Only in the past year or so had the Breeds managed to actually formulate a case against Tallant. After all, it wasn’t illegal to hire Breeds as security personnel. Just as it wasn’t a law that Breeds had to register with the Bureau of Breed Affairs, though most did to assure their own safety.
Tallant’s Breeds didn’t. The dozen Coyotes he employed had never registered, which meant no fingerprints, no way of identifying them. And they were damned good killers. The best the Council had ever created from the Coyote DNA.
He pushed back from the laptop as he disconnected the link into the Breed satellites and sighed wearily.
Something was eating at him; he could feel it. Something that just didn’t set well with what he knew about Scheme Tallant so far.
Forget the lust and the raging hunger. He knew himself; he didn’t lust after whores and killers. And he could smell them; the animal inside him could sense them.
Scheme was neither a whore nor a killer. And that definitely didn’t fit with the profile the Breed analysts had put together on her.
So where did that leave him? The minute he walked into Sanctuary with her, she would be placed under Breed Law, convicted and possibly executed.
Her only chance had been a mating. If he had mated her.
He stared at her, his lips flattening in anger as his teeth clenched with it.
And there lay his problem. There was no mating heat.
He had almost been certain she was his mate. The emotions were there. The lust, the need, the overwhelming, primal protectiveness. He was falling in love with her. The animal inside him was claiming her. But there was no mating. Occasionally, at odd moments, an unusual taste would tempt his senses. The taste of wild lust and heat, similar to the tastes mated couples described. But it was never there for long. And the glands that held the mating hormone beneath his tongue didn’t swell and release the hormone created from the biological and chemical reaction to a mate. It could be that his DNA was just almost compatible for the mating. Which meant she might be another Breed’s mate. A Breed whose DNA matched his own.
He ran his tongue over his teeth. The glands hadn’t inflamed, and even more, the barb hidden deep within each Feline Breed c**k hadn’t shown itself. The hormone within the saliva and that barb marked the mate even more surely than the bite to the shoulder that reportedly always occurred, unknowingly, by the Breed. They rarely remembered the need to bite their mate and only became aware of it after the taste of blood filled their mouths.
Shit. Shit. Had he been taking Cabal’s mate?
He moved almost violently from the chair and paced the rough stone floor of the cavern. He couldn’t think about that. He couldn’t allow it to take hold in his mind or the animal inside would certainly break free.
He had to concentrate on her safety.
He couldn’t take her to Sanctuary, and she couldn’t return to her home. There had to be an answer. He had searched every database he could find and hacked into more files at the Bureau of Breed Affairs than he wanted to count. There wasn’t even a hint that Scheme Tallant was the spy Jonas had recruited within the Tallant organization.
And without proof, Tanner was screwed, because he was running out of time. He barely had a week left on his vacation, and if he didn’t return, Callan would send someone out to find out why.
No excuses would be acceptable. Callan knew his family, and Tanner was part of his family. He would know something was wrong, and there was no way the pride leader would understand this one. Not considering who she was and her connection to the general.
Damn, he had been so certain the mating heat would begin. It didn’t make sense. He had never been so obsessed with a woman in his life. He had teetered between hate and lust for ten years, only to have the lust, the hunger for her, completely overwhelm him and the hatred dissolve in the face of the horror he was suspecting she had experienced at her father’s hands.
She was so small. Delicate. Yet with a strength he hadn’t expected. Her bones were so small he wondered how her father had kept from shattering them when he beat her.
Hell, he didn’t know how to work this now. He had envisioned arriving at Sanctuary with his mate, and now he had no defense to offer her. Breed Law or her father’s assassins. He couldn’t allow her to face either. Unless she was Jonas’s mole. Or Cabal’s mate.
He wiped his hand over his face.
Cabal’s mate.
It couldn’t be true, but he couldn’t ignore the signs that it was possible. Mating heat was a biological, hormonal mating, as well as emotional.
Emotionally, he was so firmly tied to her now that he wondered if he could ever breathe without her scent in his head. But what if the mating heat was more physical than emotional? What if she wasn’t his mate at all? What if she belonged to the only man whose genetics matched his? Perhaps matched enough that he reacted to her as a mate, without the mating hormone. A mating hormone Cabal would release once he came face-to-face with her.
Could he survive it? Could he live with it?
“You’re thinking too hard.” Her voice had him turning swiftly toward her, his brows drawing into a frown at the weakness in her voice.
The touch of her gaze upon him had him hardening instantly beneath his jeans, his body eagerly anticipating her touch. But as he watched her move and detected the scent of physical pain, he knew that wouldn’t be an option, not until she managed to loosen those still bruised muscles.
“There are some bath salts in the bathroom.” He moved for the bed, helping her to ease out of it despite the suspicion in her gaze.
She wasn’t used to being cared for, but hell, he wasn’t used to caring for anyone. In her case, he couldn’t seem to help himself.