Cunning intelligence, far more advanced than even his creator guessed, became stealthy, manipulative and deceitful. The emerging creature he called his monster stepped back and allowed the human and animal to meld completely within his senses and the intelligence he possessed only multiplied, amplified.
The creature Dr. Foster had envisioned had far surpassed his dreams, she realized. At any time after that moment Gideon could have escaped. He could have slipped from the research center and disappeared entirely, but to do so, he would have had to leave Cat behind. His brother was strong enough to follow him, but his Cat wasn’t. And later, once Bennett arrived and sensed the threat the Bengal alpha could be, he ensured there was no way Gideon could escape without the chance of weapons discharging. Graeme had refused to chance Cat’s survival in a firefight.
Once he’d managed her release and escape, she and Judd had forced the transfusion to save him, to ensure a survival that would have occurred far more slowly, possibly ensuring his recapture much quicker, his animal senses as well as human responses rioted. The mating hormone had already been found in her system, though not in Graeme’s despite the tests that affirmed their match. Once her blood met his though, Dr. Foster had feared it would take hold of Graeme and create needs and desires Cat was far too young to face, and Graeme was far too honorable to tolerate. It would destroy him.
Repulsed by such visions of what his future could be he’d lashed out at her, intending to make her hate him, to drive her from him and ensure she never came searching for him, never tempted what he feared could happen until he returned to her once she’d reached an age he believed allowed her the maturity to deal with it.
He’d wanted her to have a life first. To be free. That need he’d had for her had been clear, so much a part of him she wondered how she could have not sensed it before that moment her soul had met his.
Through the years after she’d escaped to New Mexico, believing she was living that life of freedom, Graeme had begun a game of such masterful cunning that it amazed her. His animal instincts, the mating hormone in his system, and the animal’s push to find Cat when Graeme still felt she was too young had distracted him at a time when the soldiers the Genetics Council had sent out for the research center, were too close though.
That recapture, what she felt and saw with the knowledge she’d blocked from those moments she’d been a part of him, showed her the Breed she’d refused to see. He’d endured death, three times. Surviving Bennett’s cruelty would have been impossible if the monster he harbored inside him hadn’t pushed forward with superhuman strength. That will to live, to survive and to ensure her safety and survival had been all that saved him. And it had remained contained until the research scientist had ordered a renewed search for the woman possessing the hormonal influences he believed were the key to Gideon’s ability to survive each of the living dissections.
In that moment, Gideon had ceased to exist. The monster had surged forward, overtaking him, filling him with the strength, the ability to heal, to hunt, to kill, unlike anything man or beast had ever known.
His life after that moment was hazy, even to him. Years of cunning intelligence and instinctive calculation was all he remembered. The strength of the hold the monster had on him had been brutally determined to see to an ultimate goal. Ensuring Cat’s safety. He’d collected debts for Gideon to eventually cash on. He’d searched out those Breeds and humans he sensed would mark her world and ensured they owed the Bengal in ways that ensured he would never be revealed to those that could be a danger.
Years of blood, savagery, plotting and the execution of goals that reached years into a future he’d instinctively sensed would evolve. He’d lived, a prison himself of such primal instinct that who and what he was became all but obliterated. Until she sent the email begging him to come to her. And he had come to her as she slept. Kneeling at her bed, the stripes easing, the savage neon amber of his eyes becoming a wild green once again, the pupils returning, the whites of his eyes once more present. Only in that moment had Gideon returned.
Thirteen years of hell that they’d both endured to bring them to that moment. To the second her eyes had opened, the animal she kept caged within her rising as she slept to stare up at him, to lift claw-tipped fingers to touch his face, a little purr rumbling in her chest.
“I’m scared, G,” she whispered, her voice trembling and filled with pain.
Even she hadn’t realized the fears that haunted her until she felt them, smelled them through his memories.
“I’m here, my little cat,” he whispered to her. “Be strong for me, just a little while longer. Hold on for me.
Because he’d known what she hadn’t. The animal’s rage at Claire’s presence and the inability to meld both human and animal senses completely without destroying the spirit that protected Cat’s identity.