Bengal's Heart Read Free Page B

is mine!” Cabal snapped in reply. “Interfere with this Breed and you’ll die.”
    He could smell the weapons trained on him, sense the other Breeds as they watched the confrontation.
    “Please.” Her voice stroked over his senses. Weak, rough with tears, shaky with fear. “He’s right, Jonas,” she whispered then. “Let it go. Please.”
    Jonas. The Jonas Wyatt. The Bengals had rated him the most commanding of the Breed generals, one of their strongest strategists. Well, wasn’t he just feeling satisfied? Wyatt had strategized an entire race of Breeds into extinction.
    “Yeah, Wyatt, let it the fuck go,” he growled viciously, even as he swayed on his feet.
    He damned the weakness of his own body. He damned Wyatt to hell for not planning better and as he stared at where the woman gazed back at him, tears and regret mingling in her eyes, he damned himself for not killing her, just as he had killed that bastard of a husband she possessed.
    He inhaled roughly. She stank of that human. The smell of him was an affront to Cabal’s senses, an affront to his sense of justice.
    “Remember me.” His whisper was more of a hiss. “Never forget, woman, because I won’t. And the day will come . . .” Darkness swirled through his vision then. His knees buckled. He’d lost one ounce too much of precious blood.
    He was unaware of his body crumpling to the floor or of the cry the woman gave as she tried to catch him. He didn’t feel her hands touch him, he didn’t feel the racing of her heart or the tears that touched his neck.
    “Cassa, we have him.”
    Cassa was only barely aware of Jonas lifting her away from the fallen form and handing her to another Breed. She felt numb inside, even as the fear exploded and ricocheted through her. She felt cold, yet she was flushed with heat. She felt dead, yet she knew she was still living.
    Tremors worked through her body as the Breed that held her helped her out of the room. He lifted her into his arms as he stepped over her husband’s body. Cassa wanted to feel remorse. She should have felt grief. But instead, she felt only hatred and a sense of freedom.
    Douglas was dead. He had been the instrument of his own death, just as he had been the instrument of her fears for so many months.
    God, she should have known. When he was chosen for this team, she should have warned the Breeds that she no longer trusted him as a husband. The problem was, she had trusted him as a supporter of the Breeds. He had been there with her when news of the incredible creatures first hit. He had been there during the first of the riots against Breed Law, and had expressed his outrage, his concern on their behalf. And all the while, he had been selling them out.
    She should have suspected. It wasn’t the first assignment they’d had that had gone horribly wrong. Each time, the blame had fallen to others. Just as the blame would fall to her now.
    She had trusted him, as the Bengal had stated. She had led him here, she had allowed him the opportunity to deceive and to plot against the Breeds. He’d tried to profit from their deaths, and he had paid for it.
    As they exited the room and headed along the corridors, she was aware of the majority of the Breeds staying behind. They were like that. They cleared out those who weren’t Breeds, and they grieved for those lost before wrapping their bodies and carrying them to a safety that would be eternal. The Breed cemetery in Virginia, not far from Arlington, was a testament to the dedication that the Breeds felt for one another. They had fought for it, won it, and they carried out their own ceremonies without the benefit of any humans in attendance. As at Sanctuary, the Feline Breed compound, they grieved the loss of their own and buried them with all the gentleness and humanity that they hadn’t known in their lives.
    “He won’t let me live,” she whispered, more to herself than to the one who sat her slowly back to her feet and began leading her