Cross Breed (Breeds 23)

He might be making a mistake. It was entirely possible he was making a mistake, but if there was one Breed who could tell them where Dog had gone, then it was this one.

“Half an hour,” she agreed, the change to her voice still a shock to him. It was smoother, a melodic sound that resonated with power and such a depth of pain, his heart broke all over again for her.

As he strode away from her, the memory of her screams as he rushed to the drive leading from the garage still filled him with horror. He’d never heard a scream like it. His instincts had never reacted to anything the way they’d reacted to those screams.

They’d echoed around her, resonated, and, he swore, pulled the animal he was to the surface with such instinctive demand he’d been shocked by it. The scream of an alpha demanding aid. Demanding they stop whatever agony was torturing her.

Pushing his fingers through his hair, he was aware of his wife catching up with him, moving silently by his side until they reached their room. She was scared for their daughter, uncertain of the decision they’d made when Dash had warned her of what he’d sensed in Cassie six years before. As that knowledge had strengthened over the years, they’d promised themselves they’d support her, no matter where it took her.

Her life, the dangers she’d faced, the choices she’d had to make, had been pushing her closer, and though he hadn’t expected this, he’d promised himself he’d be there for her, no matter the direction that strength took her in.

The knowledge that the “fairy” who had guided Cassie was Dog’s deceased mother might have surprised him, but he didn’t doubt her. Cassie had always known things she shouldn’t have known, made choices Dash knew were shaping her future, and there had been times, rare times, when he’d sensed something in Cassie that now made sense.

“This could be dangerous, Dash,” Elizabeth whispered as he changed into his mission clothes and strapped on his weapons. “She could be hurt. You could be hurt.”

Yeah, it was possible.

Sitting down on the side of the bed, he drew her to him, staring up at her with more love than he’d felt the day before, and the day before that. Over the years, he’d learned not to think that he couldn’t love her more, because it grew daily, and his heart’s capacity for it grew with it.

“It’s her destiny,” he told her softly. “Just as you were mine. She brought me to you, however she knew to do it. This is what she’s been racing toward, Elizabeth, and I don’t trust anyone else to watch her back as well as I trust myself. I don’t know what she’s facing, but I won’t let her face it alone.”

Tears filled her eyes, but they weren’t tears of pain.

“Are you ever going to tell her the truth? That you’re her father? ” she asked.

“I don’t have to tell her.” He shook his head. “Cassie knows. She’s always known.”

REEVER ESTATE

UNDERGROUND LABS OF GRAEME PARKER

Well now, wasn’t this interesting.

Graeme stood in the middle of his lab and stared at the young woman, his head tilted to the side.

The Primal had come forth the moment he caught her scent. Claws emerging, the markings spreading over his body, his gaze becoming sharper, clearing, picking up things a normal Breed had no hope of sensing.

And if he was watching her in interest, she was taking in nearly as much as he was. The blue of her eyes hadn’t completely taken over the whites yet, and he doubted there would be markings, but one wouldn’t know for some time yet.

“How fascinating,” he murmured as his mate, Cat, and his brother, Cullen, as well as Cullen’s mate, Chelsea, watched suspiciously from behind him. “Of course, so would your mate be. You’d never accept a mate weaker than yourself. How did I miss that?”

A frown snapped between those perfectly arched black brows and he could feel what was still trapped, fighting for freedom. This Primal was strong. What the body lacked in physical strength, the creature beneath her skin would make up for in other ways. Ways he may even find shocking.

“I wonder if it was the mating,” he questioned, speaking more to himself than to those standing in the cavern with him. “A hybrid thing, do you think?”

It was the first hybrid mating, he consoled himself. It could be something that emerged in hybrids. If so, the Breed community could well be screwed. There was also a chance it was merely an anomaly.

“Did you sense it?” He turned to her father as curiosity got the best of him. “Has it always been there?”

Dash’s sharp nod was all he needed.

“Hmm.” Retracting the claws was easy enough; the stripes remained.

Primal to Primal, she would respect nothing else.

“Are you Primal as well?” He turned his attention back to Dash and caught the Wolf Breed’s quick shake of his head.

“Not hereditary, then.” He sighed, smelling the strength of Dash’s paternal mark on her. “We’ll have to discuss this in depth, you know.”