to the slender wand of the mic quietly.
“Someone needs to pull your mate in off the balcony,” Moira said with her faint Irish brogue. “He looks better than that coffee he’s drinking.”
Dawn’s lips tilted sadly and she thought longingly of a cup of coffee. She knew the hazards of it. She would probably end up ignoring the hazards, but she knew them.
“Down, Moira,” Dawn murmured when she wanted to growl in possessive anger.
“Morning recon of the island is complete,” Lawe reported in. “Merc and I have just made our way back. There’s no sign of unauthorized landings or wandering guests.”
“We’re moving from the house to begin morning security protocol.” Noble Chavin’s rough growl filled the link.
“And wit’out me mornin’ cho’olate,” Styx said mournfully. “Lass, ye need to be talkin’ to him about this.”
The Scots Wolf Breed was a true anomaly within the species. Not so much in his love of chocolate, but in his overall attitude. Styx didn’t get temperamental; he could be savage, he could kill, but he did it with a smile. He had fun, no matter what he was doing, and he drove the rest of the team crazy in the process.
But he had an instinctive sense of danger that no other Breed could touch, and a sense of smell when it came to tracking that couldn’t be beat.
“Did you beat Styx out of his chocolate, Noble?” She chided him mockingly.
Noble snorted. “Some blond-haired vixen fed him chocolate most of the night in his room, Dawn. I’m amazed he can still walk today.”
Styx chuckled. “He be jealous.”
“And we’ve reached radio silence,” Noble announced, indicating the boundary of the main grounds around the estate they would patrol that day. “Contact in two.”
Two hours, unless extreme circumstances occurred. Dawn braced her hands on her hips and paced over to the duffel bag that she hadn’t unpacked the night before. From within it she pulled free the sat laptop. The satellite-linked personal PC would give her a clearer view of the main grounds from the Lawrence satellites. Pulling her PDA free from the utility belt, she powered it on and checked her inbox for the files she had ordered on Caroline Carrington.
She had received part of them the day before, but the Breed contacts in New York had promised her more sometime today. There were no files listed, but there were two messages from Callan and one from Merinus. They weren’t marked priority, which meant they were personal.
She didn’t open them.
She knew her brother and his wife. If there was an order in one of his messages that he was afraid she would ignore, then Merinus would know about it, and Merinus would add her own gentle pressure that Dawn see his side.
Merinus had softened Callan within the first years of their marriage. The savage killer, the Council-trained assassin that Callan had been, had bent beneath the gentle weight of Merinus’s love. And it was a good thing, Dawn reflected. But when it had happened, Callan had suddenly begun directing his attention to Dawn. To seeing things she didn’t want him to see. To trying to make up for things that had never been his fault.
“Your mate has finally left his balcony,” Moira sighed in regret and relief. “He should really wear a shirt this early in the morning, Dawn.”
Dawn sent her a muttered growl. “Don’t look at his chest.”
Moira chuckled.
“We have a heli-jet incoming,” Noble reported. “Lawrence Industries. Were we expecting more guests today?”
Dawn quickly pulled the information up on her laptop.
“All guests present and accounted for,” she informed him before hitting the security button and pushing the PDA back into its protective pocket. “Moira, you’re with me. Noble, Styx, converge on the jet and get me visual. Dash, are you available?”
“Stand down, the jet is expected.” Dash spoke quietly into the link. “Styx, Noble, resume radio silence and stealth protocol. Dawn, in my room.”
Dawn stiffened, her eyes narrowing at the resignation in his tone. She flipped the mic up, disconnecting voice ability into the link while maintaining the connection to the group.
She stalked to her bedroom, jerked her door open and started toward the opposite hall. And saw Seth slipping into the bedroom he had taken Caroline into the night before. She paused in the hall, glaring at the door, a growl rumbling in her throat as she fisted her hands at her sides.
From her ear, privacy protocol beeped its summons. Absently she lifted her fingers and pressed against the back of the ear clip as she flipped the mic down.
“I’m waiting on you, Dawn,” Dash said quietly.
Her eyes narrowed as she turned and moved quickly to Dash’s suite.
The door opened as she neared it, and Dash stood back from the entrance, watching her quietly. He was dressed in jeans and a silk shirt, and he pulled the link clip from his ear as she moved inside.
He was alone. Evidently Cassie and Elizabeth either hadn’t awoken yet or were busy elsewhere.
“Why the heli?” She rounded on him as he closed the door and turned to face her. “And why wasn’t I informed?”
He ran his hands over his short, black hair and breathed out roughly. “The heli is here to transport Miss Carrington back to her home. Seth is sending her off the island.”
Dawn’s lips curled in satisfaction. Seth might be in the witch’s room, but he wasn’t touching her. She knew he wasn’t. If she’d thought differently, there would have been no way to control the feral rage she could already feel brewing inside her.
“Sanctuary’s heli is being prepped on its pad as well. You’re to gather your gear and return to home base. You’ll be sent out on another mission the moment you arrive.”
The smile slid from her face as she focused that anger simmering inside her on the powerful Wolf Breed.
“I won’t be leaving.”
She watched as Dash crossed his arms over his chest and stared back at her broodingly. “You were given an order, Dawn,” he stated flatly. “I’m command here. It’s your place to obey it.”
“You don’t have the right to give that order.” She kept her voice calm, confident. “My mate is here. Mating heat has been established. You can’t order me to do anything that requires leaving Seth’s presence.”
She knew her Breed Law where the Bureau was concerned, and she knew Dash did as well. They couldn’t make her leave. Only Seth could make her leave.
She watched the subtle, almost hidden curl of Dash’s lips. He knew that, and she wondered at the point behind making such a useless order.
“I made a deal with Seth last night,” he stated then. “He would send Miss Carrington home, and I would send you back to Sanctuary. This is a very delicate time, Seth needs his wits about him, as do the Breeds protecting him.”
Dawn lifted her head as she felt her chest clench at the knowledge that Seth would make such a deal.
“Why would he do that?” she asked then, a frown pulling at her brow as she tried to hold back the pain of knowing that Seth would attempt to do such a thing.
Dash shook his head. “Ten years of mating heat, Dawn, that he managed to kick. Ten years without his mate. Without ease. I suspect he doesn’t want to revisit that hell.”
“But it would be worse now,” she said softly. “And I’m here. He’s not alone.”
Dash stared back at her calmly, compassionately. “Are you aware that ten years ago, Jonas and Callan showed Seth portions of the lab tapes that Callan found when they searched Dayan’s home?”
Dawn stepped back warily. If her chest had been tight before, there was a band of pure agony clenching around it now.
She licked her dry lips and fought to pull her eyes from Dash’s. She could see it in his eyes: the truth, the knowledge that Seth had seen her, as an animal. A creature snarling, spitting, screaming. Abandoned by the God she had screamed out to.
She shook her head slowly. “Callan wouldn’t do that.” Her brother would never—he couldn’t—do something so vile
to her as to allow her mate, the only man whose eyes she could bear looking into for long, to see the horror of what she knew had happened. What she knew, but couldn’t remember.
“I talked to Callan this morning,” he told her. “He’s more worried for you now than he was then, Dawn. He was desperate to give you time to find your confidence, to get past what Dayan had done through the years that you should have been free. He thought he was saving you.”
“No!” Her hands came up as she shook her head, blinked. “No. He didn’t do this to me.” Her cry was a ragged, feral sound.
Oh God, Seth had seen those images. The images the Council had placed in the files that Callan had managed to steal before their escape.
Her lips parted as she forced herself to breathe, forced herself to get control of the pain beating down on her. God, when would it end? When would the pain and the betrayals stop?
Her mate had a lover. Had considered marrying another woman, having children with her. Her brother had betrayed her by showing her mate her worst nightmare, her greatest humiliation, and her mate didn’t want her. Even now. Even after the pleasure they had shared the night before, he wanted her to leave.
“Those days were bad for the Breeds, Dawn,” Dash continued. “For Callan. He was fighting to keep his family safe, his pregnant mate secure, and trying to hold back the supremacist societies rising against him. And you were almost broken by Dayan. Callan had only learned what happened with Dayan’s death the year before. He was grief-stricken, guilty that he hadn’t protected you. He had to protect you. It was his place to do that as your pride leader.”
“Stop!” She pointed her finger back at him, and couldn’t look him in the eye. He knew. He knew what Seth had seen, he had probably seen it himself.
“Did you think I didn’t know what was on those tapes?” she growled furiously. “Did you think Dayan didn’t show them to me? Often?” She sneered at the memory of them. “He had no right. Callan had no right to do that to me.”
“He had every right,” Dash said gently. “As your brother and your protector.”
“I’m sick of his fucking protection and I don’t need yours,” she yelled out at him. She didn’t cry, she didn’t beg. Her voice rose in anger and in determination as her gaze met his. “You have no right to make deals with my mate and you have no right to conspire with Callan to keep me from him.”
“And you have no right to destroy a good man’s life with something you can’t go through with, Dawn. You’ve seen the images. Fine, you know what’s in them. You still wake up Sanctuary with your screams when you dream of it, and you still haven’t remembered the events that those discs are made of. You’ve run from Seth for ten years; now you expect him to fall in with your wishes, despite his belief that the first time he takes you, he’s going to throw you back into that hell. Aren’t you asking too much of him? He’s a strong man, but I don’t think he’s that strong. I couldn’t be that strong.”
Dawn straightened her shoulders and refused to break his gaze. Her soul cringed at the words falling from his lips and she could feel something breaking inside her heart. Because of what others had done to her, her mate couldn’t bear to take her?
“This is none of your business.” She felt as though she would crumble to the ground with the effort it took to force those words past her lips. “You can’t order me from here. If Seth wants me gone, then he can lodge a complaint with the Breed Cabinet and go through the proper channels to get rid of me.”
She forced herself to walk calmly, sedately across the room, past Dash and to the door.
“Dawn, Seth is going to hurt you,” he said behind her, his voice heavy with that knowledge. “Mating heat isn’t controllable. When he takes you, he may not be able to stop if the past rises against you and sends you back to those memories. And then I’ll have to kill him. I won’t be able to stop myself. You’re family. Don’t do this to your entire team. To yourself or to your mate.”
Her lips twisted bitterly as she turned back to him. “What makes you think that I don’t want to remember what they did to me?” she asked him heavily. “That I don’t want to be a mate to Seth? What makes you think that for ten years my heart hasn’t broken a little more every day without him? And what gives you or Callan the right to make these decisions for me?”
She stared back at him, seeing in his eyes the lack of confidence they all had in her. All these years she had fought, strengthened herself, forced herself to fight past her fears of just being in a room with another man, for this? So no one could even give her her due and see that in so many ways she had succeeded.
“I’m not a child. I’m not the daughter that you still bloody Breeds over flirting with, nor am I still the broken little girl Dayan created. And as God is my witness, I don’t know if I can ever forgive either of you for interfering in my life this way. Not you, Callan or Seth. I don’t need any of you to make my life decisions for me.” She snarled, the anger beginning to burn, not flame. It was burning. It was a hot, bitter coal in the pit of her stomach that sent pain tearing through her entire being. “Fuck off, Commander Sinclair,” she gritted out. “And tell Pride Leader Lyons and Director Wyatt they can both do the same. Because if I leave here, I won’t be returning to Sanctuary ever.”
She jerked the door opened and stepped out of the room before slamming it behind her and moving quickly along the hallways to make her way from the house.
Turning toward the main hall, she saw Caroline’s door open and Seth step out of it. He was pale, sweating, and the woman’s scent hung on the air around him like a stink that sickened her gut.
She stopped in front of him, staring back at his harsh face, into his brutally stark gaze.
“You’re a coward,” she whispered. “Even more so than I ever was.”
She didn’t give him time to answer, but brushed past him, making certain she didn’t touch him, that she didn’t tempt the feral fury brewing inside her by allowing that woman’s scent on her own body.
She left the house and joined her team to ensure her mate’s protection. The mate that didn’t want her.
Cassie stepped from her bedroom and turned her eyes to her father as he pulled the sat phone from his belt and, she knew, prepared to call Callan.
“Stay out of it.” The words slipped past her lips as she watched him, watched him frown back at her darkly.
She could feel Dawn’s pain like a lash of psychic energy whipping around the island. It was so great, burning so bright, it seared at the edges of her mind.
“Cassie—”
“Dad, Callan can’t protect her any longer. Dawn’s awakening. You can’t make her go back to sleep or you’ll kill her.”
He closed the phone slowly.
She rubbed at her arms as she stared around the room. The fairies were so few now. Or the ghosts, as others called them. They were so dim, and the one that had carried her through the most hellish years of her life was rarely present at all.
But there was one. The small, huddled shape of a child. The child Dawn had left behind so long ago. Ghosts were the energy of those lost souls that had left their mortal bodies. Cassie knew she also saw the forms of other beings. Parts of people and Breeds who were lost or left behind, denied by the living beings that should shelter them.
It was that part of Dawn that followed her like a bleak little shadow, begging for shelter, begging to come out of the cold nightmares that held it.
“She promised me,” that little being whispered. “She promised me, and now she ignores me. You have to make her see. She has to keep her promise or we’re all lost.” That child that Dawn refused was dying. And if the child died, then Dawn would be no more than a shadow of what she was now.
“Cassie, she’s not as strong as the others.” Dash sighed. “You know that as well as I do.”
Sometimes her father understood her. He always accepted her and trusted her. Tears filled her eyes as she felt the conflicting urges rising inside her. The good and the bad, she called it.
The wolf and the wicked coyote. And he loved both.
She turned back to him as a tear fell. “You have to let her fight this battle. If you don’t, she’s dead to us.” She looked at the fog that made up the child. “And if that happens, then one day I’ll be lost as well.” She turned back to him, her lips trembling as her own nightmares rose within her mind. But she knew her demons, met them each night and remembered them each time she woke. “If she doesn’t remember, then more than just the child she refuses to remember will die.”
She watched as he slowly slid the small phone back into its clip then opened his arms to her. She ran to them, ran to the security, the safety and protection he had given her, without question, most all of her life. He was her rock. Her father. More a father than any man who could share her blood, and she knew he had seen and sensed the terror inside her.
As his arms closed around her protectively, she let another tear fall, for Dawn. She wished Dawn could know this security as well.
CHAPTER 8
That night, Dawn dropped her clothes to the floor and collapsed into her bed before curling into a tight ball. Her womb was twisting inside her belly, convulsing as fire poured through her veins and the taste of the mating hormone filled her senses with dark arousal.
She lay atop the sheets, the temperature control in the room turned down to the fifties, and still she was sweating. Sweating and exhausted. So weary from lack of sleep, from fighting the mating heat and herself, that she was praying for sleep. For once in her life the nightmares weren’t as frightening as lying here night after night, awake, and needing Seth with a bitter intensity that she was suddenly afraid would pour free.
She had stayed far away from him as much as possible throughout the day. She stared blindly into the darkness of her room, her eyes dry, the tears locked inside her. She couldn’t force herself to be around him, even to breathe in the scent of him that she needed so desperately. Just the scent of him.
She locked her arms around her stomach and tensed against a wave of gnawing pain. She couldn’t look him in the eye, because he had seen—
She swallowed tightly against the sickness rising inside her. She didn’t want him to see her, she didn’t want to see that knowledge in his eyes again. Because she had seen those discs, she knew, frame by frame, the images they contained. And he had been the one person she was certain, to her soul certain, hadn’t seen them.
And she had been so wrong.
She rolled over on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, feeling the need that tore through her like a hungry beast. The arousal, the aching desperation for his touch. It hadn’t changed for her. She hadn’t lost the need as he had; this was just another night, another torment to add to the others.
How could Callan betray her this way?
She pushed her fingers through her hair as waves of red-hot mortification and confusion whipped through her mind. She had depended on Callan that first year, she knew that. After Dayan’s death. After Callan killed him. She had let him protect her, let him draw her beneath his wing and help her find her way.
She shouldn’t have done that, she saw now. She shouldn’t have placed that burden on Callan’s shoulders.
You’re weak, Dawn. Look how weak you are. So weak you couldn’t endure what the rest of us learned how to live with. Look at that, Dawn.
The girl on those discs fought. Feral. Enraged. And she prayed. She prayed, and Dayan had laughed at it, laughed because he told her God didn’t care. He had proved it by taking her mind and leaving the animal to fight.
And Dawn felt no more for the memory of the images he had showed her than she did for any other image she had ever viewed of any other Breed. She felt regret, compassion for that child. And she felt humiliated, dirty, because Seth had seen it. He had seen her pray, and he had seen that God had turned the other way.
She blew out a weary breath and closed her eyes. She had to sleep. She couldn’t afford to leave Seth’s protection to a broken, exhausted woman. Just a few hours. She set her mental clock, her inner defenses, to awaken her in time to keep the dreams from slipping into her head like the malevolent creatures they were.
Not that she ever remembered the dreams. But she couldn’t let that animal free again. The one that awoke Sanctuary with feral, enraged feline screams. God help her if Seth ever had to see that, because she didn’t think she could bear that humiliation.
Sleep. She forced herself into the sheltering darkness, shut down her thoughts and made herself rest. As she had done so many times before.
An imperative, though slight, knock sounded at the bedroom door. It was muffled, but it didn’t stop. Seth snapped his lips together as he rolled from the mattress and padded in his sock feet through the bedroom and into the sitting room.
He didn’t have to pause to dress, because he was still damned well dressed. Slacks, shirt and socks. He wasn’t about to take his clothes off and feel the sensuous slide of the silk sheets against his flesh and remember how much softer Dawn’s flesh had been.
Hell no, he wasn’t going to try to sleep. He was going to stare at the damned ceiling all night long. Again.
He jerked the door open, then paused in shock at the sight of Cassie. Her face was paper white, all those curls hanging around her and flowing to the waist of the long, white gown and robe she wore.
“Seth.” Her voice sent chills up his spine. “You have to do something, Seth. She’s waking up.” Her eyes were huge, neon blue in a face parchment white.
“Dawn.” His gaze jerked to her door. He knew she hadn’t left her room. “What do you mean, Cassie?”
A tear fell from her eye. “She’s waking up, Seth. You have to go to her. Now. You can’t let her wake up alone. Please, Seth. Please.”
He clenched his fists at his side then ran his fingers through his hair.
“Cassie,” he groaned in frustration. “Dammit, I can’t go to her.”
“Seth. Don’t you love her anymore?”
Love her? He had never stopped loving her.
“This isn’t about love, Cassie.”
“But it is, Seth. If you love her, you’ll be there when she begins to wake up. You have to, Seth. You have to, or she’s lost to us forever.”
The chills that went up his spine turned to daggers of fear. He didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, but he had heard enough about her over the years that he couldn’t ignore it.
He grimaced painfully, then stepped back into his room and closed and locked his door, before striding to the door that connected to Dawn’s room. And, of course, it was unlocked. She could lock the hall door, but she just had to leave this one unlocked.
He stepped into the dark room, not certain what to expect, but he wasn’t expecting what met his eyes. She lay on her bed, stiff and still, her breathing harsh and heavy as small, terrified mewls left her lips. She was sweating heavily, her body jerking.
And something broke inside him, because he knew where she was, he knew what dreams had stolen her and why Cassie was so concerned now.
“Dawn,” he whispered her name as he moved to the side of the bed and sat down warily.