He moved almost violently from the chair and paced the rough stone floor of the cavern. He couldn’t think about that. He couldn’t allow it to take hold in his mind or the animal inside would certainly break free.
He had to concentrate on her safety.
He couldn’t take her to Sanctuary, and she couldn’t return to her home. There had to be an answer. He had searched every database he could find and hacked into more files at the Bureau of Breed Affairs than he wanted to count. There wasn’t even a hint that Scheme Tallant was the spy Jonas had recruited within the Tallant organization.
And without proof, Tanner was screwed, because he was running out of time. He barely had a week left on his vacation, and if he didn’t return, Callan would send someone out to find out why.
No excuses would be acceptable. Callan knew his family, and Tanner was part of his family. He would know something was wrong, and there was no way the pride leader would understand this one. Not considering who she was and her connection to the general.
Damn, he had been so certain the mating heat would begin. It didn’t make sense. He had never been so obsessed with a woman in his life. He had teetered between hate and lust for ten years, only to have the lust, the hunger for her, completely overwhelm him and the hatred dissolve in the face of the horror he was suspecting she had experienced at her father’s hands.
She was so small. Delicate. Yet with a strength he hadn’t expected. Her bones were so small he wondered how her father had kept from shattering them when he beat her.
Hell, he didn’t know how to work this now. He had envisioned arriving at Sanctuary with his mate, and now he had no defense to offer her. Breed Law or her father’s assassins. He couldn’t allow her to face either. Unless she was Jonas’s mole. Or Cabal’s mate.
He wiped his hand over his face.
Cabal’s mate.
It couldn’t be true, but he couldn’t ignore the signs that it was possible. Mating heat was a biological, hormonal mating, as well as emotional.
Emotionally, he was so firmly tied to her now that he wondered if he could ever breathe without her scent in his head. But what if the mating heat was more physical than emotional? What if she wasn’t his mate at all? What if she belonged to the only man whose genetics matched his? Perhaps matched enough that he reacted to her as a mate, without the mating hormone. A mating hormone Cabal would release once he came face-to-face with her.
Could he survive it? Could he live with it?
“You’re thinking too hard.” Her voice had him turning swiftly toward her, his brows drawing into a frown at the weakness in her voice.
The touch of her gaze upon him had him hardening instantly beneath his jeans, his body eagerly anticipating her touch. But as he watched her move and detected the scent of physical pain, he knew that wouldn’t be an option, not until she managed to loosen those still bruised muscles.
“There are some bath salts in the bathroom.” He moved for the bed, helping her to ease out of it despite the suspicion in her gaze.
She wasn’t used to being cared for, but hell, he wasn’t used to caring for anyone. In her case, he couldn’t seem to help himself.
“I’ll be okay.”
Why the hell was she always pulling away from him? He was constantly trying to get closer to her while she was constantly moving away from him.
“I’m sure you will be, but I prefer to make certain of it.” He stared into her dark eyes, seeing the response in her gaze as his hands slid slowly down her arms. “I didn’t mean to be so hard on you when I took you.”
“I don’t break easily, Tanner,” she assured him, moving away from him again and heading for the bathroom. “I’ll take you up on those bath salts though.”
He followed her into the bathroom, his lips quirking as she moved naked through the cavern. She wasn’t self-conscious about her nakedness; he liked that about her. She didn’t pretend coyness or shyness. She gave as good as she got and didn’t make excuses.
Moving into the small cave that held the bathroom, he reached beneath the sink and pulled free the bottle of scented salts.
“My pride sisters Dawn and Sherra like to keep their smelly stuff around.” He uncapped it for her and set it on the sink cabinet. “Take your time. I’ll fix breakfast now that you’re up.”
“So it’s morning?” she asked casually.
His lips quirked. “About ten.”
She stiffened as she adjusted the water running into the tub.
She finally sighed as steam poured from the hot water. “When do you intend to let me go?”
Straightening, she turned to face him, her long hair falling over her shoulder, framing her unique features.
“This isn’t a game, Scheme. The minute you walk out of here you’re dead, and you know it. Your father won’t let you escape, and even if he did, Breed Law sure as hell wouldn’t. Without his protection, you’ll be taken by the Breeds. Once in Sanctuary, you’ll be placed under Breed Law.”
“Then why waste your time like this?” She stared back at him somberly. “You confuse me, Tanner. What do you want? A few hard fucks before you turn me over to your pride leader?” Her lips turned down sadly. “Why don’t you go ahead and do it? Stop torturing both of us.”
“Do you think I want to see you dead, Scheme?” he snapped back, enraged that she would accept death so easily. “I didn’t waste my damned time bringing you here just to see you executed under Breed Law or by your father’s hand.”
“So why did you waste your time?” She moved to the sink and picked up the salts before turning back to the tub and pouring a healthy amount into the water there.
She acted as though dying meant nothing, as though her life had no worth, and it was pissing him off.“You could turn evidence against your father,” he stated. “Sanctuary would protect you, Scheme, for that information.”
She paused, biting her lip, her expression concentrated as she stared back at him. “I wish it were that easy.”
“Scheme, time is running out,” he urged. “I can’t stay here forever, and neither can you.”
“Then let me go.” She turned back to the cabinet, pulling towels, a washcloth and a bottle of bath gel from it before laying them on the small stool by the tub. “The answer is pretty easy, Tanner. I didn’t ask you to bring me here.”
“You’re asking me to let you die,” he snarled, furious. “You could live.”
“For how long?” Her expression enraged him. Cool. Composed. They might have been talking about the weather rather than her life. “If you truly want to see me safe, then prove it. Give me a secured cell phone and let me go. I’ll be safe.”
Her words made him crazy.
“Are you Jonas’s spy in your father’s organization?”
He watched her tense, pale. “You have another spy in Father’s organization?” she asked hesitantly, almost fearfully.
His teeth locked together. He could smell neither deceit nor guilt, but he did smell fear.
“Trust me, Scheme,” he whispered.
“Trust me first, Tanner,” she rebutted. “Just take me out of here and drop me off far enough away from the Coyotes searching for me, and give me a cell. I’ll contact you within hours.”
If she were still alive. And there wasn’t much change of that.
“I can protect you, goddammit,” he snarled. “Give me that much at least.”
Her gaze flickered with indecision, with hope and fear and a flash of agonizing pain.
“I can’t.”
“I won’t let them fucking kill you.” He was surprised to hear his voice rise. His voice never rose. He was the calm Breed, the playful one.
She stared back at him, a cynical twist to her mouth that told him more than words how little she trusted him.
“I can’t give you what you want, Tanner.” Desperation filled her voice. “I don’t have what you need.”
“Why do I have to keep telling you that I can fucking smell your lies?” he growled.
“Have I ever mentioned how little I care?” she cried out, the lie obvious not just in her scent, but in her voice and in her eyes. “You seem to be under the misconception here, Breed, that I’m willingly playing this little game with you. I’m not. I didn’t ask you to bring me here, and I didn’t ask you to interrogate me. All I asked for was a bath.”
The tiger he fought to keep hidden awoke with a dangerous shift within him. He could feel the warning snarl in his chest, the opening of extra senses, the added determination that nothing ever hurt her again.
“You’re still protecting him.” He clenched his teeth against the knowledge. “That bastard has beat you, buried you alive how many fucking times, and killed your child. He hired his own man to be your lover and used him to find reasons to punish you, and you still protect him?”
She turned back to the tub, her hand running beneath the water again before she gripped the lip of the high, claw-foot tub and moved to lift her leg over the side.
She didn’t make a sound, but he saw the discomfort the effort was costing her.
“Goddammit, Scheme, can’t you even fucking ask me for help?” He gripped her waist and lifted her in as he fought back emotions he had never known in his life. For the first time, he knew fear. Without her help, he couldn’t save her.
“If I needed your help, I would ask for it.” She lowered herself into the hot water with a small, sighing gasp, the heated liquid washing to her hips as she pulled her hair out of the way and let it flow over the edge of the tub.
“Scheme.” He hunched next to the tub and stared back at her imperatively. “Give me something. Anything I can use to help you. Don’t go down like this. For both our sakes.”
Her lips quirked. “I’m nothing to you, Tanner,” she said softly. “You aren’t even part of the equation.”
Scheme watched as Tanner’s face hardened, his eyes gleaming with an almost unearthly light as he straightened, staring down at her with a predatory intent that she knew should have frightened her.
“I won’t let you die like this.” His voice was guttural, animalistic. “No matter how willing you are to die for that bastard who sired you.”
He turned and stalked from the room, snapping the curtain closed behind him as she closed her eyes against his rage.
He was good, she thought, in regret, fighting back her tears. God, she was not going to cry over this. She had never cried for anything short of unbearable pain, until Tanner. She didn’t cry because her emotions were ripping her apart inside. And they were ripping her apart.
For the first time since Chaz, she wanted to believe in a man. She wanted to believe so bad it was eating her alive inside, breaking her heart, destroying a part of her mind that she hadn’t known existed. She could have sworn she had outgrown fairy tales. But she wanted the fantasy Tanner was offering so desperately that it cut like a knife inside her.
She had lost her child because she had trusted a man. Believed in him with all her heart. Loved him until she had overlooked the tiny inconsistencies that warned her of his betrayal. And now she was on the very edge of doing it again. Placing her trust and the lives of others in the hands of a man who could betray her.
Her soul screamed out in denial. But she remembered that the moment she realized that Chaz had aided her father in destroying her child, her soul had screamed out the same denial. Could she survive such betrayal again?
If he was sincere, then once he learned the truth of what she had been doing, he would understand. That was love, she told herself. He would forgive her, wouldn’t he? He would understand why she hid the fact that she was working for Jonas, that she couldn’t trust him until the information she had made it to the only man who knew what she had been doing for the past eight years.