Mercury's War

CHAPTER 11

The animal prowled the man’s mind, careful to stay in the shadows, to hold back, though rage was a fire in its gut and the need for action was like a hunger for blood.

But it couldn’t move yet.

It had to ease into place. It was still so weak. The drugs had taken so long to wear away, and it had taken still longer to awaken. And it might have never awoken if not for her. If not for the soft scent of what the animal knew belonged irrevocably to it.

The man had staked his claim. The animal could retreat just enough to strengthen a little more. If it moved too quickly, the man could fight it. If they fought, it would be a battle they would both lose, because once the animal stepped free of its bonds, it knew it would never return. There would be no going back, not even to save the man’s life.

Freedom awaited. Its mate awaited him, and it could smell her scent, her pain, her need to be marked, to be claimed by one such as the animal. She was wild and she was bound to it. But she ached; her spirit reached out to the animal, and it longed to shelter that spirit in the shadow of its strength.

So sweet. It inhaled her scent as the man’s defenses relaxed, as the man rested against her, lost in the pleasure of his release. The animal inhaled her essence and it was pleased. It stepped closer, just a little bit closer to the man’s flesh, felt her warmth, felt her like a gentle rain and it rumbled its pleasure.

Ria’s lashes lifted, a frown on her face as she felt something. She didn’t hear it. She felt it. Mercury held her tight to his chest as he rested against her, catching his breath, and she could have sworn… She waited, holding her breath. A grumbly little purr?

She heard it again and let a smile touch her lips.

“You’re purring,” she murmured.

He stilled against her. Tensed and it stopped.

“I don’t purr.” He moved, lifting himself off her, his expression set now, his eyes their normal amber brown as he adjusted his clothes then helped her from the couch.

Ria frowned, standing before him as she unzipped the skirt that was bunched at her hips, stepped out of it and collected the shreds of the rest of her clothing.

“I know a purr when I feel one,” she told him, irritated by his denial.

“You misfelt then.” He shrugged, his gaze hooded as she stared back at him.

She wasn’t going to let herself get angry, she promised. This was the best sex she had ever had in her life, why argue over a damned purr?

“What, are you ashamed of it?” she asked him, defying her own promise.

He picked up his shirt from the floor and pulled it back on. He was fully dressed now and she was as naked as the day she was born. That small detail had the power to irritate her. He should be as naked as she was at the moment.

“Breeds don’t just purr,” he informed her. “And you need to shower. I’m betting we can expect company within the hour. I don’t think I can handle anyone seeing you naked like this.”

“What the hell do you mean Breeds don’t just purr?” Her nakedness didn’t bother her, and it wouldn’t until company actually did arrive. “Come on, Mercury, it wasn’t that big a deal. Just a tiny little purr…”

“Breeds only purr during mating,” he told her stiffly, his expression somber, almost regretful. “There hasn’t been a mating.”

That told her. She tried to still that sharp little pain that drove a spike through her chest, but damn, it wasn’t easy. And it made her question her own mind. Because she could have sworn she heard that faint little rumble. And now she wondered if she had just needed to hear it.

“Well.” She stiffened her shoulders and her upper lip. Because if she wasn’t careful it was going to start trembling. “That puts me in my place, doesn’t it?”

“Dammit it, Ria.” He reached for her, scowling.

“I have to shower, as you said. You expect company soon, and parading around naked isn’t my favorite pastime anyway.”

She turned away from him and moved quickly for her bedroom.

“Straighten the couch up if you don’t mind.” She paused at the doorway and looked back.

He hadn’t moved. He still stood there, watching her, his expression arrogantly impassive. The couch cushions were in disarray, and God only knew what his company would catch scent of when they walked into the room. Probably her complete humiliation.

“And there’s room freshener in the kitchen cabinet,” she told him. “Make use of it please. I’d prefer your company not know exactly what happened in here.”

His lips parted to speak, and she couldn’t bear to hear anything he had to say. She didn’t care what it was. She slipped into her bedroom, closed the door behind her then leaned against it with a hitching, silent sob.

Only mated Breeds purred. They only purred for their mates, not for women who were too stupid to steel their hearts against the need to hear it. And she was one of those stupid women.

Mercury watched the bedroom door close, his fists curling, the need to punch something riding so hard inside him it was nearly impossible to deny.

She didn’t know what he would have given to purr for her. To know that all that wild courage and passion was his alone.

Before he could help it, he ran his tongue over his teeth again and snarled in fury. Nothing. Not an itch, not the slightest swelling of the glands, not even a vague sensitivity to give him hope.

He pushed his fingers through his hair and did as she’d asked. He straightened the couch, he sprayed her detestable air freshener. But unknown to her, that wasn’t going to do anything to cover the scent of their sex. And he refused to wash her scent from his body.

He needed her scent on him, soft, delicate, merging with his to create something that, when he breathed it in, seemed to comfort the rage building inside him.

Belonging. It was something it seemed would be forever denied him. Callan had revoked his rank within the enforcer hierarchy when his weapon and uniform had been confiscated. He had backed the safe path rather than an individual Breed, and logically, Mercury couldn’t even blame him for it. The Breed community as a whole was of more importance than a single Breed. Even one whose need to belong was like a hunger in his soul.

He sat down on the couch, close to Ria’s scent, and breathed her in, knowing she was in that shower, washing his scent from her body. It infuriated him, knowing that it took no more than soap and water to wash the smell of him from her flesh.

Mating changed the scent of each mate. Their scents combined, created something unique that couldn’t be washed away. It wasn’t like the scents that mingled on his flesh now, both of the them together, because he could still distinguish between her scent and his.

He paused, staring down at his hands in confusion. His sense of smell was sharper than it had been. That knowledge sent a pulse of wariness tearing through him as he inhaled, and frowned again. Perhaps it was. He shook his head. What he thought he had smelled moments ago was gone. There was no combined scent, just the smell of sex, of the pleasure they had shared.

He had lost the ability to distinguish smells as other Breeds could in the labs. When the drugs killed the feral rage inside him, they had killed the animal that lurked beneath his senses as well.

Once, he had known himself as two halves. The man and the animal. They existed together, complete, until the animal had fought for supremacy. A form of madness that normally meant instant death when it showed itself in an adult Breed.

The scientists in the labs he had been created within had developed a drug instead. One that killed the animal instinct to dominate the human. But he had also lost those extraordinary powers to see in the darkness, to smell the slightest scent, to touch, to taste. He had become more merciless, more cunning, but he had lost the animal instincts inside him to the point that he was only slightly better than a non-Breed.

The Breed with the face of a lion, and the instincts of a normal man. It was laughable.

He pushed himself from the couch and paced to the kitchen. Opening her cabinets, her refrigerator, he found nothing more than coffee and beer and a few old Danishes. Good God, how did that woman survive eating as she did?

He shook his head and moved to the phone. Five minutes later he had an order in to the local grocery store, whose owner he often went hunting with.

He couldn’t fix coffee worth shit, but he was a mean cook. He was tired of starving to death in this dark little cabin where she existed after work. And he grew tired of pizza fast.

Ria wasn’t his mate, but his mate was dead. She was taken from him before he had even had a chance to realize what being mated meant. It didn’t mean he was dead. It sure as hell didn’t mean there were no emotions lurking beneath his odd appearance.

He had emotions, and those emotions were tightening, building within him and centering on one contrary little woman. A woman with an intelligence that often amazed him as she stood back and watched people. She watched and she listened. And what she saw, he sensed, was often much more than others did.

Such as her determination that there was a power play being orchestrated in Sanctuary. The more Mercury thought about it, the more it concerned him, and the more he realized how incredibly difficult it would be for him to investigate it.

He wasn’t an enforcer any longer. He couldn’t just walk into the secured areas of Sanctuary and begin investigating the oddities he was beginning to put together for himself.

Something wasn’t as it should be. He could feel it, he could sense it, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

He moved to the front door and stepped outside, ignoring the Jaguar female that hissed at him as he stepped out the door.

“It’s damned cold out here,” Shiloh grumbled. “And listening to you have fun in there is not fun out here. Do you realize I had to spend the better part of the damned hour in the woods, to escape the sound of her caterwauling?”

He turned and arched his brow. Most Jaguars possessed darker skin tones and black, silky hair. This Jaguar Breed was an anomaly. The rich auburn highlights in her black hair and her creamy complexion gave her a unique look that never failed to draw stares.

She was a bit shorter than most Breed females, barely five-five, and for some odd reason the scientists that created her had allowed her to have a temper.

“Shi, you’re going to piss me off,” he warned her, hiding his smile, knowing she wouldn’t, unless she really wanted to.

“Do you hear my knees shaking?” she growled as she pulled her jacket tighter around her.

He grunted at that. “The grocery from town will be delivering supplies soon. I need to talk to Rule and Lawe. Make certain when the owner arrives that he doesn’t enter the house. Take the bill and I’ll collect it when I come back.”

“You’re going to cook!” She accused him with a hint of disbelief. “While I’m stuck outside? Mercury, that’s not fair.”

“Take it up with Jonas.” He shrugged as he left the small porch and headed toward the tree line. “Maybe he’ll send you back to Sanctuary.”

Mercury doubted it. Once he had a chance to talk to Jonas and lay out his suspicions, he knew the director would begin shifting his own people, keeping those in place that he trusted and shifting back those he didn’t.

Most would have suspected Jonas of heading a revolt against Callan and the Ruling Cabinet, but Mercury couldn’t see it happening. Jonas was a sneaky, manipulative son of a bitch, but Sanctuary and the Breed community were his primary concerns. And Mercury had spent enough time as the man’s personal bodyguard to know Jonas didn’t have revolt in mind. Driving everyone insane with his games, yeah, Mercury could see that one coming where Jonas was concerned. But a strike against the security of the community? That wasn’t going to come from Jonas.

Jonas had no desire to rule. He liked playing puppet master, and he loved poking his nose in where it wasn’t involved, but he didn’t have the temperament to play the games it took to weave such a play for power.

Jonas would challenge outright. He would never allow a breakdown in authority. And that was what was happening. Someone had waited, watched, and while Callan was occupied with staying alive and then healing from his wounds, they were moving in to disable the power structure the Ruling Cabinet had in place.

He could sense it. He could feel it, but with his rank stripped now, he had no idea how to identify who or what.

As he entered the thick forest growth, Lawe and Rule fell in place beside him. They turned to face the cabin, all three silent for long moments.

“She’s not my mate.” He answered the question he had seen in their eyes.

Lawe grunted at that.

“Whatever,” Rule snorted. “I don’t know about this mating bullshit, Mercury. Seems to me there aren’t any rules to it. You act mated.”

And there had been a few odd moments that he had felt a bond, an unbreakable something that he couldn’t put his finger on.

“Jonas contacted me ten minutes ago,” Lawe murmured. “He’s pulling Shiloh back to Sanctuary before he arrives here. It seems there’s a problem at home base.”

“What kind of problem?” Mercury swung his gaze to his friend, watching as Lawe leaned against a tree, his expression implacable, his eyes burning with a hard, savage light.

“He’s going to explain things when he gets here, but notice had gone out that Callan has reinstated your rank. He’ll be bringing your uniform and weapon when he arrives.”

Mercury shook his head. He didn’t want the rank, he realized. Jonas would have found a way to force Callan to reinstate it. It meant nothing to him that way.

“There’s something going on,” he said quietly. “There are too many anomalies.”

“Meaning?” Rule gripped his weapon, his gaze sharper now.

Mercury shook his head. “I can see the threads of it, sense them, but I can’t put my finger on where they’re going. Ely has targeted me, though, and she’s never done that with another Breed. She needs me out of the way. Or someone does.” It just didn’t work for him that Ely would be in on any kind of deception, but he knew it was possible. It was even probable.

“Ely?” Lawe straightened and started back at him in disbelief before he shook his head and suspicion began to fill his eyes as well.

“We need to be careful.” Mercury stared back at the cabin, and thought of the woman inside. “Ria’s not here just to decide whether or not to stop Vanderale funding. The files she’s going through have nothing to do with funding, and everything to do with outgoing transmissions. Ely’s managed to separate me from Sanctuary, but not as far as she could have without Jonas standing in her way. When Jonas arrives, I want you at the meeting.”

“And Ria?” Lawe asked. “Will she be in on it?”

He turned back to Lawe. “She’ll be there, or there will be no meeting.”

She wasn’t his mate. But he didn’t have to mate her to know she belonged to him.

Ely stared at the test results as she sipped at a bottle of water and felt the anger burning in her mind. She was sitting here, putting together the proof for what she was trying to convince the Ruling Cabinet of, and a part of her already knew they weren’t going to listen to her.

Mercury was a strong enforcer, and not just in physical strength. His animal qualities were more a part of him than anyone suspected. The Council drugs may have recessed the more violent qualities of his animal, and the senses he had once possessed, but he was still intelligent, and cunning. That animalistic intelligence was by far his most dangerous trait, because it was stronger than other Breeds’ she had run across since the rescues.

If it hadn’t been for the feral fever, he would have been trained to lead and to command. He could have possibly been a stronger alpha than even Callan. As hard it was to believe that there could be a stronger alpha.

She pushed her fingers through her hair and fought the rage burning behind her eyelids, fought the screaming warning her own animal was sending through her head. She had never felt like this, and she knew the pressure was beginning to get to her.

Reaching around, she rubbed at the back of her neck, fighting the headache that seemed to spread there.

Shaking her head, she opened a bottle of over-the-counter pain medication and washed two down with the water before turning back to her computer.

She put a tight hold on the anger, forced it back and forced her mind to work on the analysis of the fluids she had taken from Mercury.

There was something in the semen that she knew was off, something odd. The saliva as well. His blood was corroded with the feral adrenaline, and that terrified her. The images of the videos taken in the labs where he had killed so horrifically continued to run through her mind.

His hands, the nails thick and curved like claws, had punched right through a man’s chest. The bloody mess of the man’s heart had still been in Mercury’s clenched fist when he drew back. That heart had been ground into the trainer’s face before Mercury ripped his head from his shoulders.

That shouldn’t have been possible. To just rip flesh and muscle, cartilage and spine away in such a brief span of time and toss the head away.

She shuddered, imagining Callan or, God forbid, Jonas taken apart in such a way.

Jonas was her nemesis, but there had always been a sense of fondness between the two of them, until now. He had respected her opinion even if he didn’t always want to believe what she had to say. He pushed her to find other answers, and because of that she had run these tests until her head was about to explode.

“You bastard!” The snarl surprised her as she jumped from her stool and began to pace the room. “Damn you, Jonas, I can’t find any other answer.”

And why should she care what she found for him? This was the man who had had his own sister captured. The man who had blackmailed that sister, laid her head on the chopping block of Breed Law, and he would have gone through with it. He would have killed Harmony if she hadn’t done as he ordered.

Just as he killed others.

He thought she didn’t know the things he had done. The trips the Breed heli-jet made to an active volcano, one that bubbled and churned and waited with greedy anticipation for the sacrifices he fed to it.

The bodies he had dropped into it. Council scientists who had been wiped away within the boiling mass of molten stone. He and his pilot, the wild-eyed Jackal.

Jackal. Damn him. He was protecting Mercury as well, and he was furious with her. And he was just as much a killer as Jonas was himself. Everyone knew it. Even Kane, head of Sanctuary’s security, knew it. Jackal was a murderer. He should have been born a Breed rather than a human.

She dug her fingers into her neck, trying to rub away the pain there. There had to be a way to convince the Ruling Cabinet that Mercury had to be confined and forced to undergo the testing she needed. It would be easy to duplicate the drug the Council had used to control him. He had lived well then. He would live well again, and there would be no risk of death. No risk of losing those she cared about.

She breathed in deeply, forcing the calm she needed, and moved back to the computer and testing equipment. She was the scientist. The Ruling Cabinet respected her opinion, and she knew Callan had called the cabinet together for a meeting. A very secretive meeting. She would make certain she was prepared. And she would make certain she saved Mercury. As with the others, she cared for him. He was her friend and losing him would leave a vacant hole inside her. She didn’t want to see him killed. The feral displacement wasn’t his fault. It was the fault of those bastards who created them. And she would find a way to save him. No matter the friends she lost in the process.

Mercury put away the groceries as Lawe unpacked them, the other Breed’s acute sense of smell going over each item.

Mercury liked the grocer. The man was a hell of a hunter and always seemed willing to embrace the Breed cause. But Mercury had seen betrayal come from all sides. He was cautious, he told himself.

When they finished, Lawe left again, locking the door behind him, and Mercury stared at Ria’s closed door. She hadn’t come out, and Lawe had informed him with a hint of amusement that the scent of her anger was filling the house.

Her anger. And he knew where that anger came from. That damned purr she had convinced herself she heard. He shook his head and moved to the door, opening it slowly and stepping into the bedroom.

“I thought I’d fix dinner,” he told her, forcing himself to stand in the doorway as he stared at her.

She was sitting in the middle of the bed, her laptop opened in front of her, a silky robe covering her, the soft, shimmery fabric slipping over one shoulder.

“Pizza is fine.” There was no accent in her voice, but he could tell she was controlling it ruthlessly. Her expression was smooth, her eyes the color of bitter chocolate as she glanced at him.

“I’m going to cook,” he said. “You need something more nourishing than pizza.”

“There’s nothing more nourishing than pizza,” she informed him. “Besides, after drinking the coffee you make, I’m flat terrified of any food you fix.”

He inhaled slowly and stepped forward, closing the door behind him. “I can cook. I told you I couldn’t make coffee.”

“If you can’t make coffee, then there’s no hope for even the slightest talent at something as simple as boiling water.” She turned her gaze back to the computer, dismissing him. “Call out for something. That’s what I do.”

He grimaced before tightening his lips and reining in the natural impulse to do something about the subtle challenge she was throwing out to him.

He reminded himself that Jonas would be here soon. He would have enough of a battle with her then. And when Vanderale sent that heli-jet for her, then he was going to have the devil’s own battle keeping her here. He couldn’t leave yet. But he had a feeling the battle she would learn they faced might appeal to her more than leaving would.

“Ria, if you don’t dress and come into the kitchen with me while I cook, then we may end up doing something on this bed that’s only going to make you angrier.”

Because he was about two seconds from ripping that robe off her body and enjoying some of the more wicked acts he’d considered doing with her.

“Something could make me angrier?” she asked him then.

“I’d have to know what made you angry to begin with,” he stated. “And since you don’t seem willing to discuss it…”

“Who said I wasn’t willing to discuss it?” With that, she closed the laptop and stood from the bed, facing him.

She crossed her arms over her breasts and that robe barely covered her thighs. He was going to tear it off with his teeth.

“You were the one that stomped out of the living room,” he pointed out.

“And you just let me walk out, didn’t you, Mercury?” Her voice was still calm and even, but he could see the shadows of anger and pain in her eyes. “It didn’t matter to you then and it doesn’t matter to you now.”

“What doesn’t matter?” he growled. “The fact that I’ll never have a mate of my own? Does that make me a robot, Ria? Incapable of caring? The woman that could have been my mate is dead,” he snarled. “Does that change anything between us?”

He watched her inhale roughly, saw the betraying tremble of her lips as he crossed the room to her.

“Ria, I’m not dead inside.” He gripped her shoulders and forced her to stare up at him. “What you do to me, no other woman has ever done, even the woman that could have been my mate. She was a child. She was killed. She doesn’t exist any longer. But we do.”

Her arms uncrossed slowly as her expression clenched, then the confusion and uncertainty he sometimes felt himself crossed it.

“I don’t know what to do about you,” she whispered then. “I don’t form attachments, Mercury, and you seem determined to make me do that here. When it’s over, where does that leave me? Alone again?”

“Do you want promises from me?” he asked her, wishing he had so much more than that to give her. “If that heli-jet arrives for you, you’re going to have to fight me to get on it. When it’s time for bed, I won’t be sleeping away from you, you’ll be sleeping in my arms. And when tomorrow comes, and the tomorrow after that, as long as Ely hasn’t had me confined in a damned padded cell and pumped up on drugs, I’ll be curled around you when you wake up. What more can I give you at this point?”

What more could he give himself?

Finally, she shook her head. “I knew better than to come here,” she whispered. “I knew you were going to completely mess with my head and my life, Mercury. I knew I should have stayed where I was.”

“But you came.” He lowered his head, caught her lower lip with his teeth and stroked over it with his tongue. Her eyes darkened then; the anger and bitterness left them and heat began to flicker in them.

“Come for me again.” He released her lip, only to stroke both lips with his tongue, tasting her, loving her warmth. “One more time, Ria, before both our lives go to hell.”

He took the kiss he needed then. His lips moved over hers, relished the feel of her, the heat of her, and his tongue pierced the tender seam, sinking into her mouth.

Her moan met his kiss. Her tongue twined around his, and the pleasure of that shouldn’t have been so intense. He shouldn’t have felt her stroking of his tongue echo in his cock. He shouldn’t have felt the warmth of her sinking into the very pores of his body.

He let her hands remove his shirt before he returned to her lips. He let her unbuckle his belt, release his jeans. And when her soft hands wrapped around the heavy length of his erection, he had no choice but to draw back from her.

He pushed her robe from her shoulders and growled at the sight of the one-piece silk-and-lace teddy she wore beneath it.

“Take that off.” He moved back from her after unwrapping her fingers from his shaft. “I don’t want to destroy more of your clothing.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed and jerked his boots and socks off. He wasn’t going to fuck her with his boots on again. He wanted skin on skin, heat matching heat.

When he rose and shed his jeans, she still stood before him, her eyes going over him with hunger as she licked her lips with a nervous little stroke.

“You’re huge,” she finally whispered, reaching out for him again.

“And you’ve already taken me once, so we don’t have a problem there.” He didn’t want that growl in his voice, but it was still there. Animalistic. Rasping.

“Maybe more of a problem than you think,” she told him, her eyes, her face, her scent-hell, he could scent her now-becoming demanding.

“No problems,” he informed her as her hands pressed against his chest.

“I want to taste you now.” She pushed against him, pressing him to the bed, shocking him with the demand.

Women wanted him to fuck them. They wanted him wild and hungry on their bodies, but Mercury had to admit this was the first time one had wanted to taste him.

And this one, he knew, could destroy him with her touch.