The human side, the icy logic that ruled him, realized the mistake that would be. Whether Jonas or the animal genetics wanted to admit it, Jonas would never deliberately endanger Diane. She was his mate’s sister, he would protect her as much as possible. Still, the fact that she was facing any danger, period, had Lawe’s guts tightening in reflex.
Lawe rose to his feet. “I’ll meet with her.” He couldn’t help the growl in his response or the command in his voice.
He’d be damned if he would allow his brother, a Breed with genetics so similar to his own, around Diane at the moment. The silent fear that Rule could perhaps end up mating her was too great a risk. The fear could just be the possessiveness lashing out rather than any true risk of it. Still, it was a threat he couldn’t ignore.
Should it happen, Lawe knew he’d never control the vicious fury that would erupt inside him against his brother. A brother who had risked his life countless times to save him.
Lawe moved for the door, the tension in his body nearly impossible to control or to hide as he left Jonas’s office and headed for his own.
The rogue Breed cutting a swath of blood through research scientists involved in Breed development was a problem. The young woman the Breed was searching for, and the danger he represented to her and the two research victims she was hiding with, was nothing short of horrifying.
But it wasn’t his mate’s place to handle it or to find either of the missing parties. It was her place to stay safe. He may not have mated her yet, but she was still his mate.
It would still destroy him if she were harmed, or perhaps even killed.
God help whoever so much as scratched her because he would lose his mind, as well as his perspective, and shed a swath of blood that may well destroy the Breeds forever.
She was as essential to him as the very air he breathed.
But as long as he didn’t have her, as long as he maintained his distance, his control, then perhaps, just perhaps he would have a chance—
A chance of surviving, of maintaining control and his sanity if the worst did happen.
It was the only chance he had of holding back the pure, burning rage he could feel ready to ignite inside him. The rage of too many Breed lives lost, too many mates tortured, and far too many nightmares haunting him—
The knowledge that he now understood how a Coyote like Elder, a creature born to mercilessness and blood thirst, had given his life for one tiny, fragile, helpless breeder, sank inside his soul.
He would give his life—he would give his soul—for Diane.
CHAPTER 2
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA
Some would say he was insane, and some would be no less than completely accurate.
He was insane.
Staring down at the helpless, terrified research technician before him, Gideon acknowledged that fact with a sense of aching, bitter regret.
His sanity had been stripped from him with each day, with each injection, each slice of the scalpel against his flesh as Phillip Brandenmore’s monsters conducted their experiments on him.
So many years. So many broken bones, so many demonic experiments.
So many times he had prayed for death and death hadn’t come. Insanity had come instead. Insanity, and the overwhelming thirst for the blood of his enemies first, then for the blood of those who had betrayed him when they should have allowed him to die.
Crouching down to the floor where he had stretched his victim out spread-eagle, Gideon tilted his head and stared at the panic in the research tech’s wide hazel eyes.
Gideon had injected him with the same drug that had been used to paralyze the victims in the Council and Brandenmore labs.
The same drug that had been used on him.
Scott Connelly had been a particularly sadistic bastard to the research subjects he had been assigned to. The evil that had existed inside him had gotten off on ensuring his charges felt as much pain as possible.
And they had felt pain. An agonizing, horrible pain that could never be forgotten.
All but one. Only one of those innocent victims had been spared his cruelty, his insanity. The one Gideon considered his ultimate prey.
Vengeance for the night death had been ready to receive him with gentle, comforting arms, only to be torn from them. To be given blood that had tainted his own, that had created a fever inside him he couldn’t endure. A feral rage he couldn’t exist within.
Gideon tensed at the memory, still so clear and vivid, the agony of so many years ripping through his senses and causing an involuntary growl to pass his lips.
His muscles bunched as if preparing to move in for the kill and he felt his mouth water for the taste of blood.
An enemy’s blood.
A primal snarl rumbled in his chest, scraping his throat as he bared the sharpened canines at the sides of his mouth.
He was rewarded with a whimper of terror, and panic. The fear scented the air around him but did nothing to ease the primal violence swirling inside him.
Control was hard won. It was won only because it was now his turn to inflict the pain. His victim awaited him. The scent of his terror wafting through the room. Though it was an addictive aroma, it did little to appease the rage building inside him.
Gideon twirled the scalpel between his fingers as he rested his arms on his upper legs, his wrists lying over the edge of his knees as he watched the former research technician. He barely felt the rasp of his denim jeans against the underside of his arms where the sleeves of the white shirt he wore were folded back. Normally, the thin white scars that lay over that flesh didn’t tolerate the rasp of clothing well. But this time, he barely felt it.