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A Novel of the Breeds
Lora Leigh
#1 New York Times bestselling author of the Breeds series delivers the novel fans have been waiting for--mixed Coyote/Wolf Breed Cassie Sinclair finally gets her story!
It's been over a decade since she was introduced as an unforgettable eight-year-old in Elizabeth's Wolf.
Now all grown up, Cassie is unique among the Breeds as a Coyote/Wolf mix. She has long known that her mate was somehwere out there, but he's stayed frustratingly out of sight and beyond her senses.
Cassie has decided to make her move and her mate is ready to make his. The Breed world will be rocked to its foundation as dangerous secrets are revealed.
Excerpt:
Prologue
She was only eighteen and she
knew would die soon. Here, on this island Seth Lawrence owned, surrounded by
the protective strength of a breed force unlike any other, and Cassie knew she
would die.
It wouldn’t be tonight though.
Not yet. But it was coming.
Stepping past the wide double
doors opened into the huge atrium, the glass domed roof allowing the night to
slide into the enclosed garden and had to fight back the bitterness. The anger.
Turning she met the gazes of the
breed enforcers standing behind her, their gazes resolute, but compassionate,
and snapped the doors closed as they watched her silently.
“Ask to enjoy the gardens at
night and this is what I get?” she muttered, swinging around to let her gaze go
over the massive enclosure of brick and glass surrounding it.
The grass beneath her feet was
surprisingly real. A wide stone walk led into the shadowed greenery, the lush,
heavy growth and sultry scent of moisture and fragrant blooms pulling her into
the depths of it.
The atrium, Seth had called it.
It was a damned greenhouse and nothing more. A well protected, stone and bullet
resistant glass enclosed room with only one entrance, the wide doors she’d
stepped inside.
Moving further into the lush
greenery she could find little pleasure in it. Despite her bare feet and the
feel of grass beneath them, she found no satisfaction in it. Just as she found
no satisfaction in the deep, wide pond trickling in the center of the trees
surrounding it.
Heavily leaved, beaded with what
appeared to be dew, but actually came from the water that misted from the pipes
running along the steel frame supporting the glass above. The scent of the
night wasn’t here. The chirp of insects, the scuttle of creatures created to
stalk such shadowed beauty wasn’t here. It was sterile. Created by man rather
than by nature.
She hated it.
At least on her balcony she could
smell the night, the creatures that inhabited and the sea surrounding the
Lawrence island. On her balcony there was a chance of sensing him…
Swallowing tightly Cassie eased
wearily to sit on the rough, flat boulder bordering the pond, and shed the
matching robe covering the thin, long white gown she wore. Drawing her feet up
to rest on top of the boulder and looping her arms beneath her knees, she
rested her chin on her knees and stared into the trickling water.
What was wrong with her? She knew
how dangerous it was to allow herself to stand on the balcony, in clear view, a
target to any enemy with the intent to kill her. Though few wanted to kill her.
The price on her head was for her abduction, her virginity intact when she was
turned over to the scientists secretly working with what remained of the
Genetics Council.
She was Cassandra Sinclair.
Cassandra Colder. She was unique, not just in her genetics but in her birth.
Breed sperm used to inseminate her mother’s egg without any alterations to the
ovum. The same as a hybrid, a breed born of a breed and human mating.
But she was even more unique that
that. She wasn’t created from a single animal species genetics, but two. She
was created from both wolf and coyote genetics. The good and the bad. The wolf
dna altered and forever dirtied by that of the coyote dna.
“Such
a beautiful animal,” the voice whispered through her memories.
She’d been five, standing in nothing
but the white panties she wore, shuddering, sickened by the touch of the
bastards fingers on the mark at her shoulder. The shadow of a paw print. A
genetic marker. But as she grew older another shadow began marring her flesh,
one even her parents were unaware of, one resembling that of a jagged slices
made by claws. The mark of the Coyote stained the flesh just over her womb.
“She
was created to whelp monsters,” her father sneered as Cassie shook with her
tears and disbelief.
A
part of her had known he wasn’t her father. Unlike her mother, her father’s
scent didn’t resemble her. Her momma’s scent resembled her. And her mother
loved her.
“She’ll
whelp my little monsters,” Terrance chuckled, lifted his arm and a second later
the weapon he carried exploded and her father was dead.
She
knew he was dead. He fell to the floor, blood spilling from his chest as he
stared at Cassie with hatred.
Thirteen years. It had been
thirteen years and still, Cassie remembered every second of it as though it had
happened only moments before.
She would whelp monsters. Many
said she was the monster.
At that thought she felt the
presence. She didn’t smell it, there was no scent to warn her. She felt him.
Her heart raced, her breathing was faster, and she could feel the whisper of
the air drifting through the room.
What an odd sensation. She’d
never felt that before, until him.
“If you’re caught, they’ll kill
you.” She didn’t shift, did try to call out to the guards standing outside the
doors.
She wasn’t frightened of him, though
she sensed she should be. She should be terrified.
“Think they will?” he remained
behind her, hidden. And she let him stay hidden, because she didn’t want to
know…
“You know they will,” her voice
trembled. “Are you here to kill me?”
“Do you want to die?” amusement
laced his voice, amusement and something more, something dark and shadowed.
“I’ll die either way.” She stared
into the pond, wondering at her own cowardice. “I won’t leave here alive you
know?”
Silence met her question, but she
knew he heard her, knew he hadn’t left. She could feel him in the air she
breathed, in the whisper of movement as he eased closer.
“What makes you so certain of
that?” curiosity filled his voice. A voice that was dark, sensual.
“I know things…” Sometimes, she
knew terrible things. Things she didn’t want to know, didn’t want to see or
sense.
“I won’t let you die, little
halfling,” he whispered just behind her, causing her to stiffen at the warmth
of his breath at her ear. “You’re mine.”
She stiffened in outrage, in anger
but before she could turn and inform him just how insane he was, he was gone.
Wide eyed, her heart racing, she
stared at the swaying leaves of the huge ferns behind her and heard a whisper
of a chuckle somewhere in the darkness.
“Cassie.” The atrium doors were
thrown open her father’s voice echoed through the artificial glade, dark with
menace, but not toward her.
His enforcers rushed through the
atrium, at least half a dozen, converging on her as she drew her robe on and
tied the satin ribbons holding it closed.
“Cassie, sweetheart, I told you
stay in our rooms.” Her father, Dash Sinclair, pushed through the foliage, his
amber gaze piercing as it went over her. “Are you all right?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Looking
around the silence of the atrium sadly then she knew her time there was
finished. “It’s not like I’m actually outside, right?”
He stared behind her, his eyes
narrowed, nostrils flaring as though testing the air for any unfamiliar scents.
“Come on, let’s get you back
upstairs.” He held his hand out to her, his expression implacable when his gaze
returned to hers. “It’s getting late.”
“And of course I’m still a
toddler that has no idea how to defend myself, nor do I have gaurds on my ass
twenty-four seven.” She ignored his outstretched hand and pushed past him
instead. “For God’s sake, dad, I’m not ten.”
She didn’t wait around for his
reply or the confusion she knew she would glimpse in his eyes. He couldn’t
understand, couldn’t know the hell her dreams were becoming or the anger that
clashed through her every waking second.
She was going to die here, soon.
So very soon.
If her father had just let her
have this time in this place, maybe she could have stolen something for
herself. Maybe she could have figured out why the man whose gunsights she felt
on the balcony outside her room, didn’t terrify her.
Why he drew her.
Why she ached for his warmth for
just a moment, just for tonight. Because tomorrow night would be too late.
She’d be dead.
Giveaway
$100 Visa gift card, and a book/galley/bound manuscript by each of the authors participating.
Enter here: http://bit.ly/2zlFxAq
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