“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.