Cassie had been crying when Grange showed up for his money. It was then Dane offered him something much more valuable. A Breed child. Conceived naturally, and without the genetic faults that kept the other Breeds from conceiving children. Trainable. Breedable. To convince the other man, he had ripped Cassie’s gown from her, showing him the genetic marker. The same marker notated in the Top Secret files Martaine had given him years before.
Grange had been ecstatic. But he had been smart enough to know Dane could never get away with selling his daughter. He had told Cassie to watch. To see how very easy it was to kill a man. That it would be the first of many lessons she would soon learn. In front of her eyes he had killed her father. Cassie cried as she told them what happened, and Elizabeth didn’t stop her. The sobs were heartbreaking, cleansing. Finally, Cassie was being allowed to face the truth of that night, as was Elizabeth.
When she finished, Elizabeth rocked her, hummed a lullaby to her and didn’t protest as Dash sat, holding them both. Finally, the little girl slipped into an exhausted sleep in her mother’s arms. Elizabeth laid her back in the bed and smoothed the dark curls away from her face with trembling fingers.
“I’ll wake up soon,” she whispered hoarsely. “I’ll wake up in my house, in my bed and realize it’s all been a horrible nightmare.”
Dash sighed behind her as he rose from the bed. “When you do, wake me up as well,” he sighed. “Then find an explanation for me being in that bed beside you. Because I won’t let you go, Elizabeth. Not now. Not ever.”
She stared down at her daughter, unable to turn and look at him.
“What do I do?” she asked him, fighting the feeling of helplessness suddenly overtaking her. “Tell me what to do, Dash. How do I protect her now?”
“You can’t, Elizabeth.” His voice was hard, cold. “But I can. And I will. Now lie down and try to rest. We’ll plan this out tomorrow. And I promise you, Cassie will be protected.”
Chapter Fourteen
Tomorrow came too soon. Elizabeth sat hollow-eyed and quiet in the study as Dash and Mike Toler faced her. The plans he had made, without her approval, were insane. Somehow, as night had turned to dawn, she had known this was coming. She had listened to Cassie’s soft little puppy sounds as she slept, and had known Dash would take her baby away from her.
It didn’t matter that she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wanted only to protect her. It didn’t matter that she knew protection would come with a price. All she knew was that the culmination of two years of fighting, fleeing and hiding had ended with this.
She sat on the worn couch and faced the two men, her hands tucked between her knees, feeling disjointed, disassociated from the world around her. Her baby, the child she had raised, had been no more than an experiment to others. She had been used and her daughter had been used, horribly. A little girl had been forced to grow up too soon. To see the horror of a life she should have never known. And now, they wanted to separate her from her mother.
“No.” She kept her voice quiet, reasonable. Dash didn’t look surprised. He shouldn’t be surprised, she thought. He should have known she would never agree. He should have come up with another plan.
“Elizabeth.” He sighed deeply. The sound was filled with regret. “Listen to me, baby. If you go with her, then we’ll never draw Grange back to his estate at the right time. We get Cassie safe then we take care of the monster. It’s the only way we can do this.”
There had to be another way, because she wasn’t accepting this one.
“Cassie stays with me.” She rose to her feet, staring back at the men calmly, amazed at herself and the lack of fury, fear or rage inside her.
She should be screaming this morning. Her insides should be a shuddering wreck at the thought of what her daughter was facing. She shouldn’t have been able to function considering the state of shock she knew she had entered.
“Elizabeth.” Dash stepped in front of her as she moved to leave the room. “We don’t have a choice.”
She stopped before she could touch him. She couldn’t touch him. Couldn’t let his heat seep past the icy protection she had pulled around her heart. She stared at his chest for long moments, seeing how well the Army T-shirt hugged the broad muscles, stretching and conforming to a body she hungered for. A body she couldn’t touch. Had no right to desire.
“Of course we do.” She shrugged as she finally stared up at him. “We do the same thing the Felines do. We go to the media.”
She could almost feel the air humming around her now, charged with anger and volatile protest. It was a simple solution. The Felines had done it and were now so securely protected and autonomous that no one dared mess with them for fear of public outrage. Her daughter could be protected in the same way. Couldn’t she?
“The media,” Dash said carefully. “Think about that, Elizabeth. Cassie isn’t an adult and she doesn’t have a Pride backing her. What’s more, she wasn’t lab-created. She was conceived naturally, which raises the stakes in ways you can never imagine. You’re a woman alone and the scientists who will be eager to get their hands on Cassie for studies ,” he sneered the word, “could contrive any manner of charges against you. You’ll go from a mother fighting to save her child, to a money-grubbing mercenary using her baby to make her own way. They could frame you for Dane’s murder. Make it appear you were in league with Grange…”
She shook her head desperately, panic flaring in her chest. “No…”
“They will, Elizabeth.” Dash kept his voice soft, almost sinister. “Listen to me. Hear what I’m saying because you know it’s true. They can do it. And they will. Cassie is exceptional. She’s also exploitable. Don’t think you can win with them. If you go to the media now, before she’s listed as a Breed and under their protection, then you’ve lost her forever.”
Elizabeth swallowed tightly as she stared into his eyes, seeing the total conviction there, the strength of his beliefs. She hadn’t considered it, that they would try to take her child away from her, to manipulate opinion in such a manner. She looked over at Mike Toler. His face was somber, his gaze concerned as he nodded in agreement. They could do it , his expression seemed to shout. They would do it. And where did that leave her except without her child?