The Breed Casstiel's Vow (5 page)

“Did you send the picture
to my parents?” she asked trying to keep her excitement down.

“I don’t want to get their
hopes up if it turns out to be a false alarm. Are you ready Tessa?” Sebastian
urged, his crisp green eyes cutting into hers.

“Yes,” she replied, hardly
breathing, her mind reeling, a thousand thoughts buzzing in her head.

If it wasn’t him
the heart break would be devastating.

As Sebastian pulled the
photo out of his suit pocket he studied her, probing, for a moment she almost
felt as though he would try and reach into her mind the same way that she had
done with so many other humans.

He handed her the picture
at last and sat back, his fingers steepled.

Tessa almost didn’t want to
look, but she had to.

She inhaled a shock of air
as the face of the person in the photograph swam through her memories. She knew
it was Quinn more by the feeling of connection in her heart than by the
recognition her eyes made. There was no doubt in her mind that this was her
brother.

No matter how blurred the
picture, she would know him anywhere. 

“It’s him,” she whispered,
tears of relief pooling in her eyes.

 After all these
months of holding on, of not knowing if her brother was dead or alive, here he
was right in front of her.

“I was afraid of that,”
Sebastian sighed closing his eyes.

It took Tessa a few minutes
to register the
solemness
in Sebastian's voice. The
emotion sounded so alien that it snapped her out of her fantasy of reuniting
her family.

“Why would you be afraid of
that?” she asked slowly as her thoughts returned to the present situation.

Sebastian opened his eyes
and stared at her questioningly, as though trying to estimate how much weight
he could place onto her shoulders before she crumbled beneath it all. He wasn’t
sure if she could bear to hear what he had to say.

Tessa didn’t care how
dangerous the road before her was, she didn’t care if she broke apart
emotionally in the process,
all
that mattered to her
was getting her brother back.

Getting
her life back.

“Just tell me,” she
demanded steeling her spine.

She felt Nora’s hand reach
across the couch and squeeze hers. Whatever was about to happen, she wouldn’t
be going through it alone.

After what seemed like
hours Sebastian finally began to speak.

“As you are aware, when you
came to us we were all shocked to hear your story.  The Breed has long
since given up feeding from or attacking humans, except the hunters. So we
asked ourselves ‘why’, why would werewolves attack your brother?” Sebastian
asked as though he were really expecting her to have an answer for him.

Tessa shrugged her
shoulders, she had asked herself the same question over and over again, and had
yet to come up with an answer.

“At first we thought the
answer was obvious: you had simply misunderstood what you had seen. It had been
such a shock for you to see a werewolf in the first place that instead of
seeing your brother being initiated into a pack, which would have involved him
being conscious and drinking the blood of at least one of the werewolves, your
mind had rejected what you were seeing and had instead replaced the scene with
your brother was helplessly being attacked and drug off into the woods.”

Sebastian took a pause, and
again gave her an evaluating stare.

She felt her irritation
rising at the suggestion that Quinn would join the Breed to begin with, but she
took a deep breath and let it go. There was no point in arguing when no one
really knew what had happened. Nodding her head, she encouraged him to
continue.

“We sent Memphis out to
Michigan to investigate everything. He searched through your house, and when he
found nothing of interest he moved on to the packs themselves. He went to every
pack within a two hundred mile radius successfully interviewing four out of the
five packs. They had never seen nor heard of your brother, and had not
recruited anyone new in quite some time. That left him with the last of the
five packs, the Balor pack of south eastern Michigan,” Sebastian continued,
reciting off things she already knew.

“Right, my parents told
me,” Tessa replied, confused as to why she was receiving a refresher.

“Memphis however came
across a problem with this last pack, he couldn’t find them. The home that they
resided in, a three story mansion on ten acres of land was still exactly where
it was supposed to be, but everyone who should have been inside was gone.”

Nora and Tessa locked eyes
as they stared at each other in confusion. Apparently no one had thought it
would be a good idea to tell either of them this piece of information.

“How could an entire pack
just disappear?” Sebastian asked, “And even if the pack had decided to
completely give up life in Michigan, why would they leave everything they owned
still inside the compound? Refrigerators full of food, closets full of clothes,
cars still in the garages.”

A shiver ran up her spine
as the severity of what Sebastian was saying set in.

“Naturally we called my
brother at the embassy to investigate. We were almost positive that the hunters
had something to do with this, but no hunters had left their compounds and come
anywhere near the Balor pack. We had to chalk the situation up to mystery.

“Since then we have had no
luck in finding your brother. No one has seen him, the human police haven’t
found a body, there has literally been no trace of him,
then
a year later we get two different sightings of him, each one on opposite sides
of the United States within the same week. How could that be possible?”
Sebastian sat back in his chair and stared hard at the two girls.

Neither one said anything,
just waited for him to finish his train of thought.

 “The embassies have
put an alert out on your brother, which means any sighting of him, any use of
his name or social security number on documents, would send an alert, just as
it did when your brother was sighted on the subway.

This means that if he has
been working or receiving finances, he is doing it by using an alias, but why?
Why would your brother choose to disappear into thin air, and then go into
hiding by running all over the United States disguising himself?”

“He wouldn’t,” she cut in,
“I don’t care how it seems my brother wouldn’t run from us. I don’t know what’s
going on, and I don’t care how it looks, my brother isn’t running from us.”

Tessa was seething with
rage. She didn’t care how much the Breed had helped her family the past two
years,
she wouldn’t let anyone criticize her brother.

“So what’s the plan?” Nora
changed the subject as she stared daggers at Sebastian.

Tessa squeezed her hand. It
felt so good to have someone in her corner.

Throughout her life she had
never understood why other people valued friendship so much, but thanks to Nora
she had finally understood.

“Well, my brother and his
team feel the first step is to interview you for themselves. They would like
for her to go to the embassy today,” Sebastian leaned forward, placing his
elbows on his knees, staring at the girls, “We’ve come to the point that I’m
torn between.”

Go to the Embassy of the
Breed… be interviewed by a team of vampires and werewolves…
the thoughts were circling through her head. She had
only ever heard of the Breed’s Embassy’s, who
were these
‘defense agents’?

She bit back a flush of
anger at the thought of them accusing Quinn as well.

“No harm will come to you
from my brother or his team, I promise you. Every member of the Embassy has
pledged their lives to not only helping the Breed, but to helping humans in
need as well,” Sebastian stated, correctly guessing at Tessa’s hesitation, “I
cannot however keep you or myself safe from the reaction of everyone else when
they find out you’ve gone.”

One look at Nora’s face
told her they were going.

“When do we leave?” she
asked, drawing strength from the hand that was clasped around hers.

~

“Even if they are just
humans they would notice a floating fucking head,” Kain snapped, “He’s moving
too fast for them to see, it’s the only answer.”

 “Cass what do you
think?” Jax demanded.

So far Casstiel was the
only person not interested in the discussion that had held everyone’s attention
for the last half hour. His hand clutched his cell phone on his lap as he
waited for Sebastian's call. He wasn’t sure what he was hoping for, but any
answer was better than sitting in the dark.

 “I think you both
should stop arguing like an old married couple. We shouldn’t be making any
assumptions until we hear back from Sebastian and see if this is the missing
guy or not,” he replied coldly.

Had this guy really been a
human two years ago? If it was him how had he stayed under cover for so long?

Finally, thankfully, the
phone rang and broke the tension in the room.

 “Brother,” he let out
a sigh of relief.

Casstiel’s face tightened
as he listened to everything Sebastian had to say, then silently hung up.

“The girl has identified
him as her brother and Sebastian believes her. She and a friend, a female
werewolf, will be leaving momentarily to join us here,” he stiffly informed his
team.

He wasn’t sure if the man
from the subway being identified was a good thing, but he was sure that having
to deal with a human female was about the last thing he needed.

“A female
werewolf?”
Jax asked rubbing his hands together as a grin slid onto his
face.

“Yeah, Memphis’ daughter,
so as long as
she’s
here you’re gonna keep your dick
in your pants.  BOTH of you,” Cass demanded his eyes darting between the
two werewolf members of his team.

“Trust me, you’ll never
have to worry about me wanting a Breed female,” Kain stated matter of
factly
, “they want commitments. I’d rather play with the
humans who are more than happy to leave me alone and get back to their own
lives when fun time is over.”

“You’re so full of shit,”
Jax scoffed rolling his eyes.

Cass turned his attention
to Ghost, “this is their vehicle VIN number, re-route their On-star to our
squad room. Sebastian's already placed a tracking device in the vehicle, and
they have been advised not to make any stops. They should be here by 7 p.m.”

Ghost didn’t respond, just
swiveled his chair around and began typing.

“Heckle,
Jeckle
, when the girls get here bring them in and come get
me. I’ll be in the gym if anyone needs me,” Casstiel grunted, practically
running out the door in his need to work out some frustration and confusion.

Two hours later Casstiel’s
muscles were screaming with the intensity of his workout.

After hitting his fourth
set of two hundred on the bench press he placed the weight onto its rest and
let out a long sigh.

He didn’t want to think
about anything to do with work anymore. If he went over the details of this Roberts
case, or the situation with the Hunters one more time his head might explode.

However as he lay back onto
the padding of the bench press, he realized work was all he had to think about.

Since their deaths, he and
Sebastian had begun living out their parent’s dreams, giving it every thought,
every minute, every ounce of energy that they had.

With running the defense
department he had let go of the idea of having a social life, of hobbies or
free time.

 His life was the
defense department now.

Aside from going out with
the boys for drinks every now and then after a shift, all he did was bury
himself
in work.

Casstiel sat up on the
bench and rested his head in his hands. The only thoughts that he had that
weren’t work related, were the thoughts of his mysterious dream woman.

‘Red’ he had began
affectionately calling her.

What did the dream mean?

Was it just his body’s way
of telling him that he needed to get out of the gym and get a girlfriend?

He laughed at the thought.

His mind had made the dream
so real and so vivid that even if he was willing to date someone, all he wanted
was Red.

After seeing her and
pleasuring her night after night in his dreams, could he ever stop thinking
about her and settle for a real woman?

He hadn’t been able to so
far. Hell he couldn’t even have sex with a real woman anymore unless she looked
like Red. Even then all he was doing was pretending, trying to make
himself
believe it was her.

Things were getting way too
out of hand with this ‘dream girl’ fantasy. For
his own
sanity they needed to stop.

Even as he told himself
that, his mind began to wander off to her.

He thought about her laugh
first, a sweet tinkling of bells that he loved so much. He thought about how ticklish
she was, and how sweet and shy her smile could be, then about her smell, and
the smoothness of her skin.

Finally he thought about
her body, and his lips let out a soft growl. His finger tips itched to touch
her. His lips tingled with the thought of kissing hers, and then kissing their
way slowly downwards. His ears burned with the sound of her calling his name,
and his cock stiffened with the thought of her being sprawled out beneath him.

He knew he needed to stop,
but somehow the message was lost from his brain on the way to his limbs as he
walked into the shower room to think about her privately.

~

“How much
farther?”
Nora asked steering the SUV through a bend in the highway.

“About fifteen miles,”
Tessa checked their GPS, “I’m so anxious.”

“Me too, I’m excited to
visit the big apple again, see how much it’s changed since the 90s,” she
confessed, as always a little embarrassed about her age. Though she looked to
only be in her early twenties she was over a hundred years old.