Chapter 2

“They escaped.”

The young woman standing next to him bore most of his weight, her strength all that kept him on his feet.

“I’m dyin’, lass. Let me go in peace,” he whispered, regret piercing him as he stared into the wild neon color of those incredible amber eyes. This wee lass who had risked her own life, her own secrets, to tell him of the child they had ordered to be terminated. The child of the man he owed so much to.

And now he’d done gone and done it, as his wee Khileen was wont to say. Aye, he’d done gone and done it. For good this time.

God, the pain was hell. His chest felt as though it were split open, his heart exposed, a raw gaping wound and now exposed to air.

“I can’t do that,” she whispered, all but dragging him along a worn path until he stumbled, nearly taking her to the ground with him.

Suddenly, stronger, broader hands caught him, dragging him into a sheltering darkness before laying him out on a padded floor.

Jorn stared around at the Breeds—he knew they were Breeds. Breeds unlike any he’d ever seen before. These Breeds, they were the stuff of rumor, of horrifying tales of slow, agonizing deaths. They were the ones whose genetics had never fully progressed past the animal state.

“Nephilim,” he whispered.

Men who were animals.

Animals who were men.

There was no true description of these men. The myth of the Breed Nephilim was that they were the product of experiments gone awry that the Genetics Council had studied, experimented upon, then lost control of.

They were crouched around him as he felt whatever they had dragged him into suddenly moving. Lifting?

“Why?” he whispered, directing his question to the one he knew was the leader. There were such legends of these creatures. Greater even than those of the winged breeds in the Americas that groups of soldiers and scientists hunted with such dedication.

One of the creatures gripped his arm, turned it palm outward, while another pushed an old-fashioned syringe into the vein. He could feel the burn of whatever medication was shot into his system as it began to speed through his veins. He tracked it. Through his arm, his shoulder—

“What are you doing? Why are you doing this?” he rasped, directing his question to the leader as he crouched at Jorn’s side.

Nephilim, he thought again. The true terror of the Breeds.

In Europe, the Nephilim were spoken of with the same fear as vampires and werewolves had been in centuries past.

Pale, his face marked with the stripes of a white tiger, his white blond hair flowing to his shoulders, their leader gave a mocking snort as he nodded to Jorn’s side. “She would leave me no peace should I allow you to die.”

Jorn turned his head slowly to the wee lass that had dragged him from the labs.

Barely five three, tawny brown hair, long, thick matching lashes with sharp cheekbones, lips formed nearly like a cat’s, and her eyes—

Cat’s eyes.

And so young. So tiny. Surely no more in age than his wee Khileen.

“Why?” he asked her now as he felt himself drifting, lifting, becoming light as air.

“Because I’m yours,” she whispered, her eyes glowing like amber fire. “And you are all I can claim as mine. How could I allow death to take you in such a way?”

What could she possibly mean? God, he needed to know what she meant. He needed to know—

Agony pierced his chest, his guts. It lifted his body as a scream tore from him as the jagged, serrated teeth of death’s demon bit deep and shredded his insides like a dog shredded meat from a bone. The pain was horrifying. Brutal.

Darkness closed around him.

He prayed death took him.

Katie at 16

She was all wild Irish red hair, big emerald eyes and soft peaches-and-cream skin.

Many Irish girls were now freckled, as their American counterparts were. The world was much smaller than it had ever been, and pure Irish blood was all but nonexistent.

As Devil Black watched Katie Sullivan maneuver through the obstacles set up on the training course, admiration surged through him.

Sixteen years old and pure human, yet she could outrun, outclimb and outlast a third of the young Breed females on the course with her.

Mary Katherine “Katie” O’Sullivan was the reason he’d been called to the Breed Protection Network’s training center by the center’s operator, Gilliam Finneghea. A former American special forces soldier and United Nations undercover intelligence officer, Gilliam had not just trained some of the top covert agents the United Nations have ever employed, but he had also gone against some of the best, and had come out of each battle alive.

Sometimes only barely living, but alive.

Jonas would have sworn nothing could really impress Gilliam, because the man had already seen the best.

Until Katie O’Sullivan had entered the network.

“You’re certain she’s not recessed?” Devil asked, the Ireland showing in his accent. It only happened when he stepped out on Irish soil; no matter how he tried, the Irish blood he’d begun with couldn’t be hidden.

Gilliam snorted. “She’s adopted on Irish soil, Devil. Do ya think she’s recessed and got away with it? This ain’t America, my friend.”

Testing in Europe, Ireland and Scotland was far more in-depth and done far more often on adopted children and adults than in any other countries. With the tests becoming more painful every year after the age of twenty-five, many adopted adults were opting to move to countries with less stringent testing laws. Some of Europe’s Breeds continued to hide or escape the European countries to avoid the required one-to-five-year testing requirements for all Breeds, no matter how recessed their genetics were. Many of the Breeds forced into the testing facilities were so radically different, with no scientific reason for the change once they were released, that questions were beginning to be asked.

This girl was tested yearly as well. During the last genetic screening she had been forced to do, it was reported that she had punched one of the techs when he had been too rough drawing the genetic sample from her liver and spleen.

She was tough as hell, but she looked as delicate as a red rose.

Crossing one arm over his chest and propping his elbow on his forearm, Devil stroked his jaw thoughtfully. He was there to watch the girl go through training maneuvers. He would be there tomorrow to watch her in the control room of the underground command center the network had established a decade before.

It had been hidden at first, to protect the Breeds from the labs they escaped from. If they could make it to a predestined pickup point without being spotted or followed, then they were taken to a safe house overnight. Eventually, several days, underground tunnels and church basements later, they made it here.

“Okay, so she’s not a Breed.” Devil scratched at his jaw, his eyes narrowed, his body more tense than it should have been as he watched her go through the network’s bruising maneuvers.

“Yeah, she’s not a Breed,” Gilliam retorted, a question in his voice as he watched Devil. “You act like it’s news.”

Devil shrugged. She had all the qualities of a Breed female. Beautiful. A delicate, fragile appearance.

An underlying strength.

“Okay then, I’m interested.” Giving a decisive nod without looking away from the girl, Devil made his decision quickly. “I’ll let Tiberian know and we’ll check her out in five years.”

In five years she would be twenty-one and beyond the requirement that the network reveal any underage workers. And at twenty-one, her body would be mature enough, strong enough, to train for the Bureau of Breed Affairs as a human agent.

The Bureau had been built from the ground up by Breeds, and only in the past years had they begun accepting humans into their ranks. But it was Devil’s hope that rather than joining the Bureau, she would instead join Lobo Reever’s security team in the New Mexico desert.

As he watched, he couldn’t help but allow his curiosity to grow. A human that moved like a Breed. He was always of the opinion . . .

If it looked like . . .

If it acted like . . .

If it sounded like . . .

He wasn’t a great believer in coincidences either.

At that moment, her head lifted from where she watched another trainee slipping around the form of a deserted building. Their eyes met. And in that brief moment, in that connection, Devil swore he saw a hell of a lot more than a human.

Yet, she wasn’t a Breed?