After flashing to the back door of the house in SoHo, the large party of Romans and Beasts filed into the house. With the not-so-gentle rumble of irritated voices, they headed straight for the library, where Nicholas and his true mate, Kate, were waiting.
Nicholas looked up expectantly. "Where is she? Back in the cage already?"
Erion gave his twin brother a frustrated sneer, then dropped into an armchair near the fire. "Not in our cage, no."
Nicholas turned to Alex. "What is my not-so-identical brother talking about?"
While turning on a second laptop, Alexander answered. "She wanted to stay with Gray."
Nicholas didn't even try to hide his shock. "Why?"
"Who knows."
"And you let her?"
"Let her?" Alex repeated with a snort, looking up from the computer screen. "We're talking about Dillon here, not a rational veana."
As Sara went to stand beside her mate, Nicholas's brows drew together. "She keeps going back to that male. If I didn't know Dillon, I'd say she was seriously into him."
Lucian, who had been checking a text on his phone, glanced up at Helo and snorted. "Speaking of being into someone."
Helo's gaze flickered to Kate; then he growled at Lucian. "Shut up, dickhead."
Lucian chuckled. "Touchy, touchy."
"But we do know her," Alexander said quickly, his gaze narrowing on both idiot pavens, damning Gray for not only harboring Dillon but letting the entire family know that Helo thought Kate was an attractive veana. "Dillon needs him for something, maybe thinks he can protect her. I don't know."
"That male cannot protect her," Helo snarled, his eyes avoiding the couch and the true mate pair sitting on it. "He is an Impure."
Sara lifted her chin and regarded him with a tight smile. "Don't underestimate an Impure. Especially not that one."
Helo glanced at Alexander, who chuckled softly and added, "You heard the woman. Gray is different. He has gifts, deep and powerful mental gifts." He granted the paven a look that said, "You know what I'm talking about." "And we didn't just walk into his home earlier because we're Purebloods. I felt heavy magic around that warehouse space, as I'm sure you all did. It's as protected as this place, maybe more so."
"But how?" Erion asked him. "How could Impures have that kind of power? It's not possible."
"We are learning that power is not black-and-white, Erion. Not confined to Purebloods." He paused when Bronwyn walked into the library holding her infant daughter. Her face was flushed and her gaze went immediately to her mate, who jumped up to greet her. "And not defined by the old rules. Not anymore."
"We must convince her to return," Helo said, his tone no longer filled with ire but with the deep concern of a brother.
"Give her a few days," Sara said calmly. "Alex is right. Dillon makes her own choices, regardless of the consequences. I know you care deeply for her, but how much of a fight are you willing to take on to pull her out of there?" She looked at each Beast in turn. "A fight that will only end with her escaping again."
"The Order will find her there," Lycos growled, standing near a shelf of books, his wolf features unnerving in the dim light and shadows. "No matter how many charms they have unleashed. And if they get her, they get us."
Helo turned to the paven, said accusingly, "That's what you're really concerned with, aren't you, Ly?"
"You bet your water-loving ass, I am," he spat back. "I say we let Dillon be. She isn't one of us, not really-never wanted to be. I don't run after anything that doesn't wish to be caught-unless it's a food source." He looked to each mutore in turn. "I say we leave this house and get lost, find our own life."
Phane chuckled. "Shit, that sounds good."
"Too good to be true or wise," Erion finished. He looked at Alexander, then Nicholas. "Do you want us out?"
"Yes," Lucian answered quickly, then looked up from his baby and nodded at Phane. "Especially that one. He snores. I can hear it all the way down the hall."
Erion chuckled. Alexander too.
"I'm surprised you can hear anything over the crying of your balas," Phane returned with a playful sneer. "What is that thing you have her in anyway?"
"Don't be making fun of my sling, bitch," Lucian countered.
"No," Alexander said, still laughing. "We don't want you to leave. Not when we've gotten so used to you being around."
Nicholas nodded his agreement. "And not when we finally have someone for Lucian to verbally assault."
Phane and Lucian started laughing first; then the others joined in. Lycos smirked. "You have a great risk with us being here-you know that."
Alexander and Nicholas nodded. The Beasts turned to Lucian, who gave them each a vulgar glare, but in the end nodded as well.
"We give our sister a few days, and ourselves a few days, too," Lycos said, pushing away from the bookcase and the shadows. "But then a decision must be made."
"Agreed," said Helo.
Erion nodded.
"In the meantime," Phane said, his mismatched eyes suddenly bright, his tone heavy with sarcasm, "Lucian needs to decide if he's going to change his balas's diaper or let the rest of us pass out from the scent."
Bronwyn burst out laughing, but a growl emanated from Lucian's throat. "I'll change her diaper after I change yours, little birdie."
"My 'little birdie' isn't so little," Phane returned. "Want to see?"
Lucian sniffed. "And make my eyes bleed? Fuck no!"
The room exploded with laughter, male and female alike, and Alexander couldn't help but note that his house had never been filled with such a sound before, and he didn't want it changed. But that was a foolish wish. Lycos had been right when he said the Order would find Dillon, and in turn would find the Beasts, if they stuck around to watch. They were just biding time, all of them-waiting to see who was going to move the next chess piece and to where.
As if his very thoughts had commanded it, something flashed into the room.
A male.
Alex stared. Titus! The paven looked drawn, ill, ready to collapse, but purposeful as he searched the faces in the room until he found the one he sought.
His gaze pinned Sara where she stood. "Your brother is in grave danger."
In the apartment on the first level of the three-story warehouse, Gray sat in the good-sized kitchen around a rustic pine table with the man his father had called his best friend. "The male we need to retrieve tonight used to be an Impure consultant for the Order. Until they felt he was getting too powerful within the communities."
"Sounds about right. Not to mention familiar." Samuel Kendrick wore a pair of dark blue jeans and a red striped button-down shirt. He looked to be in his late fifties now. He had started aging rapidly after being blood castrated several months ago. "Where do we think the Impure is being held?"
Gray sat back in his chair. "Our informant says he's in the sixteenth cell, directly across from the secret entryway. It'll be a rough grab, but-"
"We'll get him out," came a sharp, confident female voice.
Gray looked up to see Samuel's daughter, Uma Kendrick, enter the room. As she walked over to the refrigerator, she tied her blond hair back into a ponytail at her nape.
"I'm starving," she said, yanking the door open and grabbing a glass of blood. After kicking the thing shut with her foot, she came to sit beside them at the table.
"I can't believe you drink that, Uma," Gray said, remembering the once-timid creature he'd met when they were both being held in the Paleo and the less timid creature he'd met when he'd returned to get her and her family out. "The Order's blood tastes like shit on a shingle."
She laughed. "I love it. I stole this batch on my last run and it's the best by far-like a really hard-core espresso to a human-that jolt gets me up and running." She downed the entire thing while they watched. "Now," she said when she'd finished. "I told Frankie to take the night off. I want to do this one alone. It's easier, nothing to slow me down."
Gray's gaze moved over the female-long, lean, and tight. With a face like an angel and the strength and determination of a bull who constantly saw red. Shit, what was wrong with him? This was the kind of female he should be claiming-with his tongue and with his heart. Someone with purpose, someone with a drive like his to make things better for her kind.
Someone who ran into danger for the greater good, not away from it for her own selfish reasons.
This female would be a perfect mate.
"What's wrong, Son?" Samuel asked him, his tired eyes moving over Gray's face. "What's on your mind?"
It should've bothered him that Samuel called him "son," but it didn't. In fact, it was the opposite. It made him feel closer to his father-it made him feel purposeful and right. This was the closest he was ever going to get to the male who'd sired him and who'd shared his goal.
"How often did my father go into the Paleo for rescues before he was taken there for castration?" Gray asked, no strain in his tone, but he sure felt it within himself.
With a sudden, thoughtful smile, Samuel stretched out his hands. "More than I can count on these ancient things. He had a strong pull when it came to liberating his own."
Pride and purpose moved through Gray. He felt the same. He wasn't content to watch, wait, give orders-he wanted to participate. He wanted to feel the shock, the charge of heading into the action, to danger and coming out alive, his arms full of his brothers and sisters in blood.
He turned to Uma. "I'm going with you tonight."
Her brow lifted in surprise, but she didn't look displeased. "You sure? I'd love to have you along, but the other Impure warriors won't like it. Risking their leader."
Perhaps they were risking their leader by having objections to his actions at all. "I'm not built to sit behind a desk, if you know what I mean."
She smiled. "I do." Her eyes flashed with warmth, an interest, sexual and otherwise, that he'd seen a few times before. He didn't encourage it, but he sure as hell didn't discourage it. "Why don't you stay?" she offered. "We could strategize, leave for the Paleo together?"
"I'd like that."
She heard the "but" in his voice. "Got somewhere to be?"
He nodded. What an ungrateful, led-around-by-his-dick bastard. This beautiful, strong, intelligent female right in front of him, clearly interested, and all he wanted to do was get out of there and back to her. Get back and lay his hands on her, open her up like a goddamn birthday present and see what was inside.
He needed Alexander to stick those fangs back into his brain and remove this goddamn need inside him. Sometimes it was more debilitating than those trauma sessions his sister used to force on him in the hospital.
At least those sessions had ended with a happy pill.
"I'll see you both later," he said, standing up, pushing his chair back. "I have something waiting for me."
Someone.
A fierce kitty cat who wanted to become a veana, he mused, heading out the door. And he would see to it...give her what she craved. Slowly, very slowly.
But first, he had a stop to make.
Snow was falling outside the window, turning the afternoon light a dark, swirling gray. Dillon had abandoned her mat twenty minutes ago and, after eating the deer meat the nervous servant had brought for her, began stalking back and forth near the door, trying to decide if she was going to stay in the room or head out into the Impure Resistance headquarters. One choice made her curious; the other made her tremble like a little bitch.
She did not tremble.
She made others tremble.
And yet every goddamn time she thought about Gray returning to the room with those hands, those fire-ravaged hands, and the eyes that bulleted straight through her, well, she wanted to run.
Christ.
Running was the last thing she needed to do. And from his hands-the hands that warmed and soothed and changed molecules. Why couldn't she get it through her head that this male was her ticket out of here, out of the cat suit and into her veana's thick skin?
A scent rolled toward her from the closet and she followed it. Among boxes, bags, and shoes, she found his clothing hanging from long, white rods, and she rubbed herself against them. First her body, then her face, back and forth, the material moving like calm ocean waves as she took deep inhales until her insides began to quiver.
"Starting without me?"
She stilled. "Wouldn't be the first time." She turned around to face him, though part of her body was still bound by his clothes. "Back so soon, Impure?"
"Now, what did I tell you about that?"
"I can't remember. I have a very bad memory."
"Well, maybe this will help." He held up something in his hands. "Maybe this will teach you obedience and who is truly in charge here."
Dillon stared at the collar in his hand, the animal's collar and a leash. "Clearly you've been drinking. Heavily. Or maybe you've been smoking something you shouldn't."
"What?" He ventured a quick glance at the objects in his hand. "It's pink."
"And that's supposed to tempt me?"
He grinned. "Just until we have you broken."
"No."
"'No' isn't allowed here, Dillon," he warned.
She swallowed tightly and used her brain. "There will always be a 'no' in my world, Gray."
His brow lifted at that. "Well, since you used my name so nicely, and with such respect, maybe we'll put these aside. For now."
"Try forever," she nearly snarled, but she wasn't going to push it. She needed his touch more than she needed to lash out at him.
"Shall we get to work?" he said, his eyes flashing.
"Work?" she repeated.
"You got another name for it, D?" He didn't wait for her answer, just turned and walked away.
When she emerged from the closet, she found him sitting in a chair by the fire, which was all but dead now. "Are we really going to pretend you don't love this? Sitting there like a king, waiting for me to sidle up between your legs and beg for your hands on me." She moved toward him. "And let's not even start on the control trip thing."
As she came to sit between his splayed thighs, Gray's eyes moved over her cat's golden, fierce face. "I won't deny it, my unfortunate desire for you, the need to bend you to my will."
"Ha!"
His gaze pinned her. "But it's work. Just breathing the same air as you is hard, motherfucking work." His hand lifted, hovered over her head. "I wish to God I could quit."
"You can," she growled.
"Just shut up and sit still."
His hands found her muzzle first, his burned, destroyed hands, and he began to move them up and down her face in a steady rhythm. The heat surged into Dillon almost at once, but this time she didn't close her eyes and enjoy it. This time, as the breath caught in her throat and her fangs dropped, she watched. She watched his eyes searching her face. The hope, the wonder, the heat behind those gray orbs made her chest ache, and for just a second she understood what he meant-even joined him in his frustration. This was work. Work to not feel a connection to him as he changed her back into her truly female self. Work to not hate him for it, feel obliged to repay him for it. Work to not want this bond that was forming out of a chance to change her-the true her, the cynical, untrusting her-in any way.
And then the skin on her face began to transform, and she felt the heat of the dying fire and the breath of the male before her on her face.
"Oh God," she whispered.
Gray kept his hands where they were for several more moments, until Dillon breathed-completely and totally out of her mouth. Then his hands moved. His fingers went to her neck, and when that was a veana's smooth skin, he moved to her shoulders and upper back. Little by little, inch by inch, the warm air of Gray's bedroom wafted over her skin. Until she carried no more fur from head to waist-just smooth, light skin. Dillon felt tears behind her eyes at the sensation. Though the change was only halfway complete, it felt so wonderful, so delicious-so freeing. She could stretch, move muscles and limbs in directions she hadn't in what felt like forever. Her shoulders smooth again, her neck, her spine, her collarbone, her breasts-
"Look at me," came the deep, male demand above her.
Dillon's head canted up. Gray's face was so close to hers, his mouth too. She hadn't even realized she had dropped eye contact. His eyes were fierce, looking into hers, his nostrils flared.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"I don't know how this is happening," he rasped, his gaze moving down her body, from all veana to all cat. "It's like I'm taking in what I'm removing."
Dillon tensed at his words. "What?"
His fingers dug into her skin. "Your Beast...feels like it's in...me."
The last word was barely uttered aloud because he lowered his head and crushed his mouth against hers. Dillon cried out as he fed-fed from her breath and from her soul, if she could still claim to have one. The deep pulls of need were like heaven and hell, and she leaned into it and gave her lips over to him, hungry, impatient, possessive. For one brief second, a flash of herself, of the halfway state she was in, came into her mind. She'd never been touched, kissed, or felt true desire as an animal and as a veana-and there was no denying they both wanted this male. And it wasn't her body alone that craved him; it was also the unmoving organ within her chest, cradled and protected by her ribs-that thing that had never had a purpose, never beat with life or joy-it now suddenly ached, begged, cried out.
Dangerous. So dangerous. Not the wanting, the kissing or fucking or fondling, but the needing.
She had never needed another being in her life-not in this way.
"Stop!" she cried suddenly, pushing back, pushing away from him. "Stop it! Stay away from me!"
Gray's hands were off of her in seconds, but as he sat up in the chair, the throne beside the smoldering ashes in the fireplace, his gaze remained feral. Swallowing heavily, her entire body soaked with heat, with emotion, she backed away-this creature, this half veana, half Jaguar-this thing that couldn't breathe, couldn't think.
"Dillon."
She inched back all the way until she felt wall. There she curled herself into the corner and tried to get air.
"Dillon." His voice was calm, concerned now-it was the first time she'd heard him like that since the night in her house, the night she'd rescued him, let him touch her, drink from her. The night she'd pretended he meant less than nothing to her. "I'm not touching you. Look at me."
Her eyes flipped up as she moved away from the wall, awkward in her half-Beast movements, trying to get back toward the closet, the bathroom, out of sight.
"What's wrong, baby?" he whispered gently, though his eyes still retained the hot desire of a moment ago. "You're halfway there."
She felt too naked, oddly naked-a strange, foul sight. She couldn't seem to breathe right either, and everything within her was shaking so badly she wondered if she was dying. She cast around, looking for a reason to push back, to run, anything but having to reveal the truth about what she was feeling for this male. She saw his hands and bit down. "You can't touch me. Ever again. Your hands...The feel of them on my skin makes me sick. I hate them. I don't want them...They're..."
She was making no sense. She was prattling on like fool, a terrified fool.
But her words had cut deep and quick. Gray's eyes hardened into two steel-hued stones. "You don't have to say any more, baby." He sat there, unmoving, his tone ice cold. "My hands may be the ugliest motherfucking things you've ever seen, but they're also the key to your salvation."
Dillon couldn't bear it any longer-the lies, the truth, the sensations, his disgusted gaze. She got awkwardly to her hands and feet and ran into the bathroom, shut the door, and flipped the lock. Running. Goddamn it. She was always running.
She crawled into the massive shower and lay down on the drain, wishing it would pull her in and send her off to where all dirty, unwanted things went.
Her throat felt scratchy and tight, and she squeezed her eyes together, trying to force the tears to come. But they didn't. They never did. Not since that night.
When her body was taken against her will, all the tears inside of her had dried up.
Gray's touch hadn't just brought out her veana; it had brought out her feelings, the real ones-the ones she'd thought dead and buried-and the emotions that came along for the ride.
As she slowly shifted from part veana to all jaguar again, she realized that maybe this was worse-feeling a veana's emotion, pain, shame, and true longing. Maybe this was a far worse fate than remaining an animal.