Hostage to Pleasure

“Don’t you see, Dorian?” A shattered whisper. “For better or worse, she is his biological mother.” The words were like hidden grenades, blowing up in his face. “She’s the reason he exists-how could I steal her child and then get rid of her? How could I go to my son with his mother’s blood on my hands?”

The emotional knives kept twisting deeper, harder. “So you somehow convinced her to give up maternal rights? How?”

“I had to speak to her on her level.” An unflinching answer, a leopardess fighting for her cub. “I had to pretend I understood and accepted what she’d done. I talked her into making it a long-term experiment. She said it would be far too much work, but I said I’d take care of the long-term part.”

“The infection-oh, Jesus. Omega?” It was such a vile thought the cat refused to believe it could be the truth.

“In a sense.” A calm tone, but her hands were trembling so hard he saw her grab hold of one with the other to immobilize it.

Dorian let out a slow breath. “Does the Council know?”

“They didn’t when I left and I highly doubt they do now. Only Amara and I know everything. Keenan knows a little-just what he needs to protect himself. I hate that he has to know anything.”

“Keenan’s a smart kid,” Dorian muttered, pride thickening his voice, “and Amara will never betray you.” Yet she was a monster who’d planned to kill her own child. The discordance between the two was harsh, allowing for no easy answer. “Zie Zen?”

“A former associate of our mother’s. I asked him to tell this one lie without asking me why, and he did.” She met his eyes. “Do you understand now why I will get very angry with you if you treat him with anything less than respect?”

He bowed his head. Sometimes, even a leopard had to admit being in the wrong.

Apparently satisfied, she continued. “Technically, Keenan has no biological father-Amara spliced together genetic material from an incredible number of donors, most likely so no one else would have a claim on the embryo. I used that. I told everyone his DNA scan didn’t line up with Zie Zen’s because we experimented on it in vitro. They believed us-after all, we are the DNA specialists.

“That understanding both increased Keenan’s value as a hostage and kept him safe from discovery-while the Council was certain he was important to me because I was using him as an experiment, they didn’t think to go beyond the DNA.”

For the first time in hours, Ashaya felt a hard push at her mind. It was a surprise, but she held Amara back, the task far easier than it should’ve been. Something had changed in her. She checked her PsyNet shields again, relaxing only when she saw that she continued to remain anonymous. “We all knew about the idea of Omega,” she continued, “but Amara became obsessed with it. Except, she didn’t see the point in making everyone infertile. It would still leave the insurgents alive and able to agitate.”

Dorian blew out a disbelieving breath. “Why worry about procreation when you could have control over life and death itself?”

“Yes. She decided to create a lethal and easily transmissible bioagent.”

The coldness of the equation chilled Dorian’s beast. At the same time, he was struck by Amara’s almost childlike lack of concern for others. It made a twisted kind of sense if the DarkMind was involved-the twin of the NetMind was a child in many ways, a stunted creature with no real sense of the world outside its cage. “What did she base her virus on?”

“It wasn’t actually a virus. Do you know anything about prions?”

“I’ve heard that somewhere.” He frowned, thinking. “Mad cow disease?”

“Bovine spongiform encephalopathy,” Ashaya said. “Prions are responsible for that as well as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies in humans. They’re the most deadly infectious agents in the world because no cure has ever been discovered. The only reason TSEs haven’t wiped us out is that they’re extremely hard to catch.”

“Hell.” But he could see the logic of it, as Amara must’ve seen it. “Aren’t prions proteins?” At her nod, he blew out a breath. “Easy stuff for her to work with.” Ashaya and Amara could both see proteins without the need for a microscope.

“By the time I found out what she was doing,” Ashaya said, her crisp scientist’s voice beginning to grow ragged at the edges, “she simply wouldn’t be stopped. The science, you see-it was brilliant, cutting-edge science.” She seemed to be waiting for a response.

He shot her a dark look. “I’m not going to blame you for what she did. Go on.”

“I heard Tammy say you could be charming. I haven’t seen any proof yet.”

Oh, his cat liked that. “I thought I was very charming when I petted you into orgasm.” He shot her a look filled with sexual heat. “I plan to do more of that-right after I teach you about keeping secrets.”