As Jonas neared the house, he paused, his eyes narrowing on Cabal as his nostrils flared. Cabal knew the director was taking in the scent of the mating, as well as Cassa’s scent as it surrounded Cabal’s body. Now there would be no doubt in Jonas’s mind that the mating was completed.
“Hell, I thought you’d at least wait until this assignment was over,” Jonas growled.
Cabal narrowed his gaze back at him. “I’d waited long enough.”
And that was the damned truth. He’d held back because he’d sensed Cassa’s need to do so. That need was no longer there, for either of them. He should have held back for the sake of the mission, but the animal inside him didn’t give a damn about the mission. It cared about the mate, and the animal was closer to the skin than he had ever imagined.
He watched as Jonas grimaced before staring back at Lawe and Rule.
“Hey, Boss, don’t look at me,” Lawe ordered him. “I told you, I’m steering clear of that mating shit.”
“It gives us the heebie-jeebies,” Rule drawled.
Jonas grunted at that. “At least someone is still sane.” The look he gave Jackal was mocking.
The other man stared back at him stoically, as always. Jackal didn’t talk a lot. He did his job and spoke when he had to.
“Coffee’s inside,” Cabal informed them. “I have caffeinated for the four of you.”
He’d stick to the decaf for now. He didn’t need any additional problems where the mating heat and Cassa were concerned. Caffeine tended to make the symptoms worse. If his current state of arousal was any indication, he didn’t need anything to hype them.
Jonas looked around the clearing, his jaw tense before he shook his head and moved for the porch. “Pack up. You can head back to Sanctuary with your mate,” he stated as he reached the steps.
Cabal chuckled at the thought. “Forget it, Jonas. This will finish out here, and we both know it.”
“Not with that mate of yours tracking every move you make,” Jonas said coolly. “This investigation is too serious, Cabal. We can’t risk her.”
Cabal shook his head at that. “She already knows just as much as we do. The killer sends it to her whether we want him to or not, Jonas. We can’t afford to ignore that.”
He hated it. There was nothing he hated more than the fact that a killer was drawing his mate into these murders, but he couldn’t stop it. In the early hours of the night he’d admitted that he couldn’t keep her out of this. As long as there was a Breed going rogue, as long as he was drawing Cassa into this, then there was no way to keep her out of it.
“Hell, just what we need, a damned journalist involved in my business,” Jonas cursed.
“Come on in, Jonas,” Cabal sighed. “We don’t have a lot of time before she wakes up.”
Not much time at all. The mating heat was a fever that couldn’t be ignored for long, and Cabal knew it. Already the need to touch his mate, to taste her, to possess her was rising again within him.
The hormonal treatments she had been taking over the past years had helped those first few days. Adjustments were always required as time went on though, and Cassa hadn’t had an adjustment to counter the rise in hormones that mating heat was causing.
It wasn’t as hard on the male as it was on the female mate. At least Cassa had had the foresight to start the hormonal treatments ahead of time. That would ease it for her, delay conception, sometimes, and lighten the stress on the body from the need for sex.
It didn’t take away the need. There was no way to eliminate it, or to allow for the separation of mates for long periods of time. Jonas was stuck with Cassa in Cabal’s life for the moment.
“We don’t need this, Cabal,” Jonas growled as they entered the cabin and headed for the kitchen. “This situation is too damned delicate. We have to find this Breed, and when we do, we can’t risk a journalist being aware of the fact that I have no damned intentions of turning him over to Breed Law.”
Yeah, that was pretty much what Cabal had suspected. The rogue Breed had managed what no one else had. He killed without leaving a scent or a trace of his identity. There was no way to track him, no way to identify him.
“I’m sure you’ll find a way to hide the fact that the bad guy doesn’t die in the end,” Cabal muttered. He knew Jonas. The man had the ability to make things work out in his favor.
“You’re going to completely f**k this assignment up, Cabal,”
Jonas bit out as Cabal moved to the coffeepot. “He’s going to kill again, and soon. We both know he will. Do you really want your mate in the middle of that?”
Hell no he didn’t, but he knew there was no way to get her out of it now. Not without making her hate him, making her run. He wasn’t about to force her again, he’d already tried that once. It hadn’t worked then, it wasn’t going to work now.
Cabal prepared the coffee before saying anything more. He didn’t have an argument for Jonas and he knew it. There was no damned way to explain to the other man that Cassa would hate them all if she was pulled out of this.
He’d wrestled with it most of the night. He’d come up with a thousand different ways to pull her out, and he knew that not a damned one of them was going to work.