She already knew the details. Protection in exchange for information.
She wanted to laugh at the thought. As though a Breed could ever protect her.
They would be more inclined to tear her throat out if she displeased one of them.
A flash of memory, buried so deep that she rarely let herself remember it, had her eyes closing briefly as she fought it back.
Her brother's death. The Breed ripping out his throat, the sounds of James's last gurgled breath and her father's cry of fear and pain.
They should have gone with her. They should have escaped as well rather than staying behind to destroy the last of the files they had on whatever secret project they had been involved in. That information had been more important than their lives. More important than her life, because her father entrusted her with the care of it, despite the fact that he should have realized that the Council would know exactly who he had given it to.
The Council scientists knew, and the Breeds knew, and she had been running from both for the past ten years.
She was tired of running, but there was a part of her that still refused to give up the information she had.
Glancing down at her hands, she watched as she twisted her mother's antique ring on her finger. The wedding band her father had given her mother had been in the Montague family for generations upon generations. The diamonds, sapphires and emeralds were family jewels, the blues and greens family colors. And Storme was now the last of the Montague line. There were no sons left to carry on the name, and there would be no daughters left to wear the ring.
The ring had been intended for James's wife, a wife he had never had because the danger of the job he had undertaken with his father had been too great.
Creating Breeds.
She glared across the room at the four Breeds. Monsters. Animals. She hated every damned one of them. As far as she was concerned, there was no crime greater than that of creating such farcical replications of humans and trying to convince the world they deserved to move freely among them.
Hatred swirled inside her for the loss of her father, her brother, the loss of her childhood and the dreams she had had of freedom. Dreams that had never come to fruition because each time she thought she had found peace, Breeds had managed to find her.
It didn't matter if they were the few Breeds still aligned with the Council or those who proclaimed to desire nothing but peace and freedom. They were all killers. They all wanted her for a reason, for the information they thought she had.
As she glared across the room, his head turned. Blue eyes, radiating amusement and warmth, met hers and locked. For the space of no more than a second, Storme felt mesmerized, locked in a circle of hatred, anger, laughter and hunger.
She had rarely looked into a Breed's eyes. They were too intuitive, their senses too sharp to hide from if they managed to look into your eyes. But this time, for that second as the crowd parted, his gaze held her.
Then, like an erratic school of fish, dancing bodies separated them, flowed between them, breaking the contact but leaving Storme assured that she was hidden no longer.
She came out of the booth instantly, moving along the edge of the crowd at a near run as she headed to the rest-rooms at the back of the bar.
She would hide there a few minutes then see about slipping out the back entrance of the bar.
She had to get out of there. She had rushed inside to hide, only to find the four bastards that had obviously been tailing her. She had thought, this close to Haven, the Wolf Breed sanctuary, that maybe she could rest for a few days, stay hidden, and figure out what to do next.
They were getting too close. Her hotel room had been ransacked the night before; the only reason she hadn't been there was that she had slipped out for fast food and walked to a nearby restaurant rather than driving. Her car had been parked in the parking lot of the hotel, and in addition to the belongings in her room being destroyed, the car had been broken into also.
There was no escape there. Until she acquired another vehicle, she was f**ked. If she didn't get the damned Breeds off her ass, then she was f**ked anyway.
As she rushed through the crowd, several couples parted at once; a path was created, then suddenly blocked as she slammed against a hard, wide chest.
Her gaze jerked up, locked. Her lips parted in shock, a shudder racing through her as warm hands gripped her shoulders lightly and canines flashed in a smile.
"Weel now, I was goin' for a drink, but I could be convinced to settle for a wee dance," he laughed.
She noticed it then. The music as it moved into a slow, dark strain of desperate love and passion unquenched.
Her hands pressed to his chest as his moved to her hips and he pulled her easily the rest of the way to the dance floor she had been moving by.
She'd taken a scent neutralizer earlier, one of the precious last few she possessed.
She prayed it worked.
She was too shocked to fight. In all her life she had never found herself this close to a Breed, in a situation so shockingly dangerous that it could destroy her world in an instant.
"Do ye need the ladies' room so desperately that a dance will interfere?" he asked as she continued to stare up at him. "Ye look as though the hounds of hell chase ye, lass. I can wait a moment or two if I must."
He didn't know who she was? Didn't know her scent?
She shook her head. "I didn't expect to see Breeds here." The lightness of the response was desperate, and she was certain it fell far short of the casual comment she'd intended.
"Don't be frightened, please." Sincerity suddenly marked his expression as they moved slowly to the music, more because he was leading than from her own conscious thought. "My friends and myself are just takin' a break from a wee bit of business is all."