Styx's Storm (Breeds 16)

"This isn't a joke, Styx," she yelled back at him. The heat of her anger, pain and fear slapped his senses like a barbed whip.

"I agree with you, your life is a verra damned serious thing to me, woman," he growled back at her, almost wincing at the animalistic sound that had her backing away. "Damn you, Storme. You act as though I'm going to attack you, hurt you in some way. When have I ever harmed you?"

"That doesn't mean you won't," she argued forcefully, as if she were trying to convince herself more than anyone else. "I saw Breeds turn on their handlers in the labs as though they had nothing human inside them ..."

"Oh well hell, excuse the fuck outta me," he exclaimed, suddenly so completely fed up with her fear that he felt as if he were sinking in it himself. "Let's just brand us all as monsters, Storme, because the horrors we lived with may have riled us a bit. I guess we should execute those who killed their handlers and trainers for fucking raping them, dissecting them alive, and sending others out to shed innocent blood or face the deaths of those they had to leave behind in the labs."

He moved until he was standing over her, staring down at her, watching her eyes dilate with naked misery as she watched him.

"It wasn't like that. I knew them. Those scientists, those trainers. They weren't like that." Tears filled her eyes, and in them Styx saw the lie she tried to make herself believe. She knew they had been like that. But to admit it, meant admitting her father and her brother had been a part of it.

"You think because he was your father, because he loved you, that he wouldn't stand aside and allow those Coyotes and soldiers and trainers to rape those wee young women before they ever knew wha

t it was like to understand a man's touch? Do you think your brother didn't watch men and women screaming in agony as their organs were cut from their living bodies so some fat, diseased bastard with enough cash to buy their lives could live another day?"

"Stop." She jerked away from him, her face pale, her eyes like deep, dark bruises in her pale face. "You don't know what you're saying."

"Your da kept you out of the labs, didn't he, Storme?" he yelled back at her as she retreated across the room. "Your brother kept you from the trainers and the soldiers, didn't he?"

She shook her head, but he knew they had. It was one of the few things he truly respected the Montague men for.

"They kept you out of those labs but for the rare times that they had no choice because of orders from the Directorate," he snapped back at her. "Children were always shown only certain areas of the labs. The ones where the Breeds were little more than animals, so out of their minds with fever and pain that they had no concept of reality, and therefore those who knew no better had no concept of them as human. Deny it, Storme, I dare you."

She shook her head. There were no tears on her face, no horror in her eyes. Hell no, she had to know by now, had to have realized the reality of what she had been shown.

"We don't pretend to be saints." He stepped back from her, the scent of her pain far more than he could bear. "We're strong enough to protect ourselves, able enough to create our own lives and to live in peace, with an assurance of some measure of justice, and I swear to God I think you'd send every one of us right back there if you could."

"No." Instinctive, horrified, her voice slapped back at him. "I just want to be left alone. By the Breeds as well as the Council. That's all I want."

"Then give me the location of the data chip," he said wearily, knowing he could never keep a vow to release her. Even now, with the mating not even fully in effect, he couldn't bear the thought of watching her walk out of his life. He would gladly lie to her, give her any promise she asked for to ensure that Jonas could never touch her with Breed Law and that the Council could never harm another person, especially his mate, with whatever experimentation they had been researching in those labs.

"Give you the location of the data chip," she said, mocking him bitterly. "Just give you what you want." Disgust filled her expression. "You're no better than the Council, Styx. Just give you what you want and I can have my freedom. Maybe I don't like being locked away any more than you did."

"At least you have comfort," he stated as he forced back the fury threatening to claim him. "You're not held down daily and raped by whichever soldier walks past your door. You're fed well, kept in pleasant accommodations, and you're allowed to wear fucking clothes," he sneered back at her. "So I'd say I'm a hell of a lot better than those fuckers and I'd dare you to even suggest otherwise ever again."

Storme stared back at him, her chest tight with the fear and ragged pain she had fought since the night her father and brother died.

True, Coyotes had killed them. Coyotes who were controlled by the Genetics Council. But Wolf Breeds had been escaping; they had to have known her father and brother were in danger, and they had let them die.

She knew they had. She had heard their howls outside the house even as James's throat had been ripped out. They hadn't cared about the two scientists who had worked to save them. They hadn't cared about the fourteen-year-old girl who had been terrified and running for her life.

All they had cared about was their freedom and she couldn't forget it. She couldn't forgive any of them for it. Only animals cared only for their own safety and nothing for the innocents they left behind.

"Think what you want." Her voice was ragged, the tears she refused to shed trapped as always in the dark, nightmarish vacuum inside her soul. "I have nothing that belongs to the Breeds, and I have nothing that belongs to you, or to Jonas Wyatt."

"And what of his child?" he bit off. "Do you think he wants that information to satisfy his own fucking curiosity, Storme? That research could save his wife's infant daughter. A daughter injected with a genetic virus by a human sweetheart. One who thinks he can play God and cheat death."

She felt the breath leave her chest for precious seconds. For a moment, she was fourteen again, running through that darkened tunnel as the nightmarish images of her brother's death replayed itself over and over again. She was alone, cold and praying it was all a dream.

Storme shook her head desperately then. "They destroyed all their files," she whispered. "I watched them do it. I saw them destroy everything. I saw them die because that research wasn't there when the Council henchmen and their Coyotes came to collect it ..."

"It was there before he copied it all to a data chip and gave it to you," he amended softly. "That's why the Council repeatedly sends those bastards after you. That's why the Breeds have busted their asses since you were eighteen to keep them off your back until you grew up enough to realize who the fuck the bad guys are, Storme." The look he gave her was one filled with disappointment. "And you still haven't grown up, have you?"

Before she could fight, before the anger inside her could light a fuse to the temper she could feel raging out of control inside her, Styx jerked her into his arms.

Almost as though he were helpless against the need that suddenly flamed in his eyes, helpless against the situation and the sense that there would never be a way to resolve it.

A hungry groan tore from his chest as he pulled her head back and covered her lips with enough fiery lust to blaze out of control.