She had run from him because of his need to protect her, and now she was in his face, snarling back at him, willing to risk even his rage, which she had no idea what it would entail, to do what she felt was right. To do something that could give her the escape from him that he knew she was looking for. He moved back slowly, stilling the pain inside him as he looked down at the wolves.

“Go.” The single order released them from duty and sent them loping back to Dash, wherever he might be. Then he turned to her. “The labs are in the main house,” he said softly. “I can’t go with you, Amanda. As much as you may not believe me, I would kill one of those doctors the first time I heard you cry out.”

He turned and stalked back into the house. The eggs and ham were left on the table as he paced into the bedroom, drawing in her scent, the presence he feared losing in his life. And he forced himself to wait.

* * * * *

He didn’t understand. Amanda swiped at the tears that fell down her face as she stalked down the graveled road. He was so stubborn, so supremely male that she couldn’t find the words to explain it. She was falling in love with him. Stupid fool that she was, in less than a few days, her heart was reaching out to him, her soul yearning for him. And it wasn’t just the heat, though that was strong enough to drive even a determined woman insane. No, it went deeper, far too deep for Amanda to ignore the consequences of what they were facing.

As he had said, if word got out of the mating heat, the uncontrollable hunger, the need that burned through even the strongest defenses, then the Breeds would never be safe. To protect her life and the man she was falling in love with, answers would have to be found. And now was the time to find them. Now, when the heat burned inside her like a living brand, and left her shaking, weak from the hunger for his touch.

How she had left him alone at the cabin, she wasn’t certain. Hell, she didn’t even know if she was going to make it to the estate house at the bottom of the hill her legs were so weak. Everything inside her was screaming at her to go back to him, to touch him, take him inside her. She couldn’t stop crying either. She felt as though it were ripping her soul out to walk away from him like this. To leave him alone, seeing the pain inside him and not knowing how to ease it. Getting him to talk to her was like pulling teeth. Not that talking was so easy when lust ripped at her loins like a hungry beast.

Soon, she promised herself, as soon as these tests were endured and the heat eased, they would talk. If this was nature’s way of pairing the Breeds with one particular woman, then Amanda had to trust that nature had paired her as well, with a man who would love her with the same strength and desperation that she was beginning to feel for him.

“Amanda.”

She came to a stop as she realized a small utility vehicle had driven up beside her. Looking up, she met Merinus’s concerned gaze.

“Kiowa called down to the house. Do you need a ride?”

“He called?” Confusion filled her, but she knew how easy it was to become confused when the desire was climbing to such heights.

“Come on, Amanda, get in. I’ll take you back to Kiowa if you like.” Her voice was somber, quiet. Amanda forced herself into the small vehicle.

“No.” She shook her head, forcing herself to think, to finish what she had begun. “The tests. We have to do those tests.”

“Are you sure? Amanda, you don’t have to do this.”

But she did. This was her life. Possibly her children’s lives. She did have to do this.

“Yes. Yes I do,” she whispered, raising her eyes back to Merinus’s. “For myself and for Kiowa, I have to do this.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

“…As I wish for you dreams that will soothe your soul, dreams that will whisper of secrets untold. I wish for you dreams that will capture you life, dreams so spectacular and bright you can know no strife. I wish for you my child, a dream as brilliant as sunrise, and warm as its gentle rays. But most of all precious one, I dream for you, of many peaceful days.

“Sleep now here against me, this moment before our parting. And know I send with you the spirits of the eagle, the wolf and the coyote. To protect you from harm. To raise you in their arms. For mine, sweet precious one, will bring you nothing but harm…” The voice of past dreams, a young woman, small and wan, her dark eyes filled with misery.

“They forced you on her…” A grandfather’s hatred.

“We found the records, Kiowa…” Dash’s words, the day after Kiowa arrived at the Feline Compound with Amanda. “Gina Maria Bear was the daughter of Joseph Mulligan. Kidnapped, held one week, artificially inseminated before she was raped by her guard. A Coyote Breed. Test showed no pregnancy at release, but later notations mention the suspicion that she may have been after they later learned of the longer life span of the Coyote sperm. It’s also suspected that the Coyote who raped her, may have forced a second ovulation by mating her. He killed himself a month after her death…”

“They opened her up and they shoved you inside her and then they didn’t give a damn what happened to her…” His grandfather’s voice had been cruel, filled with hatred. “She suffered until the day she died, you soulless little bastard…”

“…Dream of me, Kiowa… Remember me…” The soft voice, was it his mother’s? It had haunted him for years, had come to his dreams when life was its bleakest. When a child had struggled to accept the shame and the horror of what his presence had wrought to the unknown mother.

Kiowa stared up at the dream catcher. He had been unable to dispose of it over the years. As it became worn, he had carefully repaired it, kept the wood oiled and supple, the feathers replaced as they became brittle and old. Why?

The image of his dream mother as he once thought of her, drifted through his mind again. Had the guard who raped her, mated her, known what he had done? Had his mother somehow believed her child was safer hidden away from her, in the arms of the grandfather she thought would care for it?

He sighed wearily, dragging himself from the bed, the memories, and the scent of the woman who now tormented him. How was he to know that love could happen like this? That it could rip and shred the soul, tear apart a heart that had shielded itself for more years than he wanted to count. Nature’s curse, the Felines called the mating heat. Was it a curse? Or was it nature’s way of ensuring life, of pairing those two souls meant to come together? One half of the other. And who was he to be even considering something so miraculous as a soul mate for himself?

He wandered out of the house and then came stock-still as he faced little Cassie Sinclair just outside the door.

She looked around him then, her blue-gray eyes solemn and curious.

“Amanda is down at the big house, Cassie,” he told her quietly, watching her with a frown as she kept looking behind him.

Finally, the little girl looked up at him, those elfin eyes of hers too quiet, too sad. Cassie was Dash and Elizabeth’s child. The little girl had been hunted for months the year before when a drug lord learned that the little girl had been a product of her mother’s artificial insemination by wolf/coyote hybrid sperm. Unaware that the doctor who did the procedure hadn’t used her husband’s sperm, Elizabeth had been unable to fathom why the drug lord was hunting her daughter with such dedication. Somehow Cassie had managed to save them both though when she struck up a pen pal relationship with Dash Sinclair while he was fighting overseas, during one of her few school terms. Dash had come running the minute the little girl’s letter for help reached him. The mating of the Wolf Breed and Elizabeth had produced a healthy son since then, and had created a wave of controversy currently making its rounds in the newspapers.

“I wasn’t looking for Amanda,” she finally sighed. “My fairy wanted me to come here and meet your fairy.”

He blinked down at her in confusion.

“What fairy is that?” Sometimes it was better to just go along with Cassie than to argue with her. She was a strange little girl, always talking to someone no one else could see.

“The fairy that watches you,” she said carefully. “I’ve seen her before, but I’m not allowed to speak to them until I’m spoken to.”

Kiowa was beginning to wish she treated real people like that.

“I have a fairy?” His lips twitched at the thought.

“She’s very sad,” Cassie whispered. “She says you forgot her quilt.”

He stilled. Shock resounded through him as he stared back at the child.

“What did you say?” He kept his voice calm, fought the emotion surging within him.

“You forgot the quilt she made you, Kiowa,” she said softly. “She whispered her love into each thread and placed powerful protections into its weave. She wanted you to know her mother’s love.”

He bent down, careful not to move too fast or to make the child feel threatened. She was staring back at him with tear-filled eyes, her hands clenched tightly at her side.

“You see her?” he asked then. “She’s here?”

“She says she’s always with you,” Cassie whispered. “When you allow yourself to dream, she comes through the dream catcher and tries to bring you joy and love. Just as she made certain she brought you to Amanda. But you need to return and get the quilt, Kiowa. She made it just for you.”

The quilt. He had left it in the cabin, had never used it when he was there, no matter how cold he got.

“Here, you little bastard. She bought this for you so you wouldn’t get cold. I tried to tell her animals don’t feel the cold…” He had thrown the quilt at Kiowa, the hatred in his voice almost maniacal. Kiowa had left it lying until he left, then carefully folded it, ignoring the warmth that seemed to reach out to him, and hid it in the metal cupboard in the kitchen. He had left it there when he left the mountain. Not that he had ever forgotten it. But he had wanted nothing to do with the woman who cursed him to the life he led.

“She cries because of what he did,” Cassie said then. “Forgive her, Kiowa, she didn’t know.”

Kiowa clenched his teeth as his chest tightened in pain.

“She always knew you had a soul…”

He came to his feet in a rush, stalking across the porch, away from the little girl.

“Kiowa, don’t leave,” Cassie called out then. “You’ve left Amanda alone, and she needs you. But can you help her be strong? Or can you only feed the demons you’ve known for so long?”

He stopped, turning back to her.

She stood, outlined by the rays of the sun and shadows that made no sense. A chill raced up his back as he realized then what Cassie was. The little girl, created from the altered sperm of both wolf and coyote, holding the traits of each, was psychic. She didn’t have fairies; the little girl saw ghosts and they spoke to her.

“Tell her I loved her,” he said hoarsely then, thinking of the dreams that had come to him as a child and the comfort they brought.

Cassie nodded slowly. “And she always loved you, Kiowa. She asked that you know, she was coming for you. They knew about you, and about her, and she was coming for you when she was taken from this life. She cried for you.”

He grimaced, his lips pulling back from his teeth as his head fell back and he fought the grief that ripped a ragged wound into his heart.

“Let yourself dream, Kiowa,” Cassie whispered then. “Let her comfort you again.”

He turned from her. He had to get the hell away from her and he had to do it now. Before he saw ghosts himself in the shifting shadows that moved around the child and in his own ragged soul.

Chapter Twenty-Four

He intended to escape into the forest, to find the time he needed to still the demons that raged inside him. And he would have, if the cell phone at his side hadn’t vibrated insistently. Snarling, her jerked it off his belt and flipped it open.