He didn’t understand. Amanda swiped at the tears that fell down her face as she stalked down the graveled road. He was so stubborn, so supremely male that she couldn’t find the words to explain it. She was falling in love with him. Stupid fool that she was, in less than a few days, her heart was reaching out to him, her soul yearning for him. And it wasn’t just the heat, though that was strong enough to drive even a determined woman insane. No, it went deeper, far too deep for Amanda to ignore the consequences of what they were facing.
As he had said, if word got out of the mating heat, the uncontrollable hunger, the need that burned through even the strongest defenses, then the Breeds would never be safe. To protect her life and the man she was falling in love with, answers would have to be found. And now was the time to find them. Now, when the heat burned inside her like a living brand, and left her shaking, weak from the hunger for his touch.
How she had left him alone at the cabin, she wasn’t certain. Hell, she didn’t even know if she was going to make it to the estate house at the bottom of the hill her legs were so weak. Everything inside her was screaming at her to go back to him, to touch him, take him inside her. She couldn’t stop crying either. She felt as though it were ripping her soul out to walk away from him like this. To leave him alone, seeing the pain inside him and not knowing how to ease it. Getting him to talk to her was like pulling teeth. Not that talking was so easy when lust ripped at her loins like a hungry beast.
Soon, she promised herself, as soon as these tests were endured and the heat eased, they would talk. If this was nature’s way of pairing the Breeds with one particular woman, then Amanda had to trust that nature had paired her as well, with a man who would love her with the same strength and desperation that she was beginning to feel for him.
“Amanda.”
She came to a stop as she realized a small utility vehicle had driven up beside her. Looking up, she met Merinus’s concerned gaze.
“Kiowa called down to the house. Do you need a ride?”
“He called?” Confusion filled her, but she knew how easy it was to become confused when the desire was climbing to such heights.
“Come on, Amanda, get in. I’ll take you back to Kiowa if you like.” Her voice was somber, quiet. Amanda forced herself into the small vehicle.
“No.” She shook her head, forcing herself to think, to finish what she had begun. “The tests. We have to do those tests.”
“Are you sure? Amanda, you don’t have to do this.”
But she did. This was her life. Possibly her children’s lives. She did have to do this.
“Yes. Yes I do,” she whispered, raising her eyes back to Merinus’s. “For myself and for Kiowa, I have to do this.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“…As I wish for you dreams that will soothe your soul, dreams that will whisper of secrets untold. I wish for you dreams that will capture you life, dreams so spectacular and bright you can know no strife. I wish for you my child, a dream as brilliant as sunrise, and warm as its gentle rays. But most of all precious one, I dream for you, of many peaceful days.
“Sleep now here against me, this moment before our parting. And know I send with you the spirits of the eagle, the wolf and the coyote. To protect you from harm. To raise you in their arms. For mine, sweet precious one, will bring you nothing but harm…” The voice of past dreams, a young woman, small and wan, her dark eyes filled with misery.
“They forced you on her…” A grandfather’s hatred.
“We found the records, Kiowa…” Dash’s words, the day after Kiowa arrived at the Feline Compound with Amanda. “Gina Maria Bear was the daughter of Joseph Mulligan. Kidnapped, held one week, artificially inseminated before she was raped by her guard. A Coyote Breed. Test showed no pregnancy at release, but later notations mention the suspicion that she may have been after they later learned of the longer life span of the Coyote sperm. It’s also suspected that the Coyote who raped her, may have forced a second ovulation by mating her. He killed himself a month after her death…”
“They opened her up and they shoved you inside her and then they didn’t give a damn what happened to her…” His grandfather’s voice had been cruel, filled with hatred. “She suffered until the day she died, you soulless little bastard…”
“…Dream of me, Kiowa… Remember me…” The soft voice, was it his mother’s? It had haunted him for years, had come to his dreams when life was its bleakest. When a child had struggled to accept the shame and the horror of what his presence had wrought to the unknown mother.
Kiowa stared up at the dream catcher. He had been unable to dispose of it over the years. As it became worn, he had carefully repaired it, kept the wood oiled and supple, the feathers replaced as they became brittle and old. Why?
The image of his dream mother as he once thought of her, drifted through his mind again. Had the guard who raped her, mated her, known what he had done? Had his mother somehow believed her child was safer hidden away from her, in the arms of the grandfather she thought would care for it?
He sighed wearily, dragging himself from the bed, the memories, and the scent of the woman who now tormented him. How was he to know that love could happen like this? That it could rip and shred the soul, tear apart a heart that had shielded itself for more years than he wanted to count. Nature’s curse, the Felines called the mating heat. Was it a curse? Or was it nature’s way of ensuring life, of pairing those two souls meant to come together? One half of the other. And who was he to be even considering something so miraculous as a soul mate for himself?
He wandered out of the house and then came stock-still as he faced little Cassie Sinclair just outside the door.
She looked around him then, her blue-gray eyes solemn and curious.
“Amanda is down at the big house, Cassie,” he told her quietly, watching her with a frown as she kept looking behind him.
Finally, the little girl looked up at him, those elfin eyes of hers too quiet, too sad. Cassie was Dash and Elizabeth’s child. The little girl had been hunted for months the year before when a drug lord learned that the little girl had been a product of her mother’s artificial insemination by wolf/coyote hybrid sperm. Unaware that the doctor who did the procedure hadn’t used her husband’s sperm, Elizabeth had been unable to fathom why the drug lord was hunting her daughter with such dedication. Somehow Cassie had managed to save them both though when she struck up a pen pal relationship with Dash Sinclair while he was fighting overseas, during one of her few school terms. Dash had come running the minute the little girl’s letter for help reached him. The mating of the Wolf Breed and Elizabeth had produced a healthy son since then, and had created a wave of controversy currently making its rounds in the newspapers.
“I wasn’t looking for Amanda,” she finally sighed. “My fairy wanted me to come here and meet your fairy.”
He blinked down at her in confusion.
“What fairy is that?” Sometimes it was better to just go along with Cassie than to argue with her. She was a strange little girl, always talking to someone no one else could see.