Rule Breaker(3)

            Claire Martinez, the young woman who inhabited Fawn Corrigan’s body, had accepted the fact that she wasn’t who she believed she was. Accepting and awakening were two different things, though. And the secrets the girl was hiding were beginning to bother him. How the hell was he supposed to stand aside and let her continue to search for a way to honorably kill herself?

            Son of a bitch, why couldn’t he just fucking walk away from everyone else’s problems and just focus on his own. On his daughter. On his mate.

            Because it was all tied together, he admitted.

            Woven so closely together that to abandon one would be to abandon the child his heart had taken as his own. And that meant doing what he could to bring Fawn Corrigan, or Claire Martinez as she was now called, along a path that would bring her face-to-face with the Breed sworn to kill her.

            Claire had revealed nightmares and some scattered pieces of memories from Fawn’s years in the labs as well. But there were still so many missing pieces and so little time.

            Before he could draw the Bengal Judd and the feral Bengal Gideon out, the girls would have to reach inside themselves and find the spirits that slept within them. Liza and Claire would have to accept that the reprieve they had been given from death was at an end, and the parts of Honor and Fawn that still slept would have to accept that it was once again time to face their lives and truly awake.

            This had to be finished.

            Moving from Amber’s bedroom into the main room of the hotel suite, Jonas strode to the desk that sat at the far wall and took his seat. Activating the holo-board of his computer, he laid his palm against the biometric scanner on the top of the desk and waited for the screen to appear.

            When the holographic panel came up, he pulled up several files as he checked the time.

            He had five minutes before the meeting he’d called with the newly promoted Investigative Commander, Rule Breaker.

            The investigative field of the Bureau of Breed Affairs was growing quickly, requiring Jonas to put his best enforcers into key positions now available.

            And into the investigations of crimes against Breeds and Breed Law.

            Though soon, Jonas suspected, Rule would be heading the new offices in New Mexico as division director rather than continuing on to another assignment after completing this one.

            That knowledge had reminded him of a silent promise he’d made to himself nine years ago as he flew away from the area, and to the broken child who had been left to the care of her family. A family tragically wounded by the death of the young man they had all treasured.

            Arranging Rule’s life was something Jonas had sworn to Rule he wouldn’t do.

            Hell, he’d even crossed his fingers, just in case, as he’d made that promise.

            Maneuvering Seth Lawrence and Dane Vanderale, two of the Breeds’ greatest benefactors, into doing his dirty work for him had required a bit more finesse. If they had even had a distant thought or suspicion regarding his actions, they would have created a Breed Town Crier just to announce it to every Breed far and wide.

            Especially Rule.

            Narcs.

            That was what they were.

            The old-fashioned term flashed into his mind.

            They were nothing but damned narcs, both of them. If they weren’t extremely careful, he’d show them exactly why they should be very wary. Because Jonas knew things of their futures that neither man could ever imagine.

            So far, he was playing nice.

            But the day was swiftly approaching for one of them that nice would be a thing of a past.