She had never understood why he took only a few at a time. It had been imperative to weed out the spies, to show her that often those she trusted would betray her. And when it came to his packs, he wanted the assurance of loyalty. Cavalier had information he needed and a view into the facility that even Anya and Sharone wouldn’t have known to make note of.
The drive to the pack headquarters in the center of the compound wasn’t a long one. The valley was nearly two hundred acres of pristine grassland and rising, centuries-old cotton-woods, pines and oak. They sheltered the cabins and buildings within, and deep beneath the base of the mountains that rose above them was a command center rivaled only by the Felines or the American government itself.
It took time, though, to clear Security in the main building of the headquarters. An elevator ride took them down to the bowels of the base, and then they had another drive through steel and cement to the once abandoned military base that the Wolf Breeds had been given access to.
Over the past seven years since Haven had been established, the majority of work had gone into this defense and operational base. Above them, the serene valley reflected a love of nature, privacy and established camaraderie, if one overlooked the armed guards hidden in the mountains and the sheltering branches of the trees.
Below was the heart and soul of Haven’s security, and it ran like a well-oiled machine.
“The cabinet is waiting in meeting room three on the third level,” the Wolf Breed guard said and nodded to them as they entered an elevator. “Dash Sinclair and his family arrived just ahead of you.”
Dash Sinclair had risen up the ranks of Breed hierarchy quickly since his revelation of Breed status. A Breed with recessed genetics, he had escaped his labs at ten. He had gone into the American foster care system, been educated and was in the military until a little girl’s letter drew him back to America and awoke the animal that had stayed suppressed within him.
His daughter, Cassandra, was still a sore point with Del-Rey, but he knew she had been wounded several months before during an operation that she should have never been in the middle of.
“How is Ms. Sinclair’s recovery?” he asked. He hated the woman’s logic, her ability to argue for everything he had rejected with every part of his soul, but he had seen the tender, compassionate woman she was in her concerned gaze the day she had argued for his mate’s freedom.
“She’s doing much better.” The guard nodded. “She’s here at Haven at present under the care of Dr. Armani. We still haven’t learned who broke into her hospital room that night.”
Cassandra Sinclair had had a visitor as she lay in a near coma state, surrounded by Wolf and Feline Breed guards. Someone had managed to cut a hole into a window more than twelve stories above the ground, slip into her room and send her into screams of hysteria.
The last Del-Rey had heard, she had no idea who or what had been there with her.
Del-Rey clenched his jaw as the Wolf Breed looked back at him expectantly then. Each time he had arrived at Haven, always secretly, always under the cover of night, the Wolf Breeds watched him with the same expression. As though waiting for him to ask the question he had no intention of asking: How was his mate?
“Here we are.” The elevator shuddered to a stop depositing them in another steel-and-cement corridor. Water, electrical and various other pipes ran along the walls. Monitors displayed general orders and Breeds—Wolf, Feline and Coyote—moved with an array of humans that had aligned with them.
Some with clipboards, some chatting with companions—they were all heavily armed and prepared.
Del-Rey, Brimstone and Cavalier followed behind their escort until they came to a door, the same gunmetal gray color as the rest of the operational base.
Stepping inside the entrance alone as it slid open, Del-Rey motioned for the other two to wait for him as he faced the Wolf Breed Cabinet that had come together.
There were six of them. Just as there were six in the Coyote Breed Cabinet, six to the Feline Breed Cabinet. Dash Sinclair; the Wolf Breed Alpha Wolfe Gunnar; Aiden, a class one enforcer; Jacob, Haven’s head of security; Faith, Jacob’s wife and liaison to the other packs; Hope Gunnar, Wolfe’s wife; and the lupina, second-in-command of Haven.
“Del-Rey, welcome back.” Wolfe and the others rose from the table, hands extended in greeting.
Once the preliminary meet-and-greet bullshit was over with, Del-Rey took his seat and slapped the file he carried with him in the center of the round table, in front of Wolfe.
The pack leader’s expression tensed as he opened it and read the report Del-Rey and his men had put together with the help of the Bureau of Breed Affairs, the Feline Cabinet, and the investigations he and his own men had done into the subject.
The file was passed around the table, each member going over it carefully, their expressions telling the same story. Disbelief and anger.
“Will it ever stop?” Jacob murmured, his low voice harsh as he finished the file while his wife read over his shoulder. He slid it on and waited.
Del-Rey watched as Faith laid her hand on her mate’s shoulder, her cheek against the top of his head. The connection, the bonding between them ignited a flare of rage in him that threatened to spark out of control. They were mated. The scent of their bond, their emotions and need for each other was an affront to his senses. An insult to everything that he had been forced to walk away from.
When the last cabinet member, Dash Sinclair, closed the file, Del-Rey felt the tension as it began to ratchet up through the room.
“We’ll need to convene the full cabinet together,” Wolfe said heavily. “This is a risk to all of us.”
The full cabinet was something even Del-Rey had never seen. Each species of Breed had their own cabinet. The twelve-member tribunal he had faced eight months before was a selected mix to deal with smaller issues that concerned the society as a whole. Such as when Anya Kobrin had demanded separation from her mate.
The full cabinet was another story. Six members of each species. The Wolf and Coyote packs as well as the Feline pride. Added to that was the six-member board selected from within the Bureau of Breed Affairs, comprised primarily of humans except for the director of the bureau, Jonas Wyatt.
The full cabinet was twenty-four members in all, and Del-Rey had a feeling its meetings wouldn’t be as social and well conducted as the few pack meetings he’d been called to.
The risk in not calling together the full cabinet was growing by the day.