The Devil's Due by Lora Leigh, now you can read online.
THE DEVIL’S DUE
LORA LEIGH
In loving memory of the greatest aunt a niece could have. Dorothy “Sugar Babe” Few Lucas. You are missed. Not just for your laughter, your witty replies, and generous spirit. You are missed, just because you were you.
I love you, Aunt Sugie.
There was Death, and she faded into the shadows.
There was Slaughter, and he disappeared as dust into the wind.
There was the Lyon, who sought vengeance in the darkness, then found the light of love.
There was the Jaguar, who was the darkness, but found the heart that saved his soul.
There were so many.
There were all who knew vengeance, who knew retribution, and they succumbed to the greatest weakness man or beast could ever know.
They succumbed to the hearts they should have never possessed.
And now, the forces of man’s greatest ally and his most cherished creator have looked down upon a heart that all have claimed to be black, to be without mercy or compassion, and felt Himself soften.
For mercy resides in quantities that are vast while compassion slices His soul with each act of justice he’s forced to mete out.
The one they call “Devil.” The one they say is the darkest of all Breeds created.
The one his creator has guided to ensure his hand had dealt the blow of justice needed to ensure the existence of the Breeds. The one for whom his creator has planned the most cherished of all gifts.
The Lyon now guides his Pride.
Slaughter now slays only the demons that risk his love.
The Jaguar now prowls only the darkness of his own lair while the bogeyman of the Breeds, the warrior Warrant, is the champion of love.
Each has received the truest gift of all, that gift of love.
Now the Devil will receive his as well.
The creator lifted his hand, his smile gentle, compassion and mercy guiding his actions as he brought revelations, hid from the Devil’s enemies those secrets that would have harmed the coming gift, and laid in place each emotion, each hunger, each separate hormone and cell, the qualities needed to ensure a match none could have expected.
A mating.
A priceless, unending love.
It’s now time to give the Devil his due.
PROLOGUE
Barrett O’Sullivan stared at the tiny—too, too tiny—form of the child that his best friend had followed him into hell to save.
So tiny.
A little scrap of flesh and bones that was all of nine years of age, but he swore she could be barely four if she was a day.
Now Jorn Langer, the friend who had uncovered the secret of these labs, the secret of this child, lay on the cement floor next to her, his blood staining the icy stone below.
God, it was so cold.