More Than Life (Arcane Crossbreeds) (29 page)

That voice could just shut it. She wasn’t a single tiny point of life in a dark room anymore. She had to stop being so pathetic and just walk right out there. Raife was waiting. She turned her head and looked at her wrist where the silver bracelet had been last night. He’d taken it off—trusted her to stay and face whatever came their way. Together. If nothing else, he would stand by her;
that
she was beginning to believe in. It was a solid foundation. Besides, if the scent that was wafting to her was any indication, he was cooking. As if on cue, her stomach growled.

With a sigh, she reached down and pulled the door open before she could worry herself out of it again. The whispering skidded to a halt, and she felt the weight of all their stares. Silence hung heavy in the room for a long moment.

“It’s about damn time, chickie. The rest of life started hours ago,” Kel commented drily from where she lounged on the back legs of a kitchen chair, one foot braced against the edge of the table.

“Not everyone gets up at the ass crack of dawn like you, short stack.” Raife laughed and tried to toe the chair out from under her. She slammed it down on all four legs and shot him a dark look.

“You appear well, achoti.”

Katya smiled at Gideon where his inscrutable dark gaze appraised her over some files he had fanned out in front of him.

“Thank you. I feel…better,” she said, her eyes drawn to Raife as she walked across the room. A thin distressed brown T-shirt was stretched taut across his wide chest, and a pair of faded jeans, torn at the knee, rode low on his hips. His thick brown hair was tied back at his nape; an escaped strand brushed behind his ear. She couldn’t help but let her gaze travel down his back and over the firm swell of his butt to his bare feet as he turned to retrieve a plate from the cabinet.

“Nice shirt, kitten,” he murmured, his voice saturated in awareness. The ass knew she was admiring him.

Katya dropped a startled glance to her shirt and felt heat flare in her cheeks. Kel had bought most of her clothes, since she wasn’t permitted to risk being out in public. She hadn’t looked too hard at what she’d pulled on, so preoccupied with having to face everyone. Now she wished she’d put a little more attention into her details before meandering out into the light.

She was wearing a pale yellow baby-doll T-shirt with the image of a dragon on the front. In dark red lettering it said “dragon rider.”

Kel pursed her lips and nodded in satisfaction. “That one was my personal fave.”

“Bitch,” Katya shot playfully at the other woman as she rounded the table to take the seat Raife was holding out.

Kel chuckled as she rocked back on the back two legs of the chair and raised her hand in the air. “Guilty.”

As Katya settled into the chair, she cast a quick look at Tag, who sat on the other side of the table. He had yet to look up from his laptop or acknowledge her in any way, and she felt the coolness of his silence. Of all of the team members, she’d come to lean on Tag the most. His rejection hurt.

Taking a deep breath and pressing down her bruised feelings, she forced a smile. “So what are we looking at?”

“Eat first, and then we need you to do your magic hack trick,” Raife said as he set a plate in front of her. His big hand slid lightly over her head, and she could feel a spike of anger in him that wasn’t directed at her.

Katya picked up her fork and cocked one brow at Raife. “Magic hack trick? I’m not a magician at a birthday party.”

Raife folded his arms across his chest with a smirk, his gaze roving over the front of her shirt. The heat that rolled between them had her squirming in her seat. She knew he was remembering last night.

“Now you can really say you’ve been there, done that, and got the T-shirt, kitten.”

“Stop and just tell me what you found.”

Raife chuckled and then cleared his throat, a smirk still playing around his lips. “I found some files hidden in Defoe’s fireplace. All missing persons. What was in the files was pretty generic, but Defoe must have gone back and interviewed the families again, because his notes are a little more detailed.”

“His notes create a profile of the missing people that indicate they may be crossbreeds,” Gideon added and slid a couple of the files down the table to her.

“Crossbreeds?” Katya cast a surprised look at him and picked up a file. “These are the files from the police department, right? They’re all humans.”

“At first glance.” Raife nodded and pulled the chair out next to her. He spun it around and straddled it, folding his arms across the back. His shoulder pressed against hers when he leaned over to point out a note on the file she held. His body heat and that heady male scent that was all him added to the sense of easy intimacy that clung to them this morning. “We’re thinking they’re not aware of what they are. They all have human lives, but there are these things that stand out—a little stronger than they should be or claim to be psychic or a witch. Defoe was heading in the right direction; he just didn’t know what he was looking at.”

Taking a bite of the omelet off her plate, she set aside one file and picked up another, frowning as the same note appeared on the new one.

“What is ‘lost colony vent’?”

Tag cleared his throat and turned his laptop around so she could see it. “The Lost Colony Venture.”

Katya flitted a look to his face before concentrating back on his screen. He still felt closed and cold to her, and she just didn’t have the courage to call him on it. “What is it?”

“It’s a research project that is investigating a theory about the Roanoke Island Colony.” Tag’s green eyes were shadowed as they met hers. “Jamestown wasn’t the English settlers’ first time trying to create a colony in America. They tried to create a settlement on a little island south of Jamestown in modern-day North Carolina.” He clicked a button, and a map of the East Coast appeared. He moved his mouse over the narrow strip of land. “They didn’t do very well, and in 1587, the governor went back to England to get supplies for the colony. When he returned, the entire colony was gone. Just vanished without a trace.

“So this Lost Colony Venture is a group of historians and archeologists who’ve set up shop in the area to try to determine what happened to those settlers. A couple of years ago, they created a sister program called the DNA Venture.”

Katya jerked her head up and met his shadowed eyes. “They’re doing genetic testing on people?”

Tag nodded, looking away to pull his laptop back in front of him with a frown. “The bastards sent a call out for volunteers who thought their ancestors came from that area to offer up their DNA for testing.”

“Defoe made the connection,” Kel continued, sliding more of the files from Gideon to Katya. “Every single file has the same note. He must have discovered that the one element all of the missing people had in common was that they participated in this project. That meant those assholes were looking for a specific type of person, and they were using this research project as a means to find it.”

Katya pushed a file off the pile to frown down at another one. “They were looking for humans with Arcane genes.”

“Exactly,” Raife boomed before pushing up from his seat to pace. “This Lost Colony Venture checked out—just a bunch of history nerds—but they use an independent genetics firm for the DNA profiling called GenTest.”

“GenTest?” Katya echoed woodenly as the bite of light and fluffy omelet she’d just shoveled into her mouth turned to ash on her tongue. She had to muscle it down as a chill tightened over her skin.

“Kat?” Raife stopped pacing to look down at her in concern.

Katya pushed away the last quarter of the omelet, since the part she’d already eaten now felt like a rock in her stomach. “It’s the Triumvirate.”

The legs of Kel’s chair slammed down onto the floor. “And you know this how?”

Katya could feel Tag’s distrust swell against her. Even the thick, dark mist that shrouded Gideon’s emotions curled in suspicion. She slowly pushed her chair back, and the muted grunt of the chair legs dragging across the tile bounced off the expectant silence.

They wanted her to explain. Most of them had been dealt a raw deal by the Triumvirate at some point in their lives. Kel particularly had a major hate on for any traditional Arcane structure.

They deserved an explanation. She carried her dishes to the sink and scraped the remnants of her brunch into the garbage disposal before setting her plate on the counter. She kept her movements precise and controlled.

“What is this bullshit?” Raife snapped, glaring at each of them. “You think she’s in league with those fuckers?”

Katya mentally reached out to soothe his anger. “No, it’s okay.” Turning around, she braced her hands against the countertop behind her and met their stares. “Before…everything, my uncle used to proctor contracts for me to create unique security software and hardware. I was given the specifications. I developed it and sent it on. A lot of it was for the Triumvirate. I wasn’t supposed to know who the work was for, but…” Katya shrugged one shoulder. She’d been innocent but not ignorant. “I designed the security software for GenTest. It’s definitely Triumvirate. The Bay House as well as most other Houses use it to perform their genetic testing. Blood purity is important to many of the old Houses, and they used GenTest to weed out anyone with…anomalies.”

Kel’s eyes warmed, and she came to her feet with a sigh. “That’s how they nailed you. Pureblood bastards.” She walked over to stand shoulder to shoulder with Katya, crossing her arms over her chest as she eyed Gideon and Tag. “All the females in a high-and-mighty House have to get tested to decide if they are pure enough to be brides or whether they only make the grade to be walking blood banks. My guess Kat here lucked out on both counts.”

“That’s an understatement.” The laugh that slid past her lips was dry. “Females get tested once they reach sexual maturity, but they must have been testing me from the beginning. I thought it was normal, and no one ever said anything about it. They were profiling me from the start.”

Katya cast a glance at Raife where he hovered with his arms crossed over his massive chest, his gaze hard as he stared at his friends. Kel and Raife flanked her on either side, their irritation and loyalty providing a buffer against the distrust.

Those amber eyes were intent when he dropped his gaze to her.

“You were right all along. My uncle is responsible for this.”

The pain of it sliced through her. All of the bloodwork she’d received as a child. They were experimenting on her.

He wrapped his arms around her and buried his lips in her hair.
“I’m sorry, Kat.”

“I should be the one apologizing to you. I blamed you, when you’re nothing like them.”

“I should have checked on you. I could have spared you all these months of hell if I hadn’t been so weak.”

His big body was tense, and she gripped the back of his shirt in her fists.
“If it hadn’t been for you, the past twenty years would have been hell instead of just the past couple months.”

He let his breath out in one gust, ruffling her hair, and his body relaxed. “Fuck, I love you, kitten.”

The room went silent, and Katya buried her face in Raife’s chest, his heartbeat fast under her cheek.
“I just said that out loud, didn’t I?”

She nodded against him, squeezing him tighter. He lifted his head and cast a chagrined look at Kel.

“Don’t look at me, dumb-ass. I wasn’t the one that just blurted my feelings to the room at large.” Kel laughed next to them.

“Stuff it, Sheridan,” he said to Kel as he pulled slightly away from Katya and looked into her face. His golden eyes were bright, and she thought there was a slight pink tinge to his cheeks. “
I’ll do it again if that’s what it takes.”

“I believe you.”
Katya reached up and pulled him down for a kiss.

Kel rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “Now that we got that taken care of…can we get back to the stuff that pays the rent?” She shook her head and turned back to the table. “All the people in those files are crossbreeds. That they were experimenting on you doesn’t make sense. We need to access the GenTest files and find out what was so special about you. No offense.”

Katya caught Raife’s gaze. He’d shared his blood with her when he’d rescued her as a child, but that couldn’t be the reason. Dr. Mahoney insisted species couldn’t be changed after birth. That meant one or both of her parents had to be of mixed descent. Her mother was from the Bay House, and her Uncle Canton said her father was from the Great Lakes House. Somebody was lying to her.

“That shouldn’t be a problem if you wrote the software for GenTest.” Tag’s voice was flat.

Katya exhaled the breath she hadn’t realized she was still holding and nodded. “As long as the software’s still mine. I always leave a back door. I can gain access to whatever they have stored on their network servers.”

“Funny thing about programmers,” Tag said drily, carefully watching her, “each one has a unique way of writing code. The security software at GenTest was written by the same programmer who wrote the security software at the research facility in Death Valley. Why do you think that is?”

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Just what the hell are you trying to say, Jennings?”

Raife pushed Katya behind him as he andTag launched toward each other. The two large Drachon faced off, the barely leashed power drifting from them like smoke, tainting the room. Gideon slowly came to his feet. Distantly, she felt Kel put a hand on her shoulder as she took in the distrust and disgust in Tag’s expression, distorting the face of someone she’d thought was a friend.

But then what the hell did she know about people? Obviously someone she loved and trusted betrayed her.

“What the hell else should I believe? That you just happened to be taken where she was being held? How convenient. She’s a freaking computer genius that was led right into Incog. The Triumvirate would love to get their hands on Doc and her research. Your
mate
could be a damn Trojan horse for all I know. Hell, and I just led her right to my security system.”