“Stop hitting him.” It was hard to breathe for the pain in her ribs, the agony streaking up her arm and the fear she could feel crawling inside her. “You knock him out and he’s going to be dead weight.”

“So?” Tamber sneered, her plain face twisting into a grimace of anger. “Who really gives a fuck? He’s going to be wishing he were dead by the time General Tallant finishes the first stage of training. Let him get used to the pain now.”

There was a smug glint in her eye as her gaze flickered to David.

“Let him go,” Scheme whispered. “I have something more important than the kid. Something my father will want much more than he wants that child.” She waved her fingers toward him.

“There’s nothing you could have,” Tamber snapped.

And Scheme prayed for forgiveness. She sent the prayer winging to heaven and begged for protection. Not for herself.

“I know where the first Leo is,” she whispered painfully.

It was a secret she had sworn to herself she would never reveal. If the Leo wanted to reveal himself, then that was his business. It wasn’t her place to do so. No one else knew the secret; it was information she had destroyed long ago. It was information she had thought she would die before revealing.

“Shut up, Scheme!” David suddenly cried out. “Daddy’s going to be pissed.”

Tamber tangled her fingers in his hair and pulled. Hard.

“You’re lying,” she snarled.

“Breeds can smell a lie, Tamber,” she reminded her harshly. “You know I’m not lying.”

“Then you’ll just have to live. I’ll take you both.” She leveled the gun at Scheme. “Move.”

Scheme shook her head. “It’s not going to happen. Let David go and I’ll come with you. But I’m not moving as long as you have him. He’d be better off dead than with the general. And if you kill him, you’ll have to kill me.”

Her gaze flickered with indecision.

“The first Leo and his mate, Tamber. They’re both still alive.”

Her eyes gleamed.

“Let David go.”

She loosened her hold as she waved the gun to indicate that Scheme should move back.

David jerked away from her.

“Man, Daddy is going to be so mad at you. He’s going to roar,” he said and sighed, stumbling.

“David, get down the mountain,” Scheme ordered harshly. “Now. Go.”

He stumbled again, righted himself and started running down the track, glancing at her over his shoulder as the low, vibrating hum of a heli-jet on stealth mode began to fill the air.

“Let’s go.” Tamber jumped to her, grabbed her arm and began pulling her back up the track. “Bitch. You are so dead anyway. And I’ll just come back for him.”

A lion roared. Scheme’s gaze jerked to the side, watching as a huge, four-legged, sharp-toothed, fully grown male lion opened his mouth and roared a challenge before disappearing into the brush a second before Tamber fired.

There wasn’t a chance in hell Scheme was going any farther. She knew these lions, remembered the reports her father had received on them. They were trained to attack and kill intruders. The only time they wouldn’t attack was if the victim was on the ground, unarmed. Tamber’s bullet would hurt a hell of a lot less than those teeth. Scheme wasn’t going anywhere near that border and she wasn’t running any farther.

She shuddered before stumbling and letting herself fall to the ground. Her arms went instinctively over her head as she prayed not to feel the mercilessly large, sharp teeth of the predator.

“No, you don’t,” Tamber screamed, her foot driving into her ribs, sending shafts of agony to tear through Scheme’s body. “Get up.”

Oh God. That hurt bad enough.

Snarling, Scheme reach out, gripping Tamber’s foot before the second blow fell, struggling to stay on the ground and at the same time to keep the bitch from breaking her bones. Dammit, this was not the way that party was supposed to end tonight.

“Whore, I’ll kill you,” Tamber shrieked as she managed to kick free.

A hard punch to Scheme’s stomach came as a gunshot splintered her hearing and black agony raced through her mind. Better to die here.

CHAPTER 30

Tanner rounded the curve in the old logging road, cursing as he threw the cycle to the side and jumped off in a crouch to grab David and haul him to the side of the road, out of the way of the cycles moving in behind him.

“Get her, Uncle Tanner,” he was screaming, crying, his bruised face twisted in fear and anger as he struggled in Tanner’s arms. “Tamber’s going to kill that lady. She’s going to kill her.”

Turning, Tanner saw Callan pull his own cycle to a stop, jump from the seat and run to David.

“Tamber has Scheme ahead,” Tanner yelled, as the other bikes skidded to a stop. From the corner of his eye he watched Dawn’s Lionesses take off on foot around the mountain as Dawn jerked her rifle from the scabbard at the side of her bike.

Pushing David into his father’s arms, Tanner took off at a run. He could smell them now. Scheme’s pain and rage sliced into his senses, as did Tamber’s killing rage.

A second later his roars followed the lions’ as he watched Tamber aim the deadly pistol at Scheme’s head.

“No!” He was too far away. He couldn’t save her. He wasn’t going to make it in time.

The shot came out of nowhere. He was within twenty feet of them when the bullet tore into the center of Tamber’s forehead, throwing her backward as her eyes widened in disbelief.

“Scheme!” He raced for her as the lions converged on the area, roaring, enraged as they paced the perimeter, the sound of the approaching heli-jet warning them of the danger coming.

“Spread out,” Dawn was yelling to the female Lion Breeds she commanded. “I want that heli-jet down. Go!”

They all packed small, cylindrical rocket launchers on their backs, which they tore free as they ran to take up defensive positions.

“Scheme.” Tanner fell to her side, his hands touching her, moving over her, shaking her as pure terror raced through him.

She was bloody, bruised, but she was alive. He rolled her over carefully, a roar ripping from his soul at the sight of her heavily bruised face and the blood that seeped from a wound in her forehead.

She was breathing. Thank God she was breathing. He buried his face in her neck. She was breathing.

At the sound of gunfire, he waved several Breed Enforcers over to her as he jerked the automatic rifle from his back and began to return fire.

The border was within sight, and somehow Tallant had managed to get his men in place with no advance warning. Which meant he had to have had help in Buffalo Gap.

“Cover her!” he yelled to the enforcers braced around Scheme and returning fire across the ravine. “Nothing touches her.”

Several more raced in to circle her as David was pushed into the circle as well. Tanner covered the circle of men, motioning other enforcers racing in to cover them as well as more gunfire began to echo through the mountain.

“The heli is gunning,” someone yelled as the rapid fire of the heli-jet’s onboard guns began to cut through the forest. “Get them the hell out of here. Now. Dawn, get a bead on that bastard and take out those guns.”

Someone, a Breed, grabbed David as Tanner lifted Scheme carefully in his arms and ran for the chopper landing in the small clearing below.

Behind them, Tanner heard the retort of a mini rocket launcher. The shoulder-held device Dawn and her women carried would pack a punch if one of them managed to hit the heli-jet. The problem was aiming at a moving target and managing to hit it before the rocket’s safety primer self-detonated in the air.

“Jonas, I want Tamber’s body back at Sanctuary,” Tanner snapped into the earwig. “Take no chances that she’s carrying any info.”

There could be hidden chips or any manner of other ways of hiding sensitive information on her body. “I want a complete examination and autopsy of her body.”

“Got it,” Jonas snapped. “Just get Scheme and David out of here. Go.”

Tanner was going. An enforcer tossed David to the pilot while another braced Tanner as he jumped into the cockpit. The doors slammed closed as the chopper was lifting into the air, angling sharply and rising above the trees.

Checking for the heli-jet, Tanner watched in satisfaction as one of Dawn’s rockets hit the tail, swinging it off-kilter before it righted itself and banked away from the area, shuddering before the pilot managed to engage one of the jets.

The heli-jet was still in the air but unable to fight now. It surged around the mountain, disappearing from sight as the Breed chopper maneuvered around the opposite hill and headed back to Sanctuary.

Shaking, Tanner stared down at Scheme, smoothing her hair back from her pale, bruised face as he realized his tears were staining her face.

“She was very brave,” David said beside him. “But you need to train her. She doesn’t know how to fight, Uncle Tanner.”

He didn’t want to train her, but he knew he had to. If she woke up. God, if only she would wake up. He wanted to protect her; he wanted life to be secure and happy; he wanted the threats she faced gone forever.

“I love you,” he whispered against her ear. “Don’t leave me, pretty girl. Please God, don’t leave me.”

It was like being buried alive. Scheme fought for consciousness, moaning as she felt her body being jostled, firepoints of pain erupting along her arms, ribs, legs.

“Easy, Scheme.” Ely’s voice was soothing, comforting as her gloved hands pressed against her stomach. “I just want to make sure there’s no internal bleeding. There are no broken bones, though there’s a hairline crack in your left arm. You took a beating.” Her voice was soft, though husky, as though she had been crying. “I’ve given you more of the hormone to allow for the exam and to give you time to heal.”

Scheme struggled against the blackness surrounding her, a whimper leaving her lips.

“You’re not buried, Scheme,” Tanner whispered at her ear again. “Ely had to place coverings over your eyes while she swabbed around them. They’ll be off in a minute.”

She tried to shake her head. Now. She wanted them off now.

“Easy, pretty girl,” Tanner crooned at her ear. “Would I lie to you, baby?”

In a heartbeat, if he thought it was for her own good.

He chuckled huskily. “I would never lie about this, Scheme.” A light touch to her cheeks, beneath her eyes, her forehead, proved his words. “See, you’re fine. Just in Ely’s lab. You took a beating, baby.”

“David.” She managed to push the word past her lips.

“Safe and sound.” His lips brushed over her ear as his hands smoothed to her bare shoulders. “Tamber is dead. We got to you in time.”

Did he? She couldn’t see; she couldn’t be certain. She whimpered in dread, terrified it was another trap. Did Cyrus have her again? Was he tricking her somehow?

“Take the coverings off her eyes, Ely,” Tanner ordered. “Now.”

Soft latex brushed her cheeks, and an instant later the pressure was gone. Her eyes flickered open as the lights dimmed in the exam room.

“You look like shit,” she whispered as Tanner’s face came into focus.

He looked haggard. Pale, his face streaked with grime, his hair tangled.

“Keeping up with you is hell on my appearance,” he said, his amber eyes gleaming with…love. They were filled with love. Soft, warm, rich with emotion.

“I love you,” she whispered then, her lips trembling as his hand clasped hers and he bent closer to her. “I was so afraid I couldn’t come back to you.”

She had been terrified. In the midst of everything rushing around her, in the back of her mind, the awareness that Tanner could be lost to her forever had been more horrifying than the thought of being buried.