"So I guess Styx had things to do today," Cassandra said and sighed. "We've been looking for this really cool, rare chocolate and I finally found it. It arrived today along with the wine we ordered. I just thought he might like to know."
"I'll let him know you were here, Cassandra." Storme wished she could forget.
The thought of Styx sharing chocolate and wine with this young woman wasn't a comfortable feeling.
"Call me Cassie. One of these days, we might be friends." Cassie tilted her head, her gaze at once mysterious as well as sharp, intent. As though she could see beyond the surface into part of Storme that Storme wanted no one to see, or to know. Especially Breeds. "If you ever decide we're not monsters, that is."
"We might be friends?" Storme questioned in confusion. "Hopefully, I'll be leaving soon, Cassie. I rather doubt you socialize much outside Breed society. As for monsters, no, I don't see you as a monster." At the moment. And that statement didn't apply to many of the Breeds she had met before Styx kidnapped her.
"Well, the socializing part is rather true. There's that whole nasty price-on-my-head thing," Cassie stated mockingly, though Storme could have sworn there was an edge of pain in her voice. "But the Breed social set is improving daily and we do enjoy our little parties."
Parties such as the one Cassie and her parents had attended on Lawrence Island several months past. The party where she, pride leader Callan Lyons, and an Enforcer had nearly died.
"The reports stated you nearly died at the Lawrence party," Storme said.
Cassie laughed, a bitter, mocking sound that sliced at the illusion of teenage perseverance. For a second, her expression was far too mature for her age, and far too frightened of the future.
"A former Council trainer, Jason Phelps." Cassie swallowed tightly. "He really wanted Dawn, Seth Lawrence's wife now. He was at the labs where she was created and decided that because he was given leave to terrorize and rape her as a child, he could do so now that she was an adult. I was just a little extra, I guess. Three million dollars is a lot of money to pass up, right?"
Jason Phelps. Storme had known Jason Phelps. He had been a friend of her brother's, for a while. For a moment, a flash of memory surfaced. Her brother stalking into the house late one night, furious, his expression tight and hard as Jason followed him inside.
She didn't remember the conversation, or rather the loud argument, that had awakened her and drawn her from her bed. Her brother had been so enraged he had ended up slamming his fist into Jason's face and throwing him out the door of the house.
"Three million dollars is a lot of money," Storme agreed as she fought the panicked feeling beginning to rise inside her. What this young woman had suffered, what she endured as her life had to be hell. Storme was alone, fighting to run from the Council for years. But in all fairness, they hadn't seriously tracked her, simply because until lately, no one had believed the importance of the information she had.
Unlike Cassandra Sinclair. Every move she made, every breath she took was with the knowledge that the Council was willing to pay a fortune to destroy her.
Cassie watched her curiously, a question in her gaze. No doubt she caught the response, the heavy hard thud of her heart before she could control it.
"Jason was killed wasn't he?" Storme asked when Cassie said nothing further.
"A sniper, we still haven't learned who it was." Cassie shoved her hands in the back pockets of her jeans as she drew in a hard breath. "Thankfully, I survived it. The alternative wouldn't have turned out nearly as well."
"And the alternative was?" Storme asked.
Cassie gave her a hard smile. "Standing order among the Breed community where I'm concerned. If I'm taken and rescue isn't possible, then I'll be killed by the very people who love me. And trust me, that is preferable to a life in a Breed lab."
Storme flinched. She remembered the Omega labs, the cells where wounded or experimental Breeds were kept. Cassie would be considered an experimental Breed. She would be caged, kept naked, tested, examined and forced to endure a life that even an animal shouldn't have to endure.
That realization had Storme's heart clenching, her stomach dropping. The Council had been wrong in the creation and the treatment of the Breeds. Storme had known that all along. So how right did that make her?
It was a question she pushed back, one she couldn't focus on quite yet.
"And it's okay for you that your own people would execute you?" she asked Cassie heavily, wondering how she could have lived with the knowledge if her father or brother would have been in that situation.
Cassie's smile was bitter. "Trust me, Storme, I'd rather die than suffer the rapes, the beatings, and the experiments the Council would conduct on me. Death would be a vacation."
Storme swung away from the other girl and paced to the barred window. She couldn't imagine living in such a way. Cassie at least had been raised as a human; for years she hadn't known what she was or how she had been created. Still, the scientists would strip her of her freedom, her very humanity, to find the animal they believed she was inside.
She was, at least mentally and psychologically, human. To have to live with the threat of death at the hands of the people she loved must be a horrifying weight. To be so young and to have to accept that the dreams that could have been hers, the future she could have had, would never be.
Cassandra Sinclair was a young woman who didn't have college to look forward to. The illusion of security, peace or happiness would never be hers. And yet she was here, she had been laughing, joking. She had actually fared far better than Storme had in the past ten years.
"I'm tired ..." Storme needed to be alone. Only when she was alone could she sort out her emotions and her thoughts enough to remain true to the promise she had made to her father.
"No, you're not tired." Cassie mocked the excuse as Storme refused to turn and meet her gaze. "What's wrong, Storme, your idea of reality faltering somehow?"
It wasn't her idea of reality that was faltering. It was her idea of the past, the future and everything she had thought she believed in.