For a moment, her thoughts had been distracted from her parents, their crime, and the decision she faced concerning her brother’s betrayer.
Eight years before, she’d shot a Council informer that the Unknown had been certain had betrayed her brother. He’d deserved to die for other crimes against both Breeds and the Navajo, but knowing he had been the wrong one cut at her.
The man who betrayed Mark deserved to hurt. He deserved to feel the same hell Mark had felt, knowing that his sister would be raped and killed and even the chance to help her was denied him. The fact that she had been rescued at the last moment hadn’t helped Mark. It didn’t salve her fury now.
Years of distrust made sense now. She’d been so angry as she’d watched her parents allow him to take Mark’s place. He tried to be a brother to Mark’s sisters, he’d married Mark’s fiancée, he’d taken over Mark’s company.
He’d thought he could live Mark’s life.
Her nails bit into her palms as she realized they’d curled into fists, prepared to inflict whatever damage possible.
Damn him.
She wanted to slip away now. She wanted to find him, wanted to tear his throat out herself.
The only thing stopping her was the knowledge that he had disappeared, just as she’d known he would. The Breed team sent to find him that morning had reported that he couldn’t be found either at his home or at his office.
Where would he go? she wondered. Where would Jason hide?
Eyes narrowed, she scanned the desert as it rushed by, going over old haunts Mark had once shown her, remembering bits and pieces of her childhood that she’d refused to allow herself to remember before.
As she did, she could “feel” Rule. As though the very fact that she was considering where he could be, where to find him, how to make him pay, had alerted Rule to her not-so-hidden desire to kill him herself.
She almost smiled as she felt him. Geez, it was the strangest damned feeling. He would just be there, like the caress of a breeze, but in her mind. She really wasn’t certain if she liked it or not.
One thing was for damned sure, though, she thought on a sudden sigh; there would be no going after Jason by herself, and there wasn’t a chance in hell Rule would allow her to kill him herself as Cullen had. And she wondered if anything else would exorcise the ghosts of her past?
...
Did she love him?
Had she just accepted the mating, nothing more?
Standing in the lobby of the hotel as he leaned against one of the stately pillars that supported the atrium, Rule crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the doors as he waited for Lawe to roll into the courtyard with his mate. Allowing her to make that trip without him had been hell.
He’d been a part of her in one form or the other since her final surrender to him the night before. Exploding like the fourth of July and crying out his name, she had opened every part of herself to the link he had forged within her soul. And still, he was damned if he could sense whether that love was there.
“Damn creatures,” Dane murmured as he sidled up beside him. “I can tell by your glare, fixated into space, that the lovely Gypsy McQuade is no doubt driving you to distraction.”
“You got back fast enough,” Rule grumbled. “How?”
Dane chuckled. “Father ensures that I have the fastest, most technologically advanced vehicles possible whenever I’m out of his sight. He’s somehow convinced himself it lessens the danger I may find myself in.”
“Or just gets you there faster?” Rule grunted. “Tell me, Dane, was that your technologically advanced personal jet-copter that Gideon caught a ride on earlier?”