Styx's Storm (18 page)

Jason Phelps. Storme had known Jason Phelps. He had been a friend of her brother's, for a while. For a moment, a flash of memory surfaced. Her brother stalking into the house late one night, furious, his expression tight and hard as Jason followed him inside.

She didn't remember the conversation, or rather the loud argument, that had awakened her and drawn her from her bed. Her brother had been so enraged he had ended up slamming his fist into Jason's face and throwing him out the door of the house.

"Three million dollars is a lot of money," Storme agreed as she fought the panicked feeling beginning to rise inside her. What this young woman had suffered, what she endured as her life had to be hell. Storme was alone, fighting to run from the Council for years. But in all fairness, they hadn't seriously tracked her, simply because until lately, no one had believed the importance of the information she had.

Unlike Cassandra Sinclair. Every move she made, every breath she took was with the knowledge that the Council was willing to pay a fortune to destroy her.

Cassie watched her curiously, a question in her gaze. No doubt she caught the response, the heavy hard thud of her heart before she could control it.

"Jason was killed wasn't he?" Storme asked when Cassie said nothing further.

"A sniper, we still haven't learned who it was." Cassie shoved her hands in the back pockets of her jeans as she drew in a hard breath. "Thankfully, I survived it. The alternative wouldn't have turned out nearly as well."

"And the alternative was?" Storme asked.

Cassie gave her a hard smile. "Standing order among the Breed community where I'm concerned. If I'm taken and rescue isn't possible, then I'll be killed by the very people who love me. And trust me, that is preferable to a life in a Breed lab."

Storme flinched. She remembered the Omega labs, the cells where wounded or experimental Breeds were kept. Cassie would be considered an experimental Breed. She would be caged, kept naked, tested, examined and forced to endure a life that even an animal shouldn't have to endure.

That realization had Storme's heart clenching, her stomach dropping. The Council had been wrong in the creation and the treatment of the Breeds. Storme had known that all along. So how right did that make her?

It was a question she pushed back, one she couldn't focus on quite yet.

"And it's okay for you that your own people would execute you?" she asked Cassie heavily, wondering how she could have lived with the knowledge if her father or brother would have been in that situation.

Cassie's smile was bitter. "Trust me, Storme, I'd rather die than suffer the rapes, the beatings, and the experiments the Council would conduct on me. Death would be a vacation."

Storme swung away from the other girl and paced to the barred window. She couldn't imagine living in such a way. Cassie at least had been raised as a human; for years she hadn't known what she was or how she had been created. Still, the scientists would strip her of her freedom, her very humanity, to find the animal they believed she was inside.

She was, at least mentally and psychologically, human. To have to live with the threat of death at the hands of the people she loved must be a horrifying weight. To be so young and to have to accept that the dreams that could have been hers, the future she could have had, would never be.

Cassandra Sinclair was a young woman who didn't have college to look forward to. The illusion of security, peace or happiness would never be hers. And yet she was here, she had been laughing, joking. She had actually fared far better than Storme had in the past ten years.

"I'm tired ..." Storme needed to be alone. Only when she was alone could she sort out her emotions and her thoughts enough to remain true to the promise she had made to her father.

"No, you're not tired." Cassie mocked the excuse as Storme refused to turn and meet her gaze. "What's wrong, Storme, your idea of reality faltering somehow?"

It wasn't her idea of reality that was faltering. It was her idea of the past, the future and everything she had thought she believed in.

"You know who I am. I was raised in the labs. I saw what the Breeds were, what they were created to be," Storme whispered. "You know who my family was ..."

Cassie waved through her words, her expression irritated as she shook her head in impatience.

"Your father and your brother were friends to the Breeds, and their deaths were a terrible tragedy, I know that," Cassie stated. "I came across their file when I was going over a case against another trainer. You however, are a different story, aren't you, Storme? If we all died tomorrow, you wouldn't give a damn."

"That's not true." She swung around, instinctive anger rising inside her.

"Oh, well, you might want to keep Styx around for a little while." Cassie laughed derisively. "To play pet stud perhaps? But the rest of us could go to hell, couldn't we?"

"No." She shook her head, though she knew it was a comment she had made often in regard to Breeds in general. That they could go to hell for all she cared.

The thought of Styx dying, of his laughter, his charm, and his wicked flirtatiousness being extinguished or locked in a cold cell, was more than she could bear.

And strangely, the thought of knowing that gatherings such as the one she'd glimpsed the night before would never happen again had her chest clenching in something resembling regret.

She knew for a fact that Breeds had never had such gatherings in the labs. There had been no warmth for them, no peace and no love. Even a human without Breed genetics could be turned into an animal. And if that human had animal genetics to begin with? Genetics taken from not just the most savage animals on the Earth, but also DNA gathered from some of the most criminal minds the world had ever known, what would then be produced?

That process produced Breeds.

"Look, you've been through hell, your dad and your brother were killed and I'm sure you saw it all, but you know what, Storme, they made a choice and stuck to it. Whatever your father gave you, he gave you for a reason. Because we may need it ..."

"Stop." Storme couldn't hold back the word, or the demand that this end and this end now. "You don't know me, and you didn't know my father or my brother. I don't have anything to give you, it's that simple. You, Styx, Jonas Wyatt and your alpha are simply going to have to accept that."

"But Navarro did know you," Cassie broke in. "And Navarro remembers well the times your father and brother hid certain details, and worked with him to help certain Breeds escape. They risked their lives for the Breeds, and they told him you held the key to the secrets they were destroying."

"Then they lied to him. And they risked my life by telling him that," Storme bit out furiously. If Navarro had been such a friend, if her father had wanted the Breeds to have the data chip, then surely he would have said something. "I was there in those labs too, Cassie. Any risk they took on themselves, they placed me in the same line of fire. Tell me, would your father do the same?"

"Any battle my father took on would be my battle as well," Cassie told her fiercely. "We're not animals and we're not monsters, but that's not what you believe, is it? It's not what you want to see either. Styx is fine for you to fuck, but tell me, would you stand in front of him to protect him? Would you argue to the world that your lover is human and deserving of life? And if you did, would you argue for his friend as well? His pack mate? His alpha?"

Storme drew in a hard, shaky breath. "You need to leave."

"So you can wallow in your self-pity and judgmental racism?" Cassie's smiled was censorious and edged with disgust. "Sure, Storme, I'll leave now. Be sure to tell Styx I'm looking for him." Cassie paused then, a tight, confident smile filled with critical certainty crossing her face. "When you're gone, he'll be mine again. I can be patient. Right?"

For a second, Cassie's gaze gleamed with feminine confidence. She felt she had a hold on Styx for some reason, a hold that went far beyond sharing a little chocolate.

"Isn't Styx a little old for you?" Storme asked tightly. "I'd think you'd want someone closer to your own age, Cassie."

"I like older men," Cassie assured her. "I especially like Styx. He makes sure I have fun. He may have other lovers, but he always comes back to me. And we both know you have no intention of hanging around, don't we, Storme?"

She had to force herself to control her breathing, to keep from raging inside and out with anger. An anger she shouldn't feel. As Cassie had said, she had no intention of hanging around. Her only firm plan was to escape this place the moment she found her opening, and never look back.

She couldn't force herself to agree with Cassie though. There was something about the other girl that warned her to be wary, to be careful of what she thought, felt and said.

Cassie smiled slowly. "You're a bright woman, Storme. It's too bad you're so damned stubborn as well. Life might have been better for you if you had realized who your friends were, and what your enemies want from you."

"Meaning the Breeds are my friends?" Storme asked bitterly. "Should I just expose my neck with a smile and hope for the best?"

"It depends on the Breed you're exposing your neck to." Cassie was clearly laughing at her. "I believe there may be a few you've pissed off over the years. They might nip you just for the hell of it unless Styx declares you as belonging to him. And I'm certain the Council Coyotes would be more than happy to do some true damage, but until you actually threaten Haven, I don't think you have much to fear."

"And what would it take to threaten Haven?" Storme crossed her arms defensively over her breasts and glared back at Cassie.

Strangely, she had the feeling that Cassie was right, that under different circumstances, they might have been friends. But these weren't different circumstances, this was reality, and in this reality, they weren't friends. There was no chance of them being friends that she could see.

"Escape," Cassie answered thoughtfully. "That's what it would take, Storme. Because if you escape, then you escape with information no one else has, information that could be a danger to us. Be careful what you plan, be careful how determined you become to remain so very stubborn, Storme. Because if you escape, then as with me, we can't afford to allow the Council to take you."

"So your precious alpha would have me killed?" Storme bit out furiously.

"That job would fall to me."

Both Cassie and Storme whirled around, staring in surprise at the implacable expression on Styx's face and the cold, hard edge of determination that filled his eyes.

Panic, fear--they rose inside her like a whirlwind growing rapidly out of control. Like something she couldn't contain or control with the last ounce of determination inside her.

She could see the truth on his face. If she escaped, then she would have the knowledge that even the human soldiers working in Haven didn't have.

Humans were confined to the security areas only. The communications bunkers, the secured entrances. They didn't roam the small cluster of homes and likely only a few had any knowledge of the location of the alpha and his second's homes, except the most trusted ones.

She knew pure blood societies that would pay a hefty price for that information. For any information that would aid in even a quick suicide strike against the leaders of this community, a strike that would come even close to success.

She was a liability to Haven and to the Breeds in general, and the slow, icy knowledge of the danger that placed her in had her throat tightening.

She had slept with this Breed. She had curled against him, felt his arms around her, and she had felt safe.

Even here, safety was an illusion.

"Somehow, that doesn't surprise me." She forced the words past her lips as she turned away from both him as well as Cassie. "Could the two of you leave now? I'm tired of company. I rather enjoy the time I have here to stare at the walls."

To plot and to plan. Suddenly, the idea of escape had never seemed so imperative and yet so far out of reach.

"Like hell," Styx growled as he stalked into the room, then turned to Cassie. "What are you doing here? I sent word I'd meet you in the community center this evening."

Storme swung around and stared at him in disbelief as he spoke to Cassie.

"Strange," Cassie murmured. "I didn't get that message. I wanted to let you know the chocolate we ordered arrived today. Dr. Armani promised to have it tested by the party next week along with the wine we ordered to go with it. I thought we'd check it out tonight."

He glanced back at Storme. Catching his gaze, she made damned certain he didn't sense anything out of her but the anger and disgust she felt.

"Not tonight, Cassie," he growled as he turned back to her.

Cassie pouted prettily. "You promised, Styx."

"And things have happened since I promised," he stated, his tone firm, but still warm. There was a softness to his tone as he spoke to Cassie that set Storme's nerves on edge.

What was it that made her feel like clawing both their eyes out. That had her fingers curling in an effort to hold back that need.

"Styx, this chocolate cost me a month's allowance." Cassie propped her hands on her hips as irritation filled her voice. "And that wine? Do you remember how much that wine cost, Styx? We had a date. You are not allowed to break dates because of a current playmate. You promised me that."

"A current playmate?" Storme was all but choking on her anger now as Cassie shot her a glare and Styx turned, raked his fingers through his hair and grimaced helplessly; she lifted her hand and fought back the incredible urge to throw something at him. "Don't let me hold you back, Styx. And don't even imagine in any part of that tiny brain of yours that I'm some kind of playmate. Go eat your chocolate." Mockery filled her voice. "Drink your wine." Her eyes widened with an innocent concern that was patently false. "Have a really good time by all means. I'm sure I'll find some way to entertain myself." It was all she could do not to clench her teeth in fury.