Rule Breaker (Breeds 20)

“Gypsy.” Releasing her, he raked his fingers through his hair in frustration as he tried one last time. “Sweetheart. Your brother died because he refused to trust those who could help him . . .”

“My brother died because his sister betrayed him.” Flat, hard, she spoke the words as though it were a trained response.

“Baby, no.” The softness of his voice shocked him as he reached out to touch her cheek, only to have her flinch away from him.

“Go do whatever Breed stuff you do when you’re not accusing innocent people of lying to you,” she charged, turning away from him, the insulting sense of her complete distrust causing the animal to react before the man could pull back.

He had her against the wall, using his stronger, heavier body to hold her there as she stared up at him in shock.

“I watched my mother lie screaming in inhuman agony as her living body was dissected just hours after her mate’s,” he snarled in her face, ignoring that flash of horror in her eyes. “Her screams cut into my soul like a blade whose sharp edge I can never escape because I was unable to warn the mate who could have saved her. I was too young, and I was too slow to slip past the guards plotting against them or to sense the packmate, the fucking brother Lawe and I wanted only to protect. One whose loyalty to the Council exceeded his loyalty to his mother. There is nothing, mate, not a fucking thing you can teach me about guilt, dark memories or nightmares. But have no doubt I have much to teach you about fucking loyalty to the only person you know in your heart can help you without betraying you.”

Her gaze flickered. For a moment, for the briefest moment he swore she was weakening, that the trust he knew she felt, that he could sense her about to give into, was suddenly jerked back.

Her green eyes hardened, her expression flushing with anger—at herself, at him, at whatever thought or brutal pain ravaged her heart.

“Did you betray your mother?” she asked then, the tears that thickened her voice unbidden, and hated—by them both. “Were your actions the ones that caused her and her mate to die?”

“My inability . . .”

“I’m the brother who betrayed your mother,” she retorted furiously then, the agony that raged inside her like her own beast shocking him with its strength. “Do you hear me, Rule? I’m the same as that gutless coward—”

His lips covered hers.

The kiss, filled with fury, with pain, with the need to cut off the agonizing torment of a child made to believe she was a monster, was infused with the hormone that filled the glands beneath his tongue with a suddenness he hadn’t heard of.

Anything to hold back the words she would have spilled between them. The knowledge that his mate couldn’t differentiate between an innocent girl’s actions and a depraved Coyote’s use of them.

Tearing his lips from hers, he stared down at her, watching as the tears she should have shed remained locked in her soul and flailed at his like the barbed whips the lab soldiers had used against him when he was just a cub. She didn’t shed the tears, but they dripped down her soul, gouging into it and leaving wounds that bled night and day. The sobs she held inside shuddered through her body, causing her to flinch repeatedly in barely perceptible little jerks that tore past her control.

“Say such a thing to me again and I swear to God I’ll make sure you regret it,” he warned, furious that she believed such a thing. “Never ever, Gypsy, let me believe you are even considering such thoughts inside that far-too-complicated little brain of yours, or the ba

ttle you’ll have with me is one you never want to face.”

Her lips trembled, then hardened.

“Go to hell, Breed,” she retorted flatly. “Better yet, get out of my hell and leave me the fuck alone.”

Leave her the fuck alone?

His hand moved, a quick reflex action that had him grabbing the curve of her ass and jerking her into the cradle of his thighs.

He’d be damned if she would defy him this way. He’d be damned if she would ever allow another such thought of herself to see the light of day, let alone the dark of a nightmare as long as he lived.

His lips curled over the sharp canines at the side of his mouth, a rumbling growl of dangerous intent sounding in his chest and echoing around them as her eyes widened before her lashes flickered nervously.

He was one second from tearing the clothes from her body and showing her, proving to her exactly why she never wanted to push him to such an extent again. His free hand was only a heartbeat from jerking open her jeans when the vibrating ping of the comm device lying on the counter went off with a distinctively coded sound, a warning he knew he couldn’t afford to ignore.

“Get away from me,” he all but whispered, though the deep animalistic sound of his voice sent a sharp wave of submissive wariness instantly striking at her senses. “Get away from me now, mate, and pray to God that by the time I finish this, I can forget the fact that you’re not just trying to destroy us, but you’ve already by God all but destroyed yourself, and that I will not tolerate.”

With that, he jerked away from her, reached out and snatched the link from the counter as he turned for the exit and stalked through it, placing the link competently in his ear and barking out a “What the fuck is going on?” to the Breed unlucky enough to send out the imperative summons.

“The McQuades have just been arrested for bringing another device into the hotel after requesting a private meeting with Jonas,” Lawe stated furiously as an enraged snarl could be heard in the background along with raised voices. “This time it was video and audio programmed with an electronic nano-nit. Jonas has just fucking lost his mind. Claws are out, and I need some fucking help here.”

Rule slammed the door behind him as he raced from the room, carrying his boots rather than taking time to actually put them on.

A nano-nit was serious.

The tiny, almost-too-small-to-be-seen electronic robot hitchhiked on the back of audio or video devices to the desired location, where it was only activated once the parent device was. It then worked its way from the device to attach itself to an electrical source to power up before following the current and homing in on the specific electrical identifier it was programmed to infiltrate.