His eyes narrowed on the other man.
"That baby." Brandenmore nodded to the too-silent babe. "She's a test, no more than you were a test. No more than any other has been. It doesn't take a lab to create an experiment, now does it, Alpha One?"
He'd shoot him, but the slightest movement of Brandenmore's finger on that trigger and the laser burst would destroy Amber despite Jonas's attempt to protect her.
"I'll kill you," Jonas promised him, staring into the cold, merciless cruelty of the other man's gaze.
Brandenmore smiled again. "You've been trying for a while now, Alpha One. You haven't succeeded yet." He glanced to the cradle, which held the child. "And you won't succeed now."
Before Jonas could jump for him, Brandenmore dove through the doorway.
A roar of rage tore from Jonas's lips. Adrenaline and pure animal fury had him starting for the door before he stopped, turned and went for the child instead.
Pulling the tiny body from the cradle, Jonas tucked her close against his chest. He launched himself through the window seconds before fire and heat exploded behind him, catapulting him through the air as the night seemed to go to hell around him.
CHAPTER 2
SANCTUARY, FELINE BREED HEADQUARTERS BUFFALO GAP, VIRGINIA
The Breed heli-jet touched down in the main estate yard, an almost unheard-of occurrence. Teams of Breeds--Feline, Wolf and Coyote--surrounded the area, hard eyes, weapons ready as the outside entrance to the labs was flung open just as the doors to the heli-jet slid open.
Jonas Wyatt jumped from the black jet, his clothes singed, his dark face smeared with soot and blood as he clutched a small bundle to his chest and raced for the labs.
Behind him, Feline Breeds Lawe Justice and Rule Breaker stayed close on his heels, each gripping a fragile arm of Jonas's secretary, Rachel Broen.
Tears and soot streaked down Rachel's face. Her dark red hair was no longer in its carefully arranged, precise little bun. It flowed around her face, long waves cascading to the middle of her back as she was pulled into the bunker beneath the main house.
"I want Elizabeth and Ely immediately," Jonas shouted as they raced through the steel- and cement-lined corridors to the main lab.
"They're waiting in the labs." Pride Leader Callan Lyons raced at his side as head of security Kane Tyler and Sanctuary's Enforcer commander, Mercury Warrant, brought up the rear. "Elizabeth was still on-site when you called. She and Ely have everything ready."
"Jonas, what's going on?" Rachel could feel the dread tearing through her system.
The hair-raising ride from D.C. to Virginia hadn't taken more than fifteen minutes in the heli-jets. It had raced to Sanctuary at full power with Jonas yelling at the pilot for more speed as Amber lay lax and limber in his arms.
He wouldn't let her hold her child. Amber hadn't whimpered, she hadn't cried.
"Here's the syringe. It was beside her in her carrier." Jonas slapped the small pressure syringe that Rachel hadn't even noticed in Callan's hand. "I want a full analysis from Amburg ASAP."
Callan passed the syringe off to Mercury, who took a quick turn down another corridor and disappeared.
Jeffrey Amburg, the scourge of the Breed community. He had been known as a butcher in the Breed labs before the rescues twelve years earlier.
Moving ahead, Kane Tyler, his dark hair cut military short, his icy blue gaze frozen with fury, flung open the doors to the main level of the labs where two women raced from a nearby office.
"We have everything prepped and ready." Elizabeth Vanderale, her dark hair tied back in a close ponytail, a white lab coat flying out behind her, pushed open another door as Ely Morrey, the Breeds' main scientist, moved quickly to an incubator set up in the middle of the room.
"Jonas." She was pulled to a stop just inside the room, watching in horror as Amber's small gown and diaper were pulled quickly from her before she was laid inside the incubator.
"We need blood, saliva and tissue samples immediately," Elizabeth was barking out as she and Ely began to move quickly.
"What's going on?" Jerking away from the two Breeds holding her Rachel latched onto Jonas's arm, fury and fear tearing through her as she stared into the living fury that brewed in his gaze. "Damn you to hell, talk to me. What did that bastard do to my baby?"
Terror was tearing at her mind, digging into her soul. God help her, if anything happened to her baby, she couldn't survive it.
She'd been begging Jonas to talk to her since the second he had rolled to his feet, just ahead of the fiery blast that had taken her house to the ground in an explosion of flames.
"Rachel, give him room." Kane gripped her arm to pull her back, only to face the snarling, animalistic fury that Jonas turned on him.