Lion's Heat (5 page)

Jonas went through the window. He felt the glass biting across his shoulders, felt the animal rage that surged through his body, and went for the enemy.

Brandenmore hadn't expected an attack. Rather than thinking to grab the child, he came to his feet instead. The weapon aimed and fired, the minute burst of explosive energy barely missing Jonas's head before Brandenmore jumped for the door.

A roar tore from his throat. A sound Jonas knew had never escaped his body as the full scent of the child hit him then.

Jumping between the babe and the door, Jonas faced the other man, his own weapon ready, held firmly in claw-tipped fingers as he snarled back at Brandenmore.

His faced creased with cruelty and age, Brandenmore smiled, a cold, mocking sneer that had Jonas's finger tightening on the trigger. Brandenmore held his weapon aimed in the direction of the babe.

"So much information." Brandenmore shook his head with a cluck of his tongue. "So many experiments. We've learned a lot since you escaped, Alpha One."

His eyes narrowed on the other man.

"That baby." Brandenmore nodded to the too-silent babe. "She's a test, no more than you were a test. No more than any other has been. It doesn't take a lab to create an experiment, now does it, Alpha One?"

He'd shoot him, but the slightest movement of Brandenmore's finger on that trigger and the laser burst would destroy Amber despite Jonas's attempt to protect her.

"I'll kill you," Jonas promised him, staring into the cold, merciless cruelty of the other man's gaze.

Brandenmore smiled again. "You've been trying for a while now, Alpha One. You haven't succeeded yet." He glanced to the cradle, which held the child. "And you won't succeed now."

Before Jonas could jump for him, Brandenmore dove through the doorway.

A roar of rage tore from Jonas's lips. Adrenaline and pure animal fury had him starting for the door before he stopped, turned and went for the child instead.

Pulling the tiny body from the cradle, Jonas tucked her close against his chest. He launched himself through the window seconds before fire and heat exploded behind him, catapulting him through the air as the night seemed to go to hell around him.

CHAPTER 2

SANCTUARY, FELINE BREED HEADQUARTERS BUFFALO GAP, VIRGINIA

The Breed heli-jet touched down in the main estate yard, an almost unheard-of occurrence. Teams of Breeds--Feline, Wolf and Coyote--surrounded the area, hard eyes, weapons ready as the outside entrance to the labs was flung open just as the doors to the heli-jet slid open.

Jonas Wyatt jumped from the black jet, his clothes singed, his dark face smeared with soot and blood as he clutched a small bundle to his chest and raced for the labs.

Behind him, Feline Breeds Lawe Justice and Rule Breaker stayed close on his heels, each gripping a fragile arm of Jonas's secretary, Rachel Broen.

Tears and soot streaked down Rachel's face. Her dark red hair was no longer in its carefully arranged, precise little bun. It flowed around her face, long waves cascading to the middle of her back as she was pulled into the bunker beneath the main house.

"I want Elizabeth and Ely immediately," Jonas shouted as they raced through the steel- and cement-lined corridors to the main lab.

"They're waiting in the labs." Pride Leader Callan Lyons raced at his side as head of security Kane Tyler and Sanctuary's Enforcer commander, Mercury Warrant, brought up the rear. "Elizabeth was still on-site when you called. She and Ely have everything ready."

"Jonas, what's going on?" Rachel could feel the dread tearing through her system.

The hair-raising ride from D.C. to Virginia hadn't taken more than fifteen minutes in the heli-jets. It had raced to Sanctuary at full power with Jonas yelling at the pilot for more speed as Amber lay lax and limber in his arms.

He wouldn't let her hold her child. Amber hadn't whimpered, she hadn't cried.

"Here's the syringe. It was beside her in her carrier." Jonas slapped the small pressure syringe that Rachel hadn't even noticed in Callan's hand. "I want a full analysis from Amburg ASAP."

Callan passed the syringe off to Mercury, who took a quick turn down another corridor and disappeared.

Jeffrey Amburg, the scourge of the Breed community. He had been known as a butcher in the Breed labs before the rescues twelve years earlier.

Moving ahead, Kane Tyler, his dark hair cut military short, his icy blue gaze frozen with fury, flung open the doors to the main level of the labs where two women raced from a nearby office.

"We have everything prepped and ready." Elizabeth Vanderale, her dark hair tied back in a close ponytail, a white lab coat flying out behind her, pushed open another door as Ely Morrey, the Breeds' main scientist, moved quickly to an incubator set up in the middle of the room.

"Jonas." She was pulled to a stop just inside the room, watching in horror as Amber's small gown and diaper were pulled quickly from her before she was laid inside the incubator.

"We need blood, saliva and tissue samples immediately," Elizabeth was barking out as she and Ely began to move quickly.

"What's going on?" Jerking away from the two Breeds holding her Rachel latched onto Jonas's arm, fury and fear tearing through her as she stared into the living fury that brewed in his gaze. "Damn you to hell, talk to me. What did that bastard do to my baby?"

Terror was tearing at her mind, digging into her soul. God help her, if anything happened to her baby, she couldn't survive it.

She'd been begging Jonas to talk to her since the second he had rolled to his feet, just ahead of the fiery blast that had taken her house to the ground in an explosion of flames.

"Rachel, give him room." Kane gripped her arm to pull her back, only to face the snarling, animalistic fury that Jonas turned on him.

Rachel almost stepped back herself as Jonas's head lowered, his lips pulling back from his teeth to flash the predatory canines at the side of his mouth. One hand clamped on her arm, and Rachel jerked her gaze down in time to see the lethal curve of sharpened claws that had sliced from the flesh beneath his fingernails.

She lifted her gaze slowly. "Jonas, please. Tell me what happened."

A growl tore from his throat.

"Miss Broen, my son is primal at the moment. He can think, he can react, but the beast is currently controlling the man."

Rachel jerked around to face Leo Vanderale. He was a near replica of Callan Lyons, or perhaps it was more accurate to say Callan was a replica of the other man.

Long, flowing tawny hair was streaked with blacks and reds. Fierce features framed golden eyes, and power seemed to exude from his very pores and give lie to the civilized cut of his dark gray suit.

Jonas snarled back at Leo, only to receive a flash of canines as the other man came slowly forward.

He stopped and stared into the incubator for a long second before turning to Jonas. "Will you trust me to oversee her safety as you oversee the child?"

Jonas's jaw clenched. "No!" The sound was a rumble of rage.

Leo's lips tightened. "Do you really want to take me on tonight, whelp?" he growled. "Or make this woman hate you?"

Jonas growled again as he finally allowed Rachel to jerk away from him.

"Get them out of here, Leo," Elizabeth barked out at him as she moved back to the incubator with a syringe designed to draw blood.

The pressure-activated vial was quick, painless, but at the moment, it looked like a tool of death as it neared her baby's tiny arm.

"Jonas, please." Her nails dug into his arm as she gripped him. Anger and fear latched onto her with an inhuman grip. "What's wrong with my baby?"

"Brandenmore," he snarled down at her. "He injected her with something, Rachel. We have to find out what."

The words were barely human. The implications were a nightmare.

She released him slowly. Rachel pressed her hands to her stomach as it cramped with a spasm of horror, threatening to heave what little contents she had taken in that day.

Her gaze flew to the unconscious form of her child as she began shuddering, shaking with such fear now that she wondered how she managed to stay on her feet.

Amber looked so tiny in the incubator. She'd been born underweight, not sickly but her slight weight had given Rachel months of worry.

Now she lay pale and unmoving, her mop of red-gold curls laying limp along her tiny head as Rachel slowly released Jonas's arm and backed away from him.

"Amburg is testing the syringe," Kane reported, a finger pressed against the small communications bud at his ear. "He expects an initial report within thirty minutes."

"Five minutes or he dies." Jonas turned on Kane, his dark face so much more savage than normal and filled with predatory mercilessness. Rachel had no doubt he meant what he said.

Coldly, Kane repeated the order.

Evidently, Amburg didn't argue.

"Why?" Rachel turned to the only man willing to give answers, the man who had called Jonas his son. Rachel had no idea that Leo Vanderale was a Breed until this moment--until she had seen the wicked incisors at the side of his mouth that he normally kept hidden. "Why would he want to kill Amber?"

Leo shook his head. "I doubt seriously what he's done was done with the intent to kill her. Anything Brandenmore does is done with the intent to experiment, nothing more. He simply doesn't care if she lives."

Jonas snarled at Leo again.

"Why?" Rachel cried again, her voice rising as terror began to steal her senses. "Why would he do it?"

"Because certain tests have proven that you, as well as your daughter, are viable Breed mates." It was Callan Lyons who answered her, despite the rumble of fury that came from Jonas. "Brandenmore managed to steal certain information from Sanctuary last month, Ms. Broen. That information contained the results of several tests done for Breed mating. Your tests."

Rachel shook her head. Breed mating was supposed to be nothing more than a rumor, though she had wondered at the truth of it often enough.

She stared at Callan. Neither he nor Merinus appeared to have aged in the twelve years they had been together. And Kane. She had once worked for Kane. He was in his mid-forties, but appeared to be a decade younger.

Good genetics; she had heard that given as an excuse.

There had been a multitude of reasons thrown at the press, as well as scientists who had questioned the phenomenon. No Breed had ever admitted to mating heat though.

"Tests," she whispered as she tried to control the nausea welling inside her. "I was tested?"

"The blood, saliva and vaginal samples you were asked to give were to test for your viability as a mate with any Breed that you would come in contact with." Callan nodded shortly as Jonas snarled silently before turning his back on them all. "You tested positive in that viability, which led us to suspect that Amber would be viable as well as she grew older. It was a precaution we had to take, Rachel."

She shook her head slowly, denying the truth. Merinus hadn't warned her of this. Surely she would have warned her if anything like this were possible.

"I need all of you out of here," Elizabeth snapped, as she was forced to move around Jonas.

Blue eyes flashing with ire, she glared up at Jonas. "You and the mother can stay, but get the hell out of my way. The rest of you, clear out. That means you too, Leo." Her tone brooked no refusal.

Rachel turned her head, stared at Jonas and suddenly the implication of those tests hit her.

"They think we're somehow mated?" she asked as he kept his back to her.

"If you have questions, then get out with the rest of them," Elizabeth ordered as she attached electrodes to Amber. "I can't save this child if I have to listen to you berate Jonas at the moment."

Rachel clamped her lips shut, but the look she directed at her boss was a promise. The questions would come, and once she had answers, then she would decide exactly where she and her daughter would relocate to.

She wouldn't trust another Breed, not as long as she lived. She had trusted Jonas; she had trusted Merinus and Kane.

As the heart monitor began to beep, Rachel latched desperately onto the noise. Blood pressure and heart rate monitors, as well as several machines she'd never seen before in any hospital, began a life-saving symphony of sound as they surrounded the incubator.

Elizabeth Vanderale nodded slowly at the readings as she attached a nearby comm set to her ear and began to talk quietly into it.

"Rachel, we'll be outside if you need to talk," Kane promised as they passed her. "Merinus is on her way back from Colorado now. She flew out immediately when Callan called her with the report. We'll answer what questions we can."

The large lab emptied as Rachel crossed her arms over her breasts and fought back more tears as she stared at her daughter.

"She's innocent," she whispered. "You should have warned me she would be in danger."

She would never forgive Jonas or Merinus for neglecting that warning.

"We had no reason to believe she would be in any danger." Jonas's voice was still an animalistic rasp. "We had no reason to believe you would be. It wasn't the tests of viable mates that Brandenmore needed. It was the tests of current mates and certain hormonal shifts that occur with mating that he was interested in. There was no reason for him to go after potentials, because it's been proven that those tests aren't always reliable."

Rachel rubbed at the chill that invaded her arms as she focused on the machines once again.

Elizabeth Vanderale was still talking softly. Jonas glanced her way several times, his more acute Breed hearing picking up the conversation when Rachel most likely couldn't.

"Amburg has initial results back," he told her softly as her lips parted to question him. "The syringe held certain Breed hormones, but in his estimation, nothing that should be harmful to her."

"She's not moving," she whispered painfully.

Jonas jerked as though in pain before rubbing his hand along the back of his head. She'd seen him do that often over the past months she'd worked for him. The gesture normally indicated a sense of frustration.