.Chapter 1.

Broken Butte, New Mexico

Eight Years Later

Broken Butte had changed, Katelyn Chavos thought as the black Tech-Corp SUV she rode in entered the city limits. There was now a large, chic hotel with attached shopping and a conference center as well as several other popular tourist stays on the outskirts, between Broken Butte, New Mexico, and Window Rock, Arizona. A mall outside of town, updated sheriff's department, as well as a sleek new city police department and courthouse.

The dusty town she remembered had all but been transformed and appeared to be thriving. Even the diner the Santiagos had once owned was gone, and in its place a chain restaurant known for its American-Italian food.

From the file she'd gone over on the flight there from San Francisco she knew that the Breed groups settling in the area, the new Western Division of the Bureau of Breed Affairs in Window Rock, Arizona, along with the accompanying businesses to support the Breed influx and their needs, had transformed many of the poor counties along the Navajo Nation reservation land and nearby towns.

Prosperity was beginning to show itself not just in the communities surrounding Window Rock, but all through Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, where Wolf, Coyote and Lion Breed communities had begun to spring up.

The majority of many of the Breed bloodlines were found to have contained a high concentration of genetics from the area. The young women kidnapped from the tribal communities in the decades of Breed research and development had come from this area. Their connection to the land and what was considered psychic talents were prized by the Genetics Council scientists who had been given free rein to choose the young women used to carry the fetuses created from the genetic modifications.

The horrors and atrocities committed on the women taken from the area were often reviewed in the press as well as by governments around the world. Lest anyone ever forget the monstrous acts of the scientists who created the Breeds.

They were nearing the twenty-year mark of Breed knowledge and awareness. The day Callan Lyons stood before the world with his small pack of Feline Breeds and proclaimed their demand for freedom wouldn't be forgotten for decades, if ever.

And the closer that twenty-year mark had come, the more Katelyn had seen interconnected events and possibilities and knew that soon, possibly too soon, change would be coming. She wasn't certain which side the scales would tip in that, but she knew neither Breeds nor non-Breeds would be unaffected.

"Mr. Parker asked me to remind you that he and Mrs. Parker will join you at the hotel restaurant for dinner this evening," the Bengal Breed driving the SUV reminded her as he glanced in the rearview mirror.

This Bengal still retained a shadow of striping along his rough-hewn, handsome features, an indicator that he had been one of the last to be freed from the labs some ten years before.

Bengals were most often testy, hard to get along with and exceptionally brutal in battle. Thankfully, this one was rather polite and strikingly handsome to boot.

Breed males weren't classically handsome. They were rugged, the strong bones and angles in their faces giving them the ultimate bad-boy look. Their gazes were penetrating, often with hair that sometimes resembled the animal their genetics came from, and they normally wore it a bit overly long. Their voices could often hold a latent growl or become low and resonate with sex and sin.

The Breed females, few though there were, were absolutely beautiful.

Katelyn had yet to meet one over five feet six inches. They were delicate and appeared vulnerable and in need of protection. They were anything but. They'd been honed in the fires of cruelty and sexual abuse, considered no more than playthings for the upper echelon Council ranks or the soldiers that ran the labs where they were created.

"Thank you, Drew. I'll contact Mr. Parker myself and let him know when I'll be available this evening," she told the Bengal as she glanced up from the electronic pad and the files she was going over. "Would you slow down as we drive by the office site? We won't be stopping; I'd just like to see how it's progressing."

"Of course, Ms. Chavos," he murmured, slowing the SUV to a crawl as he turned up the side street the Tech-Corp offices sat on.

The three-story white stucco-and-redbrick building sat amid several office buildings, rising a story higher than the others and appearing stately, waiting to be finished and filled with activity. Sun-dimming windows gleamed beneath the harsh sunlight drawing her gaze and her need to investigate the interior.

"Looks quite nice," she said in satisfaction as she sat back in her seat and closed out the files on the electronic pad.

She would get out by herself and walk along the streets to absorb the changes in the town one day soon. She doubted there were many people she'd recognize, or who would recognize her. She'd changed, Katelyn reflected; she was still different as she'd once been accused, but that difference was now buried and the world only saw a woman confident and certain of her place in the world.

"Should we go to the hotel now?" her driver asked politely.

Katelyn gave him a small smile. "Of course. Thank you for taking the time for me."

He shot her a look of surprise through the rearview mirror but said nothing else. Within minutes they were pulling beneath the hotel entrance, the shaded awning relieving the bright sunlight that would have spilled onto the dark gray and cream tiles that lined the entrance floors.

"Ms. Chavos." A hotel steward opened her door and lifted the leather briefcase from the seat next to her then handed it off to her driver, extending his hand to help her out.

Katelyn stepped from the vehicle, the four-inch heels she wore with the cherry red snug business skirt that ended just above her knees and white chiffon sleeveless blouse giving her the added height she always felt she needed. Not that the four inches helped around Breeds. They were tall enough, broad enough, to remind any woman exactly how feminine they were, she thought with an edge of amusement.

"Your suite's ready, ma'am," the steward, Bert, the name tag proclaimed, assured her as he led the way through the entrance and motioned to a porter to collect her bags. "Should you need anything, please let us know, and we'll make sure it's delivered immediately."

They moved to the bank of elevators where he pushed the button inset between two cubicles, the doors opening immediately.

The ride to the top floor was made quickly and soon the elevator doors were sliding open, the cool, pristine hallway opening before them.

Katelyn could feel the exhaustion she'd been putting off for the past week catching up with her. She wanted in her room, in one of the comfortable silk pajama sets she'd packed, and stretched out on a bed for a nap.

She'd been going full tilt for the past two years as she prepared for the move to Broken Butte, coordinating and overseeing the completion of both the Tech-Corp production facility as well as the offices. Vetting construction companies and future employees for the new Tech-Corp location and making certain everything went smoothly was a time-consuming job. The agreement between Tech-Corp, Breeds and the Navajo Nation made things doubly difficult at times. And if she thought Tech-Corp was tough when it came to security, well, they had nothing on the Breeds.

Tech-Corp itself had a strict vetting process, but only Breeds required the many DNA samples she'd been advised she'd need from not just those employees, but herself as well.

Blood, urine and saliva swabs as well as a vaginal swab that would be taken in the Bureau of Breed Affairs medical facility rather than by a private doctor.

The background checks were completed, thankfully, and she had only to go over a few of them with the man who had taken her under his wing eight years, Graeme Parker, before submitting them to the Bureau when she arrived for her appointment at the medical facility. Everything was running smoothly, without a wrinkle in sight.

And that alone was worrying.

Within minutes a porter arrived with her luggage and placed it on the luggage racks awaiting them in the bedroom. Tipped, smiling in pleasure and assuring her all she had to do was call for him, he left the suite, and Katelyn slid the secure lock on the doors in place before sighing in relief.

God, she needed to sleep.

She felt that she could sleep a week and it still wouldn't be enough to renew the energy she needed some days.

"Hello, love."

Katelyn froze.

She knew that voice, smoother than sex and sin and flavored with a dark, heady rasp.

Please, God, what had Graeme done?

Releasing the doorknobs to the double doors, Katelyn turned slowly and stared at the man standing in the middle of the living area, close to the bar and balcony doors.

Six-four, dressed in a white dress shirt, sleeves rolled back on his forearms and tan khakis with his ever-present scuffed brown boots. His green gaze was somber, the color almost emerald though shot with warm amber tones in his sun-bronzed face, his thick dark blond hair falling over his brow and growing nearly to his shirt collar.

The ultimate bad boy, she'd always thought.

He should have been a born a Breed.

"Did they put me in the wrong room?" She fought to ignore how her heart raced, how memories tried to push to the surface from that deep, dark place she'd confined them to.

"And here not even a hello, or How have you been, Dane?" he asked, his voice somber. "It's been a long time, love. Far too long."

It hadn't been long...