More than Truth (Arcane Crossbreeds) (17 page)

“Dude.” Raife growled and forcefully spun Tag’s chair around to face the screens again, pointing at a specific screen. “Is that who I think it is?”

Tag had to blink twice before the image on the security feed outside of Forestor’s office registered. “Fuck.”

Fingers flying across the keys, he zeroed in on the four giant men Forestor was leading down the hall, not that he needed a more detailed image to know who he was staring at.

“Who are they? What am I missing here?” Katya asked, and Tag could feel her moving in closer behind him to get a better look at the screen.

“The Drakes,” Raife hissed.

The last man in the group paused to look directly into the camera overhead as though he could feel their attention. The bastard probably could. Gray winged either side of his immaculate dark hair. Tiny creases framed familiar brown eyes.

Shit.

“Taggart.”

Tag’s entire body jerked with the impact of the telepathic greeting. It still boomed in his head, wrenching every sin he’d ever tried to hide to the surface of his mind. Even after fifty years. Great, this was exactly what he needed most at this fucked-up point in his life.

“Father.”

* * * *

Meghann.

Vin remembered Brit’s outrageous younger sister. Even the Triumvirate had been unable to control the troublesome brat, but they hadn’t concerned themselves too much with her since she’d not shown any skills they found useful. They’d kept Meghann around because of the power she gave them over Brit. He’d seen the shot that took Meghann’s life, looked down into her lifeless eyes as he stepped over her body. His damn boots had tracked her blood across the concrete. There was no way the woman still lived.

“Your sister is dead, love,” Vin said gently as he came around the lab counter. He narrowly dodged the book she threw at him. Brit immediately looked contrite and shocked by the outburst. She felt volatile to him, but it was more than her suddenly careening emotions that concerned him. It was her confused and panicked reaction to the loss of control.

“Don’t patronize me. I’ve not lost my wits, dragon,” she snapped, her Irish brogue very thick as she stared down at the leather lab book as though puzzling something out. That accent was arousing, but then again everything about her was arousing right now. Her heat had been clawing at his senses for the better part of two days, and the fiery emotions only heightened it. “I saw her on a video. She was older. Restrained. She was at that damn research facility. They were going to use her to make me finish the research.”

Brit leaned down to pick up the lab book she’d thrown. “And the things they did to her. They injected her with that synthetic ARSA gene. We have to find her before it mutates.”

ARSA
.

Ice slid through his veins at her words, and he very nearly shuddered at the sensation. The ARSA project. Brit had lost her family escaping it. It was the project he’d resurrected and had been working on for the past ten years—part of the deal he’d made. The synthetic gene he created and experimented with was ineffective. At least he’d thought so.

“Mutates?” His heart hammered, and he slid the book from her fingers. “How can you be certain?”

Vin scanned the nearly illegible script. Horror swept through him as the notes raved on about cellular regeneration. Fuck.
Right there he mentions the lack of efficacy of the ARSA-2. Nothing about mutation.
Perhaps she was just overwrought after discovering her sister still lived.

Brit narrowed her blue gaze on him. “Aye. I do not make claims without certainty.”

There was a dangerous spark in her eyes that went straight to his cock. Her agitation made the heady scent of her heat thicker and stronger, and the urge to pin her against the wall and rub his body against hers to coat himself in it was overwhelming. It blended with the sharp taste of his fear that she would discover his role in the research she’d risked everything to destroy. Fear and desire. The combination was decadent, and his cock hardened to the point of pain.

Inside his dragon bucked against his control. It wanted to taunt her with the truth until she attacked, so it could devour her passion and subdue her—mate her. It wanted the heat of a violent mating fury. Vin clenched his fists and blew out a breath in a bid to smother the dark needs clawing at him. Right now, Brit needed his help. She may not know it, but the mating heat had her treading too close to a wicked edge that would drag them all down.

His work on the ARSA project already condemned him. If he allowed the heat to overtake them and Brit lost the window to save her sister, he doubted she would ever accept him. If that happened, their lives would be hell, because Vin had no intention of ever letting her go, and she would fight his dragon at every turn. No, if there even a remote possibility Meghann was alive, he had to find her.

Vin shifted, grateful his slacks allowed room for the raging erection that pulsed insistently between his thighs. His proprietary gaze slid over Brit’s profile with calculation. He wished he could be the kind of man who wanted to save Meghann on principle alone, but the past years had darkened him, and from that darkness came a whisper that he could gain favor with Brit by giving her back her sister. It could be a path to redemption if she discovered his past. He wasn’t proud of that voice, but there wasn’t enough of his humanity left to be ashamed either. He just accepted it.

“If you say Meghann was there, I believe you. Read me the file.” Vin listened as she recited the last data entered in the files Brit believed to be Meghann’s. The final entry was the day before. “She could have escaped during the raid.”

Brit shook her head. “No. She knew I was being brought there. She addressed me specifically in the video. Why run at the very moment we were being rescued?”

Vin studied Brit a long moment. Her dark red hair fell around her face, and she pushed a thick lock behind her tiny ear. Pale blue eyes luminescent and cheeks flushed from the heat racking her body, she looked beautiful. He was in a position to stoke her hope, keep it burning to pull every last dreg of benefit from it, but he couldn’t— wouldn’t—do that to her. He evidently still had limits.

“Britony.” Vin lowered his voice. “Is there a chance she didn’t make it from the facility alive?”

Those haunting blue eyes met his. “No, Dr. Rupple was very confident that I would do what he wanted, and he was shocked by the raid. They barely had time to escape.”

Vin crossed his arms over his chest. “There were very few casualties from the raid. Most of the security detail escaped. Could they have taken her with them when they left? Tag has the recovered video surveillance from the building. Perhaps if you locate where they kept her?”

A frown marred the pale expanse between her dark red eyebrows. She sorted through the remaining books and picked up a volume. She flipped it open. “She was relocated to a new wing of the facility marked for a ‘special project.’ That was on the fifteenth of last month, but the medical files don’t indicate where that was at.”

There was a faint buzz that told him Tag was trying to speak to him, but Vin ignored his brother for the moment. “Then there should be an electronic log of it. Certainly Tag can have that answer for us easy enough. In the meantime, can you identify the other individuals in that ‘special project’?”

Brit pulled a pad of paper across the counter and began writing a list of subject files.

“If we can identify them, then we can question them about your sister. They may have information on what happened to her that last day. Just try to keep control…” Vin licked his lips and shook his head. “We are trying to give you time, but the heat is getting worse.” The buzzing grew in intensity, and Vin spun to glare up at the camera.
“She is fine, brother. The situation is under control.”

There was a wealth of satisfaction in Tag’s voice.
“On the contrary,
brother
, the situation is actually just getting started. The Drakes should be on you right…about…”
Vin became aware of the hissing of the locks disengaging on the lab door behind him as Tag’s voice trailed off.

The Drakes… Vin turned on his heel, his heart hammering in alarm. The lab door slid open with a surreal slowness, and then he was there. In the flesh. After twenty years.

“Father.” Vin barely managed to get the greeting past the stranglehold his heart had on his throat.

Kahn Jennings filled the room with his larger-than-life presence. He was well over six foot tall, barrel-chested with a full beard and a hard, dark brown gaze that slashed past Vin and landed on Brit. His nostrils flared, and that accusing gaze swung back to Vin. Obviously they were going to skip the heartfelt homecoming and get right to the point.

From the corner of his eye, Vin saw Brit prop her fists on her hips. Her lips thinned, and he could practically taste her rising irritation. “Must you all scent the air like animals? It’s an invasion of my privacy.”

Kahn ignored Brit and narrowed his gaze on Vin before turning his glare to the camera in the ceiling. “Boys!” His voice boomed, and Vin couldn’t help but wince, much like he had as a kid, or at least from the moment he’d grown old enough to let Tag get him into trouble. “Why is this woman not properly mated?”

“Father,” Vin started, “the situation is complicated.”

Chapter Thirteen

Father?

Blood was pulsing hot and insistent through Brit, but she was capable of separating her body and mind. Mostly. She’d learned the talent during the strenuous lessons she’d undergone from the Triumvirate scientists as a girl. When her back ached or her hands cramped from hours of being in the lab, she simply turned her awareness of them off. For once she was thankful to the Triumvirate for those lessons, because she would never have been able to function with the symptoms of the Drachon heat constantly waging an assault within her.

Even if it was starting to chip away at her control.

The feel of the blood pulsing in her neck and between her thighs heightened her arousal, but it was manageable as she stepped forward to study the large man standing in her lab as though he owned it. Obviously a trait Tag had gotten honestly.

Brit snorted and propped her fists on her hips. So this was the guys’ father? She could see the resemblance in the low set of his brow and the breadth of his shoulders, but that was where the physical resemblance waned. The twins obviously bore a more striking resemblance to their mother.

A mated Drachon. Silver barely touched the dark hair at his temples and salted the strands of his thick beard. He presented an intriguing opportunity. Her knowledge was limited to what she’d observed while treating Raife Merrick. Raife was only recently mated, and his biology was just beginning an extraordinary metamorphosis. Though the stubborn ass wouldn’t allow her access to anything but his and Katya’s blood. This man, on the other hand, had to have been mated for the better part of a century at least. The Drachon biology, particularly that of mated Drachon, was so guarded that she was instantly drawn to the lure of what this man could tell her with just one small tissue sample.

“How old are you?” Brit eyed the man with clinical interest, ignoring the amused lift of his thick eyebrows. “How long have you been mated?”

“Doc, you are not experimenting on my father.”

Brit jerked at the roar in her mind and glared up at the camera. “It was a reasonable consideration, Taggart. So very little is understood about the biology of a mature Drachon, I could—”

“Doc!”

“Britony,” Vin began cautiously, but Brit ignored him.

“Britony,” Kahn repeated in approval. “We know quite a bit about the biology of the Drachon; however, it is privileged information for only our species. Once you’ve mated…” He let the sentence hang and shrugged his massive shoulders. There was a hint of a smile that curled the corners of his mouth. Those lips, full but partially hidden by his beard, must have been a genetic gift to his sons as well. She well remembered the feel of Tag’s tugging on her nipples. The feeling— Brit brought her mind back to the present before either of her telepathic mates picked up on the slip. Instead she focused on their father. Here she had the opportunity to use this man as a baseline to compare and contrast the chain of biological changes in the brothers during the mating.

“You are not experimenting on us during the mating.”

Brit narrowed a warning glance at the camera. She didn’t tell Tag she’d already started analyzing her own blood.
“
We’ll see.”

Kahn’s laugh boomed through the lab. “I think I’m beginning to understand.”

“You have no idea.” Vin sighed.

Brit ignored Vin and stepped forward to extend her hand. “My name is Dr. Britony Mahoney.” The man lifted one brow at the offering before angling a condemning glance at Vin.

“Have you explained nothing to her, Vincent?”

“There are extenuating circumstances,” Vin said drolly, and he pulled her back from his father until the warmth of his chest ignited over the sensitive flesh of her back. What use was clothing if every touch felt as though they weren’t wearing any?

Brit jerked away from Vin and temptation, choosing to concentrate on Vin’s father instead. She had to stay focused, or the heat would engulf her. It was getting stronger than her ability to compartmentalize it. “Explain what?”

The man’s dark brown eyes twinkled as they focused down on her. He gave a short, somewhat formal bow of his head but kept his hands at his sides. “I am Dr. Kahn Jennings. As to what my sons have not explained: it is not permissible for another male to touch the intended female of another during a mating, even if said male is already mated or blood kin. I’m afraid Drachon have rather archaic and basic instincts. We find it easier to accommodate them rather than court the consequences. Which brings me back to my initial question… Why have my sons not finished this mating?”

Vin reached for her again, and Brit shrugged his touch away before the tingling from the contact began to exceed the bounds of her control. She folded her arms over her chest and faced off against his father. “Is the inability to adhere to any personal boundaries a trait all Drachon share, or is it unique to just you and your sons?”