Harmony's Way (27 page)

He was an uncle, though. He was the grandson of the man whose sperm had created the first Leo. Elijah Vanderale Demarcy and his wife had given birth to a daughter, then Elijah had turned his attention to the Genetics Council and creating his vision of the perfect son. After all, his wife had refused to bear more children, and as old Vanderale Demarcy had told Leo, a son meant everything. Elijah had been determined to sire a son unlike any other. No matter what it took.

His arrogance and sense of superiority had never been in question. His determination to have a son stronger, more intelligent and unique than any other, could have defined him as mad.

Elijah’s seed, genetically altered though it had been, had begun the process. Then he had set about creating an empire for his son. Vanderale Enterprises. A conglomerate of corporations headed by a supposed distant relative. His vision had been remarkably insightful toward the future. Electronics, weapons and specialized vehicles.

Dane shook his head at the old man’s vision. He had died not long after Leo’s escape from the labs, but he had died knowing he’d given his son freedom and that his son would always know security.

That had been more than sixty years before. Vanderale Enterprises was a thriving, worldwide force now, though the man behind it had always been careful to stay hidden.

Unfortunately, somehow the Alonzos had learned of old Elijah’s contribution to the Genetics Council, and his kinship to the Breeds. Poor gents, they were rather upset over it all.

“Leo is getting antsy,” Ryan murmured as he moved into the cafe booth across from him. “He wants an update on her. Now.”

Great. The old man wanted an update. That usually meant he was roaring from one end of the estate to the other and threatening to head to Broken Butte himself.

This was his fault, Dane admitted. The first time he had found Harmony, wounded, nearly broken, out of her mind with fever, he had taken her to his mother. Hell, he was no doctor. His mother had at one time been the foremost authority on Breed genetics and ailments. She had been the perfect answer.

Except, as Harmony lay in a fevered haze and cried as the child she was, it had been Leo who sat with her. Who cried with her. Now the old man thought of her as his own. And no one threatened what belonged to Leo Vanderale. If such a person lived, it was only so he could regret it.

He stared back at Ryan silently, narrowing his eyes chastisingly as he read the guilt on his friend’s face. Amusement lurked in Rye’s dark eyes as he pushed darker hair back from his forehead.

Ryan was considered quite attractive by the females. His features were well sculpted and slightly rough-hewn. His lips were a bit full, his blue eyes most often filled with laughter. And he had a horrible crush on the Leo’s fair mate, Dane’s mother.

Dane’s mother had called earlier, and rather than facing her inquisition, he had given Rye the phone to offer explanations instead. Bad choice. Ryan was so infatuated with the woman that it was all he could do not to stutter when he talked to her. He was always spilling their plans to the deceptively gentle, soft-spoken mate to the first Leo.

Dane turned his head and stared back out the window at the protestors in front of the Sheriff’s Department. Leo would never countenance taking Harmony from her mate. It was a good idea, and a workable one, but Dane knew his father. The old man would rupture a blood vessel.

Old man. He almost snorted at the thought. At ninety, Leo was still in his prime, as was his wife. And there was the crux of this little nightmare.

“Jonas has made his move,” Dane murmured. “He’ll try to bargain with her now. He may well accept the information she has if she refuses what he truly wants.”

He should have forced her to give it to him years ago, Dane thought. But protecting it, the thought of what would happen to the first Leo if the Council found him, had kept Harmony fighting to live. Her survival depended on her believing she was the only one who knew of Leo’s existence. Dane trusted her—even more, he knew her, as no one but her mate knew her. She had fought like a wildcat to hide and preserve what she had stolen from those labs. She had fought to live, and he had wanted to help. He had needed Harmony to live.

“He wants you,” Ryan reminded him.

Ahh yes. Elyiana’s report that Jonas was after the shadow that kept saving Harmony’s life. The old boy was biting off more than he could chew there. If by chance Jonas managed to capture Dane, he wouldn’t keep him long. If Leo was possessive over Harmony, then his feelings were downright obsessive where his only son was concerned.

Not that Dane intended to let himself get caught.

“He’s going to accuse her of the killings. He’ll pull Breed Law on her and pull her out any minute. Leo’s going to have a cow,” Rye reminded him.

Dane shook his head. “He’ll have an aneurysm. Not a cow.”

Ryan’s lips quirked.

As a partner, Ryan DeSalvo was the best a Breed could ask for. Especially a hybrid breed with the secrets Dane had. Admitting he was well over fifty years old would have shocked most people. Rye had taken it in stride.

“What’s the plan?” Ryan asked as Dane watched the protestors absently.

“Must we have a plan?” Dane leaned back in his seat and placed the smoking cigar between his teeth as he smiled slowly. “Let’s wing this one, my friend. I’m interested to see how far Jonas will take this little plan of his. Let’s see what he’s made of.”

Ryan stared at him in slack-faced amazement. “You’re kidding.”

Dane grinned. “Not hardly. I think it’s time I learned what my little half brother is made of, don’t you? The seed the Council preserved from the old man created Jonas. Let’s see if he has the same steely determination.”

Harmony was a product of another patriarchal Breed line, thankfully. Otherwise, the feelings he had for her would have gotten him killed years before. Leo wasn’t very understanding about breaking certain rules. That was one of them. If Dane fucked a Breed female, then he better damned well be one hundred percent certain what her patriarchal line was. Which meant his mother did a thorough genetic typing. Not exactly conducive to a good sex life for a man when his mother was vetting the prospective lover.

It had been bad enough when Leo learned Dane had taken Harmony to his bed. The old man had raged for months, furious that Dane had dared to take her without a mating.

“And the information she has?”

“Unfortunately, we have to secure the files she stole. We can no longer allow her to keep them.” Dane removed the cigar from his lips and blew a stream of smoke past his lips as his gaze wandered to the little waitress working across the room. A delectable little thing she was, and he had a need to relieve the tension growing inside him.

As she glanced over at him, he winked slowly and watched her pretty little blush.

“And how do you intend to do that?” Ryan asked suspiciously.

“I won’t.” He shrugged. “Harmony will. We’ll just follow along and relieve her of her bounty. And of course, Jonas will follow to protect her, and possibly apprehend myself. The latter we’ll just have to disappoint him in.”

“God, you’ve lost your mind.” Rye sat back in his seat slowly. “The old man is going to blow a gasket if he learns of this, Dane. He doesn’t like these games you keep playing with the Council and Jonas.”

“Who says we have to tell him?” Dane grinned as he replaced his slim cigar between his teeth. “Ryan, I’m going to have to keep you away from my mother. That crush you have on her is going to get you killed, besides the fact it makes you too eager to spill all our secrets.”

Ryan grinned. “She’s a fine-looking woman, Dane.”

“She’s my mother.” The warning glare didn’t help much.

A sigh, one filled with regret, left Ryan. “There are days I wonder about that one…”

CHAPTER 20

She was pregnant. Being pregnant wasn’t something that an assassin should take lightly, Harmony was certain. It was something that frankly terrified her. And she hadn’t been terrified in a very long time.

As Jonas and his crew, lawyer included, left the office and flitted away in their spiffy little black heli-jet, Harmony moved to the couch across the room and sat down wearily.

Strangely, she didn’t feel any different. Shouldn’t she feel pregnant or something? Shouldn’t the world look different or her body feel different?

As Lance stalked to his desk and threw himself into his chair, Harmony leaned her head back against the cushions and contemplated. She didn’t like contemplating. She didn’t like being stuck between a rock and a hard place, but that was where she was. Thanks to Jonas.

Brother. She gritted her teeth at the thought of their kinship. Then ground them as the logical part of her brain agreed with him. She would have done the same thing. Protecting the Breeds was a precarious job at the moment, and if this mating heat/aging crap got out, then they were all screwed. Hell, it freaked her out, when she wasn’t one huge raging hormone intent on getting up close and personal with Lance. Not that she had really allowed herself to think about it to this point. Though dammit, she really should have thought about it by now.

She was so screwed. And not necessarily in a good way.

She was pregnant. She had another life to protect. A child. Lance’s child. How was she going to protect herself, her child and Lance? As long as Death was alive, then danger would be drawn to her.

And yet she couldn’t countenance betraying Dane either. It didn’t matter why he might or might not have been there to rescue her through the past ten years. The fact was that he had. He had cared for her, nursed her through potentially fatal wounds and given her a place to hide when she needed to heal.

He had cared about her. For whatever his reasons, whatever he might want from her, he did care for her. She might be madder than hell at him right now, but she knew that much.

God, could things get any worse? Alonzo was protesting outside the doors, Jonas was determined to capture the only friend she had ever known, and she was mated to a man determined not to let her go. And there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that Lance would tie her up and lock her in one of his damned cells if that was what it took to keep her there.

Pregnant.

She laid her hand carefully over her abdomen, frowning as she tried to make sense of that. Evidently the hormonal therapies weren’t worth taking. They hadn’t stopped the heat and they hadn’t stopped conception. All they had done was keep her from running. And she would have run, wouldn’t she?

Okay, so she wouldn’t have run. She felt like kicking something. From the first night she met Lance she had been hooked and she knew it. Mating heat be damned, the man knew how to touch, how to hold, and how to make a woman addicted without her stupid hormones adding to it.

There had to be a way out of this. A way to give Jonas what he wanted without betraying Dane, and a way to ensure that Dane stayed safe. It wasn’t possible that he was the first Leo, no matter what Jonas claimed.

Most of the electronic files were encrypted, but the information on the first Leo had been hard copy. Pages and pages of genetic reports and training profiles. Unless there was more on those hard drives, within the files she had never been able to crack.

She wasn’t exactly a hacker. Electronics, unless they ran a security system or a weapon, weren’t her thing. Computers were a pain in the ass, and the handheld models just made her crazy. And cell phones were for people with a death wish. They could be hacked, traced and bugged, as she often tried to tell Dane. Therefore, she didn’t even have a cell phone to call him on. And she really needed to talk to him now. Because she wanted to know just what the fucking hell he was planning. Maybe she could slide into the connecting office and make a quick call…

“Not on your life.”

Harmony lifted her head and stared back at her mate. That alpha tone just made a girl’s nerve endings stand up and take notice, but really, this was no time for it.

“Stupid wind thing,” she half snarled. “That is so wrong, Lance. That’s worse than mind reading.”

“Get used to it.”

She lowered her brows at the grump that had taken the place of her normally indulgent lover. He sat, forearms braced on the desk as he went through a file. A thick file. Her eyes narrowed as he turned a page and she caught a name. Was that her file?

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to figure out how to de-fang that bastard brother of yours,” he growled.

Harmony shrugged. “Dane. But he’s not the first Leo.”

“No shit!” Lance snarled, glaring back at her. “How do you know?”

Harmony rolled her eyes as she surged to her feet.

“For one thing, Dane isn’t mated. The first Leo is mated.”

“And you know this how?”

She tucked her hands in the back pocket of her jeans as she considered her options in the face of that question.

“Harmony?” There was that damned alpha tone again.

“Well, according to what you’ve said, once you’ve mated you don’t have sex with anyone else. Right?”

“Yes.” He snapped the word off.

“Well.” She shifted her shoulders, suddenly uncomfortable. “If Dane is the first Leo, then he broke that little rule.”

“Not possible,” he growled. “Braden says the males can’t even get ‘interested’ in other women. Now explain how Dane broke that little rule.”

She pursed her lips. “Well. Because.” She cleared her throat. This was damned uncomfortable. “I’ve slept with him.”

“Goddammit, I fucking knew it!” he snarled as he slammed the file closed. “And why didn’t you give this piece of information earlier? When it would have defused Jonas?”

“Because, maybe, it’s none of his business,” she snarled back, revealing her canines. Okay, now he was just going to piss her off.

“And you think it wouldn’t have helped if he knew Dane wasn’t the first Leo?”

“Well, I don’t know that for sure.” She frowned. “What happens if a mate dies? Though really, I don’t think he’s mated.” She was babbling. Harmony Lancaster, aka Death, was turning into a twit. She snapped her mouth closed.

“Look, Jonas isn’t going to just stand down,” she informed him as he glowered back at her. “Once he gets something into that knot head of his, it stays there. He was like that in the labs and he hasn’t changed since.”