Her baby. Elizabeth fought Dash. Fought the sudden, sickening realization that he could be right. She had always known how special her daughter was. So unique and so gifted in so many ways that she had convinced herself that it was only a mother’s pride that made her see it.
“She’s still your child, Elizabeth.” He tried to step closer to her, then stopped as she retreated in panic. She couldn’t let him touch her. If she did, she would break. Shatter into so many fragments she would never be able to find all the pieces again. “I smell your connection to her. It’s unmistakable. But Dane Colder is not her father.”
She was going to faint. Elizabeth could feel it and fought it. He could smell it? No. Motherhood wasn’t a smell. Or was it? Cassie had come from her body. Her womb. She trembled violently. How could he smell it?
“He is.” She shook her head desperately, suddenly remembering Dane’s desperation to convince her to have a child that first year. “He was desperate for a child. We went to the doctor’s office together. He did everything he was supposed to.”
She was fighting to deny him, to deny what he was telling her. Fighting to try to find a way out of this sudden, horrifying situation. She stared at Dash, silently pleading, begging him to take it back, to show just a small moment of weakness, a doubt that he could be right. If he would, then she could find a way to convince herself that none of this could be true. Instead, he gave her proof.
“Martaine was a high level Genetics Council scientist,” he said with chilling knowledge. Of course, he knew, she thought. He was a Breed. He knew the monsters who worked within those labs. “He worked in the initial phases of breeding, trying to reverse the coding that kept the males from fertilizing their females.” A low, painful whimper was her only protest. “When he failed to do what they wanted, he was quietly retired rather than killed, in case they needed him later,” Dash continued. “He went into fertility practice and evidently his experiments continued. Somehow, he figured out how to use the unique Breed sperm to fertilize the ova. Because I swear to you, Elizabeth, Cassie is a Wolf Breed child. That is why Grange won’t let her go. That is why he killed her father. And that was why Dane refused to accept the child. Because he knew.”
“No.” She shook her head desperately. “He wouldn’t have done that. He wouldn’t have.”
“He did, Elizabeth,” he snarled, the sound ricocheting through her body like a bullet. “Listen to me, damn you, because Cassie’s life is in more danger than you ever realized. She is the first. Do you hear me?”
She flinched violently. “She is the first Breed child conceived outside a lab. The first created, in vitro, without first altering the ova to accept the unique DNA. Do you understand what I’m saying, Elizabeth?
She’s unique. A bridge between human and Breeds, and a female in the bargain. Breedable, Elizabeth. Grange would know that. He knows it and he wants her for it. And if he doesn’t get her, his next step will be to sell this information to the bastards who created us to begin with.”
Breedable? She was a baby. You didn’t breed babies. You cuddled them and you loved them and you raised them to be happy and free and to love you in return. She couldn’t make sense of this. Couldn’t accept the information battering into her brain.
“She’s just a baby. You can’t do that with a baby.”
“Elizabeth.” He groaned her name with agonizing emotion. “Listen to me, honey. You have to listen to me now. You can’t protect Cassie from this. You can’t shelter her or run far enough away to hide her from this.”
Elizabeth stared back at him in shock. Couldn’t protect Cassie? She had to protect Cassie. She was her child. She couldn’t accept anything else.
“I won’t let my baby die,” she raged furiously. “You’re wrong. You have to be wrong.”
“You know I’m not wrong,” he snapped. “The sounds she makes while she’s sleeping. There wasn’t a Wolf Breed in the labs I lived in that didn’t make that sound as children. When she was playing with Mica and bit her. It’s instinct to use the teeth rather than the hands to gain freedom. Her canines are longer. Her intelligence is far advanced for her age…”
“Stop!” She screamed out at the pain radiating through her body now. She couldn’t bear to breathe; it hurt so badly. She had to escape him. Had to help Cassie survive this. “Get away from me. Just get the hell out away from me.”
She moved for the connecting bathroom. She had to get to Cassie. Had to make sure nothing or no one could ever hurt her child again. She tried to run, tried to rush past him and escape the pain he was bringing into her life.
He caught her just past the chairs, moving faster than she could. His arms, so hard and strong, wrapped around her, dragging her against his chest as she collapsed. One big hand held her head against him, his broad chest absorbing her sudden scream of agonizing denial.
“No,” she wailed against his chest, her fists slamming into him as hard as the truth slammed into her soul.
“Oh God, no. He didn’t do this to my baby.”
She was shaking so hard in his arms she frightened herself. On one level, she was aware of the breakdown. The past two years had culminated in this. The fragile hold she held on her control crumpled and memories assailed her mind.
She hadn’t been comfortable with Martaine. Dane had had to fight, beg and plead with her to allow the doctor to perform the procedure. Elizabeth had wanted someone else. Had wanted a doctor she trusted, one who didn’t make her skin crawl. But Dane had been insistent. It would be private this way. No one would ever know that their child hadn’t been conceived naturally. No one would be aware that he wasn’t man enough to get his own wife pregnant.
The list of excuses had been long and the fights had almost been violent. Finally, Elizabeth had given in. Dane had been ecstatic until they had been told the procedure had been effective. Elizabeth had conceived.
He had been quiet. His excitement had slowly faded from that moment on. And she had never known why. Now she knew. It had gone from his wife and child to an experiment. Dane had been almost obsessively jealous. The realization that she wasn’t carrying his child must have eaten him alive. It had. It had destroyed their marriage, and eventually his greed had taken his life.
“Mike, see what you can find out about Colder and Martaine, privately, such as any money owed or paid. I need as much information as I can get. Put a call into Tyler for me. We have to talk again.”
She had been barely aware of the other man and his wife entering the room as she and Dash fought. Now she was in his arms as he held her tightly to his chest, crying. She didn’t know why she was crying. Tears weren’t going to help. But she couldn’t stop.
As Dash threw out hasty orders to the other man, his hands were stroking her hair, her back, holding her close to the heat and hardness of his body. Sheltering her the only way he knew how. She recognized it. Had done it often with Cassie.
Her baby had been betrayed again, just as Elizabeth had been. It all made sense now. So many things she hadn’t been able to explain: the sudden influx of money after she conceived, Dane’s distance from the child, Martaine’s interest in her. He had visited the house often before her divorce and had called her personally several times.
And Cassie. Elizabeth felt her heart stop. Her daughter knew. She knew and hadn’t told Elizabeth. She had to know. She was there when Dane was killed, had heard her father haggling over the price of selling her to Grange. She would have to be aware of her birthright. The pieces started falling into place. How Cassie had known all the times someone had been in the apartments they had lived in. She had stopped, fear holding her body rigid as she breathed in deeply. They’re here, Momma. The fairy says they’re here. The fairy hadn’t shown up before the night Dane had been killed.