The four men jumped in startled surprise as twelve fully grown Feline Breed males growled in hungry menace.
“Wait.” One of them spoke nervously, holding his hands out, his gun held in a clearly non-threatening
manner as he laid it on the floor. “No harm, no foul…”
“No harm, no foul?” Callan asked mildly as he eyed the gun on the floor before raising his head to stare at the man with brooding fury. “Wrong. You broke into my home, attempted to harm my woman, and you think you’re just going to walk out of here?”
“We’re just doing our job.” One shook his head desperately. “Come on, Lyons, you’ve always let us go before.”
Taber recognized the voice. One of the mercenaries who had been sent home in defeat years before, smarting from the lazy, amused chase Callan had given him.
“The rules changed, Brighton,” Callan snapped. “You don’t just walk away anymore.”
“Callan, we question them first.” Kane moved into the room, watching the Breeds warily. “You know the score.”
“I know they’re dead.” It was as though the very air itself stilled with that announcement. There was no mercy in Callan’s voice, no weakness. “We’ll send them back to their owners in pieces. Isn’t that how they sent back our scout last month?”
Taber’s jaw tightened at the memory of it.
The four assassins shifted nervously within the room.
“Come on,” Callan dared them. “Show me what you’re made of. Personally, I smell the stink of a coward.”
“Callan…” Taber warned him carefully. “Step back, man. This is no time for mistakes.”
The mistake being an accidental death. “Think of Merinus and the babe. She would have to go on without you.”
“Callan.” Her voice was faint, frightened.
“Kane, get this shit out of here. Lock them up with the other bastard you’re holding until the garbage runs. We’ll send them out then. Maybe in pieces.”
It was a threat that pushed the intruders into action. A flare of brilliant light pierced the darkness, blinding them as the assassins made their bid for freedom. Weapons were dropped as the Breeds used senses well honed from years in captivity. They couldn’t see, but they could smell, hear and taste the evil flowing around them.
Taber’s knife cleared its sheath at his side as he reached the first man. The weapon sliced through flesh, severing the jugular vein. Blood sprayed around him as he dropped his enemy to the floor and turned for another. The brilliancy of the light had dissipated and he came face to face with Roni’s horror-filled expression.
Rage and grief filled him because he knew what he looked like. He knew, because he had seen Callan in a similar rage. His canines were bared, blood covering the lower part of his face, his chest. Another
man’s blood. The animal gloried in the scent of it; the feel of his enemy’s defeat, the knowledge that this time, Taber had been victorious. But the man he was screamed out in rage against the fates, the cruelties, and the single instant that his mate had seen the carnage and the animal within. The agonized roar that echoed through the house was one of rage, pain and a protest against the realities of a life never asked for, never imagined. A protest against the loss of innocence he glimpsed in Roni’s eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The roar was unlike anything Roni had ever seen or heard. She stared at Taber in shock as his head went back, his chest expanded and the primal sound of rage and anguish ripped from his throat. Everyone stilled. The assassins lay dead. There had been no mercy. Roni hadn’t expected any. But neither had she expected to see the bitter, raging pain in Taber’s eyes as he dropped the assailant, either. Blood covered him, staining his cheek, his neck, the black cloth of his shirt, and running in a rivulet along the hardwood floor beneath his feet.
God help her, how was she to ease so much pain? She wanted to run to him, to clean the blood from him and whisper how thankful she was that he lived, but she was held rooted to the floor, tears whispering down her cheeks as she witnessed the one thing she knew Taber would not have wanted her to see.
As the sound of his fury echoed around them, his head lowered, his green eyes glittering with an intensity she had never witnessed before and an expression that terrified her. His legs ate the distance between them as he moved to her, gripping her wrist and jerking her along behind him as he headed for the door.
“Taber…” Callan’s protest was cut off when Taber turned back to him with a snarl so threatening, so demanding, that the other man stood back, shaking his head in regret.
“Dammit, Callan, stop him.” Merinus’ voice was filled with fear as Roni was pulled from the room. No one would stop Taber. No one could stop him now if they wanted to. Violence and lust swirled around him, tightening his body as the animal surged ever closer to the surface. Roni didn’t even try to stop him. She followed him, nearly running to keep from being dragged behind him, her heart thundering in her chest, shock ripping its way through her body.
He had barely caught the assassin before the other man let loose on the trigger of the submachine gun he held. The bullets would have ripped through the bathroom at that angle, possibly killing them all. She remembered all too clearly watching the knife slice through human flesh, the hatred and surprise on the other man’s face as his gaze locked with hers.
Taber pulled her into the bedroom, slamming the door behind them before he turned to her. She didn’t have time to gasp before he ripped the shirt from her back, leaving her br**sts bare, ni**les hard, as he worked at the closure on his jeans.
“Taber…” She didn’t know what to say. What to do.
“Mine.” He bared his teeth as he pushed his jeans over his hips, freeing the thick, desperate erection