The Breed: Nora's Choice (5 page)

            Landing
silently at the bottom he extended every instinct he had to see if the hunters
were there. He heard nothing, and though he could smell that humans had been
here recently the scent wasn’t over powering. He was alone.

            Relaxing
slightly he began moving through the tunnel, his eyes slowly adjusting to the
overwhelming darkness.

            For what
seemed like miles the tunnel continued in a straight line, before finally
rounding off into a single room.

 Odd.

            The room
was large, but like the hallway, made almost entirely out of dirt. Nothing
padded the walls or covered the floor, giving the space a freezing chill. 

            It reminded
him strongly of a prison from the middle ages, and he felt a stab of sympathy
for those held in such primitive conditions.

            Three of
the four walls were covered in cells only large enough to hold one person. The
fourth wall held a surprisingly advanced looking computer system.

            In the
center of the room a medical table stood with thick leather straps to hold down
whoever laid upon it. Whatever they did to their victims here, they wanted the
other prisoners to witness it.

            Drawing
closer he scented female blood and sweat covering the table. It was bad enough
that they tortured
anyone
, but to him inflicting such cruelty on a woman
was unforgivable. His stomach roiled with rage at the Hunters and grief for the
victims and he forced himself to look away.

            Pulling his
phone from his pocket he took pictures of everything in the room then sent them
all to Cass.

            Within
seconds his phone was ringing in response.

            “Brother,”
he grunted, his mood so foul from his discovery the word came out like acid in
his throat.

            “The list
has got to be of their laboratories,” Cass cut straight to the point, “Ours was
completely abandoned. We need all that computer equipment.”

            “Don’t
touch it,” Ghost snapped from the back seat of their speeding SUV, “it could be
a trap.”

            “What are
we talking about here?” Cass demanded, clearly not in the mood for anything but
positive news.

            “Anything
from an alarm alerting the hunters that someone is using the computer, to
setting off a remote control bomb,” he replied, “if you really think they’re on
to us, this would be a perfect trap for them to leave.”

            “Ok don’t
touch it, we’ll send Ghost and the boys down there tonight to work on it,” Cass
delegated.

            “I’ve got a
better idea,” Sebastian cut him off, “I don’t think they meant to leave all of
this equipment, I can scent that the hunters and their prisoners were here
within the last two days. I’m going to set up some cameras and alarms of my
own, and when they come back for their equipment I’ll get their computers and
some new humans for your precious mate to work with.”

            “Great,
just what I wanted, more blood thirsty murderers for Tessa to interact with,”
Cass ground his teeth, knowing it had to be done, “when we get back to the embassy
I’ll show the kid the pictures you sent and see if he was ever kept there, he
gave us a lot of good insight into the place we went tonight.”

~

            The first
twenty minutes of the car ride home were filled with a tense silence between
the two men.

            Now that he
had calmed his temper and the rage had subsided, Quinn was left with nothing
but an unfamiliar hollow feeling.

            On one hand
he was devastated that his mate had suffered something so horrific and not only
could he do nothing about it, but she hadn’t even confided in him. On the other
hand, he understood that they had known each other for only a few weeks, and
hadn’t exactly gotten to know each other. Aside from the fact that they were
bonded, they were practically strangers.

            Why
would
she tell him?

            They were
bound together as mates, but that didn’t mean that they loved or trusted each
other. She certainly had done her best to avoid him.

            Briefly
they had seen each other weeks ago in the middle of a battle with the hunters,
but that had been far from a happy reunion.

            Angrily he
pounded his fist on the dash board.

            “Alright
man,” Memphis barked from the passenger seat, “let’s get this conversation over
with because you’re killing my vibe.”

            “I deserve
to know what happened to her,” he bit out furiously.

            “And she
deserves to be the one to tell you, not some chuckle head who thinks he’s doing
you two a favor,” Memphis shot back.

            Rage
crackled silently between the two of them as freeway lights whizzed over head.

            “Look man,”
Memphis sighed, “I’m telling you this for your own good; drop this. You can’t
go back and change her past, and if you think she’s cold and distant now, try
coming at her with some macho demanding bullshit. Not only will she tear your
ass a new one, she’ll completely shut you out.”

            Quinn let
out a frustrated growl his grip squeezing the steering wheel between his tense
fingers.

            “How the
hell am I supposed to just drop this? She’s my mate,” he snapped, “I have to do
something
for her.”

            He didn’t
know very much about the Breed, but he did know that your mate was the most
sacred person to you, and right now his was suffering.

            “Yeah and
I’m the guy who’s been taking care of her for the last century. I carry around
the guilt of what happened to her every single day. I have wiped her tears, and
watched her sleep with gym shoes on because she wanted to be ready to run even
in her sleep. If I can find a way to deal with it, and not push her, then you
can too,” Memphis snarled, immediately annihilating every argument Quinn had come
up with.

            “You’re
right,” Quinn sighed, feeling like he had lived through a hundred years in this
one day, “I need to let her come to me. Nora isn’t the type of woman I could
bully into telling me what happened anyway.”

            “That’s an
understatement,” Memphis snorted.

            “I just
don’t know how to deal with her,” he confessed shaking his head, “I’ve never
had a problem getting a woman before, and she clearly wants nothing to do with
me, mate or not.”

            Quinn had
been one of the first boys in his high school to grow out of the awkward
puberty phase, and by the end of the 9
^th
grade he was the size of
most of the seniors in their school.

            Constantly
playing sports since the time he could kick a ball had made him lean, and
muscular. By the time 10
^th
grade rolled around he had groups of
girls whistling every time he took his shirt off for a swim team match, and a
horde of friends who loved him solely for his popularity with the ladies and
ability to win games.

            College had
proved to be the same, only intensified. Instead of girls offering to make out
behind the school bleachers, they were drunkenly trying to drag him back to
their dorms. His friends loved him only as long as he scored points and
attracted women to the party.

            The more
people that surrounded him, the more alone he felt. No one cared about him as a
person, not giving a damn what he was actually interested in or who he really
was.

            Even the
girls who claimed to be so head over heels for him had no idea there was more
to him than his fraternity and sports scholarship.

            Being
constantly surrounded by muscle heads and easy women had made it impossible to
make any real friends. Anyone who shared his interest in psychology, history,
or sociology seemed to give him and his rambunctious frat brothers a wide
berth.

            Girls he
actually liked always looked down their noses at him, assuming he was only an
air head, only interested in having sex with them. He never bothered to correct
them. The fact that he was going for a master’s degree always seemed irrelevant,
and he didn’t feel like he should have to prove himself to anyone.

            These
feelings of loneliness and emptiness are what had driven him away from his own
life and attracted him to the Breed so much.

            “Which is
why you’re perfect for her,” Memphis’ voice broke him out of his thoughts,
“Most men in the Breed would not be as accepting of her circumstances, they
would push to take their mate, coming at her far too aggressively, and Nora
would slit her own throat before she let a man control her again.”

            Quinn’s
thoughts were full of rage and turmoil. He would never press her into being
with him, but at the same time he couldn’t stand the way things were going. He
wanted his mate, and more importantly he wanted her to feel the same way.

            “It’s gonna
be a slow process. It’ll take time for you to show her that you’re strong and
someone she can depend on. I think it’s obvious that she’s going to have trust
issues, but you don’t strike me as someone who gives up easily,” Memphis winked
at him.

            “Never,”
Quinn vowed, “but I can’t move this forward if she won’t even look at me, I
need a game plan, a direction,
something
.”

            He needed a
tip to get a girl to talk to him? He shook his head at what his life had
become.

            “There are
dozens of couples in the Breed who are bonded, but never fall in love, they
merely keep each other around because of how strongly they’re bound. I don’t
want Nora to turn out like that, she deserves to be in love, she deserves
happiness, and you are going to give it to her,” the threat in Memphis eyes
would have scared the hell out of a weaker man.

            This would
be the longest game he’d ever played, the World Series of his own life, and at
the end, if he could endure it, he would receive the greatest prize of them
all.

            “She’s
stubborn and prideful to a fault,” Memphis plowed on, “it keeps her from a lot
of things and backs her into corners. She’s also one of the most competitive
people I’ve ever met. She won’t back down, especially if her pride is on the
line.”

            “For being
so competitive, she doesn’t seem to be into any sports,” Quinn replied,
thinking dates would be so much easier if he could take her to a hockey game.

            “She’s
never even bothered to watch a game, I think she’d become a monster if you
could get her into it though,” he chuckled, “but there’s one last thing we need
to discuss before we wrap up this little meeting.”

            “Ok,” he
spoke cautiously, the sudden change in Memphis’ tone setting him on edge.

            “We need to
discuss your plans for the future,” Memphis looked down at him, and suddenly he
felt like an ant looking up to find a magnifying glass over him.

            “I uh,” he
ruffled the back of his hair trying to think… what
were
his plans?

“I
mean this whole bonding thing just kinda came out of nowhere… I haven’t really
had time to think about the future,” he had a college degree that he had no
plans on ever using and he belonged to a pack that was now destroyed, besides
that he didn’t have a whole lot going for him at the moment.

            “That’s
what I thought,” Memphis tsked, “lucky for you, you have a father-in-law with a
plan, because I know you don’t think I’m gonna let my baby girl run off with
some bum who doesn’t have a dollar to his name.”

             “I’m not a
bum,” Quinn grumbled, “alright, what’s your plan?”

            “You
already know I have a BBQ restaurant chain throughout the South, I’ve been
wanting to open up another chain somewhere else and was hoping to start Nora
off by running it. In her usual fashion though, she’s been a little less than
cooperative,” he rolled his eyes, “I’ve got all the startup capital you’ll
need, I want you to come up with the restaurant, and the details to oversee it.
If you can turn it into a success, I’ll give you and Nora the chain and all the
profits.”

            Quinn was
absolutely dumbfounded. No one had ever even given him a free text book, let
alone a restaurant chain.

            “I can’t…I
can’t accept that,” he finally spit the words out.

            “Are you
listening to me? I’m not doing this for
you
,” he shot him a cold look,
“I’m doing this for Nora, and it’s not an option. Unless you come up with
another plan to take care of her, and I mean quickly, I suggest you get to
brainstorming restaurant names.”

            “I don’t
know the first thing about running a restaurant,” his mouth had run dry.