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  That wasn’t right! They always took her first for the testing, not Katya, and strapped her into an elaborate restraining chair with her arms stretched out at ninety degrees and her legs held wide apart by horizontal braces attached at the ankle by silver-plated cuffs. The toxic burns on her wrists and ankles from her futile thrashing to break free never completely healed. Sometimes, more frequently lately, they took them together—and they tried to make Katya force her to breed by exciting her with her hands and her mouth.

  Gray shuddered. The change in routine sent a shiver of unease down her spine.

  “Gray?” Katya whispered under cover of the keys clanging in the lock on the adjoining cell.

  “I’m here, Katya. I won’t ever leave you,” Gray subvocalized. The humans would hear only a growl, but her Packmate would understand her. She couldn’t project her mind the way the Alpha could, but she could communicate in a range too low to be intelligible to anyone other than another wolf Were.

  The three human guards in rumpled khaki uniforms dragged Katya down the hall, through the windowless steel doors at the end of the corridor, and out of sight. Gray pressed her ear to the thick stone wall. Usually, Were hearing was acute enough to penetrate several floors of a building, and mere walls were no obstacle. But she was rewarded with only silence. Maybe they had found a way to impregnate the walls with silver. Would silver block sound? The Alpha would know.

  The Alpha’s face filled her mind, and with the image came a longing for home and Pack so acute her stomach twisted, and she slid down the wall. Dizzy and weak, she rested her head on her knees. She would never let her captors see her anguish. She wouldn’t let Katya see her fear. She was a dominant Were, she needed to be strong, she needed to protect her Packmate. Katya was not nearly as dominant as Gray in the order of the Pack, and that made her Katya’s protector. But how could she protect her Packmate when she had no idea how to free herself? She’d reached out psychically over and over again, hoping to find some hint of the Pack, some sense that she was not as alone and isolated as she felt. Days, weeks had passed, and no answer came.

  She drifted in a black haze until the sharp clink of metal followed by the grating of steel on stone warned her the guards were returning. Now they would take her. Her groin tightened in preparation for the coming pain. The response was automatic after so many sessions in the laboratory. Her body was conditioned now to anticipate pain with every touch. She didn’t mind. The pain made her mind sharp and her spirit strong. They would not break her. She would not embarrass her Pack by crying out. She would not disappoint her Alpha by showing weakness to those who tried to destroy her.

  The three men appeared in front of her cell.

  “Watch that one,” the thin, balding one with the scent of decay floating around him said. Elliot, he was called. “She likes to use her teeth.”

  “Too bad the pretty ones are so nasty.” The young one, Ames, held the restraint collar at the end of a long flexible rod in one hand. His mouth split into a smirk, and he gripped his crotch with his free hand. Gray snarled, jutting her head forward and letting her canines slide out over her lower lip.

  “Stay back and behave,” ordered the third, a large, shaggy-haired male with pockmarked skin and angry eyes, as he unlocked the cell.

  Gray jerked her head away when Ames pushed the restraint collar toward her neck with the rod, but the wide cuffs that held her shackled to the wall allowed her little movement, and he was practiced at placing the collar. Within seconds, the broad silver-plated collar snapped around her throat, and burning pain tore down her neck and into her chest. Her back arched, she couldn’t stop it, but she bit down on her tongue to prevent the slightest whimper from escaping. Blood filled her mouth, and she swallowed it. Her wolf’s screams of rage filled her head.

  Through the haze of agony tearing at her mind, she heard laughter.

  “Where is Katya?” Gray growled, happy that her voice did not tremble.

  While the big guard, Martin, controlled the long rod attached to the collar, Elliot joined Ames. The two of them inserted keys into the shackles on her wrists and quickly re-cuffed her arms behind her back.

  “Seems your girlfriend’s not as feisty as you are,” Elliot said, straddling her thigh as he worked. The stiffness in his pants brushed against her naked pelvis.

  “Where is she? What have you done to her?” Gray’s heart hammered in her chest, and she trembled on the verge of shifting. She hungered to taste their blood, to tear their flesh from their bones, to make them pay for every moment of pain and humiliation they had inflicted on Katya. Inside her wolf raged, clawing at her guts, ripping at her psyche. Sweat broke out on her forehead and chest, the muscles in her stomach turned to stone, and her sable pelt line erupted low in the center of her belly. Rage and pain stiffened her clitoris.

  “Looks like she’s ready for us.” The guard who smelled like death gripped her sex, twisting until her swollen sex glands hardened from the unrelenting pressure, and she snarled, thrashing her head from side to side. She would rip his throat out.

  “You better ease up on that until we get her in the lab,” the big man with the furious dark eyes said, pushing the controlling rod into Ames’s hand and loosing Elliot’s hold on Gray’s sex. “If we have to stun her and she loses that stuff, the bosses won’t be happy.”

  “This one’s got plenty to spare,” Elliot said with a sneer. “With the amount of jizz she makes, she could probably populate the whole countryside with those fucking mutants.”

  “Yeah, well, the bosses want it in a test tube, not all over the fucking floor. Leave her alone.”

  “You turning into a wolf-lover all of a sudden, Martin?” Elliot said.

  “What I love is my ass in one piece,” Martin said. “You guys got her? Let’s go.”

  As soon as the cuffs on her ankles opened, Gray reared back and jerked at the rod attached to the collar, just as she did every time they came for her. Just like every one of the dozens of times before, Ames triggered the electric shock and flames shot along her nervous system. Her muscles convulsed and she fell to the floor, unable to stifle the whine wrenched from her throat. The surge of current made her clitoris jerk, and her hips pumped helplessly. One more jolt like that one and she’d release. A boot struck her hip.

  “Get up, bitch.”

  No way would they break her. No way. Staggering to her feet, Gray clung to the image of Sylvan and home. The Alpha would come for her. She believed that with all her heart.

  Chapter Six

  Niki vaulted onto the porch of the rambling L-shaped infirmary and barreled toward the door.

  “You can’t see her,” a quiet voice said from the shadows.

  Niki stopped, regarding the petite brunette curled up in an Adirondack chair. Elena’s dark eyes swirled with unhappiness. “She’s alive?”

  Elena sighed and, rising from her seat, drew Niki into a tight hug. She ran her fingers through Niki’s hair and stroked her back. Niki relaxed into the medicus’s embrace, Elena’s gentle caresses soothing some of the sharp edges of her lust and calming the acrid dread she’d endured while watching Sylvan fight the rogue. All her life, she’d been by Sylvan’s side—playing dominance games when they were pups, tussling with her as an adolescent, fighting beside her as an adult. She’d rather die than see Sylvan suffer a single injury, and she’d failed completely to protect her twice in as many days. She’d urged Sylvan to take a mate, knowing she couldn’t give the Alpha the soul-deep protection she needed, but she would never have chosen Drake. The doctor was a newly turned Were—a mutia. Not everyone in the Pack would accept her, and she would be sterile, unable to give Sylvan an heir. She was a political liability, physically inferior, and not worthy of the Alpha. But nature and Pack law dictated Niki bow to Drake’s will, and she had. She’d submitted, and prior to this day she’d only gone to her knees for Sylvan. The burn of humiliation simmered in her belly, and she growled.

  “What happened?” Elena continued to stroke Niki’s s
houlders and arms.

  “Nothing.” Niki pulled Elena’s sweet scent deep into her lungs. The medicus was mated, and her caresses did not incite Niki’s need to tangle, but Niki was nearly as dominant as Sylvan, and her frenzy would eventually stir Elena. Neither Elena nor her mate Roger would mind that, but she broke free and backed away. For the first time in her life, her needs set her apart from the Pack. “Tell me about Lara.”

  “She’s…” Elena kept hold of both Niki’s hands. Her voice vibrated with anger and worry. “I’ve heard her crying out. I don’t know how aware she is. I can still feel her ties to the Pack, but I don’t know…what she is.”

  Bile churned in Niki’s stomach. Lara’s heart had been shredded by a fusillade of silver bullets meant for Sylvan, and even the Alpha’s treatment of her wounds had not been enough to save her. She’d been dying, had died, and the Vampire had kept her from passing beyond anyone’s help by giving Lara her blood. Blood that would colonize her organs, infest her system, turn her from the dominant Were centuri she’d been into something…other. Something, perhaps, not Pack.

  “I don’t care what she is,” Niki said. “I intend to see her.”

  “Be careful, Imperator,” Elena said. “The Vampire is powerful, and the Alpha has given her leave to be here. We are in her debt.”

  “I know what we owe her,” Niki said, the quick hard pulsations in her sex a potent reminder she couldn’t, and didn’t want to, ignore.

  Jody watched Dr. Marissa Sanchez orgasm for the third time in as many hours. Lara pulled from the punctures she had made in Marissa’s neck, and Marissa moaned, her hips undulating faster and faster. Marissa’s familiar, ecstatic cries ignited Jody’s bloodlust. Until recently, she had been the one to feed from Marissa’s neck. She had been the one to release the hormones that made Marissa come. She couldn’t stop the rise of her bloodlust, not when she hadn’t fed all night and the heavy scent of blood and sex thrown off by Lara and Marissa permeated the air, but she was strong enough not to join them. No matter how much she lusted to bury her mouth in Marissa’s groin and drink her.

  Like all her species, she orgasmed in the throes of bloodlust when she fed, but the release was purely physical. When humans, and on rare occasions Weres, showed signs of wanting more than the shattering orgasms her feedings induced, she moved on. Ever since Marissa had shown signs of becoming emotionally attached, she’d rarely let her host. She wouldn’t tolerate an emotional connection with her hosts, not when the next step was blood addiction. She didn’t want the responsibility. First they’d be dependent on her for the hormones her bite provided to achieve sexual satisfaction. Then they’d want to blood-bond and be turned. And turning more often than not resulted in death for the human hosts. The spiral was inevitable.

  Marissa cried out, clutching Lara’s back and riding the hand buried deep between her thighs. Jody’s stomach roiled and her vision shimmered. Her hunger pounded in her loins, and the rich aroma compelled her incisors to unsheath. Across the room, Marissa’s eyes snapped open, searching for her.

  “Jody,” Marissa whispered, her voice a plea. She stretched out an arm in invitation, then abruptly, her eyes rolled back, and she went limp in Lara’s arms.

  “You’ve taken enough,” Jody warned. When Lara kept feeding, Jody leapt to the bedside and cupped one hand beneath Lara’s chin, pulling her mouth away from Marissa’s neck. “Stop.”

  “No!” Lara whipped her head around, her eyes an inferno of red and gold. Vampire and Were. Like all newly turned Vampires, she was ravenous and unable to control her bloodlust. Those urges accelerated the inherent sexual frenzy provoked in Weres by danger or challenge and made her lethal. She should probably let Lara die now. If she helped her live, she’d be responsible for seeing that the newling didn’t run amok while she learned to feed without tearing her hosts to pieces.

  “She’s unconscious. You took too much too quickly.”

  “I want her,” Lara growled.

  “She needs to recover.” Jody still didn’t know why she had offered her own blood to save the Were. She had no particular fondness for Weres. Unlike the Fae, the Magi, and the Psi, Vampires and Weres did not rely on magic and extrasensory abilities to stay alive. Vampires and Weres were predatory creatures whose survival depended upon physical power and dominance. They were more often rivals than allies.

  Lara had acted instinctively when she’d thrown herself in the path of the bullets meant for Sylvan—any Were would have done the same. But Jody hadn’t expected to see Sylvan risk her own life trying to save one of her guards. Sylvan, with blood pouring from multiple wounds in her torso, had fought for Lara’s life. No Vampire would have chanced their existence for an underling. Probably not even for a family member. So she’d offered her own blood to keep Lara alive long enough to heal, but Lara had been too close to death and hadn’t been able to replenish her own blood stores. She’d incorporated Jody’s blood and had become a rare chimera, both Were and Vampire. Lara, like Jody—like all Vampires living or Risen—was now dependent on the ferrous carrier compounds in human and Were blood to supply oxygen to her tissues. Without it, her own blood would slowly empty of the essential elements needed to sustain life, and she would suffocate—one cell at a time.

  Jody stroked Lara’s damp face. “The hunger will not kill you. You’re stronger than your urges.”

  Lara jerked her head away. Her incisors gleamed. “She agreed.”

  “She’ll die.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You will.” And so will I. Lara was her responsibility now—hers to protect and control while Lara learned to satisfy her needs. Even for powerful, experienced Vampires like Jody, the urge to absorb every ounce of heat and strength a host could provide was hard to restrain. For a newly turned Vampire, the bloodlust was so exquisitely painful, the need to feed so overpowering, they would leave a trail of bodies behind them before they were hunted down and destroyed. Jody would not allow one of her line to devolve into an animal.

  Jody tightened her grip on Lara’s jaw. “You will do as I say.”

  “I need more.” Lara’s thick chestnut hair clung in wet strands to her corded neck, her pale bronze skin stretched tight over knife-edged bones. The muscles in her torso rippled, and a faint dusting of brown pelt exploded down the divide between her carved abdominals. Her nipples tightened into small, hard stones. Aggression in Weres was always accompanied by sexual arousal, and she was doubly dangerous with all her drives demanding satisfaction. “I want her.”

  “It’s almost dawn. We’re going hunting after you sleep.” Jody held Lara in place with the force of her gaze. “We’ll find you another host.”

  “Now.” Lara lunged for Jody’s throat, and Jody tossed her across the room. Lara crashed into the wall and fell onto her back.

  Before Lara could regain her feet, Jody leapt atop her. Driving her thigh between Lara’s legs, she simultaneously grabbed Lara’s wrists in one hand and pinned them to the rough wood floor. Lara roared, her eyes blind pools of fire. Jody twisted Lara’s hair in her fist and pressed her mouth to Lara’s ear.

  “Don’t make me kill you,” Jody warned, the weight of her body magnified a dozen times by the power of her mind thrall.

  Lara whimpered, and sanity surfaced through the agony of endless hunger and searing sexual need. Wrapping one leg around Jody’s thigh, she ground her swollen sex into Jody’s hip. “Help me. Please. Please.”

  “I will.” Jody relinquished her grip on Lara’s hair and pushed the flat of her hand between their bodies, skating over the stone plains of Lara’s abdomen to her sex. She palmed the swollen clitoris and pressed down rhythmically, milking the glands on either side. She brushed her mouth over Lara’s. “Come in my hand. Let me feel you spend, Wolf.”

  Lara arched like an overdrawn bow, only her head and heels touching the floor. Her abdomen contracted, her pelvis jerked, and she released in a howling fury of pleasure and pain. Jody, shuddering with need, held her down until the spasms stopped. L
ara was still Were enough to excite her bloodlust, but not Were enough to satisfy her. If she tried to feed from Lara, she would likely kill her and poison herself. Vampire blood was too ferrous-depleted to sustain another Vampire.

  When Lara quieted, Jody rolled away, panting. Hunger stripped away her control—relentless and unstoppable—but she wouldn’t have fed from Lara even if she could have. She hadn’t imagined Lara’s face dissolving in pleasure at her bite, but that of a human female she had no intention of ever tasting. Becca Land awakened more than her hunger, incited more than her bloodlust. She stirred a longing she couldn’t afford to feel, a need for connection that only harbingered pain. She’d seen firsthand the inevitable result. She’d watched her mother die because her father had been too weak or too selfish or simply too uncaring to resist momentary pleasure. Vampires had millennia to indulge their needs. Humans had only a fleeting lifetime and a fragile hope for immortality. She might be a predator, but she would not become a murderer.

  Pushing herself to her knees, Jody buttoned her shirt with trembling hands and tucked it into her pants. Lara lay curled on her side, her knees drawn up, her hips and thighs slowly flexing as her orgasm waned. Jody leaned over and skimmed her fingers through Lara’s hair.

  “Get dressed. We’re leaving.”

  Jody didn’t wait for an answer, but proceeded to cover Marissa with a sheet and lift the semiconscious woman into her arms. The bites in Marissa’s neck were already fading, but she was hovering on the brink of serious blood loss. Marissa always did push the envelope when she hosted.

  “Did I hurt her?” Lara whispered, standing now, her whiskey eyes hollow with torment and lingering hunger. She’d pulled jeans and a shirt from the closet and dressed mechanically.