"Rachel, we'll be outside if you need to talk," Kane promised as they passed her. "Merinus is on her way back from Colorado now. She flew out immediately when Callan called her with the report. We'll answer what questions we can."
The large lab emptied as Rachel crossed her arms over her breasts and fought back more tears as she stared at her daughter.
"She's innocent," she whispered. "You should have warned me she would be in danger."
She would never forgive Jonas or Merinus for neglecting that warning.
"We had no reason to believe she would be in any danger." Jonas's voice was still an animalistic rasp. "We had no reason to believe you would be. It wasn't the tests of viable mates that Brandenmore needed. It was the tests of current mates and certain hormonal shifts that occur with mating that he was interested in. There was no reason for him to go after potentials, because it's been proven that those tests aren't always reliable."
Rachel rubbed at the chill that invaded her arms as she focused on the machines once again.
Elizabeth Vanderale was still talking softly. Jonas glanced her way several times, his more acute Breed hearing picking up the conversation when Rachel most likely couldn't.
"Amburg has initial results back," he told her softly as her lips parted to question him. "The syringe held certain Breed hormones, but in his estimation, nothing that should be harmful to her."
"She's not moving," she whispered painfully.
Jonas jerked as though in pain before rubbing his hand along the back of his head. She'd seen him do that often over the past months she'd worked for him. The gesture normally indicated a sense of frustration.
"He believes it reacted as a sedative," he related. "If so, then in a few hours, she should awaken her normal self."
"If so, then we're leaving . . ."
"Dream on." The look he turned on her was almost terrifying. Or would have been, if she hadn't already faced such an influx of fear in the past hours. Her system now seemed immune to his fierceness.
"I won't stay here." She shook her head fiercely.
"You won't be leaving until I know for a fact that you and that child are safe." He paced closer, his head lowering until her vision centered on the roiling mercury of his eyes. "Understand that, Rachel. If I have to place you under twenty-four-hour guard, you will go no place, make no move, not take so much as a breath that I don't know about first."
She stared back at him, shock winding through her system first before pure rage took over. Before she could stop herself, her hand lifted, flew, smacking open-palmed against the hard contours of his face.
Everything in the room seemed to freeze.
Elizabeth and Ely stared at them in shock, their expressions wary as they watched Jonas.
He could have stopped her. He was fast enough, instinctive enough that he could have prevented the blow. Instead, he stood still for it. He took it, his expression never changing, his eyes boiling with currents of emotion she couldn't make sense of.
"That changes nothing," he rasped. "Where it comes to you and that child, my word is law, sweetheart. Trust me on that. There's not a man or a woman in Sanctuary who would dare defy me on this."
"Kane . . ."
"Won't risk his life for it." His smile was tight, confident.
"Merinus won't let you . . ."
"Merinus wouldn't dare interfere," he snarled.
"They won't let you hold me here." She shook her head, certain they would never betray her to that depth.
"Tell me, Rachel, the mating tests that were ran--who do you think they were run with?"
She couldn't breathe now. She could feel her chest tightening with panic at the knowledge she hadn't wanted to face.
"It doesn't matter--"
"Oh, but it does," he cut her off again. "It does matter, Rachel. Those tests were run against my samples. They wouldn't dare interfere because they know the hell they'll face. You're my mate, Rachel. And I will protect you and my child with every last ounce of blood I possess. No one, but no one will do anything to harm either of you again. If I have to lock you in these labs to assure you don't leave, then I swear to you on all I hold dear that is exactly what I'll do."
Hours later, Jonas glanced at Rachel where she sat in the small chair beside the baby's bed.
She hadn't spoken since the promise he had made to her, since he'd revealed exactly whose mate she was. She'd backed slowly away from him, her expression never changing, the scent of her fury never abating.
At least he hadn't scented her fear of him, he thought mockingly. That was the last thing the beast prowling inside him needed to sense.
The animal.
He rubbed at the back of his head, where his lab number and birth ranking had been tattooed into his skull. He hadn't been branded as many of the other Breeds had been. He'd been tattooed instead while the woman who claimed to be his mother had looked on in pride.
His mother. What a job that bitch had been. Madame LaRue had carried him to term, but it hadn't been her egg or the sperm of the male scientist that had created him, as she and the lab reports had claimed.
According to those reports his DNA had been enhanced with that of the first Leo, but that wasn't entirely true. Just as it wasn't true that Callan Lyons was more the son of Elizabeth and Leo than he was.
He let them believe it. Callan, Leo, Elizabeth. Dane. He let them exist in that comfort zone they had that the bogeyman of the Breeds wasn't really related by blood to any of them.
Not that they would believe it without proof. He didn't carry their familial scent. His DNA had been fucked with too many times; his scent was unique, with few of the markers that other Breeds possessed.
There was just enough tint of the Leo's familial scent that they had been assured Jonas carried his DNA, but nothing more. And he was certain the Leo wanted it no other way.
And Elizabeth.
He glanced at his mother. Hell, she stared at him as though he were an aberration most of the time. A puzzle she couldn't quite figure out, and wasn't certain she wanted to know.
That was how most people, Breeds and humans alike, stared at him.
Except Rachel. The few times he'd been able to draw any emotion from her at all, it had been colored with desire and laced with amusement. She tolerated him better than most. But then, she was his genetic mate. What else could she do? It wasn't as though she could hate him. Not with any amount of true strength anyway.
Breathing out wearily, he paced the lab, his gaze going between Rachel and the child.
His child. He had claimed the babe, though he had no basis for it. He hadn't helped create that life inside her. Over the months, he'd done nothing but attempt to watch over them both, and he'd failed miserably at that.
The beast inside him claimed the mother, and in turn claimed the babe.
Damn, Amber was too small.
He'd thought that the first time he'd seen her in the hospital, just after her birth. She'd been so small, underweight and yet feisty as hell. She'd screamed in rage each time the nurses had taken her from her mother, demanding with everything inside her tiny body that they return her to the safety and security of her mother's arms.
Unless Jonas had arrived.
How many times had he gone to the nursery and sworn the nurses to silence as he held her? Too many times for him to count.
Unlike adults, children's emotions were an open book. He'd connected with the babe while she had still rested safely in her mother's womb. The beast that was so much a part of him had bonded with the child. That animal sense reaching out on a plane that was mostly reserved for mother and child alone.
He had known the moment he'd seen Rachel Broen that she was his mate. The second he'd sensed she was with child, he had staked that claim as well. A solitary claim that he'd had no intention of informing Rachel of. And a claim he'd no intention of doing anything about.