? CHAPTER 11 ?
A restless night filled with broken, erotic dreams haunted Cassa until the first fragile rays of light began to spill over the Gauley River that flowed beyond the window of her room.
Rising from bed, she stared into the churning, murky winter water, not for the first time, frowning at the sense of excitement and trepidation that filled her.
She should have been furious. She hadn’t seen Cabal the night before. Whatever business he’d had to do had taken him much longer than hers had. Of course, hers had amounted to no more than tracking down Banks’s golfing buddies. None of whom had any information that could have led to the cause of the former mayor’s disappearance.
She had returned to her room at midnight, disgusted and aroused. Mating heat sucked, but at least Ely’s hormones were keeping her from searching out Cabal and demanding sex.
She didn’t want to face what she knew was happening to her own body. She wanted to question someone, anyone. She just wanted a few ideas on how to handle a very stubborn Bengal Breed. Surely that wouldn’t be too much to ask.
Merinus, the Feline pack leader’s wife, or Scheme, the wife of the Felines’ head of public relations—anyone but Cabal, because God only knew he’d never tell her the truth. But she knew better. If she talked to anyone, then she was sealing her own fate.
Somehow—no, not somehow, she knew how—mating heat was beginning to affect every facet of her life. It would only get worse, she already knew that. As the days slipped by, her need for him would only grow, until the initial phase of the heat eased. After that, she could expect a few days to a week each month that the symptoms were worse. Ovulation always triggered it, made the need for sex more insistent. Ely had already pretty much told her what to expect.
Wrapping her arms across her chest, she breathed in slow and easy, feeling the hard tips of her nipples, the swollen contours of her breasts. It was more of an irritant, at the moment, rather than being painful.
She gave her head a hard shake before turning and striding quickly to the shower. Despite the cool temperature that she’d set the thermostat at the night before, her body was still overheated.
A cool shower eased it, but only marginally. Two hours later, dressed in jeans, a white blouse, leather jacket and hiking boots, she slung the small backpack she carried for personal use over her shoulder and left her room.
She’d wasted enough time the day before. There were answers in this small town, she could feel it, as well as a story that went much deeper than the murders of men who had once hunted down and aided in the torture of Breeds.
She had felt that knowledge each time the anonymous emails came through. She had seen something beyond the pictures of death that were attached to the later emails, and the threats that her own secrets could be revealed. She had no secrets that she knew of. There wasn’t a day in her life that the Breeds hadn’t thoroughly investigated.
Those deaths had a purpose though, a reason that went far beyond Breed rage. Cassa wanted to know what that purpose was. For the first time since the Breeds had revealed themselves, one of them was stepping past the careful control she had always glimpsed within them. One of them was taking personal vengeance, and he had come here, to Glen Ferris, a place where Breeds had once taken refuge, to do so.
Leaving the inn, she opted to walk rather than drive the few blocks to a nearby diner and the breakfast meeting she had set up with Myron, hoping to get more information than she had the day before. He knew something. She had sensed it, felt it.
She wanted to know what he wasn’t telling her, and why he had never told her about the Breed wife he’d had before he met and married Patricia.
Pushing through the door to the diner, Cassa gazed around the large, crowded room until she caught sight of Myron. His bright red hair stood out in relief. Cut much closer to his head than it had been years before, it lay around his freckled features and threw his pale blue eyes into stark relief.
At the side of his eyes deep lines were carved into his face that she hadn’t noticed the day before. She would have called them laugh lines, but Cassa had never seen Myron laugh. The same grooves bracketed his mouth, and across his forehead deep frown lines were displayed with the shorter cut of his hair.
But his face was lean, and he looked years younger than his forty-two years of age. He had been one of the guiding forces in the movement to find a safe place for the Breeds to hide before their presence was revealed eleven years ago. He and his father had worked tirelessly for years to hide the Breeds, who had often arrived near death, in the one area rumored to offer a measure of safety.
Moving across the dining room, Cassa caught sight of two Breeds drinking coffee in a corner behind and to the side of Myron. They were dressed in jeans, flannel shirts and ball caps. She would have never picked them out for Breeds if she hadn’t familiarized herself before she arrived with the Breeds known to be in the area. They looked like farmers. Hell, they might well be farmers. Many of the Breeds that had been hiding in these mountains had been smart enough to carve a living out for themselves in the area.
“Myron, I hope you have coffee coming.” Cassa slid into the booth as she smiled back at the reporter, taking in the ever present suspicion in his pale eyes and the deepening of the frown lines at his forehead.
Lifting his head, he nodded toward the counter.
“The waitress was waiting on you,” he told her as he laid aside the newspaper he had been glancing over. “What do you need now? I told you, Cass, I don’t know anything about Banks’s disappearance.”
He had been in a better mood the day before, which wasn’t saying much.
“I wasn’t going to ask about Banks.” She waved the subject away. “It’s been a while, Myron, maybe I just wanted to catch up.”
He shook his head at that. “You don’t have time to catch up, Cass. I follow your stories, you know. Last I heard you were chasing down the location of Breed scientists known to have been involved in the Coyote Breed genetics. What happened to that?”
“I’m still working on it.” She shrugged. “There were rumors that two Coyote Breed scientists had survived an assassination attempt by the Coyote Ghost and were now actually residing in the Coyote stronghold. All I’ve heard are rumors though.”
Myron lifted his red brows in surprise. “Surprising that the Council allowed them to live, even if the Ghost did. The Coyotes were their most secret creations.”
“And Breeds as well as human scientists are still trying to figure out why,” Cassa agreed. “Perhaps this marriage between the Coyote alpha, Del-Rey Delgado, and Anya Kobrin will shed some light on those scientists.”
Myron snorted at the thought, though she saw a flicker of worry in his gaze.