Katie—8 years later
Mary Kathleen O’Sullivan, Katie to friends and family, had no idea so many reporters could exist in one place.
Standing behind one of the protective filters that now covered each of her windows, she stared at the crowd of journalists vying for position, watching her home closely, microphones and notepads held ready.
“The guardians of the masses,” her father had once called journalists. He now called them “those sons of bitches,” despite the fact that they were doing no more now than they had been when he’d made the first comment.
“Katie, please come away from the window,” her mother requested, her soft, lilting voice heavy with concern.
Katie, her parents had always called her. She guessed it beat “Fido,” or “Precious,” as several tabloids’ writers had dubbed her.
Turning, she did as her mother asked, glancing at the other woman from beneath the veil of her lashes.
Kella O’Sullivan had aged a bit in the past weeks. There were fine worry lines now etched in her once smooth forehead, while her emerald green eyes reflected a fear that hadn’t been there before.
Her long, red gold ringlets were caught at her nape with a heavy silver clasp, displaying the family pearls she wore at her neck.
Katie had often reflected on how alike she and her mother looked. The high cheekbones and slightly tilted eyes. Small, though sensually curved lips and the thick, unusually long red gold lashes that framed their deep green eyes. Eyes that Katie had never seen so clouded with worry and fear.
Or had they been?
Katie had always sensed the well-hidden concern that rode her parents, though she’d never truly believed she was the root of it. She’d always assumed the stress came from her father’s job as assistant chief constable of Northern Ireland, rather than from the freak of science their daughter was.
Maintaining her poise, she returned to the wingback chair beside the gas fireplace her father had just installed in the three-story home she’d lived in all her life. That chair had been turned to face their “guests,” rather like an interviewee’s chair would face some emissary of power, such as the men sitting across from her.
Callan Lyons, the Feline Breed Pride leader, was accompanied by Jonas Wyatt, the director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs, Wolfe Gunnar and Dash Sinclair, the Wolf Breed Pack leaders, Del-Rey Delgado, the Coyote Breed Pack leader, as well as the often elusive Dylan Killato, the European Wolf Pack leader determined to pull the hidden Breeds on his side of the world together, watched her, as she imagined the scientists that created her most likely had watched her: with detached curiosity.
“Katie, I know you’re frightened.” Dylan leaned forward, the shifting silver and amber colors of his gaze cool and calculating as the heavy Scots brogue offered to wrap her in a false sense of security. “And I hope you know our only concerns at this time are for your safety and security.”
Katie could have rolled her eyes. Killato used his dark, savage good looks, the old-fashioned brogue and unusual color of his eyes to full advantage whenever he needed to.
The American emissaries still sat quiet, watchful, offering neither advice nor countering Killato’s claims.
“You’re becoming a sensation among the paparazzi as well as the scientists tasked by many countries to break the hidden genetic codes the Council scientists used to create us. You’re both a weakness as well as a possible answer for the Breed communities as a whole. This makes you a highly sought-after prize by many opponents as well as proponents of the Breed community.”
Katie turned her gaze to the still silent American group. “Do the Breeds have proponents?” she asked as her gaze connected with that of Jonas Wyatt.
One black brow lifted over a silver mercury eye. “Not in that group,” he assured her as he nodded to the door and the crowds outside.
Killato shot the director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs a chilling look that had Katie wondering at the animosity she could sense emanating from him.
“I can understand why you’re here, Mr. Killato,” she assured the European leader. “Building and pulling together the European Packs is a daunting task, I realize.” She turned back to his American counterparts. “But why are the rest of you here? How can I profit or aid the American Breeds?”
“Katie,” her father scolded her gently. “They could be concerned with your welfare, lass.”
Katie shook her head. “I find that very hard to believe, Da. Why risk their lives as well as their very busy schedules over just another Breed that the world has learned of?”
“But you’re not just another Breed, Mary Katherine,” Jonas assured her, a hint of mocking amusement filling his gaze as he leaned forward slightly, his arms crossing and bracing on the table between them. “Unlike Pack Leader Killato, I’m not going to assure you that nothing more than your safety matters. That’s not true of any Breed. We’re all a danger to ourselves as well as our Packs and Prides. But you are more so for the very fact that your genetics were so well hidden until this past year. With the surge of your Breed genetics coupled with the fact that your grandfather was one of the most notorious lab overseers in Europe, it makes you a sensation. Breed opponents want you silenced before scientists can use your genetics to possibly hide other Breeds among society, while proponents hope you can do the opposite; and both sides admit to the very high profitability of either answer. You are quite literally worth your weight in gold.”
“I wouldn’t be quite so extreme,” Killato argued.
“Dylan, you know damned good and well that her father’s position as Ireland’s assistant chief constable, her grandfather’s secrets into the Genetics Council, as well as her own genetics make her a prize that scientists from among the Breeds, as well as the more acceptable scientific societies assigned to research the Breed genetics, would kill to claim. Even if it meant killing her,” Dash Sinclair argued, the gleam of worry in his eyes as he glanced at her rather surprising.
“So then?” she asked Sinclair. “How do I profit the American Breeds?”
“You ensure that you’re not taken by the wrong groups and used against us.” It was Sinclair’s young daughter, Cassandra, who spoke from her position in the far corner of the room, rather than her father, who answered that question.
“That’s a bit harsh, Ms. Sinclair,” Killato growled, his gaze filled with a latent sexual intensity as he turned and glared at her.
Cassandra rose to her full height from the chair she sat in, a very false height of five-eight, thanks to the heels she wore. Elegantly graceful, dressed in white slacks and a white vest-style blouse that revealed a hint of cleavage, she moved closer to the group, entirely comfortable in the five-inch heels she wore.
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 fa
cility 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.
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.” r />
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.
The sexual need.
The need to have those hard, broad hands push her dress over her ass, grip her hips and push inside her with a heavy, deep, bruising thrust.
She wanted all of him at once.
Her vagina clenched, rippling with hunger. It ached, flushed with heat and demanded his possession.
She wanted him.
She wanted to be touched.
Taken.
Oh God, she wanted him fucking her and she wanted it now before she was forced to scream with a need so painful it terrified her.
Horrified her.
Because she was going to demand it. Her lips were parting, a cry building in her throat when he suddenly lifted just enough to flip her to her back before wedging his thighs between hers, the hard length of his cock pressing against her sex as his fingers covered her lips.
“We are not alone,” he mouthed as her eyes widened in dawning terror. “And this isn’t the time for this.”
Of course it wasn’t.
The time would never come.
He was the Devil. The Grim Reaper of the Breeds and he’d come to drag her away and make certain she never became a danger to the species again.
Everyone had lied to her. She was a liability. A secret they didn’t want to risk. She knew that now.
She knew it, because the Breed pinning her to the floor with the strength of his hips and his very aroused cock was not a potential lover.
He was a killer.
He was the Devil, and he would have no other reason to be there other than—
To kill her.
TWO
Terror.
Anger.
Injustice.
Fascination.
So many emotions.
Katie couldn’t seem to settle on just one, or to figure which was uppermost. But the resounding regret, she finally realized, was the emotion that seemed to beat harder at her brain.
Why did her body pick this moment, this man, to become sexual? She was twenty-three years old and she’d berated her sexuality as well as her heart for so many years for being unable to react to the opposite sex as other women did.
She had dated. She’d tried to force a need, an arousal for some of the more appealing prospects she’d known as potential lovers, yet she’d never been able to work up enough interest to actually join one in bed. Even Douglas, the fiancé who had informed her that he had no intention of allowing Breed genetics into any children he would eventually bring into the world. And besides, he’d sneered, he’d never been into fucking animals.
He’d slipped the engagement ring off her finger while she was too weak to fight, even had she wanted to, and he had walked away without even saying good-bye. But in his gaze she had glimpsed the pure disgust he’d felt at the thought of her.
Now, in the middle of attempting to escape a situation she didn’t understand, that sexuality had kicked into overdrive with the Breed known for being seen only when someone was such a liability to the Breed community that they were marked for termination.
Termination.
As though she weren’t human—
Oh yeah, she wasn’t human, she thought half hysterically.
She wasn’t human, she wasn’t an animal. She was a Breed.
She was something in-between, and that wasn’t something she had expected.
Why had the Breed leaders, the very same ones that had sat in her father’s living room such a short time ago and appeared so compassionate, marked her for death?
“Why?” she whispered, needing to know, to understand why she had to die by this man’s hand when she would so much prefer to be stroked by it.
The hard, savage smile that pulled at his lips was accompanied by a flash of white-hot lust in the odd, amber-speckled eyes staring down at her.
“Orders, baby.” A shiver raced through her at the hard rasp of his voice.
Orders? Jus