“Who says we have to tell him?” Dane grinned as he replaced his slim cigar between his teeth. “Ryan, I’m going to have to keep you away from my mother. That crush you have on her is going to get you killed, besides the fact it makes you too eager to spill all our secrets.”
Ryan grinned. “She’s a fine-looking woman, Dane.”
“She’s my mother.” The warning glare didn’t help much.
A sigh, one filled with regret, left Ryan. “There are days I wonder about that one…”
CHAPTER 20
She was pregnant. Being pregnant wasn’t something that an assassin should take lightly, Harmony was certain. It was something that frankly terrified her. And she hadn’t been terrified in a very long time.
As Jonas and his crew, lawyer included, left the office and flitted away in their spiffy little black heli-jet, Harmony moved to the couch across the room and sat down wearily.
Strangely, she didn’t feel any different. Shouldn’t she feel pregnant or something? Shouldn’t the world look different or her body feel different?
As Lance stalked to his desk and threw himself into his chair, Harmony leaned her head back against the cushions and contemplated. She didn’t like contemplating. She didn’t like being stuck between a rock and a hard place, but that was where she was. Thanks to Jonas.
Brother. She gritted her teeth at the thought of their kinship. Then ground them as the logical part of her brain agreed with him. She would have done the same thing. Protecting the Breeds was a precarious job at the moment, and if this mating heat/aging crap got out, then they were all screwed. Hell, it freaked her out, when she wasn’t one huge raging hormone intent on getting up close and personal with Lance. Not that she had really allowed herself to think about it to this point. Though dammit, she really should have thought about it by now.
She was so screwed. And not necessarily in a good way.
She was pregnant. She had another life to protect. A child. Lance’s child. How was she going to protect herself, her child and Lance? As long as Death was alive, then danger would be drawn to her.
And yet she couldn’t countenance betraying Dane either. It didn’t matter why he might or might not have been there to rescue her through the past ten years. The fact was that he had. He had cared for her, nursed her through potentially fatal wounds and given her a place to hide when she needed to heal.
He had cared about her. For whatever his reasons, whatever he might want from her, he did care for her. She might be madder than hell at him right now, but she knew that much.
God, could things get any worse? Alonzo was protesting outside the doors, Jonas was determined to capture the only friend she had ever known, and she was mated to a man determined not to let her go. And there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that Lance would tie her up and lock her in one of his damned cells if that was what it took to keep her there.
Pregnant.
She laid her hand carefully over her abdomen, frowning as she tried to make sense of that. Evidently the hormonal therapies weren’t worth taking. They hadn’t stopped the heat and they hadn’t stopped conception. All they had done was keep her from running. And she would have run, wouldn’t she?
Okay, so she wouldn’t have run. She felt like kicking something. From the first night she met Lance she had been hooked and she knew it. Mating heat be damned, the man knew how to touch, how to hold, and how to make a woman addicted without her stupid hormones adding to it.
There had to be a way out of this. A way to give Jonas what he wanted without betraying Dane, and a way to ensure that Dane stayed safe. It wasn’t possible that he was the first Leo, no matter what Jonas claimed.
Most of the electronic files were encrypted, but the information on the first Leo had been hard copy. Pages and pages of genetic reports and training profiles. Unless there was more on those hard drives, within the files she had never been able to crack.
She wasn’t exactly a hacker. Electronics, unless they ran a security system or a weapon, weren’t her thing. Computers were a pain in the ass, and the handheld models just made her crazy. And cell phones were for people with a death wish. They could be hacked, traced and bugged, as she often tried to tell Dane. Therefore, she didn’t even have a cell phone to call him on. And she really needed to talk to him now. Because she wanted to know just what the fucking hell he was planning. Maybe she could slide into the connecting office and make a quick call…
“Not on your life.”
Harmony lifted her head and stared back at her mate. That alpha tone just made a girl’s nerve endings stand up and take notice, but really, this was no time for it.
“Stupid wind thing,” she half snarled. “That is so wrong, Lance. That’s worse than mind reading.”
“Get used to it.”
She lowered her brows at the grump that had taken the place of her normally indulgent lover. He sat, forearms braced on the desk as he went through a file. A thick file. Her eyes narrowed as he turned a page and she caught a name. Was that her file?
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to figure out how to de-fang that bastard brother of yours,” he growled.
Harmony shrugged. “Dane. But he’s not the first Leo.”
“No shit!” Lance snarled, glaring back at her. “How do you know?”
Harmony rolled her eyes as she surged to her feet.
“For one thing, Dane isn’t mated. The first Leo is mated.”
“And you know this how?”
She tucked her hands in the back pocket of her jeans as she considered her options in the face of that question.
“Harmony?” There was that damned alpha tone again.
“Well, according to what you’ve said, once you’ve mated you don’t have sex with anyone else. Right?”
“Yes.” He snapped the word off.
“Well.” She shifted her shoulders, suddenly uncomfortable. “If Dane is the first Leo, then he broke that little rule.”
“Not possible,” he growled. “Braden says the males can’t even get ‘interested’ in other women. Now explain how Dane broke that little rule.”
She pursed her lips. “Well. Because.” She cleared her throat. This was damned uncomfortable. “I’ve slept with him.”
“Goddammit, I fucking knew it!” he snarled as he slammed the file closed. “And why didn’t you give this piece of information earlier? When it would have defused Jonas?”
“Because, maybe, it’s none of his business,” she snarled back, revealing her canines. Okay, now he was just going to piss her off.
“And you think it wouldn’t have helped if he knew Dane wasn’t the first Leo?”
“Well, I don’t know that for sure.” She frowned. “What happens if a mate dies? Though really, I don’t think he’s mated.” She was babbling. Harmony Lancaster, aka Death, was turning into a twit. She snapped her mouth closed.
“Look, Jonas isn’t going to just stand down,” she informed him as he glowered back at her. “Once he gets something into that knot head of his, it stays there. He was like that in the labs and he hasn’t changed since.”
“And calling your precious Dane will help this how?”
Harmony licked her lips. “Well. I could tell him what’s going on.”
“And this would help us how?” His voice had roughened, grown angrier.
“He could hide us both. Just until we figure this out…”
Lance dropped his head.
“He would do it, Lance,” she whispered. “Just until the baby…” She swallowed past a rush of tears. “Until it’s safe.”
She felt her hands trembling, felt emotion swamping her. Oh God, she couldn’t stand this.