Each time she did, that battle raging through her body seemed to intensify to the point that she wanted to tear into her flesh and rip from her bones the very muscles that clenched and spasmed beneath her skin as though trying to reform, or to somehow burrow from beneath her skin.
She rose slowly to her feet, her gaze locking with Dash Sinclair’s.
“Mr. Sinclair—”
“Get down!” Cassie suddenly screamed.
Breeds were reacting before the words were even fully formed.
Dash Sinclair jerked his daughter from behind the chair and shoved her beneath the table as he followed her to the floor. Jonas Wyatt rolled across the table so quickly he was a blur before toppling Katie to the floor, while Wolfe Gunnar and Dylan Killato did likewise with her parents. A volley of automatic gunfire shattered the windows and tore chunks of wood and plaster from the ancient home that had been in her father’s family for nearly five hundred years.
Sirens were wailing in the distance, and the gunfire sliced through the room again while cries of shock and fear could be heard from the journalists outside.
“Is this what you want?” Jonas suddenly hissed at her ear. “No matter where you go or what you do, unless you leave Europe, your father will remain at your back until he takes a bullet for you. And I promise you, it will come sooner rather than later. Now, stay put.”
He suddenly jumped from her, pushed her toward Dylan and her parents as he ignored his Pride leader’s furious snarl of his name and rushed from the room.
“Bastard’s going to get himself killed,” Dylan snapped as they all huddled beneath the large dining room table her mother’s family had kept pristine since the eleven hundreds.
It was now riddled with deep gouges in the wood, no doubt from the bullets that had skipped across the top of it.
“More than likely, someone’s going to be missing a throat instead,” Callan sighed. “It’s not Jonas I’m worried about, it’s the prey he’s chasing.” Amber eyes locked with hers. “Get ready, we’re about to be hustled out of here.”
Even as he spoke, the door to the room flew open and Breeds began pouring in.
American Breeds.
Strong, silent, there were no shouted orders or codes being barked around her. She was lifted from the floor, her arms shoved into a heavy, protective vest while the bodies surrounding her rushed her from her father’s house and into a waiting vehicle in her mother’s precious back garden.
The fence surrounding the back of the house had simply been mowed down by the half-dozen vehicles surrounding it. Armed, hard-eyed, savage-faced Breeds stood tense and prepared, weapons held ready.
They were but a blur to Katie as she was pushed into the back floorboard of an armored Dragoon Elite, a low-slung SUV built for speed and agility in more populated areas. Rather distantly she remembered it had replaced the Sergeants model Dragoon that her father kept in a garage on the O’Sullivan estate on the outskirts of Dublin.
“Carrier three en route.” Quiet, assured and confident, the unfamiliar dark voice above her had her craning her neck to try to identify it.
Unfortunately, he was all but reclined on top of her, which kept her from maneuvering enough to see much of anything.
“Carrier three affirmative,” a voice responded. “Heli-jet is prepped and running. ETA thirty.”
ETA thirty what? Minutes? Hours? What the hell was that supposed to mean?
“Carrier three now in blackout. Update at thirteen hundred.”
Thirteen hundred hours?
“Get off!” she demanded, trying to drive her elbow upward. “You’re smothering me!”
“Beats the alternative.” The male grunt above her wasn’t comforting.
It was harsh, almost broken. His voice was low, deep, sending shivers racing up her back as the too-active muscles beneath her skin bunched harder, tighter, determined to tear past her bones, push through her flesh, and relish the heat above her.
The response was immediate, frightening and painful.
Geez, if she got any hotter, she was going to melt into the floor of the Dragoon.
The vehicle was supposed to be temperature controlled to more than fifty feet below water. At the moment, it was sweltering, however.
The heat wasn’t coming from the floor though. It was coming from the male Breed above her. It sank into her flesh, washed through her system and clenched her teeth with an arousal so white-hot and sudden she could barely control the need.