He wasn’t her mate any longer. She felt her nails biting into her palm as Jonas turned slowly to stare at her.
“Delay his departure,” she snarled.
The corners of his eyes twitched, as though he had only barely held back the widening of them.
“If he’s refusing protection, Dawn, there’s nothing we can do,” he told her reasonably. Dawn didn’t want to hear reasonable. She didn’t want logic and she didn’t want an argument.
“Delay his departure an hour. Let him think he won. Lie to him, I don’t care, you’re good at that. But do something.”
“And where will you be?” he asked.
“I have to talk to Ely.” She had to stop shuddering. It wasn’t showing on the outside, but on the inside she was coming apart and she couldn’t handle it. “I have to talk to her now.”
She brushed past the group, barely restraining a flinch each time her flesh came into contact with their bodies, reminding her that Seth might have gotten over her, but she was a long way from being cured. She was aware of his eyes on her as she stalked through Mission Control. She knew exactly where he was, standing to the side, where he discussed one of the satellites he had given the Breeds free use of. His voice was low, but she heard him. Heard him beneath the other voices that filled the cavernous room as she hurried through it.
When had this happened? When had Seth stopped reacting to the mating heat that she had been warned had begun in him ten years before? It had to have been recently. As Cassie had stated, he hadn’t aged a day in ten years. The mating heat slowed down the aging process considerably. He still looked in his early thirties. He was still strong and powerful, but he no longer carried her scent. It was all she could do to keep from running from the communications bunker back to the estate. When she reached it, she slammed into the back door, ignoring the women sitting at the table, the children laughing and playing as they ate.
There were three Breed children now, and Tanner’s wife and mate was carrying twins to add to them. Dawn hadn’t thought she would want children, had never given them consideration. But regret sliced deep as well. She felt bombarded from all sides, rage and pain, regret and aching need racing through her as she made her way to the basement level of the estate house and pushed her way into Dr. Elyiana Morrey’s office.
Ely looked up in surprise from the files she was reading as Dawn slammed the door behind her.
“It’s not time for another treatment, Dawn.”
It had become a battle between them. The hormonal treatments had had to be adjusted almost weekly to keep the effects of the mating heat from driving Dawn insane.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” The words rasped from her throat, hollow and filled with pain. Ely blinked back at her. “Tell you what?”
“Why didn’t you tell me that you had found a cure for my mate?” she sneered, enraged. “You can cure him but you can’t cure me?” The accusation was unfounded, and it wasn’t the point. The animal part of her was screaming in pain, in rage. It didn’t want a cure. It wanted the mate. The touch, the bond, the connection to what belonged to it. To her. Ely sighed heavily and shook her head as she rose to her feet and carried a file to the large wood cabinet on the other side of the room.
“I didn’t think you would be interested, just to start with.” She shrugged before brushing the thick strands of her dark brunette hair back from her face and adjusting her glasses on her face. “And it’s an anomaly I’m still studying.”
“How long have you known?” Something inside her was breaking apart, shattering. Ely took a deep breath. “Almost a year for certain. The hormonal levels began leveling off in him nearly four years ago. There are only minute quantities showing up in his system now. Within a few months, I expect his system will be completely free of the heat.”
Dawn sat down slowly in the upholstered chair closest to her and stared back at Ely. “Why not in me?”
she whispered, feeling strangely hollow now, alone, in a way she hadn’t felt in ten years.
“I don’t know, Dawn,” Ely said softly. “I suspect it’s because it began in you. Your Breed physiology may not allow for the hormone levels to recede.”
She stared back at Ely, her breathing rough, while inside—inside she felt the Cougar that so often lay dormant rising furiously. It snarled. Rage tore through the instinctive Breed synapses and shot through the woman’s mind.
She wasn’t just a woman. A woman who had lain alone, ached and fought the nightmares of a past that she couldn’t escape. She was also a mate, and the man she had claimed so long ago was breaking the bonds that held them together.
“Dawn, you should be happy for this,” Ely told her gently. “I know it’s bothered you that Seth suffers…”
“He’s mine!” She came out of the chair in a burst of furious energy. Ely stared back at her in surprise for long seconds. “Not any longer, Dawn. Seth is no longer your mate. And hopefully, in time, the mating heat will recede from your system as well.”
CHAPTER 3
Dawn remembered, ten years before, when Seth and his father had arrived at Sanctuary to claim Taber’s mate, Roni, as their family. She was Aaron Lawrence’s daughter and Seth’s half sister. They had been searching for her for years, and had found her during a newscast that reported that Roni Andrews, a known associate of the Breeds, carried a mark on her neck similar to that which was rumored to be a mating mark.
They had crashed through the gates of Sanctuary, and Cassie Sinclair had run through the Breeds surrounding their limo, careless of her own safety, and jumped inside to ensure that these unknown people were protected.
Dawn and her team had been assigned to guard them in one of the guest houses during that week, and she had gotten to know Seth in a way she had never known another man. His dominance and power lay beneath the surface of the man. He was steel hard on the inside, but he knew how to smile and how to laugh. He knew how to tease her gently, how to brush against her or touch her without making her stomach contract with terror.
He had been the perfect gentleman, to a point. What he didn’t say or act on was always in his eyes though. A simmering heat, a promise of wicked lusts, of a man that knew all the ways of pleasure. Dawn didn’t know pleasure. She had never known a lover’s touch, never felt a lover’s kiss, until Seth. Until his lips had brushed against hers and for the first time in her life she had been close to a man without being sick with fear.
And then everything had gone to hell. The chauffeur/bodyguard Seth had with him had been a Council spy, and he’d caught her and Seth by surprise. He had managed to knock Seth out and secure Dawn to a chair under the threat of killing him.