The Breed: Nora's Choice (3 page)

            “Just kill
me!” she screamed, “as long as I have strength in my bones and breath in my
lungs I’ll never lay still for you.”

            She met his
eyes then, not afraid of him. Nora had never been afraid of physical pain, and
he had already destroyed everything she would have suffered to protect. All
that was left for her was death.

            “Oh yes you
will,” he clamped his fingers around her jaw, pressing hard into her flesh, “I
am all you have left in this world girl. Your mother and father are gone,
Jonathan and his sniveling twat of a wife are gone. All of them tried to keep
us apart because they’re filthy humans who have no idea who I really am. You
are my mate, we are bonded for life, and you will give me what is mine. You
belong to me.”

            With his
fingers still digging into her cheeks he pushed her down hard into the water.
She kicked out wildly as her fingers dug into his flesh, trying to pry him off
of her.

            With all of
her focus on trying to reach air again, she hardly noticed that his left hand
was back to crudely yanking at her night gown.

            Once he
finally had her naked he let go of her, and she exploded out of the water
gasping for breath.

            He made her
wash herself until her skin was rubbed raw. He wanted all of the dried blood
off of her, none of which was her own, so that she would be perfect for him.

            Every time
she stopped washing he pushed her head back down under the water until all the
tension and struggle left her body, only allowing her air again when she was
limp and near unconsciousness.

            Nora let
out a roar of rage at the memory, smashing her fists against anything they came
into contact with.

            Only after
she felt warm blood sliding over her hands and down her arms, did she finally
turn the shower on and sit, letting the water soothe her fully clothed body
under the spray.

               
“I
can’t believe you’re following her,” Casstiel sighed into the phone.

            “She is up
to something, I’m going to find out who she’s reporting to,” Sebastian spoke
quickly as he followed Ayla down to the underground parking garage.

            “She’s just
doing what she does best, trying to figure out some gossip to trade off to
someone later. I think you are giving her too much credit,” Cass replied.

            “No you’re
giving her too little. There’s not much I find positive about her, but she is a
perfect predator,” Sebastian argued quietly.

            Casstiel
hadn’t spent nearly as much time with Ayla as he had, he wouldn’t understand
that as much as she tried to play herself off as nothing more than a brainless
twit she was actually a chess player who used her sex and charms to move men
around exactly the way she wanted them.

            It was true
that he didn’t respect her as a woman, but he had just as little respect for
the men that were so easily manipulated and used by her.

            “Just tell
me the news on what you found and never mind what I’m doing,” he snapped,
annoyed that his brother would question him.

            “It’s a
list of color coded locations, along with a list of women’s names,” Cass
finally answered, clearly giving up on trying to talk him out of anything. 

            “That’s
it?” he asked coldly as Ayla headed to a black Jaguar and sat on its hood,
“sounds like another trap.”

            “You and
Kain should be better friends,” Cass scoffed, “Jax and Quinn just left to check
it out, so we should have more information soon. It could be something big.”

            “Doubtful.
Keep me updated,” Sebastian knelt down, wedging himself between two SUVs’ to
watch her.

            “Since you
don’t have any plans tonight, how about you check out the second location on
the list? It’s only 3 hours north of you,” Cass suggested, rifling through
paperwork.

            “Give me
the address,” Sebastian scowled.

            As he
memorized the coordinates to Pines Forest, North Carolina he noticed a figure
slowly making his way towards them from the opposite end of the garage.

            “Here’s our
mystery person now,” he whispered into the phone, trying to make out the face
of the man that had sent a spy after him.

            “Please
tell me you’re not going to watch her have sex,” Cass laughed, “I never pegged
you as a voyeur, but I guess everyone’s got to have a fetish.”

            “Don’t even
joke,” he snapped, disgusted.

            The man
walked with a swagger full of self-importance, his shoulders thrown back to
puff out his chest, his chin tilted upwards. It had to be someone higher up in
the embassy to be so cocky.

            “Holy hell,
it’s Marcus,” Sebastian couldn’t hold back his shock as the bald head and proud
ginger beard that were Marcus’ signature, came into view.

            “Well there
you go, he sent her to sniff around and figure out what you’re doing in his
territory,” Casstiel was completely unbothered by the news, “you really should
have at least given him some sort of a reason for being there.”

            “Why would
a man of Marcus’ intelligence and power be slumming it with her? If he really
wanted to know why I was here he could have demanded a meeting with me, or came
to me as a man and asked outright,” he shook his head, unconvinced.

            She had
offered to be his spy, but perhaps she was already hard at work spying for
someone else. Sebastian’s instincts were rarely wrong, and no matter what his
brother said, right now his instincts were telling him that these two were
teaming up for far more than trying to figure out why he had encroached on
their territory.

            Tensely he
watched as the two exchanged greetings and struck up a conversation. With the
tone of seriousness between them, they certainly hadn’t met here for a social
call.

            He tried
reading their lips, but with the SUV’s blocking him it was no good.

            “What is
that noise?” he asked, irritated by the obnoxious scraping noise coming from
Casstiel’s end of the phone.

            “Oh that?
Tessa just found out her parents are coming here for Thanksgiving and she’s
having a heart attack. That noise would be her dragging a ladder so that she
can scrub the walls. My mate is an absolute lunatic,” he laughed. 

            “Well it
looks like I’m done here,” Sebastian suddenly sneered in disgust.

            “Finally
realized she’s just a silly pawn for Marcus?” Cass asked, lifting the ladder
out of Tessa’s hands.

            “No.
They’ve finished their conversation, and she’s stripping on the hood of his
car,” he shook his head.

 Marcus
had fallen so far.

~

“That’s
your car?” Jax gaped in horror at Quinn’s pride and joy.

            The old
rusted jeep wrangler was the first and only car he had ever bought. The paint
was chipped, the entire back end was covered in bumper stickers about zombies
and video games from his teenage years, but he had scraped pennies together for
three years to buy it, and it had never once failed him. 

            “What?”
Quinn laughed, “I love my baby, ole’ blue.”

            “You have
got to be kidding me? Does it still run?” Jax kicked at one of the tires.

            “Like a
champ,” he patted the hood, “just shut up and get in.”

            The moment
he started the ignition however, a searing pain ripped through his chest. He
gasped in pain feeling like his heart was on fire.

            “You
alright man?” he heard Jax’ concerned voice somewhere next to him.

            “I don’t
know, heart burn I guess,” he rubbed his fist over his heart, trying to relieve
the pain.

            He had the
feeling that Nora was upset somewhere; like she was furious and scared at the
same time.

            Of course
she would be, with the way she reacted to him upstairs, he was probably lucky
to be alive. He thought about going back inside to try and talk to her, maybe
smooth things over, but only an hour had passed since she had angrily rejected
him, going to see her now would only make things worse.

            “You sure?”
Jax stared at him.

            “Yeah, I
knew Thai food was a bad idea for lunch,” he brushed off the concern and put
his game face on. 

            The drive
to upstate New York ran smoothly, the farther away from the embassy they got,
the more the vice grip on his heart lessened.

            Finally
they pulled off a country road and killed the engine. Roughly four miles off
into the distance they could just make out the silhouette of an old farm house.
It had to be the location.

            There was
very little tree cover nearby, and with the sun blazing overhead to expose
them, they would have to get low to make it close without being caught.

            Silently
they both dropped down to their bellies and began army crawling.

            Stopping
half a mile before the house they chose their watch point.  Sitting up was not
an option, so instead they laid flat and completely still as the midday sun
beat down on them, watching and waiting.

            And
waiting.

            Quinn had
counted the number of withered roof tiles three times over before Jax finally
let out an impatient sigh.

            “I hate
sitting around like this,” he grumbled, shifting his weight, “especially when
there’s nothing going on. This house has got to be abandoned.”

            Quinn gave
a non committal grunt and went back to wondering what Nora was doing at the
moment; probably putting barbed wire around her apartment and coming up with a
plan to kill him in his sleep. Neither of which would come close to stopping
him.

            “So how are
things going with Nora?” Jax asked slyly, as if he’d been waiting for a good
opportunity to bring it up.

            “Just
fucking great,” he shook his head, “you really are a gossip queen, no wonder
the chicks love you so much.”

            “Oh yeah,
because Nora not wanting you is SUCH a shocking piece of information,” he
rolled his eyes, “I’m sure everyone at the embassy is an uproar over it. By the
way, the ‘chicks’ like me so much because I’m a good friend to them.”

            Quinn was
lining up another sarcastic come back when a thought struck him. 

            “Hey lemme
ask you something?” he felt like he had struck gold, “why is she doing this?
She have a nasty break up or something? Does she hate all men, or is it just
me?”

            Jax cocked
his head to the side and gave him a hard stare, as if he was unsure how to
respond.

            “I’m not a
hundred percent sure, I’ve never asked her myself, but I have heard all the
rumors,” he finally replied, looking as if the decision to answer had weighed
heavily on him.

            Quinn was
caught a little off guard by ‘all the rumors’, but wanted to at least know what
everyone else did. If he didn’t know why she was resisting so hard, how could
he fight her on it?

            “What’s the
rumors? I need to know,” he replied firmly.

            Jax
suddenly looked nervous, obviously regretting that he had opened his big mouth
again.

            “What? Was
she married? Does she have a kid? How bad could it be?” Jax’ reaction confused
him more than the fact that there were rumors about his mate.

            “You need
to really think about if you want to hear this,” he was more serious than Quinn
had ever seen him, “because it’s not something you can un hear once it’s said.”

            A sickening
feeling hit him in the stomach. This wasn’t some frivolous little break up,
this was something serious, something that had jaded her completely and would
probably destroy him to hear.

            He needed
to know. No matter how much he didn’t want to, he
had
to know. Letting
out a deep breath he tried to relax. He still hadn’t gained complete control
over his transformations and if he lost his cool out here there could be a
whole house full of hunters just waiting for a slaughter.

            Jax stared
at him appraisingly, clearly hoping he would chose not to hear the story.

            “Just tell
me,” he bit out, already agitated at the thought of his mate suffering or in
pain.

            “The rumor
is that she had a stalker,” he shook his head as he spoke, “Memphis’ son.”

            A stalker
from the Breed. Quinn could feel that this story was going to be worse than he
imagined. Breed men could be unrelenting, their instincts animalistic, their
feelings untamable.

            “He mistook
her for his mate, and when she wouldn’t join him willingly, he… forced her to,”
Jax finished quietly.

            Quinn was
already fighting for self control, his body shaking with rage. Some bastard had
dared to force his woman to… to…

“What
did he do to her?” he growled out, his voice blazing with anger.

            “This was a
mistake,” Jax tried to back off the subject, “we’ll talk about this another
time.”

            Like
lightning Quinn snatched out and grabbed for his throat, his nails digging in
deep.

            “Now,” he
snarled, his eyes glowing red.

            When he
didn’t get an immediate response he squeezed harder until Jax angrily ripped
his fingers away.

            “Fine,” he
gasped for breath, “All I know is he held her hostage for over twelve hours. I
don’t know what he did to her, but when they finally found her he had turned
her into a werewolf.”

            Had he
raped her? Tortured her? Hatred was consuming him, his body on fire. His mate…
the only woman who could ever have his heart… someone had dared harm her? Some
steaming pile of shit had scarred her, making her afraid of him and their bond?

            “Who?” He
spat out, too furious to fully ask the questions his mind was now obsessing
over. Where was this fucker and how soon could he kill him?

            “Memphis
and his pack killed him the minute they found out what he’d done,” Jax replied,
his features sagging with sympathy.

            Quinn
roared in anger, no longer caring if there was an ambush waiting. Of course she
wouldn’t want to be with him, some animal had brutalized her and forced her
into a life she never wanted. If he were in her shoes he wouldn’t want anything
to do with the Breed, or men, and especially not with the bond.