Unlike humans, though, there was no choice in whether to accept or reject the male or female that perfectly complemented him physically, mentally, and emotionally as well as hormonally.
Once the body, mind and heart established that this person was the one that best fit the hungers and needs inside them, then the animal took over.
Hormones gathered and built beneath the tongue, spilled to that first kiss and established a bond born of a sexual heat so intense that there was no denying it. Speeding through their bodies, spurring their emotions, each response was driven at warp speed to bind the pair together in a mating that the Breed scientists suspected would endure a lifetime.
Mating heat actually existed.
The gossip rags hadn’t printed the insanity of fear-driven drivel as they usually had. For once, they’d at least partially gotten it right.
Returning the curl alongside the others that spilled over her shoulder, Devil pulled the sheet over Kate’s slumbering body before collecting his shirt from the bottom of the bed and pulling it on.
Dressed, he slipped from her room and made his way silently downstairs.
Stepping into the foyer, he stopped as Lobo and Dash Sinclair stepped from the library on the far end of the entryway and headed for the door.
“There you are,” Lobo growled, his dark gaze fierce as savagery flashed in his gaze. “Where’s Graeme?”
“I sent him into town to check on the whereabouts of the reporters that were here,” Devil answered, tensing at the ready violence that hummed around Lobo. “Why?”
“There’s a f**king Bureau agent at the gates with two Irish and American Immigration agents with a warrant to search the premises for Katie. I want to know how the hell they found out she was here.”
“Like hell.” A flash of red filled his vision for the briefest moment before he turned to Dash. “Cassie knows Breed Law; have her send them back to the holes they crawled out of.”
Dash grimaced. “She’s going over the language now, but she doesn’t just pull these arguments out her ass, Dev. She needs time.”
“Then buy her the time she needs,” he demanded. “This isn’t American land, it’s Navajo land.” He turned back to Lobo. “American Immigration has no rights on this land, nor does the Bureau of Breed Affairs. Ignore them.”
“We can’t just ignore them,” Lobo argued, his thumbs hooking in the belt that cinched his hips and held the weapon he carried at all times since his wife’s death. “That’s a Bureau agent out there, Dev. We signed an agreement with the Bureau of Breed Affairs that negates any desire we have to tell them to kiss our asses.”
“They can’t take a mate,” he reminded the other male, suddenly remembering several of the laws he himself had read when he had been given the Breed mandates. “It’s an exception to all other laws. No matter the crime, the act or the situation at hand, no mate can be taken, claimed or incarcerated unless a crime is committed after the mating.”
He’d always wondered about the wording. It was explained that a mating was simply Breed language detailing a committed relationship between a Breed and a lover chosen as a life partner. He knew now exactly what it meant and why the wording had been so precise.
“You’ve mated her?” Dash’s eyes narrowed, his nostrils suddenly flaring as amusement lit his gaze. “That’s why the scent of lust was so strong coming from your office earlier. The mating scent was on you when we met, so I assumed you’d already mated.”
Devil grinned. “Not until that bit of Irish got hold of me. Hell, I met her when she was sixteen and training with the Breed Protection Network in Ireland. I was there to train their agents in computer security. I saw her for a few brief seconds, and couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t forget her.” He turned to Dash then. “Now, tell me where we stand.”
“We stand strong.” It was Cassie who answered that question.
Standing at the top of the stairs, her hair pulled tightly from her face and hanging down her back in masses of wicked black curls, she was dressed in a dark gray skirt, silk shell and jacket paired with plain, though obviously expensive, black high heels.
She was no longer the precocious, mischievous young woman Devil had met before being sent to Ireland to rescue Kate. The woman stepping confidently down the curved staircase was superior in every way to each and every one of them, and her very bearing emphasized it.
Cool blue eyes. She wore no makeup, no artifice. In one hand she carried a leather briefcase as the other trailed down the stair bannister.
“The laws are quite clear in this situation,” she stated as she stepped into the foyer to join them. “No matter the situation, the circumstance or any previous laws, mating heat trumps it. Especially in a case of any scientific laws that should be created after Breed Law, demanded or mandated. At no time, and in no way without both mates as well as the director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs and three-quarters of the Breed Ruling Cabinet’s express and written agreement can any scientific research, experimentation or study be conducted on a mated pair, no matter the justification, reasoning or country that signed the mandates of Breed Law.” She smiled in triumph. “And the leaders of each section of Europe, including Ireland, signed each and every mandate of the laws presented to them before President Marion took it before the United Nations, where every delegate there signed each mandate as well.” From the leather case she withdrew a folder and handed it to Dash Sinclair. “Father, as a member of the Breed Ruling Cabinet, this is the order of a stay of exemption to be presented to the Immigration officials signed by Director Wyatt and wired to me five minutes ago. Director Wyatt is currently on the line with the Bureau agent outside our gates. He’ll need the signed orders before he and the men with him can force the Immigration officials back to Ireland.”
Devil stared back at Cassie with narrowed suspicion. “Why are they so intent to take her? I’ve lost count of the European Breeds who had escaped to America, and the officials there haven’t sent so much as a protest. Now, they’re sending immigration officials after one lone female?”
“Mary Katherine O’Sullivan was taken from the lab her grandfather is accused of having overseen during his tenure with the Genetics Council until the liberation of that particular lab. One of the scientists that worked there was captured several months ago by MI-6 and revealed Wallace O’Sullivan conspired to have his son’s and daughter-in-law’s samples from a fertility clinic sent to the lab he was in charge of. From there, he had the scientists insert the Wolf Breed genetics into not just the sperm, but also the mother’s ova, before fertilization. A process that was outlawed by the Council itself early in the genetic experimentations, for reasons we’ve yet to find explanations for.”
Devil inhaled slowly, carefully.
“It was outlawed because it allowed the Breeds to conceive. It created Breed males with a mix of both human-compatible as well as Breed-compatible sperm, and in Breed females. In females, the ova could be fertilized by either species with no complications. They allowed one of these births, but terminated the Breed somewhere around twelve years of age for reasons we were unaware of.”
Cassie frowned up at him. “Surely there were rumors why the Breed was terminated.”
Devil stared down at her, remembering those rumors and the concern in the scientists that ran the lab he was assigned to.