His mate.
Stroking the heavy strands of hair that drifted over her pillow, he couldn’t help but marvel at the fact that he even had a mate, especially this exquisite creature. When he’d first programmed the genetic serum for her he’d never imagined that connection he’d felt to her could be something so complex as what he felt now.
Hell, he’d been eleven years old, his mind filled with so many formulas and so much knowledge that insanity had already set in. No child, even a Breed child, should have such a capacity for decoding something so complex as the human and animal genome being researched in Brandenmore’s labs.
He’d known not just how to decode it, though; he’d known how to code it as well. The complexity of identifying and mapping the unique DNA strands was something researchers who had studied it all their adult lives still didn’t understand. Even Dr. Foster, one of the most renowned geneticists in his field, had been unable see what Graeme saw in each DNA strand under research. And even Graeme had known that 90 percent of what he knew, he’d never be able to reveal.
That knowledge had enabled him to guide Dr. Foster in the direction he needed to go for Cat’s therapies, though. As painful as they were, as agonizing as they had become, it was all that would save her life.
The genetic abnormality she had been born with would have killed her within days. She’d been missing a gene vital to hormonal and immunity development. One he’d been able to replace with the Bengal Breed genetics.
By the time she was eight, he’d known that getting her out of the research center was imperative. Like Judd’s, her development would progress in ways science, as it stood, would never be able to understand.
He’d planned everything with such precise detail. Everything but the bullets ricocheting off a boulder and slamming into his chest, thigh and abdomen. He hadn’t planned for that, nor had he planned for the transfusion forced on him.
His Breed instincts had been unable to process the strength of the forced bond that began snapping into place. And he’d known Cat as he knew no other. The only way to force her away from him was to make her hate him.
There had been so much left to do to ensure her safety.
Then fate had stepped in once again and the Genetics Council soldiers had recaptured him and returned him to the research center.
Forcing back those memories, he glared beyond the opened doors, forcing back the volatile rage that filled him whenever he allowed himself to revisit that particular hell.
Cat shifted next to him, rolling to her side before sitting up on the edge of the bed.
Frowning, he watched as she rose from the bed, dragging the sheet along with her and wrapping it around her nakedness almost protectively. Inhaling slowly, he felt his Breed senses suddenly rioting, the insanity that was never more than a breath away blinking awake in sudden, furious awareness.
Graeme was out of the bed instantly, striding to her as she reached the balcony doors. Gripping her shoulders and turning her to him, he stared into eyes filled with bleak bitterness as he realized the scent of his mate was no longer present.
This wasn’t his mate.
“Claire?” Where had she come from? He hadn’t scented her in months, had begun to suspect she no longer existed.
She existed, though.
Cat’s scent was so subtle, so diluted by the awareness of the protective spirit that existed within her, that she almost wasn’t there.
“Aren’t you so handsome,” she said wistfully, staring up at him with a curiosity so lacking in anything sexual that he could only ache for the life she’d never had. “But I knew from Cat’s memories of you that you would be. She’s very lucky.”
“Why are you here?” The deepening of his voice, the rage building in his senses, was the only warning he ever had of the monster he could become beginning to make itself known.
Somehow, she sensed that creature and the threat it could be.
“Don’t hurt me.” Fear flashed across her face. “Please. I’m here for Cat, I promise.”
The stripes were beginning to shadow his face, his neck.
Releasing her abruptly, Graeme stalked to the other side of the room, desperate now to push back that part of him that could rise with merciless intent to destroy anything, anyone, that stood between him and Cat.
He wouldn’t last long. His instincts were rioting and yet he knew that releasing that rage would terrify this timid shadow of a child that should have been allowed to pass when her body could no longer sustain life.
The stripes eased away. The grip on his control became firmer before he turned back to her.
“Cat’s mine.” He fought to keep his voice gentle, unthreatening. “She has to return.”
“She’s only asleep.” The scent of Claire’s fear was like a cloak surrounding her. “She doesn’t know I’m here. She can’t know. Promise me. I swear, I’m here for her.”