Cross Breed (Breeds 23)
• CHAPTER 16 •
God help him but he loved her.
As he stared down at her, memories of the battles he’d fought to claim her drifted through his head.
Hell, how many times had he nearly been caught just trying to get close to her? To hear her laughter, see her smile, to smell the unique, tempting scent of her. She’d been his dream and he’d become better for her.
A lifetime of living in the shadows, believing he lived only for the day that he’d find the man responsible for his parents’ deaths, had changed the day his gunsights had landed on her.
The little halfling the Council was willing to pay a fortune no man could spend to attain. They wanted her unmated, a virgin, her unique genetics unspoiled by the hormone that would tip the scales in either direction and allow them to use her to further experiment.
Mated, her only value was that of any other mate, unless she conceived. And having mated a Coyote, she would be of even less value to them. It was generally agreed that the Coyotes were even more of a failure than the other Breeds. Shiftless and lazy, they were called. Good only for killing, and at the end of the day, they rarely did even that as they were ordered.
More than a century and a half of genetic mutations, alterations, countless deaths and horrors, and still, they continued as though what they searched for actually existed. Though only God knew what they actually searched for.
They wouldn’t find it with his mate now. Though they’d likely never realize just what they had truly created and what her life had finally allowed to emerge. A natural female alpha. Son of a bitch, he’d mated not just the only halfling living, but the only known emerging natural female alpha.
All Breed females were strong, but just as in the wild, females normally didn’t lead, and it wasn’t just due to physical strength. They lacked the sheer cunning and ability to instantly size up the males’ weakness and use it against them. But it was also that unnamed something—a natural presence that radiated from the core of an alpha—that created leaders.
Cassie possessed all of the above. She would have stood at his side, never behind him. As those genetics matured and the inherent intelligence and quick wit grew within her, she’d become a force for the Breed society unlike any other.
Hell, she was already that, he admitted. They called her the Breed princess for a reason. She was the beauty, innocence, intelligence and inner strength that Breeds and humans both found impossible to resist.
And she was his mate.
For such a very short time, he’d held her.
Dog couldn’t remember a time in his life when he’d cried. He couldn’t even remember a time when he’d wanted to cry. He’d known regret, lost friends in the battle to survive, seen horrors that he still relived in his nightmares. But at no time in his life had he wanted to shed tears until he lay next to his mate and knew that when he forced himself from the bed, he was leaving her.
Staring into her delicate face, he traced the slope of her brow, the stubborn curve of her chin, that endearing tilt of her nose. The playful curve of her lips.
He’d watched her smile often, heard her laughter. She found hope in the world, in their world, despite the fact that so many would steal that hope if they could.
She fought for the Breeds with fierce determination, but as she stood in that Cabinet meeting defending him, he’d felt something reaching out from her that he’d never felt from anyone else. Determined, fierce, she’d reached out to everyone in that room with a silent declaration of loyalty. Loyalty for him.
His halfling.
What the hell was he going to do without her? Because God knew when this night was over, he’d be dead or brought up on charges for murder. And the murder of a United States senator wasn’t something that could be hidden.
It was funny. He could remember when he was ten, hours spent with his father in the mountains of Washington. Dog had never known his father’s name; he’d just been Father, a somber, hardened SEAL. But when he’d gazed at Dog, the ten-year-old he’d been had known his father’s love.
He didn’t hug the son he called Cain; he’d been damned hard on him to ensure that Dog knew how to survive during the times his father was forced to leave him for supplies. Dog hadn’t realized until he was older that his father couldn’t afford to be seen with a child, just in case he was found. Because if Dog had been found with the man he knew as his father, then the hell he faced, he might not have survived.
A hybrid Breed hadn’t been heard of then, bu
t scientists had dreamed of overcoming the original genetic model to see one born. They hadn’t realized that Breeds needed far more than humans did to conceive. Breeds needed that one person, that one heart and soul that belonged only to them.
And Dog had thought he could finally claim his.
Now, staring at his mate, Dog found himself doing something else he’d never done. Regretting the choice he had to make.
He’d thought he could finally claim his mate, that he could finally carve out a chance at a future with this woman. He’d watched her grow from an uncertain eighteen-year-old to a strong, determined young woman. He’d watched her cry and laugh and he’d seen her play, and he’d wanted a chance to do all those things with her.
The realization that it was something he’d never have sliced through his soul with razor sharpness.
His halfling.
The inner strength and incredibly determined will rising inside her would make her a force to be reckoned with. The Wolf and Coyote genetics were fully merging as she reached maturity, at which point the aging would slow to a crawl.