Rule Breaker: A Novel of the Breeds (37 page)

No. No, her parents would not do that.

But they had. She knew her mother, and she knew her mother would do anything if Kandy were threatened, to protect her. And everyone knew Kandy was her parents’ weakness.

What would Rule do?

She stared up at the Breed in horror, watching his green eyes go from frozen to fiery in a heartbeat before they once again iced over as though the heated fire of rage had never touched them.

“What would your parents do, if they believed you would face that punishment rather than your mate?” he asked then.

The elevator doors slid open into a conference room filled with Breeds. Across from her, Rule stood as a wide flat screen monitor showed her parents, amplified her mother’s voice and the pain-filled accusation that opened Gypsy’s soul like a scalpel and left her emotions, the anger, fear and self-rapacious guilt, to flood her system like a tidal wave that destroyed everything in its wake.

“Mrs. McQuade, did you not admit to bringing a stealth device into—”

“I did,” Greta cried out painfully. “I told you I did.”

“And if I told you that your daughter will be punished—for the rest of her days, she will know a hell unlike anything you could imagine in payment for your crimes unless you divulge the name of the person or persons who aided you in this—would you then give us the information we require to prosecute them instead?”

“What? What are you saying?” Hansel shook his head, obviously fighting to understand the implications of what Jonas was saying.

“I am saying, Mr. McQuade, that should your daughter accept a statute of Breed Law that allows her to bear your punishment for your crimes, would you willingly allow her to do so? Would you allow her to suffer, in pain, in isolation, for the rest of her life to protect whoever set you on this course of action? Or would you give us the answers to the questions that were submitted to you when you were first detained for attempting to bring that damnable device into what is effectively my damned home and risking not just my life, but my wife’s and my child’s?” he demanded, the rage building in his voice with each word.

“No . . . you can’t do that,” Hansel whispered in horror and disbelief.

“She hasn’t been our daughter since the night she helped those bastards kill my son,” Greta sobbed, her expression twisting in agony as each Breed watched her in shell-shocked silence. “My daughter died with him that night.”

“No, Greta.” Hansel stared at his wife in horror as she voiced the rage she carried toward a child who had played no part in the horror she had suffered as well.

“You know it’s the truth,” Greta sobbed, all but hysterical. “All that mattered then was the next party, and that’s all that matters to her now. The next party, the next wild drunken night and trampy two-bit Breed she can fuck. That’s how she honors the brother who died because of her stupidity.” Her eyes suddenly shot past Jonas, horror filling her face as Hansel McQuade’s followed. Her father’s eyes suddenly filled with tears as they met Gypsy’s through the two-way video monitor.

She felt frozen. Locked into place as all eyes turned to her, staring at her in varying degrees of pity.

“Fuck!” someone whispered, a male voice, low, a hiss of raw fury a second before Rule roared out in rage, lifted an object from the conference table in front of him and hurled it at the screen.

It shattered, throwing shards of glass outward as Jonas ducked, and those nearest turned their heads quickly to avoid the sharp projectiles.

Something stung her forehead, her cheek, but she wasn’t certain what.

The sickening realization that her parents believed the act didn’t surprise her; she had been damned good at her job over the years. But to have them voice it to these men who respected her enough to see through her party-girl act destroyed her. To know that they might suspect or even privately blame her was one thing, but to have her mother accuse her so virulently with such disgust and lack of warmth, she had to admit, laid her soul bare.

That was her mother.

The woman who had raised her . . .

No, her parents hadn’t raised her, she finally admitted.

Mark had.

They’d been busy building their business, or playing with Kandy, the girly-girl of the two sisters who liked to dress up, and didn’t get dirty and didn’t beg to go hunting with her beloved brother.

It had been Mark who had taught her how to ride her bike, to roller skate, to hunt, and to race dirt bikes over the desert. He’d taught her how to spy while making it a game, how to be quiet, how to slip out of the house and how to pick a lock.

He had been teaching her how to know what he was thinking with just a look . . .

Her eyes met Rule’s as she felt that paralyzing fear she’d felt nine years before, the first time she’d seen his eyes go feral like that. All blue with no whites, the pupil retracting with rage.

He’d been there then, she realized, her eyes locked with the naked rage and pain in the brilliant, too-sharp blue of his eyes. With the same look in that oddly colored gaze, the same wild fury she could see there now.

And the same warning.

The same warning that had been in Mark’s eyes just before he had died.

“ Don’t cry. Be brave, Peanut.” His lips moved slowly, making certain she knew what he wanted her to see, staring at her, his gaze locked on hers, intent, warning. A message she couldn’t read no matter how hard she tried. “Don’t cry. Be brave, Peanut.”

She was rarely called Peanut, she realized in that second, and never by Mark. He had never given her pet names. She was his Gypsy Rum, baby sister or baby girl. Never, ever had he called her Peanut.

And baby sisters didn’t have to be brave, he’d told her over and over again, that was a big brother’s job. He could be brave for both of them, and she could cry all she needed to.

And still, she couldn’t cry. She was brave, foolhardy even. She had taken on her brother’s work, protected her sister as she had been told over and over again that Mark would have wanted her to.

Mark died for you . . .
How many times had that accusation been leveled at her in the form of a chastisement?

It wasn’t your fault, Gypsy, they knew Mark’s weakness . . .

She was his sister, but everyone had remarked as she grew older how Mark had always treated her more as his child than a sister.

“I’m supposed to be brave,” she whispered, nine years of unshed agonizing pain scraping over her throat.

Rule shook his head slowly as a tormented grimace tightened his face. “You’ve been brave enough for all of us, for far too many years.”

Slashing, agonizing, the wave of pain that swept through her, jerked her head to the side as she closed her eyes against the stone-cold reality of choices she couldn’t control, nearly had her losing control of that inner scream of denial she wanted to let free.

When her eyes opened, it was to meet the tormented features of Jonas Wyatt’s expression. The pain he shared with her, she imagined. Choices and decisions that had perhaps not gone as planned, lives that were lost because he hadn’t been Superman that day. She could see it all in his face.

The director who had fought for more than ten years to build Breed awareness and ensure the survival of his people. The friend who had watched over the Breeds under his command and who grieved as no one but his mate could understand when he lost one.

And the father.

The father forced to stand by and watch as his child possibly died in front of his eyes.

These Breeds together had saved her life. Jonas, Lawe, her mate Rule, Flint and perhaps even Loki. She now knew he had been there that night. They had been there, and without them she wouldn’t have lived. Mark’s sacrifice, no matter how undeserving she was, would have been in vain, just as her mother believed.

“As his mate, I refuse to accept his demand for Self-Warrant and ask that you do the same.” The words left her lips before she was even aware she intended to say them. “The crime isn’t his, and the punishment would be not only undeserving but also lacking in gratitude.”

Her mother would never understand Rule’s sacrifice. But Gypsy did. He wasn’t making the sacrifice for them, but for her. He was doing what everyone had imagined Mark had done. Giving his life for her.

“Dammit, Gypsy,” Rule growled as she swore she heard Lawe mutter, “Thank God.”

“And,” she continued. “I request leniency for the crime committed by my parents until an explanation is given and possible exoneration based upon circumstance is heard by the Breed Ruling Cabinet.”

Jonas’s eyes widened. She had just given herself away and she knew it. She shouldn’t have known about this law, any more than she had known about the one Brannigan had informed her of.

Jonas nodded slowly as she watched Rule moving from the corner of her eyes, prowling, stalking closer to her as though she would bolt at any second.

And God knew, she wanted nothing more than to bolt.

She wanted to sink into the pit of pain and rage that she’d held back for nine years, but first she had to finish what she’d just started.

“Agreed, Ms. McQuade.” It was the Prime Alpha, Callan Lyons, who accepted her request.

“Agreed,” Jonas repeated.

“And I request their release and a gag placed on any announcement of their crimes until that hearing can be held, with an offer of information in exchange for such and a promise to ensure that they arrive promptly at the hearing to answer for their crimes should exoneration not be made after they’re questioned.”

“I’m not much of a liar,” she whispered, remembering her brother laughing at how easily she gave herself away. “It’s better if you just make certain no one knows what you’re doing; then they don’t have questions you can’t answer, right?”

“Stop this,” Rule snarled furiously as she edged away from him, the intent in his gaze assuring her that he would stop her now if he could. Stop her, until he learned what she had to exchange before anyone could have a chance to hold her to it.

“I won’t let you destroy yourself for me.” Her gaze blurred from the tears that filled her eyes, Gypsy pressed her clenched fists into her stomach, nearly heaving with the pain tearing through her. “I won’t be the cause of it. Never again, Rule.”

He snarled furiously as Lawe suddenly caught hold of his arm, pulling him to a stop before he could reach her and quickly whispering in his ear.

She turned back to Jonas quickly. “I don’t know the identity of my contact,” she stated, trying to breathe past the tightness of her chest. “But not very long ago, I saw the two men he met with outside my apartment. Give me forty-eight hours, Jonas, and I swear if you don’t have what you’re seeking to save your daughter, then I’ll give you the identity of those two men and you can ask them yourself.”

“No.” The fury in Rule’s voice surprised her, causing her to jerk in protest as fear began to surge inside her again at the sight of Jonas shaking his head.

Oh God, she was sure he would take the offer. Certain she could save her parents another way.

“Do you actually believe I saved your life nine years ago to watch you throw it away by meeting with only God knows who and possibly getting both yourself and your mate killed?” Jonas snarled then, allowing the blood, and the breath, to rush back to her head in a dizzying wave. “I believe I’ve had enough experience with headstrong mates and their stubborn-assed Breed males to know for a certain fact that a mess like that is nothing I want a part of this year, thank you very much. Think again, Whisper.”

She knew that code name she was given was a very bad idea.

She shook her head desperately. “All I have to do is send a message.” She was giving that message now, and she and Dane Vanderale both knew it. “Give me forty-eight hours. I won’t leave Rule’s suite, and you can fill the damned place with Breeds if that’s what you want. But I swear to you, Jonas, one way or the other, you’ll have what answers I can give you when that time is up. Please,” she whispered, knowing she was losing her grip on the tears that had been building for so many years. “They’re still my parents. And I still love . . . both of them.” Her breathing hitched as the regret slamming through her system nearly stole her breath and weakened her knees with the uncertainty of what he would do now. “Jonas, please, they’re still my parents.”

She didn’t dare glance at Dane or at Dog where he sat near the South African. And she sure had no intention of meeting Rule’s eyes as he stood stock-still by his brother, Lawe. If she did, she would give them all away and she knew it. The second she did, Rule would know it. He knew her too well, she realized.

And knowing both Dane and Dog as well as their reputations, they would find a way to ensure that Jonas was satisfied without once sacrificing their own identities.

And she needed to do this without sacrificing the promise she had made to the man who had trusted her brother so implicitly that he had given a fifteen-year-old on a fast track to death’s door a reason to live.

But more importantly, she had to do it without placing the burden of her parents’ punishments on the chance she was being given to finally have a life of her own. A life outside the guilt, outside the lies and outside the traitorous acts of a man who had attempted to destroy it to begin with.

The same man who had betrayed her brother nine years ago and used her to ensure his death.

CHAPTER 26

L
OBO
R
EEVER’S ESTATE

T
HAT SAME NIGHT

“I know who you are,” the Breed hanging from the wall, his toes barely touching the floor, hissed with what he must have thought was an intimidating sound.

Gideon, Graeme to those at the Reever estate, smiled. It meant playtime.

And he sorely did enjoy playtime.

He ignored the Coyote for the moment, laying out a few tools he would need later. A few pliers of differing sizes and uses, a heavy hammer, ball gag—sometimes the bastards just didn’t stop screaming.

He was searching for a particular knife he’d lent Khi—Khileen as others called her—Lobo’s stepdaughter, during the interrogation of the Coyote’s partner two weeks before, when the satellite phone he carried at his hip vibrated insistently.

Pulling the phone from the holster, he stared at the number and grimaced in irritation. He really wasn’t in the mood to deal with this right now, but damn if he wasn’t fucking obligated.

Finding his mate might have started the process of returning his sanity, but a few individuals had been instrumental in completing the process and making certain he found his way to Lobo Reever’s ranch with enough credentials and references to ensure he was hired on the estate.

“Yeah?” He answered the call, hoping it wouldn’t take long. A useless hope in most cases where this hybrid was concerned.

“The jig is up, old chap.” Amused and inherently irritating, that foreign accent cloaked in a lazy drawl never failed to raise his hackles.

This time, they didn’t just rise, they started doing a little jig on the back of his neck.

“What jig?” he growled, though he had a feeling he knew exactly what the “jig” was.

“Contact Jonas,” he was ordered, the voice firming with the demand. “Or we’re all going to be in damned hot water, with more Breeds after our asses than we know what to do with. And I’m sincerely not in the mood to have to explain getting caught to my sire.”

Graeme snorted at the order. “Let me guess, you managed to fuck this up before I could finish saving that kid’s life? Why doesn’t that surprise me, you little prick?”

Why didn’t that surprise him?

This wasn’t the first time he’d worked with the bastard, and though the hybrid was usually damned competent, there were times, highly inconvenient times, when he had a habit of throwing a monkey in the works and letting it play hell with the plan.

Graeme always thought it better to just shoot the fucking monkey, but what the hell did he know? He was just the Breed who managed to hide right under everyone’s nose. And how did he accomplish that, he asked with silent sarcasm. Let’s see,
he stayed the fuck out everyone else’s business maybe?

“When’s the next injection due and how many before we’re finished?” Hell, now the accent had managed to completely disappear; that didn’t bode really well for him. That meant he could possibly get sacrificed as a useful but regrettably required casualty. And that wasn’t a part Graeme had any intention of playing.

“Final injection is due within the next eighteen hours.” And he was damned glad it was the final one. Hearing that baby’s pain-filled cries and the patient, unwavering love and pain in her mother’s voice was taking a toll on his hard-won sanity.

“We have forty-eight hours,” he was told imperiously. “Get Jonas the information he needs or my partner and I are history here. Someone witnessed a meeting we had with our contact in the Unknown. If you don’t give up the secrets, my friend, we’re all screwed.”

A snarl escaped before he could control it. Dragging his hand over the dance of nerves being played out over the back of his neck, Graeme checked the mirror he kept hanging on the wall next to his work area.

Fuck. Fuck. Was that a shadow of a stripe coming across his face? He was going to kill the little bastard on the other end of the call before it was over with.

“You’re the one who was caught,” he reminded the other man coldly. “Unlike you, I’m not into the damned games and machinations you and your brother so enjoy. I keep my nose out of everyone else’s business and get along damned fine. If I contact Jonas before that final injection, there’s no way in hell I’ll get in there to finish it. And I’m not quite so willing to sacrifice that child’s life for yours, asshole.”

“Finish it, then contact him,” he was ordered. “But have it done in the required amount of time, Graeme. Because if our witness identifies me and our partner, then we’ll give up the goods on you to save our own asses. Never doubt it.”

“So take care of your fucking narc,” he grumped, rolling his eyes and catching sight of the prisoner he’d dragged into the Reever cells less than an hour ago. “I have things to do. Dealing with Wyatt isn’t one of those things.”

“Then make it one of your things. Our narc is Whisper. Exactly how do you expect me to take care of that one?”

Son of a bitch.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he swore he could feel the stripes that once marred the flesh of his face beginning to shade his skin again as fury rose inside him. He couldn’t touch Whisper and they both knew it. Hell, he didn’t just owe her his life, he owed her the life of his mate. Whisper was the child who had overheard the plot to kill Judd, Honor, and Fawn before the Unknown had managed to hide their identities. Had it not been for her contacting the man her deceased brother had worked with, then Fawn would have died. And Gideon—Graeme—would never have found his sanity.

He’d kill for her, but he’d never consider killing her.

The bastard on the other end of the call was another story, though.

“I’m going to take this one out of your hide, asshole,” Graeme warned him.

“Stand in line.” The suggestion was amused and filled with a confidence that his safety was assured.

Graeme wasn’t so certain about that.

“You actually have forty-six hours,” he was told then. “I expect to hear the roars of rage long before that deadline is actually up.”

Yeah, he just bet the bastard did.

Disconnecting the call, he turned to the soldier staring back at him malevolently, wondering how pissed Lobo would get if he just beat the shit out of the bastard instead of wrapping him up nice and pretty for Lobo’s stepdaughter.

She’d gotten to him, Graeme admitted. The little toddler slowly becoming a Breed. Once he’d explained it all to her in a way she could understand, she had warmed to him. She knew it was going to hurt at first, bad enough that she wouldn’t be able to stop crying maybe. That she would feel really bad, but once it was over, she would be her daddy’s little girl for sure.

The first injection Brandenmore had given the baby had begun the process of changing her DNA. Almost overnight her ability to understand and to reason began rising exponentially. If one knew how to communicate with the child, then seeing the world through her eyes, through her observations, almost made a Breed believe in miracles.

Now, four injections later, the last and by far the most painful was coming. What Brandenmore had done should have destroyed the child in the same manner in which he had died himself. What no one had known, but Graeme had found in the blood and tissue samples Phillip Brandenmore had taken that night, was that Amber would soon have been diagnosed with the same type of leukemia that had nearly killed Honor Roberts.

Had the scientists begun injections in Honor sooner, then the pain of reversing it would have been much lower, closer to the levels Amber was experiencing.

But hearing that tiny child cry, seeing the pain in her eyes as he’d returned for each follow-up injection, was killing him.

He believed himself to be a monster. What did that make the scientists who had created and tortured the Breeds for so long?

“Got problems,
Gideon
?” The name that fell so easily from the Coyote’s lips had Graeme turning slowly, the monster that existed within him making its presence known.

Graeme felt the burn of his flesh, the primal response that ignited a genetic code and flashed the dark stripes across his face, his hips, alongside his left leg.

As quickly as he lost control, he snagged it back, holding on with a desperate grip before it could escape forevermore as it had before.

The Coyote saw it, though. His eyes widened, he swallowed tightly and an instant later Graeme was in his face, canines bared, his eyes picking up hues of color, differences in body temperature and the fear the Breed had been fighting to hide as claws gripped his neck, exerting just enough pressure to pierce the tough hide and threaten the large artery in his neck as the sound that rumbled from his throat echoed in the caverns like a lost nightmare.

“Say that name again,” Graeme suggested, “even think it, and we’ll see how easy it will be to skin you.” With the other hand he used a razored nail to lay open the thin layer of skin and slice between it and red meat.

He knew what it felt like. He carried his own scars from the scalpels the scientists had wielded.

“Then I’ll dissect you as they did the fine Gideon. Living. Screaming. Your bowels bloodied as the waste of it seeps from your body like liquid terror and you piss yourself from the pain. And that’s just the beginning,” he hissed, feeling his eyes begin to redden. “Within seconds you try to beg for mercy, but the pain is such that no words can form, your brain no longer recognizes the need for speech, the need to rationalize—it only knows one thing. The agony, the horror of it and the inability to move. The stark realization that you can’t tighten a muscle, can’t jerk a limb. You can’t even control your own heartbeat as they reach in and touch it, slicing into your brain with such a brutal punch of agony as they do so that those animal genetics of yours tuck their tails and start howling for death.”

A second later he scented the wash of the Coyote soldier’s urine as it began seeping from his body.

Fuck, and here he thought he had a soldier of better mettle than the others. The scent dragged him back from where he’d slipped once again, though. It jerked the sanity back to his mind, the logic and ability to think, to reason flooding back into his senses.

“Don’t test me,” he growled, stepping back from the obviously terrified Coyote Breed. Casting him a sneer, he asked in disgust, “You bastards used to have more iron in your spines. What did we do? Kill all the crazy ones?”

He was starting to think it was possible.

...

This was a complication.

Dane inhaled the sweet, black cherry taste of the slender cigar and considered his next move.

It wasn’t that he enjoyed this particular game, and God knew he didn’t. It was that he knew his brother far too well, and their parents were certain at the time that there were no alternatives.

Dane had even suggested to Jonas that if the message went out to Gideon and Judd that the injections rather than the code itself were needed, one or even both would help. Both Jonas and Rachel had instantly rejected such an action, though.

And Ely, the Breeds’ doctor, wasn’t yet in a place where her confidence could match Jonas’s will as it had once done. That had left Dane to do the dirty work, as it usually did.

He didn’t care to get his hands dirty, but if Gideon, or Graeme as he was called now, didn’t give Jonas what he wanted within forty-eight hours, then Dane could kiss his entire American family and friends good-the-fuck-bye, because Rule’s little mate would tattle on him like a five-year-old.

“Remind me to stay the fuck out of your little games from here on out.” Dog sidled next to him, struck a match and lit the tip of his own cigar. “I’d heard conspiring with you could get dangerous. Strange, never heard of you getting caught before, though.”

Dane threw him a careless, confident smile. “I’ve got this, my friend,” he drawled with far more assurance than he felt, he admitted. “All will be well.”

“Let’s hope Leo’s ready to welcome me home when Jonas puts out that execution order on me,” the other Breed sighed in response. “I’ve been getting rather bored with America anyway.”

Dane almost snorted at that one. Dog? Bored? He rather doubted it. Dog lived for the games he was able to play within the Breed societies here. Like all the Leo’s protégés, Dog was a master manipulator and a calculating son of a bitch in the bargain. So much so that when Leo realized Dog was in America working at freeing the Breeds and not just helping them to set up their societies, but encouraging it in a fashion, he’d been livid and dared the Coyote to return.

Leo was still a bit upset over that one.

The patriarch worried incessantly about the safety of the American branch of the family, and still swore that the world simply wasn’t ready for Mating Heat, and keeping it a secret much longer would be impossible.

Dane shuddered to consider what his father would do if he ever learned that his son, his legitimate heir, had been bankrolling the Coyote’s little venture at the time. He often wondered if Leo, as he often threatened, would actually disinherit him.

He was afraid his father just might do so.

“You worry too much, Dog,” Dane informed him absently as he drew on the cigar and considered the night thoughtfully. “You should relax a bit.”

“This is why we were never friends, Dane,” Dog reminded him with that ever-present mockery. “Hell, this is why I just stayed the fuck away from you. You cause havoc no matter where you go.”

Of course he did, that was his job, Dane thought as his gaze narrowed on a flash of long auburn hair and a particular turn of the head.

When the female turned back to him, the face was wrong, the slender body too soft, without the play of well-honed feminine muscles beneath her flesh.

Would he ever stop searching for her, he wondered a bit somberly. Each time he was even near the area he would watch, wait, certain at some point that he would catch a glimpse of her.

Yet he never did.

He prayed he never would.

Letting her go had been the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life. Allowing her to have the mate she longed for, the life she had dreamed of, had shattered his heart even though her happiness was all he’d ever asked for.