The furor had been ignored by Cat in favor of Mating Heat and learning as much as possible about the parents she was about to meet.
Helena and Kenneth Graymore were strongly in favor of Breed awareness and rights. Kenneth, CEO and majority shareholder in a company deemed a family legacy spanning generations of Graymores, was not just a heavy contributor to the Breeds but also one of their biggest clients. The Breeds’ reputation for providing reliable, loyal protection and security personnel was unsurpassed and highly depended upon in the Graymore businesses.
Helena Graymore had stepped into fighting for the rights of Breed children and the Breed community’s refusal to subject the few offspring and living Breed children freed from the labs from further research or experiments labeled as evaluations. She’d recently taken her fight to Europe, where Breeds were denied visas to travel and forced to submit to “evaluations” periodically, which were rumored to be as invasive as the research done before they were freed from the labs.
In past years the growing tensions between America and its allies over America’s laws of providing unquestioned Breed asylum had been growing slowly and stories of the steadily increasing cruelties in the evaluations were strengthening. Helena Graymore had even been accused of providing such Breeds safe transportation from those European countries and secreting them into America.
Those accusations were vehemently denied, but Graeme assured Cat they were indeed true.
Now landing atop the temporary offices of the Western Division of the Bureau of Breed Affairs, Cat had to tell herself once again, that Graeme knew what he was doing. Her parents couldn’t help but love her, he’d sworn.
? ? ?
She’d prayed that was true, because in learning she had parents, she already loved them. It would be devastating to learn she was a disappointment to them in any way.
? ? ?
Kenneth Graymore wanted to pace the office that Director Breaker had shown him and his wife to. The richly appointed room was more of a large sitting room. A comfortable sofa and two wing-backed chairs sat facing a radiant fireplace that would give a real wood fire a run for its money in ambiance and warmth. To one side of the sitting area was a dark wood dining area and food-warming station. To the other side a pool table as well as several video game stations.
Soft, thick carpeting covered the area and heavy specially developed curtains one of the Graymore companies had produced to protect against electronic intrusion were pulled firmly over the large windows that looked out over the desert behind the third floor of the renovated warehouse.
Sitting with his wife on the sofa, his arm curled firmly around her shoulders he stared at the picture she held of the young woman they were about to meet.
Helena had cried and raged for weeks after Foster had come to them, a friend they had believed dead for over a decade, to tell them the story of the child they believed died and the experiments that ultimately saved her life and endangered it further.
She looked like her mother. Catarina and Helena could have been sisters, nearly twins, they looked so much alike. She was the mini-me Helena had laughingly called the baby before her birth. The horrifying truth that their pediatrician had known of the genetic defect their baby carried and hadn’t treated it as it could have been treated in vitro, enraged him. That particular problem could be cured before birth if caught in time, but not after birth. To enable Phillip Brandenmore to acquire a child with such a problem and experiment upon it, the defect had been covered up in the fetal tests and hidden as though it hadn’t been detected.
Dr. Foster hadn’t hid the truth from them when he came to them. He’d given them the files, answered their questions directly and his own tears had fallen when Helena had collapsed into horrified cries at the knowledge of the pain their baby had suffered. Had it not been for the two Wolf Breed bodyguards that accompanied, one he claimed was his wife, Kenneth would have killed him with his bare hands.
Benjamin Foster hadn’t been a friend, more an acquaintance, but he too had conspired with Brandenmore, albeit by force, but still, he’d never warned them or in any way tried to let them know their child was alive and suffering.
“She’s all grown up,” Helena whispered, not for the first time. “They changed her, Ken, made her a Breed. What if she doesn’t like us now? What if she thinks we’re weak?”