Sometimes only barely living, but alive.
Jonas would have sworn nothing could really impress Gilliam, because the man had already seen the best.
Until Katie O’Sullivan had entered the network.
“You’re certain she’s not recessed?” Devil asked, the Ireland showing in his accent. It only happened when he stepped out on Irish soil; no matter how he tried, the Irish blood he’d begun with couldn’t be hidden.
Gilliam snorted. “She’s adopted on Irish soil, Devil. Do ya think she’s recessed and got away with it? This ain’t America, my friend.”
Testing in Europe, Ireland and Scotland was far more in-depth and done far more often on adopted children and adults than in any other countries. With the tests becoming more painful every year after the age of twenty-five, many adopted adults were opting to move to countries with less stringent testing laws. Some of Europe’s Breeds continued to hide or escape the European countries to avoid the required one-to-five-year testing requirements for all Breeds, no matter how recessed their genetics were. Many of the Breeds forced into the testing facilities were so radically different, with no scientific reason for the change once they were released, that questions were beginning to be asked.
This girl was tested yearly as well. During the last genetic screening she had been forced to do, it was reported that she had punched one of the techs when he had been too rough drawing the genetic sample from her liver and spleen.
She was tough as hell, but she looked as delicate as a red rose.
Crossing one arm over his chest and propping his elbow on his forearm, Devil stroked his jaw thoughtfully. He was there to watch the girl go through training maneuvers. He would be there tomorrow to watch her in the control room of the underground command center the network had established a decade before.
It had been hidden at first, to protect the Breeds from the labs they escaped from. If they could make it to a predestined pickup point without being spotted or followed, then they were taken to a safe house overnight. Eventually, several days, underground tunnels and church basements later, they made it here.
“Okay, so she’s not a Breed.” Devil scratched at his jaw, his eyes narrowed, his body more tense than it should have been as he watched her go through the network’s bruising maneuvers.
“Yeah, she’s not a Breed,” Gilliam retorted, a question in his voice as he watched Devil. “You act like it’s news.”
Devil shrugged. She had all the qualities of a Breed female. Beautiful. A delicate, fragile appearance.
An underlying strength.
“Okay then, I’m interested.” Giving a decisive nod without looking away from the girl, Devil made his decision quickly. “I’ll let Tiberian know and we’ll check her out in five years.”
In five years she would be twenty-one and beyond the requirement that the network reveal any underage workers. And at twenty-one, her body would be mature enough, strong enough, to train for the Bureau of Breed Affairs as a human agent.
The Bureau had been built from the ground up by Breeds, and only in the past years had they begun accepting humans into their ranks. But it was Devil’s hope that rather than joining the Bureau, she would instead join Lobo Reever’s security team in the New Mexico desert.
As he watched, he couldn’t help but allow his curiosity to grow. A human that moved like a Breed. He was always of the opinion . . .
If it looked like . . .
If it acted like . . .
If it sounded like . . .
He wasn’t a great believer in coincidences either.
At that moment, her head lifted from where she watched another trainee slipping around the form of a deserted building. Their eyes met. And in that brief moment, in that connection, Devil swore he saw a hell of a lot more than a human.
Yet, she wasn’t a Breed?
ONE
Katie—8 years later
Mary Kathleen O’Sullivan, Katie to friends and family, had no idea so many reporters could exist in one place.
Standing behind one of the protective filters that now covered each of her windows, she stared at the crowd of journalists vying for position, watching her home closely, microphones and notepads held ready.
“The guardians of the masses,” her father had once called journalists. He now called them “those sons of bitches,” despite the fact that they were doing no more now than they had been when he’d made the first comment.
“Katie, please come away from the window,” her mother requested, her soft, lilting voice heavy with concern.
Katie, her parents had always called her. She guessed it beat “Fido,” or “Precious,” as several tabloids’ writers had dubbed her.
Turning, she did as her mother asked, glancing at the other woman from beneath the veil of her lashes.
Kella O’Sullivan had aged a bit in the past weeks. There were fine worry lines now etched in her once smooth forehead, while her emerald green eyes reflected a fear that hadn’t been there before.
Her long, red gold ringlets were caught at her nape with a heavy silver clasp, displaying the family pearls she wore at her neck.
Katie had often reflected on how alike she and her mother looked. The high cheekbones and slightly tilted eyes. Small, though sensually curved lips and the thick, unusually long red gold lashes that framed their deep green eyes. Eyes that Katie had never seen so clouded with worry and fear.
Or had they been?
Katie had always sensed the well-hidden concern that rode her parents, though she’d never truly believed she was the root of it. She’d always assumed the stress came from her father’s job as assistant chief constable of Northern Ireland, rather than from the freak of science their daughter was.
Maintaining her poise, she returned to the wingback chair beside the gas fireplace her father had just installed in the three-story home she’d lived in all her life. That chair had been turned to face their “guests,” rather like an interviewee’s chair would face some emissary of power, such as the men sitting across from her.
Callan Lyons, the Feline Breed Pride leader, was accompanied by Jonas Wyatt, the director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs, Wolfe Gunnar and Dash Sinclair, the Wolf Breed Pack leaders, Del-Rey Delgado, the Coyote Breed Pack leader, as well as the often elusive Dylan Killato, the European Wolf Pack leader determined to pull the hidden Breeds on his side of the world together, watched her, as she imagined the scientists that created her most likely had watched her: with detached curiosity.
“Katie, I know you’re frightened.” Dylan leaned forward, the shifting silver and amber colors of his gaze cool and calculating as the heavy Scots brogue offered to wrap her in a false sense of security. “And I hope you know our only concerns at this time are for your safety and security.”
Katie could have rolled her eyes. Killato used his dark, savage good looks, the old-fashioned brogue and unusual color of his eyes to full advantage whenever he needed to.
The American emissaries still sat quiet, watchful, offering neither advice nor countering Killato’s claims.
“You’re becoming a sensation among the paparazzi as well as the scientists tasked by many countries to break the hidden genetic codes the Council scientists used to create us. You’re both a weakness as well as a possible answer for the Breed communities as a whole. This makes you a highly sought-after prize by many opponents as well as proponents of the Breed community.”
Katie turned her gaze to the still silent American group. “Do the Breeds have proponents?” she asked as her gaze connected with that of Jonas Wyatt.