Cassandra gave a small, lilting laugh. “Your greed doesn’t become you, Dylan,” she murmured as she walked to stand beside her father. “Neither does your need to use Ms. O’Sullivan and her family to your own ends.”
“Something the lot of you have no intention of doing?” Killato bared his teeth at her in an obvious display of primal superiority.
That display gained him no less than three harsh warning glares in his direction.
“What would it gain us?” Cassandra shrugged her delicate shoulders. “As assistant chief constable, Mr. O’Sullivan has nothing that could benefit either Packs or Prides in America. His connections don’t affect us. Our teams were the ones responsible for capturing her grandfather, Walter O’Sullivan, the overseer responsible for many of the labs here in Europe, when he disappeared after the news broke of his true identity, so we have no need to use her to that end. And our laws forbid, in every way, the forced induction of any Breed into a scientific study, something your European laws do not ban. It’s no wonder the Breeds that have scattered across Britain, Scotland and Ireland refuse to heed your demands to reveal themselves.”
It was Katie’s nightmare. Already her father had had to file countless stays of the Breed scientific mandates that would have forced her into a facility of Breed study for a period not less than one year, but no more than five.
When Breeds disappeared behind the walls of those facilities, they were rarely the same once they exited, she’d read.
“How do I benefit you then?” Katie asked her, more inclined to believe this young woman than any of the men seated in front of her.
“By ensuring we’re not forced to rescue you from one of those facilities as we have been forced to rescue others,” she stated without hesitation, her brilliant blue eyes glowing in the peaches-and-cream complexion surrounding them. “The Bureau of Breed Affairs is already dealing with more than a dozen official demands of restitution as well as extradition of Breeds who have fled Europe or been rescued from scientific facilities whose inhumane experiments your country claims to have no knowledge of despite the fact that they fund them.”
It was no more than the truth. Her father, Barrett O’Sullivan, had closed down two such facilities and had been summarily berated publicly as well as professionally for not doing more to track down and identify Breeds hiding in Ireland, and enforcing the mandatory one year of research imposed on Breeds in Europe several years before.
Even Dylan couldn’t counter Cassandra’s statement, though Katie could glimpse his furious need to do so.
“Katie, they won’t let you alone,” Cassandra promised softly as she nodded to the door and the murmur of the journalists on the street beyond. “Your father’s position can’t save you from the mandatory testing, and no matter Dylan’s claims, he can’t hide you from the testing. In less than forty-eight hours you’ve become a worldwide sensation for the very fact that despite the advanced testing for Breeds, you passed each stage of that testing that the European countries have ordered conducted on all adopted children, no matter their age. You passed each test with not so much as a blip on the DNA screenings from the age of nine until your genetics kicked in last month.”
“Kicked in.” Now, there was a phrase.
Her genetics had kicked her ass. A fever of one hundred and seven should have killed her. She’d lain nearly comatose for twenty-four hours before she’d begun convulsing so violently that her fiancé had rushed her to the ER, where the doctors there realized they were dealing with a phenomenon only spoken of in the fifteen years since the revelation of the Breeds.
Genetic Flaming. A sudden, “flaming” awakening of once hidden Breed genetics after a lifetime of the Breed DNA she possessed lying dormant.
Well, they weren’t dormant any longer.
“The Feline Breed community of Sanctuary, as well as the Wolf Breed communities of Haven and Avalon, and Del-Rey’s Coyote Packs of the Citadel offer you haven, Ms. Sullivan,” Dash Sinclair spoke again, his gaze once again holding hers with the compassion and integrity all four of these men were known for.
“Their protection far exceeds what I can offer you, Katie,” Dylan sighed, frustration evident in his voice. “Until Europe’s Breeds become the force America’s have, then we simply don’t have the strength. But I offer what little we have, and I would protect you and your right to freedom with my life,” Killato swore sincerely.
In that moment, she knew he would do just that. For whatever reason, whether selfish or selfless, Dylan would have done all he could to hide her. If he couldn’t hide her, then he would have died to defend her.
Katie lifted her gaze to Cassandra’s once again.
“I’m scared,” she finally admitted, forced to fight back the tears and the horror building inside her.
From the corner of her eye she glimpsed the tears slipping from her mother’s own eyes as she hurriedly tried to cover them. She watched her strong, prideful Da’s throat work convulsively as he stared up at the ceiling, blinking furiously at her admission.
She could feel her skin crawling, her muscles tensing and bunching as though battling themselves. Sensations were too extreme, others’ emotions sometimes bombarded her, and the sense of betrayal she felt that her parents had kept this horrifying secret from her was tearing her apart inside.
She’d always wondered why she couldn’t remember her life before she’d awakened in her “adoptive” parents’ home. The amnesia was the result of a drug she had been given the day the labs she was in had been attacked. The nurse that had given it to her had done so in case the Breed child she was responsible for was rescued. It was a common practice among the European labs, she had learned, to inject the children of possible rescues with the amnesia drug that had often caused older Breeds to revert to a primal state. The genetics scientists had hoped to ensure that those Breed youths would have less of a chance of being adopted into human homes.
“Katie, lass,” her father whispered as her mother covered her trembling lips with her fingers. “I’d give my life for your forgiveness if I weren’t terrified that you would have need of me later.”
“And you think that’s what I want, Da?” she demanded, the anger and tears trapped in her chest as she stared back at him desperately.
She hated the anger inside her. Hated the sense of dread and betrayal assailing her. “How much worse could my existence become if I ever felt you or Mother had done such a thing?”
He shook his dark, graying head as her mother’s fingers tightened on his arm resting against his leg.
“We were terrified for you,” her mother protested.
“So you hid what I was, even from me, no matter how often I asked you about a childhood I couldn’t remember,” she reminded them both. “The one person who should have been prepared for it was the one most surprised. Had I known, Mam, I would have never allowed Douglas to take me to the ER. I would have called you or Da the moment I felt ill and I wouldn’t feel as though everyone I ever trusted cared more for the secrets they carried than they cared for the welfare of the secret itself.”
She couldn’t remain here. She couldn’t stare into her father’s pain-filled eyes or watch the tears fill her mother’s gaze one more time.