amusement in the hard features as their gazes met again.

“Names,” he stated softly, one hand settling on the weapon strapped to his thigh.

The Breed’s lips tilted in a wry curve. “John Kodiak.” His head tilted toward the more watchful Breed. “Troy Rain.”

Then they waited.

The air of steady watchfulness never shifted. Not once was there a hint of aggression, hatred or conflict. They just stood there, all patient and easygoing, waiting on Dog to shift.

“Not going to happen.” He grinned, his hand gripping the holstered weapon as Mutt and Mongrel did the same. “So, tell me, John Kodiak and Troy Rain. What’s the sudden interest in my window that failed electronics don’t explain?”

The two Wolf Breeds stared back for long moments.

“Warned ya,” Rain muttered, amused and irritated at the same time, as Kodiak shifted a look his way.

Dog arched his brow and kept his attention on the more silent Breed. If danger came, if would be from this one, he knew. That air of calm that surrounded the Breed had to be a shield of sort. There wasn’t a Breed alive that calm and centered.

“We’re no danger to you or to your mate,” Kodiak assured him. “As I said, we were just checking it out.”

“Hmm.” Dog pursed his lips. He was highly doubtful of that. “You know I don’t believe you, right?” he pointed out.

Kodiak nodded slowly. “Yeah. I was getting that feeling.”

“Want to tell me something I’ll believe?” he asked. “Or do you want to fight your way out?”

Kodiak gave him an ironic grin. “That our only choice? Hell of a day when a Breed can’t even be a little curious. It’s not like you and your mate haven’t been moved out of here.”

He had a point, Dog admitted silently.

“Fight or talk,” Dog suggested.

The Breed stared back at him thoughtfully, his body shifting but not in preparation to fight. Or if he was, Dog was damned if he could sense it.

That damned air of complete nonconflict was fucking freaking him the hell out just to begin with. Any Breed that right with himself and who and what he was needed to die, just for the safety of all Breeds everywhere.

“Tell me,” Kodiak finally asked softly, his voice lower, his gaze thoughtful. “What do you know about your father?”