Tanner - Bengal breed - PR man for Sanctuary - the image in front of the public - sexy, fun loving, unthreatening... and he has been monitoring Scheme... Scheme - daughter of General Tallant - a man totally focused on eliminating all breeds now that they were out of council control - 8 years earlier, he paid his main enforcer to woo Scheme - and when she became pregnant, his enforcer drugged her for the abortion & sterilization... she joined Jonas as a double spy - pretending to be an assistant to her father, and feeding information & sabatoge of her father's plans... and each time she made a mistake, and her father suspected her of duplicity, she was beaten severly, she was buried alive for days at a time... and she took the torture so that she could gather the goods on her father and put him away for good...

And Tanner has been watching her (and vice a versa) for the last 10 years - even privy to her sexual encounters in her own home... He knows something is off, but he can't quite tell what...

and the time comes that Scheme has enough information to put her father away, and she needs to protect Callan's son - the first free born Breed... her father has plans to use his spy inside the compound to kidnap and train the 9-year old boy... so she contacts Jonas for an extract... except Jonas is not where he should be... and she comes in contact with Tanner, who decides there is no one to stop him from taking her...

Tanner rescues Scheme from her ex-lover/father's enforcer who was sent to kill her... and he kidnaps her himself and takes her to the caves in Kentucky that Callan had outfitted 20 years earlier for hiding...

Their courtship is a bit different... neither trusts the other, and yet they are drawn to each other... and as Tanner comes to see the horrors she went through without quite understanding why (she won't trust him to tell her) he wants to protect her from both her father and the breed council - but thought he knows he loves her, he is not secreting the hormones that tell him they are mated - her protection from the breed council...

He will not have sex with her until she asks for it (no rape)... though he is manipulative and seductive... and they have sex when she is overcome with her body's needs... He is in turn gentle and distant - she gives in, but will not give her trust as remembers her father/exlover's betrayal when they aborted her baby, not trusting her feelings... Thought they are not in full hormonal mating, she misses him when he goes, and they become more connected...

Tanner keeps Cabal, his genetic twin, and partner - away from Scheme, afraid that he is her mate, and Tanner's feelings are just a ghost... as time is running out, he leaves her to Cabal - and Cabal, knowing that his self control is what is inhibiting the mating, is borderline abusive with Scheme - pushing Tanner over the edge so that he looses control... and it works... they go into full mating with hormones & bites...

and Jonas shows up and takes them back to Sanctuary... they know that Scheme's presence will draw out the traitor in their midst... and sure enough... she and Callan's son, David, are 'zapped' and are being taken off base to her father in a helicopter... David 'attacks' the driver (bites her on the neck), the jeep crashes... and they make a run for it... Scheme is hurt, and she tries to get Callan's son to move on, but he won't leave her - especially since he knows the guard lions will attack her as they don't know her scent... their attacker comes back, and Scheme gets her to keep her and send David away with promises that she knows where the first breed & mate are... but she is rescued before they get to the helijet...

And the hormones are healing her, and repairing the sterilzation that her father initiated... and her father will be dead by the end of the week.

And though they are together, she still harbors the secret of the 1st Breed, and Tanner knows she is holding something back, and fears for her safety... She maintains that some decisions are for her to make alone... but they both have found their other half, and for the 1st time feel whole... ahhhh

What will happen with Cabal?