Bengal's Heart

◆ CHAPTER 20 ◆

“He’s not your fucking husband!” The words tore out of Cabal’s mouth before he could stop them. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he spoke without thought, without considering the words that fell from his lips.

He hadn’t meant to say it, not just like that. But he couldn’t handle it. Hearing her call Watts her husband was too much for him to stand.

The pain in her eyes, in her scent, nearly overwhelmed him. The need to comfort her, to wrap her in his arms and shelter her from this knowledge, was like a stake through his soul.

“Get out of here, Dog,” he snarled.

That bastard Coyote. The son of a bitch had to be related to Jonas, because he was nothing but a manipulative troublemaker, rather like the Bureau director himself was.

Dog watched them silently, his expression brooding, heavy.

“Let her face it,” he said softly, his gaze going to Cassa as she stared at Cabal with betrayal in her eyes.

The betrayal hurt the worst, Cabal acknowledged. As Jonas had warned him, this secret had come back to bite him on the ass.

“You knew.” Her voice was husky with a pain he had no idea how to ease for her. “You knew he was still alive.”

“And I know it doesn’t matter.” He’d had enough.

Cabal stepped forward, gripped her arm and pulled her toward the elevators. “We’ll talk about this upstairs.”

“The hell we will.” Jerking her arm out of his grasp, she stared up at him, waves of fury beginning to pour from her now. “What else have you been keeping from me, Cabal? How many other lies have you told?”

“More than you want to keep track of,” he bit out in self-disgust. “Do you want a fucking list?”

He pushed her gently into the elevator, blocked the exit and stared down at her implacably as the doors slid shut behind them.

“Locking me up again, Cabal?” she sneered at him.

He couldn’t blame her for her fury. She had every right to it. As Jonas had said, this was a secret he shouldn’t have kept from her, but neither had she needed to know. Until this assignment. Until the mission that Cabal had no doubt would require that he kill Watts again. This time for good.

“You would only slip out,” he growled. “You can’t stay in place, can you, Cassa?”

“Go to hell!” she yelled furiously, her face flushing a becoming pink. “I’m not some weak-kneed little bitch you can order around. Not anymore.”

“So instead of fighting me for anything, you go to Dog?” he snapped out, the anger beginning to burn in him as well. “To a Coyote, Cassa?”

“At least he was willing to tell me the truth.”

“Perhaps I would have been willing if you had dared to fight for it,” he accused her roughly.

“Fight for it? I should fight for it?” She looked like she was ready to shoot him. “Why should I fight for a respect that you should have given me willingly? For God’s sake, Cabal. You should have let me stand at your side without having to fight you for it, simply because I was your mate. You should have wanted me there.”

He stared back at her in silent shock, seeing in her gaze the betrayal she felt, and for the first time understanding why Cassa had never fought him for respect and acknowledgment when she had never hesitated to go head-to-head with other Breeds.

It had bothered him, he admitted that now. It was something he hadn’t wanted to admit before. Just as he hadn’t wanted to see what it was doing to her. He wanted to protect her. He had wanted her to demand her rights from him as he had seen her do with others she went up against. He had wanted her to challenge him. He hadn’t realized until this moment how she had been challenging him. Daring him to be a true mate. Daring him to be her equal.

As Cabal struggled to make sense of the mistakes he had made, the elevator came to a stop with a muted little ping and the doors slid open on Cassa’s floor.

The hall wasn’t empty. Waiting for them were Jonas, Lawe, Rule and Mordecai. And they didn’t look happy.

“We have a situation,” Jonas stated, his tone cold, implacable. “We need you for this.”

Cabal clenched his teeth together furiously as he turned to Cassa.

“Like hell.” She pushed in front of him. “I know Breed Law and don’t think I won’t use it.” She stared back at Jonas. “Where he goes, I go.” She shot Cabal a hard, angry look. “It looks like the only way to get the truth out of him at this point.”

Jonas’s brows lifted in surprise as the other members of the team stared back at Cabal in shock.

Cabal kept his expression carefully blank, though he didn’t doubt the arousal pouring through him was clearly detected. Mating heat was surging through his system, pumping in his veins. She was taking her place. She wasn’t asking for it. A part of him was exultant, another part was terrified. He couldn’t protect her if she was in the line of fire. But she was also proving that protection wasn’t what she wanted.

Was this what he had been pushing for all along? he wondered. A mate who would fight to stand beside him rather than behind him?

It didn’t matter, and he wasn’t questioning it at the moment. Later, they would discuss this. Just as they would discuss her penchant for getting information from Dog rather than her mate. If she needed information, then she could damned well challenge him for it.

“Very well.” Jonas shot Cabal a warning look. “We’ll take the elevator to the top floor. The meeting room is set up there.”

The same meeting room Cabal had been headed to when Mordecai had waylaid him in the upper hallway to inform him that Cassa was meeting with Dog.

A meeting Mordecai had set up to repay a debt he owed to Cassa. Cabal understood the repayment, just as he appreciated the loyalty the Coyote had shown in informing her mate of that meeting.

He had accepted certain facts the second Mordecai had informed him that Cassa was meeting with Dog. First and foremost was his own mistake in not working with her. He had thought he could quell that independent nature enough to allow him to protect her. He’d been wrong about that, he admitted it.

Breed society was much different from that of human society. Respect wasn’t given, it was taken. She had earned the respect of every Breed she had worked with but had held back with him. She had expected that respect to be given. She had demanded it in her own way; he had just been too dense to understand. And now it was hers.

Above all else though, he had wanted to save her from the truth of what was going on here, the truth of her own past and the parts that were not as dead as she had believed they were.

“In here.” Jonas led the way into the suite he had taken.

The meeting room was still set up from earlier. Pictures were displayed on a holographic board while several holographic vids still played of previous hunts the Deadly Dozen had been on. The videos had been saved from Council archives that had been discovered in some of the labs that were rescued over the years.

There weren’t many of them, but there were enough to show the horrifying measures the Dozen had taken in catching their prey.

Cassa stopped inside the room, her gaze on the images displayed across the electronic board.

The Deadly Dozen had been rumored to have taped some of their hunts. It was how they sold their services to the Council and the individual labs seeking to reacquire their escaped Breeds.

Actually seeing proof of it was horrifying though. Seeing the Breeds as they fought to run, to hide, to escape a dozen hunters that had lain in wait for them.

She heard the door close behind the four men, and she was aware of them moving around her, watching her as she stared at the images on the screen.

“They were too good,” she whispered as she watched the video for long moments. “There was a Breed with them.”

“Two. They weren’t part of the Dozen,” Jonas stated quietly. “That was always part of the deal. The labs would loan them two Coyotes to help track during the hunt.”

She shook her head slowly. “They led them where they wanted them to go. They watched. Waited.”

“Some of the hunts lasted for weeks, a few months at a time,” she was told. “They stalked their prey.”

Like a safari hunt, she thought. They knew what they wanted, where it was. They knew their prey’s habits and how they tracked, hid. As she watched, she could see that. They knew their prey intimately.

“This particular hunt was one of the first,” Jonas told her, and she felt Cabal moving behind her, his hands settling on her hips, pulling her against him.

The clasp was intimate rather than sexual. Comforting rather than arousing.

“We found this one in a lab in New Mexico,” Jonas continued. “The hunt took place approximately twenty-seven years ago. The Breeds they were hunting were a male and two females from that particular lab. They caught the first female a week before this hunt.”

She sensed what Jonas wasn’t saying. That she didn’t want to know the particulars of that capture. She probably didn’t want to know this one either.

As she watched the footage, she caught a few glimpses of the hunters themselves. Black-masked and black-clothed. It was impossible to tell who was who.

The dark landscape was illuminated by the thermal and night-illuminating capabilities of the video. She could see the male Breed, a Lion Breed if the brown eyes and tawny-colored hair were an indication, as he attempted to keep the female in front of him.

Both Breeds were cunning and swift, but the hunters had them surrounded. They played with them. They built the rage in the male and the fear in the female until the first shot was fired.

Cassa flinched at the sound and the sight of the bullet as it impacted the male’s back. There was a moment of stunned agony, of resignation on his face, before he went to the ground.

The female raced to him. Tears tracked down her face as a roar of rage tore from her lips. Her canines flashed in the darkness as the hunters advanced on her, their laughter echoing through the night.

“She’s a pretty sight,” one of them called out.

“Let’s not damage her too bad quite yet,” another suggested and Cassa nearly cried out in agony at the familiar tone. “I have a few plans for her.”

Another jeered. “I still say it’s like fucking an animal.”

“It’s like fucking a wildcat,” Douglas laughed back as he moved toward her. “Let’s get her down. He can watch while I fuck his pretty little pussy.”

Cassa tore herself out of Cabal’s grip, turned her back on the video and had to fight to hold in the sickness rising in her gut.

She was trembling, shaking her head as she cupped her hand over her mouth and swore to herself she wouldn’t throw up.

Behind her, the sound cut out. There was silence in the room, but all Cassa could hear were the screams as the hunters tried to pull the female Breed from her mate.

If the female Breed had mated, then any other males’ touch would have been agony. Such agony that it was like daggers tearing through the flesh. Cassa knew. Something as simple as the brush of another man against her in a crowd was so discomforting since the mating heat had begun that she avoided it at all costs.

The day she had ridden from the park back to the inn on the back of Dog’s Harley, she had been careful not to touch him, and he had made certain he hadn’t touched her.

The agony that female mate would have endured, because of Douglas, sliced through Cassa’s soul like a dull knife. Her husband. And he was still alive.

She shook her head as Cabal tried to pull her to him again. She couldn’t allow him to touch her now, not yet. She needed to think, and she couldn’t think if he held her. She needed his comfort, needed his touch too much. She wanted to burrow into him and forget that reality existed.

He had tried to shelter her from it, she realized that. He had wanted to protect her, and she had refused to allow him to do it.

Was it better to know? she wondered as she swallowed back the tears that filled her chest. Or would innocence have been better?

“Why is he still alive?” Her voice was hoarse as she realized that she wanted Douglas dead. Not for what he had done to her, but for what he had done to the female Breeds. The mates that had dreamed of nothing but freedom, safety.

She turned to Cabal, glaring at him, demanding an answer.

“Why?” she repeated. “Why is he still alive?”

She remembered as though it were yesterday. Watching that stake hurl through the air, burying into his spine and sending him to the metal floor as he screamed out in agony.

The screams had cut off. Blood had pooled on the floor. How could he still be alive? Why was he still alive?

“You let him live,” she whispered painfully. “You let him live, didn’t you?”

“He deserved to suffer.” The statement was more a growl, a primal snarl of complete rage as he glared back at her, the amber glints in his eyes like fire in a background of forest green.

“You let him live.” She had to fight the tears, and still two fell. “All these years, he’s lived while you ignored me. Is that why?”

His jaw clenched. “That has nothing to do with why I didn’t claim you, Cassa. It didn’t matter if he was alive or dead.”

“He was my husband,” she cried out. “He is my husband.”

Fury contorted his face and narrowed his eyes.

“Like fucking hell!” he yelled back at her. “That bastard was never your husband, Cassa. He made certain there were no true ties. The marriage wasn’t legal because the minister that married you wasn’t a minister. He wasn’t licensed to marry anyone, and Watts knew it.”

Cassa felt what little blood was left in her face recede. They hadn’t been married? It was relief more than anything else. She didn’t doubt Cabal’s word; he wouldn’t bother to lie to her about this. But it was the shock of it. Yet another betrayal that Douglas had dealt to that stupid, innocent little girl who had thought she loved him.

They hadn’t been married. That information shot through her head like a bullet, nearly bringing her to her knees.

And Douglas was still alive.

“Where is he?” she whispered. “What did you do, Cabal?”

An enraged growl sounded from his chest.

“Does it matter where he’s at?” he bit out furiously.

“It does actually.” Jonas answered the question for him.

Cassa swung around to where Jonas was watching them, his gaze narrowed, his expression calm, watchful.

“Watts escaped four hours ago.”

Tension snapped into the room. It filled the atmosphere, making the air thick as it tightened Cassa’s chest and sent trepidation skating down her spine.

“Watts has been confined in a small prison in the Middle East that Breeds now control,” Jonas told her. “We’ve had him in confinement since the night of Cabal’s release.”

Cassa swallowed tightly as she stared back at the director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs.

“And you allowed him to escape.” Her voice was raw, thick with tears she couldn’t shed.

Jonas’s lips quirked. “We may have made it a bit easier for the Coyote team that rescued him to get to him.” He shrugged. “He’s been a little irate since he learned you and Cabal had mated. It seems he still believes he has a hold on you, Ms. Hawkins.”

Cassa wrapped her arms across her breasts and shook her head. Douglas no longer had a hold on her. He had nothing more on her than old, bitter memories.

“What purpose did it serve to allow him to escape?” she asked acerbically.

The master puppeteer. That was Jonas. Always conniving, always manipulating. Always with a plan.

“The rogue Breed we’re after contacted you, drew you here, hoping to draw Watts out,” Jonas told her. “We believe he’s a mate that’s gone feral and now he’s killing the men who killed his mate.”

“And Douglas raped her.” She had to force the words past her throat.

Jonas nodded. “About a year and a half ago word leaked, somehow, to the Council that Watts was still alive and was being held by us. How the rogue got the information, we’re not certain yet.” He moved back to the table set up in the middle of the room and took his seat with an outward calm she doubted he truly felt.

“We believe,” he continued, “that he bribed one of the human guards we had working there. Several months later, the first victim, Dr. Ryan Damron, was killed after he called Phillip Brandenmore requesting a meeting. They were to meet here at the hunting cabin Brandenmore keeps in the Hawk’s Nest forest.”

Once again, Cabal moved behind her. His warmth surrounded her, like a blanket to hold out the cold, a solace against the pain she could feel raging inside her and the hatred that boiled black and ugly.

“Dr. Damron disappeared before he could reach the cabin. He was found several weeks later, several states from here, mauled and bled out. Since then, six other suspected members of the Deadly Dozen have turned up dead.”

“The information Damron carried was the suspected location where Watts was being held.” Cabal spoke quietly behind her. “Damron was still working for the Council, and we believe Watts had demanded that the Council facilitate his release.”

“You should have killed him,” she whispered.

She wondered if she would burn in hell for that one. If he were dead, then perhaps the Breed now killing wouldn’t have turned feral. And she wouldn’t be facing her past or the weak person she had once been.

“He had information,” Jonas explained with a shrug. “And death would have been an easy punishment. I don’t like making it easy on my enemies. Neither does Cabal.”

She well believed that. Jonas didn’t even like making things easy for those he considered his friends.

“So you arranged to allow for his release.” It was an accusation. “To what purpose?”

She didn’t want to believe he was still alive. Hell, she hated the thought that suddenly he was again breathing the same air she was breathing. That he was on the same planet. And a part of her was terrified as well. Douglas was a vicious, cruel man, and any and every weakness he could find he knew how to put to good use.

“To allow us to capture the rogue we’re after now,” Jonas told her. “We believe Douglas knows the identity of our rogue. When he learned of the killings, he became more determined than ever to escape, when he should have been eager to stay. After all, he’s the one the killer ultimately wants.”

“And how do you know this?” She pushed away from Cabal, her head turning to catch the expression of regret on his face before he wiped it away. “How do you know the killer is after Douglas?”

“We suspected when we learned he had contacted you,” Cabal answered. “We learned Watts was part of the Deadly Dozen years ago, but we’d never learned the identity of the others. That was information we were trying to get out of him when the killings began.”

“And after eleven years you still didn’t have that information?” She scoffed furiously. “Bullshit, Cabal. What were you doing, playing with him? Don’t tell me you couldn’t have learned what you wanted to know in this amount of time.”

“The truth serums we’ve developed couldn’t be used on him because of his weakened physical condition,” Jonas stated. “We didn’t want him dead, not quite yet. And he’d never fully recovered from that steel stake Cabal drove into his back.” A mocking quirk of his lips accompanied the statement.

“Do you have any suspects?” She had to stay focused. Cassa felt as though she were going to shake apart from the inside out. Anger and fear ate at her insides, tearing at them until she felt the raw, bleeding wounds in her soul. If she didn’t focus on something besides that pain, then she might not survive, she might not get out of this room before humiliating herself and breaking down entirely.

“As of now, we have no fucking clue.” Disgust flickered in his gaze and on his face.

Cassa believed him. Not that she wasn’t certain he would lie about it if he did have a suspect, but that flash of self-disgust and anger in his eyes convinced her that he truly didn’t know who the killer was.

“That’s why we allowed Watts to escape,” Cabal stated. “To draw the rogue out. If we watch Watts close enough, then we’ll be there when the killer goes for him.”

“And you’re certain he’s headed here?” she asked as she turned to her mate, to the man she had hoped would eventually love her. Now she wondered if she had a chance. If she had ever had a chance. She kept forgetting the fact that she had been involved with the most horrifying event of his life. The deaths of his family. And now she wouldn’t be the only one facing that past, he would be as well. And there was no way he couldn’t remember exactly the role she had played.

She had allowed Douglas in. She had been the reason he had the information, she had given him the chance to sell the information on the rescue of that facility. Because of her, Cabal had lost so much.

“Positive.” Cabal nodded as he broke into her thoughts. “But he’s not coming for a killer, Cassa. Watts is coming for you.”