Believed, she had. It had been a lie, just as everything else had been a lie.
Dr. Foster had said once that she was Gideon’s experiment, and she hadn’t known what he meant at the time. She knew now. She’d known since G left the labs that she had been an experiment all along, just to see if her body could be cured of the disease she was born with.
But she’d been another experiment as well.
She hadn’t been born a Breed, she’d been made into a Breed through the experiments. The horrifying wracking pain, the agonies that lasted for days and days. She’d been turned from a regular girl into one with an animal hiding inside her.
Gideon’s experiment, Dr. Foster had called her when she was younger. G worked with him all the time. He was smarter than anyone at those labs. Dr. Foster had said he was smarter than even himself. And Dr. Foster was a Breed maker.
G had put the animal inside her. He’d hurt her just as all the scientists had, just as Mr. Brandenmore had. She had just been his experiment . . .
? ? ?
She wasn’t surprised the next morning when she awoke and found him gone. Where he’d lain, a piece of paper was folded with her name.
Run, Judd, get her the hell away from here. Hide her. When I heal, and I will, I’ll find you. And you’ll die. Both of you will. I’ll peel the flesh from your bones and make you wish you’d never infected me as you have.
The rest of the letter she left unread. Folding it, she handed it silently to Judd, rose to her feet and began gathering the supplies and blankets together and placing them back into the packs.
At least G had left them that much.
“You read this?” Judd asked behind her.
Cat nodded.
“You understand it, Cat?” The gentleness in his voice should have surprised her, but she didn’t think she could be surprised right now.
She shrugged. “I’m not stupid. I’m smart, remember? G made sure of it.”
He’d always told her that, how he was making sure she was smart, smarter than she would have ever been if she hadn’t been sick when she was born.
“Yeah.” He sighed. “G made sure of it.”
He sounded so sad, almost as sad as she felt. Almost. Inside her heart she was so sad that all she wanted to do was just close her eyes and dream it hadn’t ever happened. But she couldn’t do that. They couldn’t stay here. If G came back he would kill Judd, and he would kill her. G always kept his promises.
“Were you his experiment too, Judd?” She turned to him slowly, never really understanding the part he’d played in the research center.
A self-mocking smile curled the Breed’s lips.
“I’m his brother, Cat,” he finally said, sighing heavily. “But I’m damned if I know what I am to him anymore.”
G’s brother.
Even Judd had someone, even if it was G.
She had no one . . .
? CHAPTER 1 ?
THIRTEEN YEARS LATER
WINDOW ROCK, ARIZONA
The world called her Claire.
Once, her legal name had been Fawn.
Neither was actually her true name.
Where it counted, to whom it counted, she was Cat, a carefully hidden, maturing, restless feline Breed ready to pounce. A tigress growing slowly impatient with those around her and the machinations being played against her.
She’d been growing tired of it for quite a while. The farce of living as a woman who had actually died as a young girl years before, of pretending to be quiet, studious, and without backbone, had worn her patience away.
She had backbone.
Once, a geneticist and a Bengal Breed named Gideon, one she had called G, had ensured it.
She had a backbone of steel and it was getting ready to lock into place.
“Claire should return to protective custody. With the proof that’s come to light of her father’s crimes against his family as well as the Breed community, she’ll become a target.” Jonas Wyatt, the director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs, addressed the group gathered in the conference room of the Navajo Suites Hotel just outside Window Rock.
He wasn’t wrong, exactly. What he neglected to mention was the fact that she had been a target since the tender age of twelve. It was nothing new to her.
For some reason, this Lion Breed had decided she was his favorite project, though. Since learning that her father, Raymond Martinez, had been behind his own sister’s abduction by the Genetics Council and later her death, the Breed was like a shadow she couldn’t shake.
Not to mention the fact that she was the only bait he had to draw out a creature he still had yet to learn was far too dangerous to play with in such a way.
Jonas didn’t address his concerns to her, though. They were addressed to Claire’s family members.
His freaky silver eyes swirled with concern amid the expression of sincerity that creased his sun-bronzed face.
He was about as sincere as the German shepherd that pretended to smile at her each morning. That bastard would take a bite out of her hide at first opportunity if she dared allow it.