Now she was experiencing sensations she should have never known. Exhaustion. Hunger. Drugs.
Jonas inhaled slowly. The baby was tired, but she was quiet because she had been drugged as well.
She was frightened.
He heard the tiny mewls, little squeaks of sound as her fists clenched and released. She wanted to cry, but she didn't have the strength.
"Dane, if this child is harmed, we're going to have problems." Jonas heard the growl in his own voice, felt the hidden claws as they parted the tips of his fingers, shifting beneath the regular nail beds and tearing forth.
Blood tipped, curved and sharp. His fingers flexed, his senses became sharper, edged with the hunger for blood and vengeance.
The problem had already arrived. The Lion, always kept so carefully leashed, had slipped free. In a moment of weakness, an awareness of the danger the child--his child--faced and it was there.
A snarl molded his lips, canines flashed in the darkness, a growl rumbled in his chest, deep-throated, predatory.
"Boss, we're in position." Rule knew the sound. "I have the Coyote, Lawe has the sentry in front."
"Dane converged on Brandenmore," Mordecai, the Coyote team member, gave the final order as Jonas, man and animal, moved into action.
The Genetics Council that had created the Breeds had one purpose in mind: the ultimate killing machine. The Breeds were created, enhanced, and trained for any and every situation that could be conceived.
They hadn't been created to save lives. They hadn't been trained to care, to mate or to love. But what they hadn't been trained for had made them better, faster, stronger.
It had made them the most dangerous creatures on the face of the earth.
The ultimate weapon.
Glass crashed, shattered.
It had taken precious minutes, patience Rachel had never believed she could have before she had the chance to tear open the door and fling herself from the SUV.
She made it to the side of the house, no farther. Hard, restraining fingers latched onto her arm, dragging her back as she watched the dark, snarling figure throw itself into the living room window.
The sound of glass breaking and an animal's snarl were the only sounds in the night. A shadow moved on the front porch, and silhouettes twisted and churned against the curtains covering the kitchen window.
It was the broken glass that held her horrified attention.
Shards, dark tipped with blood, were jagged in the frame. There were no sounds, not even so much as a child's whimper.
"Let me go." Her voice was reed thin, hoarse as she felt the tears falling once again.
"He'll kill me." Chimera's tone was regretful. "I've risked enough letting you this close."
Rachel's head jerked back to the other woman. "This close?"
Eerie green eyes glanced toward the house before coming back to rest on Rachel. Chimera's shadowed features tightened with some unnamed emotion. "She's your daughter. You have the right."
As the final word passed Chimera's lips, all hell seemed to break loose.
A roar, unlike anything Rachel had heard in her life, shattered the silence of the night.
Jonas went through the window. He felt the glass biting across his shoulders, felt the animal rage that surged through his body, and went for the enemy.
Brandenmore hadn't expected an attack. Rather than thinking to grab the child, he came to his feet instead. The weapon aimed and fired, the minute burst of explosive energy barely missing Jonas's head before Brandenmore jumped for the door.
A roar tore from his throat. A sound Jonas knew had never escaped his body as the full scent of the child hit him then.
Jumping between the babe and the door, Jonas faced the other man, his own weapon ready, held firmly in claw-tipped fingers as he snarled back at Brandenmore.
His faced creased with cruelty and age, Brandenmore smiled, a cold, mocking sneer that had Jonas's finger tightening on the trigger. Brandenmore held his weapon aimed in the direction of the babe.
"So much information." Brandenmore shook his head with a cluck of his tongue. "So many experiments. We've learned a lot since you escaped, Alpha One."
His eyes narrowed on the other man.
"That baby." Brandenmore nodded to the too-silent babe. "She's a test, no more than you were a test. No more than any other has been. It doesn't take a lab to create an experiment, now does it, Alpha One?"
He'd shoot him, but the slightest movement of Brandenmore's finger on that trigger and the laser burst would destroy Amber despite Jonas's attempt to protect her.
"I'll kill you," Jonas promised him, staring into the cold, merciless cruelty of the other man's gaze.
Brandenmore smiled again. "You've been trying for a while now, Alpha One. You haven't succeeded yet." He glanced to the cradle, which held the child. "And you won't succeed now."
Before Jonas could jump for him, Brandenmore dove through the doorway.
A roar of rage tore from Jonas's lips. Adrenaline and pure animal fury had him starting for the door before he stopped, turned and went for the child instead.
Pulling the tiny body from the cradle, Jonas tucked her close against his chest. He launched himself through the window seconds before fire and heat exploded behind him, catapulting him through the air as the night seemed to go to hell around him.
CHAPTER 2
SANCTUARY, FELINE BREED HEADQUARTERS BUFFALO GAP, VIRGINIA
The Breed heli-jet touched down in the main estate yard, an almost unheard-of occurrence. Teams of Breeds--Feline, Wolf and Coyote--surrounded the area, hard eyes, weapons ready as the outside entrance to the labs was flung open just as the doors to the heli-jet slid open.
Jonas Wyatt jumped from the black jet, his clothes singed, his dark face smeared with soot and blood as he clutched a small bundle to his chest and raced for the labs.
Behind him, Feline Breeds Lawe Justice and Rule Breaker stayed close on his heels, each gripping a fragile arm of Jonas's secretary, Rachel Broen.
Tears and soot streaked down Rachel's face. Her dark red hair was no longer in its carefully arranged, precise little bun. It flowed around her face, long waves cascading to the middle of her back as she was pulled into the bunker beneath the main house.
"I want Elizabeth and Ely immediately," Jonas shouted as they raced through the steel- and cement-lined corridors to the main lab.
"They're waiting in the labs." Pride Leader Callan Lyons raced at his side as head of security Kane Tyler and Sanctuary's Enforcer commander, Mercury Warrant, brought up the rear. "Elizabeth was still on-site when you called. She and Ely have everything ready."
"Jonas, what's going on?" Rachel could feel the dread tearing through her system.
The hair-raising ride from D.C. to Virginia hadn't taken more than fifteen minutes in the heli-jets. It had raced to Sanctuary at full power with Jonas yelling at the pilot for more speed as Amber lay lax and limber in his arms.
He wouldn't let her hold her child. Amber hadn't whimpered, she hadn't cried.
"Here's the syringe. It was beside her in her carrier." Jonas slapped the small pressure syringe that Rachel hadn't even noticed in Callan's hand. "I want a full analysis from Amburg ASAP."
Callan passed the syringe off to Mercury, who took a quick turn down another corridor and disappeared.
Jeffrey Amburg, the scourge of the Breed community. He had been known as a butcher in the Breed labs before the rescues twelve years earlier.
Moving ahead, Kane Tyler, his dark hair cut military short, his icy blue gaze frozen with fury, flung open the doors to the main level of the labs where two women raced from a nearby office.