The Breed Casstiel's Vow (28 page)

“You don’t think he’s going to notice he’s bonded to
you?” Sebastian scoffed behind them.

“After what I just saw, I’m not even sure he can bond,”
she shot back defensively, “it’s up to me to explain things to them, and I want
do it on my terms, not yours.”

“I can respect that,” he replied soberly, “but if we’re
going to be ‘with holding’ information, then I’d like for you to not mention
we’re interrogating Quinn, or what he turned into out there, she’s too upset as
it is, add in the thought of that monster and I’m pretty sure she’ll have a
mental breakdown.”

“What am I supposed to tell her when she wants to rush
down here to see him?” her eyes narrowed at him.

“Tell her the truth; that’s he’s recovering from serious
injuries and should be left alone tonight, tomorrow morning she can come and
see him,” he replied, “by then all this mess will be cleared up and we’ll all
know the truth.”

“We’ve got a deal,” she nodded, and he felt that a
weight had just been lifted off of everyone’s shoulders.

~

“Tessa?”
Nora called
apprehensively, “are you here?”

She was lying across her bed too tired from crying to
even bother answering her friend.

She didn’t want to hear what she had to say, felt like
she would never want to talk to another person again. Maybe this was why people
became catatonic?

“Everything’s fine, Quinn is with Remy right now,” Nora
said gently, sitting down next to her.

Her words didn’t register, all she could focus on was
the image of Quinn covered in blood with rage in his eyes as he climbed over
the wall.

He was a stranger now, nothing at all like the brother
she had known and loved her whole life. He looked sick and deranged, so very
far from the ‘all American
boy
’ image he once had.

“Are you listening to me?” Nora snapped impatiently as
she continued to stare forward, her eyes glassy and unseeing.

“Just leave me,” she mumbled.

“Your brother is fine,” she repeated slowly, staring
into Tessa’s eyes.

This time the message sunk in, this time the meaning hit
home.

“He’s…he’s ok?”
she
whispered,
her heart slowly beginning to soar, revving up like a jet engine.

Her brother was ok. No matter what happened to him in
the past two years, no matter what he had to face out there alone, he was here
now, and he was ok.

“Yeah he’s in the medical wing,” Nora smiled warmly.

“He’s ok… he’s ok,” she repeated frantically to herself,
each time becoming more and more excited until the excitement snapped, and she
couldn’t help but cry again.

Tears streamed down her face as she laughed until her
stomach hurt. The last two years didn’t matter, the fear she felt after seeing
him for the first time didn’t matter, all that mattered was that he was going
to live.

“When can I see him?” she asked, feeling like her heart
was going to explode.

She had given up so much of her life when Quinn
disappeared; leaving school, and home, giving up on the future she had
envisioned for herself, and now it had finally paid off. Her family would be
together again.

“Cass says he’ll need to heal up for today, but you can go
see him tomorrow,” she sounded distracted.

Cass…. The name echoed through her mind like a ghost, as
the realization hit her.

She couldn’t go back to her old self. Her life was here,
with him now.

“It’s the strangest feeling,” she whispered, “the last
two years all I’ve wanted was to find Quinn and go back to the way our lives
were, but now that I’ve found him, I know I won’t be able to leave the new life
I’m starting.”

It truly was a scary feeling to look the life you had
become so accustomed to in the face and decide to walk away from it.

“Everyone grows up and leaves the nest Tessa, you’re
twenty five,” she looked at her seriously, “It’s scary, but it’s right.”

“I know,” she smiled as she stared down at her hands.

Her life would never be the same, but she no longer felt
that was a bad thing.

Casstiel let out a long slow sigh of relief, the pain
that had been gripping his heart for the last two hours had finally begun to
subside, telling him that Nora had come through on her word.

           
He wished he could have been the one to deliver the happy news, but his men
needed his leadership, the embassy needed his protection, and he needed to
evaluate Quinn’s threat level.

           
Cass would have to settle for seeing her tonight, and hopefully bringing her
the happiest news of all, that her brother wasn’t a threat and everything would
be alright.

           
At last, Remy came out of her office to speak with them.

           
“Cass, he’s awake, and he wants to see you,” she mumbled, visibly upset,
“Someone
call
the surgery team.”

           
He didn’t bother asking questions, just hauled ass into the surgery room.

           
“Quinn, my name is Casstiel, I run this embassy, can you hear me?” he was eager
to begin.

           
There was no color in his face, his eyes were glassed over and fighting for
consciousness as the severity of his wounds threatened to take him out again.

           
“Tracking… device…” he gasped out, “under my… ribs… can’t reach to remove… myself.”

           
His eyes were slid in and out of focus as he fought to stay awake, the skin
stretching taunt over his too thin face.

           
“Where the hell are the surgeons?” Casstiel demanded, turning his attentions to
Remy. He would be damned if he let a tracking device signal to the Hunters
where the embassy was.

           
Her grey eyes were clouded with emotion as she checked on their arrival one
more time.

           
“Alright Quinn, stay with me buddy, we’re gonna get you healed up,” he said,
knowing that he had a better chance of keeping him alive with positive words
and encouragement.

           
Why hadn’t Remy healed him?

           
Quinn swallowed down the blood bubbling up his throat and gave him a small nod.

           
“Where is… she?” he gasped.

           
“Tessa?
She’s here, she’s safe,” he answered quickly,
then thought about the questions he most needed answered, “Where’s your pack?
Where’s Balor?”

           
“Took… took them…” each breath coming out harder than the last, the bones of
his jaw jutting out as the skin stretched even tighter around his words.

           
“The Hunters?” he demanded, shaking him slightly as his eyes began to roll into
his head, “where did the Hunters take them?”

           
“
Mmm
…” was the only response he got before his body
began to seize. 

           
“Remy, why haven’t you healed him?” he screamed at her in frustration, as he
held down Quinn’s convulsing body.

           
“Because I can’t… I keep trying but nothing works… I, I can’t heal him,” she
replied, her voice shaking with the fear of a situation that had never happened
before. 

~

           
Quinn paced frantically outside the doors of the surgery room. He had a new
appreciation for how amazing Remy’s gift was, he had never had to wait this
long for anyone to be healed, and didn’t know how humans could stand it.

           
All his men sat around him in equally uncomfortable silence, no one enjoying
the tense wait.

           
“I just don’t understand it… this has never happened,” Remy absently mumbled to
herself, “not to my mother or my grandmother...”

           
Jax slid an arm around her shoulders and let her lean into him.

           
“I’m gonna take her home, I’ll be back in a minute,” he spoke softly, and when
it looked as though she would protest, wrapped his arm around her waist and
lifted her.

           
“It might get ugly in there, you don’t need to see that anyway, let’s just get
you home,” he whispered, walking her out.

           
Cass could feel the blood pounding in his ears as time stretched on.

           
How long had it been?
An hour?
Two?
a
lifetime?

           
“Is he alive?” he demanded as the surgery door finally opened.

           
“He’s alive, and the tracking device has been removed,” the surgeon exhaustedly
replied and handed the device over.

           
“Ghost, take this back to the office and scramble the signal, then see if you
can trace where it’s coming from,” he dictated. 

           
“We had to break three ribs to be able to pull it out, not that that really
added to his injury list,” the surgeon looked over the long list on his clip
board, “eleven gunshot wounds, seven stab wounds, a punctured lung, broken
collar bone, dislocated shoulder, four broken fingers, his right hip bone has been
completely crushed and will have to be reconstructed, fractured femur, and a
broken big toe.”

           
“He couldn’t heal any of that?” he asked, astonished. Everyone else in the room
could have healed all of those in a matter of hours.

           
“It seems his healing is better than normal humans, but not nearly as good as
ours. We’ve stitched everything we could, at this rate those should be healed
by tomorrow, but his bones could take days to heal properly, we’ll need to cast
them once you guys are done with him.”

           
“Is he awake? Can we talk to him?” he asked, not really caring how long his
bones would take to heal. He was more interested in the why of everything; why
his healing was different than a normal Breed member, why he had come to them.

           
“He is awake, though I’m not sure how lucid he is, you can try,” the man
stepped out of the way.

           
“Cass, you want me to go give an update?” Memphis asked, as always concerned
for his girls.

           
“Thank you,” he replied, honestly grateful. 

           
Quinn lay sleeping peacefully on the operating table, covered in stitches and
with his collar bone sticking out at an odd angle, but at least he finally
looked like he would live.

           
“Quinn Roberts,” he called out sternly.

           
Immediately his eyelids fluttered open and recognition dawned across his face.
He grimaced in pain as he tried, and failed, to sit upright, “I’m sorry for the
way I blew in here.”

           
“Why did you come here?” he kept his voice hard, he would show no leniency.

           
“I didn’t think I was going to live through my last mission, actually planned
not to, but somehow I made it and all I could think of was to get here to my
sister and Nora,” he closed his eyes in pain as his breathing became labored.

           
“What mission?” Cass narrowed his eyes in suspicion

“Killing the hunters and getting to my pack,” Quinn
growled,
his eyes suddenly red with rage. 

~

           
“How’s my brother?” Tessa asked nervously.

           
“Badly injured, but fine,” Memphis smiled reassuringly, “he should be happy and
healthy for you to see him tomorrow.”

           
She closed her eyes and let out a whimper of happiness, finally able to breathe
again.

           
“Come on girl, bring it in,” he laughed, spreading his arms wide. She fell into
him without a moment’s hesitation, and he squeezed her tightly. 

           
For minutes on end she switched between laughing and crying, all while he held
her steadily, resting his chin on the crown of her head. Over the last two
years she had become like a daughter to him, and he soaked up her
happiness. 

           
Now all he needed to do was work on Nora’s happiness and his job as a proud
papa would be complete.

           
He stared a hole through her as Tessa hugged him tighter and wondered why she
was trying to keep her bond a secret. He knew she wouldn’t accept it easily,
but with such a tight knit group how long could she really expect everyone to
keep quiet?

           
She brushed him off and looked away.  She’d be hoping that because of his
strange mutations he wouldn’t be able to bond to her, but life didn’t work that
way. Whether she wanted it or not, she needed a mate, needed someone to lean
on, someone who could shoulder the weight she carried every
day.   

           
“I’m gonna go up to Cass’s place, I’ll call my parents and give them some good
news before I drop the big bomb,” Tessa laughed, finally breaking out of his
arms. 

           
As she left Nora faked a tense smile and Memphis folded his arms over his
chest, readying himself for the exchange that was about to go down.   

           
“Don’t give me that look,” she snapped as the door shut.

           
“You’re playing a dangerous game,” he warned, “
messing
with the bond is not a good idea. At least accept it and work on it together,
don’t try and run from this.”

           
“Look, like I said before, with how different he is he probably didn’t bond to
me anyway,” she fumed, “Even if he did, I’m not going accept this bond. I won’t
do it. I feel guilty for keeping this from Tessa, but I haven’t wanted a man in
the last one hundred years, and I doubt anything is going to change that.”

           
 “You have to let go of the past, you can’t let my son haunt you forever,”
she had already let his ghost haunt too much of her life, denied herself too
much happiness out of fear and depression. 

           
She turned and walked away from him, not even bothering to reply, just angrily
slamming her bedroom door as a conversation closer.

           
Quinn was going to need all the help he could get in the war to win Nora’s
heart, and as far as Memphis was concerned, he had just earned himself a
General.

~

           
“So you’re not working for them?” Casstiel asked, trying to stifle his hopes.

           
“Working for them?” Quinn growled out, anger biting into every word, “They’re
the ones who made me this way, who destroyed my pack, who tortured us. I’d kill
myself before I ever worked for them.”

           
“Where’s your proof?” Kain demanded, unlike Cass he didn’t have a reason to
hope that what Quinn was saying was true.

           
“Proof?” he scoffed in astonishment, “did you not see what I turned into out
there? Or maybe you didn’t notice that that wasn’t exactly normal?”

           
“That doesn’t mean you’re not working for them. You could have been a hunter
before you joined Balor’s pack,” Kain replied coldly, saying what everyone else
was feeling.

           
“Look, I didn’t know much about the Breed or hunters; I didn’t even know what
the embassy was until I met Nora. I joined Balor’s pack voluntarily and not
even a week into being with them, before I had even gotten over all the
sicknesses of my body changing, the Hunters came and attacked us,” he spat, and
Cass saw nothing but honesty in his eyes. 

Quinn wasn’t a liar, and was about to tell them what
could be the single most important piece of information on the new battle with
the Hunters.

           
“Go on,” he urged.

           
“I don’t know how they found us but they did. I was still seriously ill from
the change, when they broke through our defenses I couldn’t even get up to
help, I just laid there, defenseless,” for a moment his voice cracked, but he
wrestled himself together, “There were seven of us; they killed one in the raid
and captured the rest, dragging us off to their laboratory.”

           
“We don’t have any records of them having a laboratory,” Casstiel sighed,
realizing that problems with the Hunters were multiplying exponentially.

           
“They gave us all numbers instead of names, my number was 117, meaning there
were 116 Breed members there before me,” he explained, his voice suddenly
deadened, “and I’m sure I wasn’t the last one they captured.”

           
“Fuck,” Kain ground out. 

           
“They held us in steel cages like rats and kept us on all sorts of drugs,
keeping us so sedated we could hardly walk, let alone transform or use our
strength to escape. They used us in tests and experiments until we either out
grew our use to them or died.”

           
“How did this happen?” Jax walked through the door looking traumatized.

           
“I don’t know,” Quinn replied, “I don’t know anything about the embassy or your
war.”

           
“What kind of experiments?” Sebastian demanded his voice cutting like a knife.

           
“Strength, healing, endurance, pain reception, and lots of experiments with our
DNA, I don’t know exactly what they did to me, all I know is that they injected
me with some sort of an adrenaline and steroid combination, I think they
actually enlarged my adrenal glands,” he sounded horrified by his own words,
“it killed the first two  men they tried it on, they said they thought it
worked with me because my body was so new to the Breed that it adapted to the
chemical change as well.”