Despite all that, despite the fact she knew how dangerous he was, Toni didn’t care. Her heart thundered at near human levels. Excitement, adrenaline and something else—something she didn’t want to name—filled her veins. She wanted this, wanted it all to kick off to ease the restlessness within her.
It wasn’t to be. With a rattling sigh he slumped to the side, like someone had pulled the plug and drained all the life from his limbs. Ever wary and suspecting a trick, she waited, every line of her body tensed and ready for an attack. Ready to defend herself. But the attack didn’t come. Instead he turned his head, as though the slow movement was difficult, and then dropped it back. His long, dark hair spilled over the cold metal beneath his shoulders.
Slowly she leaned forward, extended a finger and prodded his shoulder. He didn’t move. She breathed a sigh of relief. He was unconscious.
Almost.
As she moved back, the energy in her body ebbing away, he opened his eyes to look at her. They were dark, but with a warning ring of amber. Suppressing a shiver, she matched him look for look, not prepared to back down. It didn’t matter how much silver she pumped into him—even if she used all seven shots left in the bag, the creature inside him would still be there. It would always be there. Watching. Waiting.
You’re mine.
Unbidden, his words to Kelwood chased each other around her mind like an over-active puppy chasing its own tail. She tried to ignore them. How did she know this was the Lycan who had pinned Kelwood and issued a warning for her?
He smiled, the smallest quirk of his lips which rocked her to the core, and she knew.
This was the same Lycan, and she’d become the prey.
The journey passed swiftly but time had become relative for Toni. She could zone out for what seemed like five minutes only to come to and find hours had gone by. It had freaked out the medical technicians the first time they’d ventured into her room to see why she’d missed her check-up. They’d found her staring at the wall, hairbrush in hand, frozen in mid-stroke while she pondered the meaning of life, her continued existence and why the hell she could hear a fly on the wall three rooms down.
The rhythmic sway of the vehicle and the darkness helped her semi-trance as she watched the Lycan opposite. Half slumped against the side of the truck, his occasional twitch between periods of blessed unconsciousness told her he still fought the drugs. Admiration filled her. He was a stubborn one for sure. But at least when he was unconscious, he wasn’t in pain. Everyone knew Lycans were monsters, but now she found the idea of him in pain distasteful.
Heat crawled over her cheeks, shame rolling through her with the unstoppable force of a tidal wave. She didn’t like the idea of him in pain, yet she was taking him back to the Project. She planned to trade him for a cure, knowing what would happen to him. Knowing they would beat him to within an inch of his life to get the answers they wanted, then execute him in the cold light of dawn.
She was taking a man to his death to get what she wanted.
Who was the real monster?
The scent of the forest filtering through the vents on the sides of the cabin gave way to farmland. The wilder smell would disappear when they crossed into the drier, arid wastelands around the camp. Which suited the Project fine. Miles after miles of dry, empty scrubland meant no one could watch the base. Nothing lived out there. Nothing wanted to live out there.
Her prisoner gasped again, twitching in the silver-reinforced manacles before slumping again, and lay still.
Without moving, without blinking, she watched him. He was tall, with masses of dark hair falling to his shoulders. A lock lay across his face. Had she been human, she would have been tempted to brush it away. To feel the texture of the silken strands as it slipped between her fingers. Smooth the hair back to reveal features so hard and masculine even a near-dead Blood like her felt the pull of attraction. But she wasn’t human, wasn’t anything even close, so she stayed where she was. Watching him.
The hair brushed broad shoulders which flowed down into a well-muscled chest and flat stomach. There wasn’t an ounce of body fat on him—his physique ripped enough to give even the most dedicated gym-bunny a serious case of the green-eyed monster. If he had to work out to maintain it, though, she was a monkey’s uncle.
Like Bloods, when the virus entered their system, Lycans were done with needing to exercise. Their metabolisms sped up, they lost weight, got faster and stronger—their bodies running at optimum. Perfect biological function. The fact they turned furry had been unexpected. Her lips quirked. Forget life imitating art, this was science imitating myth and legend.
Civilization was screwed.
Her gaze wandered down across his chest and paused for a moment on the flat discs of his n**ples. One was scarred, the small circular indentation familiar. He’d had a piercing at some point. Had to have been before he’d been turned because it took a lot to scar a Lycan. A mere nipple piercing just wouldn’t.
Her attention moved on. It was obvious he liked tattoos—his skin was decorated with them. Tribal designs warred for space with winged daggers on his arms, and the trailing edges of the mystical symbols over his stomach disappeared under the low slung waistband of his combat pants.
Heat threatened her bloodstream again so she yanked her gaze up and fixed on another of his tattoos. Small and discrete, tucked away on the side of his ribcage but visible with his hands above his head—she recognized it instantly.
A meat tag.
His name, serial number and—she tilted her head a little to read—what looked like his blood-type inked into his skin. All the information required to identify him in case his torso parted company with the rest of his body, although the jury was out as to whether or not this was effective with current explosives. Such markings were used by Special Forces, soldiers who went into the worst sort of combat. The kind that meant body bags rarely contained a whole body and two left feet didn’t always refer to dancing ability.
She knew because she had a similar marking on the side of her left breast. For all the f**king good it had done. No meat tag was proof against a virus—she’d learned that the hard way.
The truck rattled across a couple of potholes, the Lycan rolling against the wheel arch with a grunt. The movement stretched the skin over his side so she leaned in to get a closer look at the tag.
D. Foster.
Darcy Foster, Lieutenant.
She rifled through her memories of the pre-op reports she’d read on the Lycan section, the pages laid out in her mind as though she held them. Headed up by Captain Jack Harper, Alpha-Three were a Project success story when it came to the Lycans. They were one of the only groups with a defined alpha, and perhaps because of that had regained control of their new natures within a couple of weeks of infection. A fully operational combat unit, the Project had fielded them again and again, sending them into situations deemed far too hazardous for human troops.
Then something had happened. One of the eggheads had gotten nervous about the ease with which the pack alpha, Harper, could shift and the whole squad had been deemed dangerous and locked down. Given a one way trip to the land of the hug-yourself jackets while the scientists worked out what the hell was going on.
Foster was Harper’s second in command, and classified a potential alpha himself. A Special Forces soldier with a kill rate that would have made the average serial killer glow with pride, and his disciplinary record was just as impressive. He’d had numerous run-ins with authority until he’d been put with Harper. Then nothing. Like the rebel had found God and turned over a new leaf. The last year or two he’d been as quiet as a mouse, even after the squad had been turned, and now deemed “stable”.
As stable as a furry killing machine could be, anyway.
She didn’t believe a word of it. Oh, Foster and his group might be good at playing cute for the eggheads, but she’d seen the files. Alpha-Three hadn’t been volunteers, or even an accident like her. Instead, they’d been so good at what they did—killing—that the Project had decided they were the perfect specimens. And what the Project wanted, the Project got. Alpha-Three had been brought in for “medical assessment”, knocked out, strapped down and infected with LY16.
Toni shivered at the thought. Her own turning hadn’t been traumatic, but she’d seen enough that had been. Not long after she’d been infected, a group of volunteers had been processed. Garry had allowed her to watch to prove how lightly she’d gotten off, to prove that being a Blood beat being a Lycan hands down. But the situation had gone tits up quicker than two shakes of a lamb’s tail.
The cute young soldier in the nearest restraint cage, the one who had been winking and trying to flirt with her, howled in agony and rage when the needle had pierced his skin. Skin which flowed and bubbled, sprouting fur and fangs in all the wrong places while his body contorted. It twisted and writhed, changing shapes as though unable to choose between a humanoid or a lupine form, before settling on something sickeningly between the two. A form too big for the silver-wrapped steel—the bars cut into his fur-covered flesh as his change crushed him to death within the too-small space.
Toni jerked out of her light doze when the vehicle rattled to a stop. Sitting up straight, she blinked sleep out of her eyes and then scowled. The Lycan had sat up and was watching her, his amber-brown eyes steady. Irritation surged through her. She straightened her shirt sharply, as though she’d been rolling around the truck-bed while she slept instead of being propped up against the wheel arch.
What the hell was with that? She never dropped off easily, not even when comfortable and safe in her own bed on camp. So why the hell had she done it in the back of a truck within feet of a dangerous Lycan who could wake at any moment?
“What you looking at?” she snarled, discomforted by his unwavering attention.
While she’d dozed, he’d obviously worked the drugs through his system. Dark marks around his wrist and the scent of blood in the air told her he’d tried to escape his bonds. He hadn’t managed it. Relief rolled through her. At least she’d been woken by the truck jolting, not by the hard body of a Lycan pinning her to the deck as he prepared to rip her throat out.
Or kissed her within an inch of her life again.
“You.”
He took his time replying, his dark-light gaze sweeping over her with a very male expression of appreciation.
“Go on, snarl again. You’re cute when you’re mad. And those little fangs?” He shivered, pulling his lower lip between his teeth for a second and closing his eyes in apparent pleasure. “You can bite me any day of the week.”
“Yeah, right.” She pushed off the side of the vehicle and moved over to drop the tailgate. “Like I’d want to bite a mangy mutt like you.”
“Mange? Lady, you wound me.”
He shifted position as if to clasp his chest but was halted by the metal around his wrists. It caught one of the raw wounds and a small trickle of blood rolled down his arm as the scent blossomed on the air.
She ignored the pull, the interest in the slender trail of scarlet and yanked the locking pins loose to kick the tailgate down. Metal crunched underfoot, a boot-shaped impression visible for a fraction of a second before it slammed into the back of the chassis below.