Rule Breaker

CHAPTER 29

Gypsy knew the second the Dragoon had increased speed and begun racing for the hotel that something was wrong. No more than a heartbeat later she felt something shift inside her own senses. A door opening so swiftly inside her that she had no idea how to close it or what to do with it.

“Go with it, Gypsy,” Lawe suddenly ordered as the Dragoon roared along the highway. “Rule’s in trouble.”

Rule was in trouble?

In danger?

She focused on that link, ignoring the doorway that had opened into Lawe’s senses and concentrating totally on Rule’s instead.

What was she supposed to do? How was she supposed to do it?

Centering her attention on him, she remembered how he said he could borrow from Lawe’s strength, but was he trying to borrow from her?

It sure as hell wasn’t her patience because she was going to kick his ass for making her wait to find out what was going on.

Eyes closed, she felt a glimmer of amusement touch her mind as Rule became so firmly entrenched inside her soul that she swore she could feel steel bolts anchoring him to her.

Mental strength, she realized. If he wanted stubbornness, she had that in spades.

Was that a chuckle echoing through her head without sound? Oh God, she was so going to kill him for this.

“Interesting.” She heard the voice, felt Gideon’s name whisper through her mind. A second later she knew what was going on and felt her heart nearly stop in dread at the knowledge that the insanity Rule had described as Gideon held Rachel’s baby in his arms.

She couldn’t “see” what was happening. It was impressions, a sense of Breeds filling the suite, Gideon’s amusement and Jonas’s fury. And a second of complete terror at the knowledge that Gideon had tossed the child free of him as he jumped from the opened balcony door, over the railing to a two-person jet-copter obviously there to retrieve him.

Lobo Reever had a jet-copter. It was the only one in the area, she thought. At least, the only one she knew of. Except for the one the Navajo Covert Law Enforcement Agency owned.

The link between them immediately shut down as Gypsy blinked in surprise.

“Son of a bitch,” Lawe hissed through his teeth, his gaze meeting hers in the rearview mirror for the briefest second. “Tell me, Gypsy, just how many fucking secrets is my brother hiding from me?”

Uh-oh. She had a feeling Lawe just might be one up on the fact that Rule had been hiding Judd for the past nine years or so.

Bad Rule.

“He’s your brother,” she scoffed, glaring back at him. “Take that up with him.”

His gaze shot to hers through the mirror once again, the suspicious disbelief glittering brilliantly in the lighter blue hue.

“You know, Gypsy,” he pointed out, his tone rougher, frustrated as he turned his attention back to the road, “I’d be careful. Even as his mate, you’ll learn you’re not exempt from Rule’s manipulations.”

“I could have sworn I heard the same thing said to Rachel at some point concerning Jonas, just in the past weeks,” she mused, turning her attention out the window of the Dragoon once again.

For a moment, her thoughts had been distracted from her parents, their crime, and the decision she faced concerning her brother’s betrayer.

Eight years before, she’d shot a Council informer that the Unknown had been certain had betrayed her brother. He’d deserved to die for other crimes against both Breeds and the Navajo, but knowing he had been the wrong one cut at her.

The man who betrayed Mark deserved to hurt. He deserved to feel the same hell Mark had felt, knowing that his sister would be raped and killed and even the chance to help her was denied him. The fact that she had been rescued at the last moment hadn’t helped Mark. It didn’t salve her fury now.

Years of distrust made sense now. She’d been so angry as she’d watched her parents allow him to take Mark’s place. He tried to be a brother to Mark’s sisters, he’d married Mark’s fiancée, he’d taken over Mark’s company.

He’d thought he could live Mark’s life.

Her nails bit into her palms as she realized they’d curled into fists, prepared to inflict whatever damage possible.

Damn him.

She wanted to slip away now. She wanted to find him, wanted to tear his throat out herself.

The only thing stopping her was the knowledge that he had disappeared, just as she’d known he would. The Breed team sent to find him that morning had reported that he couldn’t be found either at his home or at his office.

Where would he go? she wondered. Where would Jason hide?

Eyes narrowed, she scanned the desert as it rushed by, going over old haunts Mark had once shown her, remembering bits and pieces of her childhood that she’d refused to allow herself to remember before.

As she did, she could “feel” Rule. As though the very fact that she was considering where he could be, where to find him, how to make him pay, had alerted Rule to her not-so-hidden desire to kill him herself.

She almost smiled as she felt him. Geez, it was the strangest damned feeling. He would just be there, like the caress of a breeze, but in her mind. She really wasn’t certain if she liked it or not.

One thing was for damned sure, though, she thought on a sudden sigh; there would be no going after Jason by herself, and there wasn’t a chance in hell Rule would allow her to kill him herself as Cullen had. And she wondered if anything else would exorcise the ghosts of her past?

...

Did she love him?

Had she just accepted the mating, nothing more?

Standing in the lobby of the hotel as he leaned against one of the stately pillars that supported the atrium, Rule crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the doors as he waited for Lawe to roll into the courtyard with his mate. Allowing her to make that trip without him had been hell.

He’d been a part of her in one form or the other since her final surrender to him the night before. Exploding like the fourth of July and crying out his name, she had opened every part of herself to the link he had forged within her soul. And still, he was damned if he could sense whether that love was there.

“Damn creatures,” Dane murmured as he sidled up beside him. “I can tell by your glare, fixated into space, that the lovely Gypsy McQuade is no doubt driving you to distraction.”

“You got back fast enough,” Rule grumbled. “How?”

Dane chuckled. “Father ensures that I have the fastest, most technologically advanced vehicles possible whenever I’m out of his sight. He’s somehow convinced himself it lessens the danger I may find myself in.”

“Or just gets you there faster?” Rule grunted. “Tell me, Dane, was that your technologically advanced personal jet-copter that Gideon caught a ride on earlier?”

“I was wondering if there was a way I could take credit for that one,” the Breed sighed morosely. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. And the black-hearted bastard is refusing to answer my calls.”

“Well, go figure.” What the hell did the fucking hybrid expect? He was dealing with a psycho, not just another manipulating, calculating Breed as he usually did.

“Gideon was nearly dead when I found him.” Dane’s voice lowered as he too leaned a shoulder against the pillar. “Nearly emaciated to the point of death, so savage Father feared he would have to have him caged. And the Leo does not keep cages on any of his estates, you know.”

Rule flicked him a look.

His dark blond brows were lowered, his green gaze distant as though his look into the past wasn’t a pleasant one.

“The secrets he knows,” Dane whispered. “So much intelligence, Rule. Insights into Breed physiology unlike anything you could even guess. The few months he was healing in South America after we found him, Mother was in scientific heaven just from his ramblings.”

“And once he healed?” Rule asked.

Dane inhaled heavily. “One night he was fevered and rambling about a transfusion and why it had driven him insane, speaking of the creature pacing, lurking and breaking free. Mother left the audio recorder on and went to check on another of the unfortunate Breeds we were attempting to coax back to health. When she returned, the recorder had been turned off, part of it obviously erased, and Gideon had simply vanished through a steel door or concrete walls. We’re really not certain how, because strangely, the recording from the camera trained on him was destroyed for nearly an hour up to the moment Mother returned.” Dane chuckled. “Smart-ass fucker had taken a moment to get into the camera and hack the programming from within the device itself. Though how he fuzzed the equipment before doing so eludes me.”

“What are you up to here, Dane?” Rule asked when the explanation finished. “Why not just go to Jonas, tell him you could acquire what he needed and allow Ely to continue the injections?”

“Jonas would have never allowed it,” Dane told him, his tone suddenly weary. “At the most, he would have injected them himself to take the responsibility from Ely’s steadily weakening shoulders, and only Gideon truly understood what he was doing. It was far better to maneuver my baby brother rather than watching that sweet child, or Jonas and Rachel, being destroyed from the inside out should something go wrong.”

Rule stared outside the main doors for long moments once again, his eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun as it spread across the glistening lobby floors.

“Callan so resembles Father that there are times I find an edge of jealousy rising inside me,” Dane said, his voice filled with amused self-disgust. “And such pride the Leo has in him, despite their differences. But if one knew the Leo as only Mother and I do, then they would see the pain he suffers each time Jonas is about. The guilt and self-recrimination, the unspeakable nightmares that have haunted him for years where one of his children is concerned. And this was before we learned of the reports he’d acquired that Jonas’s maternal genetics were from Mother rather than Madame LaRue, as we had believed. Since he learned that piece of information, his anger at himself often worries Mother.”

“Leo doesn’t seem to be the type to stress over past mistakes,” Rule offered. “Or children who were created rather than conceived by him.”

“Ah, but how little all but I and Mother know him,” Dane retorted mockingly. “Father suffers for past mistakes, decisions that resulted in less than the situations he anticipated, and the children who carried his genetics. His pride in Callan is absolute. But his pride in Jonas is ever growing, my friend. A pride that demands that Jonas acknowledge that choices are often made with a knowledge of the outcome and its tragedy, but they are never made without regret and without grief.”

“Jonas understands that.” Hell, of all people, Jonas knew that better than anyone Rule could think of. “Leo has amends to make, Dane. Many of them.”

“Jonas resents Leo for leaving him in the labs when he feels he could have gotten him out.”

Rule shook his head, staring back at the other man in surprise. “Is that what he thinks?”

“That’s what Jonas states. Often.” Dane’s look sharpened.

“No, Dane.” Rule was the one to breathe out roughly now. “It wasn’t that Leo left him in the labs. It was that Leo left Harmony there. That Harmony suffered as long as she did and that he was forced to turn on her to ensure her survival. He will never forgive the Leo for the price he paid when he lost his sister’s love. A condition that continues, even now.”

Silence stretched between them now. For the first time since he’d known him, Rule watched as Dane appeared saddened. No manipulation. No calculation. Just unaccountably saddened.

“It would seem, then, both Jonas and I have a particular grudge against our father,” he finally said softly before turning and spearing him with a sharp, fierce look. “Take that as a lesson, my friend. Don’t wait for your mate to declare her love. Don’t wait for her to realize her love. Give of yourself first if you must. Perhaps when you do so, she’ll realize what she’s refusing to allow herself to see for fear of losing once again that which sustains her.”

Rule narrowed his eyes back at the hybrid as Dane turned and moved away from him, heading back to the bank of elevators, his shoulders not as straight, his head not thrown back as arrogantly as normal.

He knew Dane had feelings for Jonas’s sister Harmony, just as he knew damned good and well Harmony’s love for her mate, Lance Jacobs, was absolute. A mate she had been given a chance to find through Dane’s and Jonas’s machinations, separately, though no less effectively.

He almost smiled.

He could smell the true affection and sense of loss and regret Dane felt, but the love . . . no, it wasn’t love. It had been close. Perhaps the closest Dane had ever come, or ever would come. The man jumped across continents like other men traveled across town. The chances of finding his mate, or of finding love, wasn’t going to be high.

Rule had a feeling when and if it happened, though, Dane would be thanking his father for whatever hand he’d had in taking Harmony from his son’s life rather than resenting it.

Straightening as the Dragoon shot in beneath the hotel awning, Rule strode quickly to the doors, Dane’s comment running through his mind.

Let her know how he felt. Let her feel it, he thought. Maybe, just maybe, she’d realize she didn’t have to hide her tender heart from him. Nor her fears.

He had her back, and he was about to prove it.

Dane wasn’t the only one to whom Gideon owed a favor or two.

...

The heavy iron door slammed closed with enough force that the cavern itself seemed to shudder from the impact.

A roar ripped through the underground space, sinking into stone before echoing back, only to be followed by another.

A glass beaker shattered against the doors, spilling a dark liquid that instantly turned to mist and filled the area with a hint of sandalwood and a male genetic scent that would have fooled any Breed living but the one who had made it.

“Motherfuckers.” The roar was nearly incoherent as the animal lent its voice to the explicit curse.

Another beaker shattered, this time, the scent evocative of desert nights with a hint of a rose. Poison should smell sweet, he’d always claimed.

His head tipped back, his lips curled back from his teeth, and this time the roar all but shook the rafters and might have actually caused dust to rain down from the cavern’s roof.

“Oh really, Graeme, what the hell did you think would happen?” Khileen propped her hands on her hips and watched the primal Bengal with a healthy dose of amused wariness. “Did you really believe you had us fooled? That we weren’t very well aware of exactly where the Bengal Gideon was hiding?”

Propped against the curve of the far entrance, she tilted her head and let a smile curl at her lips when he swung around to her, his head lowering, his amber eyes morphing to the most incredible green color.

It really was too bad she couldn’t stand another man’s touch, she thought regretfully, because Gideon was no doubt hell in bed. He was simply too much male, too much animal, not to be.

“Leave.” The order was ground out with the hoarse snarl that only an animal could have made.

She crossed her arms over her breasts and narrowed her gaze back at him. “No. We simply have to discuss this. Because I know what you’re going to do . . .” She gasped as she suddenly found herself face-to-face with the primal stripes and glittering, bloodthirsty gaze of a Bengal tiger staring back at her from the man’s face.

“Now.” The rumbled, deep-throated growl almost had her obeying.

“The show is quite impressive,” she promised him with an air of boredom. “But if I leave, then you’ll just pack up and disappear, and I can’t allow you to do so. It’s simply not in your best interests, nor is it in mine. So pull back that very savage, very impressive creature you’re trying to set free and let’s discuss this, shall we?”

Astonishment glittered in his eyes as they widened. A second later his hands shot up, clawed fingers raking through his hair as a truly horrid-sounding growling snarl erupted from his parted lips as he turned away from her.

She grimaced at the sight and sound of it. “Lobo does that rather often, you know. Is it just me?”

Tiberian had once done so as well, when he had been there. Before her life had gone to hell in a handbasket and he’d begun chasing the bitch who had destroyed them all.

“You are certifiable,” he snapped, turning back to her. “No wonder Tiberian left. He’s likely running for his life.”

“No doubt.” She nodded slowly, silently agreeing with him.

No doubt that was exactly what Tiberian was doing, in a way.

“Fuck!” A glass bowl shattered on the other side of the room as she lifted her brow at the rage inherent in the destruction.

“Really, Graeme-Gideon?” Her brows lifted in amusement. “It’s not so bad,” she chided him. “It’s not as though we turned you in or anything. No one knows you’re here.”

“You have got to be the craziest fucking female I have ever laid my eyes on,” he yelled at her, turning back to stare at her in amazement. “Fucking insane, Khileen.”

She had to laugh at that. “You haven’t met my good friend Claire yet,” she told him. “So sweet she’d give you a toothache until she dons this racy black little skin suit she wears whenever she tracks rogue Coyotes in the desert. It’s really quite amusing.”

He stilled, his head swinging back to her. “Who?”

“Claire Martinez.” A sudden thought struck her. “Oh, do tell me the two of you haven’t been after the same rogue? Let me guess, she beat you to him?” She had to laugh at that. “She’s exquisitely well trained, you know. I wish I were half as vicious as she can be when she’s tracking them. I love watching the show.”

Something glittered savagely in his eyes.

Oh dear, perhaps it wasn’t a joke to the surly feline. Well now, just imagine that.

He lifted the side of his lip in an insulting little sneer before turning away from her. “No female outtracks me, Khileen, and you know it.”

“I can’t outtrack you,” she admitted with a light laugh. “But trust me, Claire has mad tracking skills. I’m very proud of her. If the Unknown actually existed, then I would say she’s their next candidate as a warrior.”

“I’m leaving.” His stride became determined as he began moving for the exit leading to the mountains beyond.

That fast?

“No explanation?” she questioned him sharply. “Well, isn’t that a fine thank-you for all the trouble we’ve gone through to hide your cute little ass here.”

He swung around again, the clawed fingers curling as though he wanted nothing better than to claw for blood.

“Hide my ass?” he snarled again. “Like fuck, little girl. I was hiding myself just fucking fine when your daddy”—he sneered the word—“decided he needed a little side work done, with his baby brother out chasing your momma and all after she so conveniently faked her death.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Watch it, Gideon,” she warned him quietly. “I owe you several debts, but none of those debts give you leave to treat me so disrespectfully. Because never have I treated you with less than utter respect.”

And he couldn’t deny it.

“What the fuck do you and your damned family want from me?” he roared back at her, muscles bunching, shifting dangerously beneath the fine white shirt and fawn breeches he wore.

He was truly an exceptional male, though she knew one more so . . . She cut that thought off quickly.

“Your friendship,” she answered sincerely, stilling the anger that could have risen inside her, reminding herself that friends were something Gideon, the Breed who now called himself Graeme, had very few of. “You owe many debts; consider the request Rule made merely the absolution of one of those debts. The request isn’t too onerous, and you gain a favor from the Breed slated to become the division director of the Western Division of the Bureau of Breed Affairs.” She gave a little laugh. “Say that three times quickly. I dare you.”

He glared at her rather than sharing her amusement as he once would have.

Straightening, she dropped her arms, tucked her fingers into the pockets of her riding breeches and faced him squarely.

“Fine, Rule would owe both of us a favor then. You for taking care of this matter for him, and for allowing him and his mate to be a part of it. He would owe me for ensuring there was a safe place to have the matter dealt with, and that no other eyes or ears are aware of the event. I may have need of that favor in the future.”

“When your mate is brought up on charges of violating his agreement with the Bureau when he covered up his brother’s crimes, you mean?” he sneered. “Really, Khileen, do you think this favor is that big? Big enough to save the man you—”

“Don’t.” She kept her voice soft, firm, though the well of pain that rose in her chest was like a brutal white-hot poker searing her soul. “Don’t make us enemies. You’re only angry because I realized your secret and was smart enough to follow you and ensure your escape.”

“I had my escape covered, little girl,” he bit out. “And I’m angry because you made me break the promise I gave your mate to ensure you stayed out of danger. You are fucking danger waiting to happen in capital fucking letters.”

“And the vulgarity so does not become you,” she sighed. “Now, back to the original question. Yes, this favor will garner quite a large amount of brownie points with the division director. I promise you that. After all, he contacted you, didn’t he? Jonas isn’t here demanding you show yourself.” She fanned her arms to indicate the estate as a whole as well as Lobo Reever’s home. “You’re simply in a snide mood because you know this last injection will make the child cry for you and you won’t be able to go to her. I understand that. And I did tell you once that if you ever needed help in your ventures, I would be there to aid you as well, didn’t I?”

He blinked back at her.

He turned from her, looked over his shoulder in disbelief, then raked his fingers through his hair again before stalking to her favorite recliner, the one he hadn’t returned to the storage room, then threw himself in it, sprawling out with such disrespectful slouchiness that she could only shake her head at him.

“You amaze me,” he said, his voice a bit more normal now. “Absolutely-fucking-amaze me, Khi.”

At least he was calling her Khi again.

“Why, thank you, Graeme.” She smiled back at him with all the charm her mother had beaten into her when she was younger. “I’m rather proud of my ability to do this to such a strikingly intelligent man, you know.”

He blinked back at her again before narrowing his eyes, that brilliant light green color gleaming back at her with a hint, a promise of retribution if she wasn’t extremely careful.

She didn’t do careful really well, though.

“Call him,” he growled. “Put your ass on the line with mine if you’re so fucking sure of him. Call him, tell him he’ll find the coordinates buried in the programming of the nano-nit currently attached to his e-pad. Time will be at thirty minutes before the time Mark McQuade was killed. If he doesn’t know the exact time, he can ask his mate. I’m certain she remembers.”

She nodded slowly. “That doesn’t give you much time.”

Gideon shrugged, breathed out roughly, rose to his feet, shifted his shoulders restlessly, then stalked over to a secured metal door on the other side of the room.

Khileen followed, curious when he stared back at her as though impatient with her lack of haste.

Swinging the door open, he allowed her to stare inside the darkened room, tiny to the point of claustrophobic, and holding a single bound, gagged and blindfolded male. The same male Rule Breaker was searching for.

Lifting his hand and crooking his finger in a “come here” signal, he then led the way to the bank of security monitors on the other side of the room, flipped one on and surprised her yet again.

“The wife?” she glanced up at Gideon’s gaze questioningly. “Why kill the wife?”

“Kill her?” Gideon smiled. “Honey, I’m not going to kill her. I’m going to let her hear the bastard’s confession when he starts spilling his guts. Now make that fucking call before I do what I was going to do when I arrived. Kill the bastard, release the wife outside town and get the hell out of Dodge.”

She had to laugh at that. “And leave the mate you’re obviously well aware exists close by?” she asked softly.

He stilled. Not a muscle moved, and even the pulse at his neck seemed to still.

She smiled gently. “I told you, I’m no fool. But neither am I your enemy. Think about it, think very very closely, and you’ll realize, Graeme, I’m probably the dearest friend you’ll ever hope to have.”

With that, she turned and walked slowly away from him, showing him her back, giving him the chance to take her out if that was what he wanted to do.

Hell, he’d be doing her a favor if he did.