Anger. A sense of betrayal. He could still see that flash of knowledge in her eyes when her husband had accused her of knowing what he was doing. Something inside her had already warned her of his deceit. Unless she had truly loved him. Love was blind, Cabal understood that; he saw it on a daily basis with the mated Breed couples. It was blind faith, blind trust, and it took the ultimate evil to tear away those rose-colored glasses.
Her husband had done that. In one moment, whatever she had sensed inside her husband had become clear, and she had seen him for the evil he was.
She should have seen it sooner, the jealous part of him argued. She should have sensed the evil of the man she slept with.
And there they were. The second reason why Cabal had restrained himself. Because she was his mate, because mating brought out the animal within the man and because it kept the man from hiding the true core of his nature.
He was a Bengal Breed—in some ways more, in some ways less, than most Breeds. More animal, more cunning, more savage and vicious and much more deceptive than the normal Breed. And less human.
It was documented, proven. It was what the scientist who developed the Bengal genetics had worked toward. Unfortunately, Bengals didn’t fare well in captivity. Those that had survived were impossible to train, as proven by Cabal’s team. His pride. Those that he considered his family.
A dozen male and female Bengals. Cunning, fierce, they had been working within the facility for years against the Council. They had smuggled out information, destroyed targets that were Council friendly as well as the targets the Council had sent them after.
They had shed innocent blood, that was true. But they had shed more enemy blood than innocent. And they had saved those that they could.
Cabal had played the reluctant Bengal. Attention was focused on him, while those considered weaker worked around the scientists, trainers and psychologists to destroy them.
So many had died. It was believed that all but Cabal had died; that was a belief that Cabal perpetuated. Those who lived should live free for a change.
Cunning was their strongest weapon, and his people were cunning. They were surviving outside the Breed communities. Cabal was surviving, barely, within it. The restrictions often chafed at him, smothered him. The hunger for freedom after the years of captivity was still a gnawing ache inside him.
The hunger for his mate was growing even stronger than that for freedom. The possessiveness, the need, the demand that he claim her was becoming overwhelming. And with it came the anger.
Cassa was the hardest battle he had ever faced, and he admitted it. He had admitted it more than once in the years since he had nearly killed her along with her husband.
Douglas Watts had been an abusive bastard. Cabal’s initial investigation into the man’s background had turned up surprising information. Information such as the fact that he had abused several ex-girlfriends. Yet there had been no proof that he had abused his wife, but Cabal knew in his gut.
Cabal hadn’t needed proof; he knew instinctively that Watts had to have abused his wife. He wouldn’t have changed his pattern, even for love. If he had known how to love, and Cabal had no doubt in his mind that Watts had not loved his wife. The investigation he had conducted had shown several instances where the man had cheated on his new wife.
Did Cassa know that her husband of barely a year had had a new lover every other month? Mostly one-night stands. Women he had barely known. He’d had the perfect, faithful wife, and he had betrayed not just her emotions and their vows, but the principles she had lived by and the battle that she had accepted as her own.
Breed freedom. He had sold Breed freedom for a paltry couple of hundred thousand dollars. He had sold information on the majority of the rescues he had covered with his wife. Not all of them, he’d been smarter than that, smart enough that he’d managed to slip past Jonas Wyatt, and that wasn’t an easy feat.
And here Cabal was, more than eleven years later, still in conflict with himself over Watts’ wife. Over his own mate.
He watched as she continued her slow stroll along the bank of the river, obviously scouring the area for some clue as to the missing former mayor’s fate.
There was nothing to find. Cabal and his team had searched that bank more times than they should have. There were no clues, it was that simple. Just as there had been none at the scene of Alonzo’s murder. It was as though David Banks had simply walked off the face of the earth. Or had been jerked from it. Which, Cabal couldn’t say for certain. The only thing he was certain of was that Banks had been a part of the Deadly Dozen, the group of men responsible for the abductions and deaths of Breeds who had escaped the labs before Breed Law.
Banks, as well as Watts, had been a close associate of Brandenmore and Engalls, the pharmaceutical giants currently under indictment for the attempted murder of Breeds as well as suspected illegal Breed genetic research. Both men had been known to hunt with the pharmaceutical family, for the four-legged variety of prey as well.
Watts had been as evil and as vicious as his scent had indicated seconds before Cabal had killed him. But did his wife know what he had been?
Cabal clenched his teeth at the thought of Watts touching her. For eleven years it had tortured him, knowing that she had been married to Watts. Tortured him? It enraged the man as well as the animal that lived within. It was like an acid burning in his gut, knowing she had lain with him, that she had loved him.
He watched her now, the glands beneath his tongue throbbing as he tasted the hormone seeping from them. The spicy taste was stronger now, the need to claim her growing more desperate.
He had to get away from her. If he didn’t, he was going to destroy them both. He could feel the need to snarl in rage at the thought of Watts touching her. The fact that he had been married to her didn’t matter. Cabal didn’t give a f**k. She’d had no business wearing Watts’s ring, allowing his touch.
And Cabal also knew he had no business blaming her for it. He shook his head. He was falling into the same pit he fell into each time she was too close for too long. The same conflicts. And the same angers.
He saw her, ached for her, and each time he saw the men and women who had died in that pit, because of her husband. Not because of her. It wasn’t her fault, he knew that. Douglas Watts had betrayed those rescues on his own. He hadn’t even needed his marriage to Cassa to do it. He had already been chosen to cover those rescues. So what the f**k was Cabal’s problem? Other than a green-eyed monster that refused to f**king let him go. And a hunger that threatened to destroy him.