Mating the Beast (Virgin Werewolf Beast Erotic Romance) (Project Loup Garou, #2) (Project Loup Garou, #2)

by Ava Lore

  Mating the Beast (Virgin Werewolf Beast Erotic Romance) (Project Loup Garou, #2)

  Project Loup Garou, Volume 2

  by Ava Lore

  Published by Brittle Divinity Press, 2013.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  MATING THE BEAST (VIRGIN WEREWOLF BEAST EROTIC ROMANCE) (PROJECT LOUP GAROU, #2)

  First edition. January 29, 2013.

  Copyright © 2013 Ava Lore.

  Written by Ava Lore.

  Prologue

  Four was going to escape.

  They all knew it. Subject Number Five reacted, as he always did, with rage, throwing himself from one end of his cell to the other, his enormous body rebounding and rattling the whole building. The twins, Two and Three, paced the floor, restless, anxious, their monstrous noses pressing against the bars, inhaling sharply. In his own cell, Number Four slept like a baby.

  Subject Number One watched him, staying calm as the others cried out for release, the undulations of their beastly language—the one their captors could not understand—begging Four to take them with him. But One knew that was a futile exercise. Number Four could not save them before he saved himself. It was part of the natural law. You must stand on solid ground before pulling anyone up after you. Number One only wished him well.

  He'd watched Number Four—crafty, clever, devious number Four—take the drugs their captors gave with token protest. Then he feigned immediate slumber, and always made sure to vomit before 'waking.' He always woke up slowly, moaning and writhing in pain, until the darts shot through the bars of his cage became smaller and smaller, less and less potent, until he didn't really sleep at all, only pretended to do so as the scientists carried him out to the examining room. Even then he bided his time, One knew, planning. Waiting. He scratched incessantly at his left ear, where the tracking device had been implanted.

  Tonight the moon was almost full. Tonight he would be at the height of his strength before the wolf took over completely. Subject Number One forced himself to sprawl up against the bars of his cage, his monstrous arms limp, his legs—now far stubbier than any man's—stretched out behind him. His fur stuck through the bars, and his ears swiveled, listening, though outwardly he remained as bored as ever. He let his tail fall through the bars and brush the ground, twitching intermittently.

  The twins, watching him, began to calm, taking their cue. Act as though nothing is amiss. Five had no such control. He raged in his confinement, but then again, if he had been tranquil, it would have been suspicious. Number One feared that he might have to kill him at some point. Number One feared that he wouldn't be able to, if it came to that.

  But all that was in the future, he reminded himself. It may come to pass. It may not. In the meantime, helping Number Four was the most important thing.

  Number One had watched him today, devouring his meat as though it would be his last meal. Though they were watched at all times, One had asked him, in yips and growls, if he was still hungry. A sated animal, he knew, was a sleepy one. A sated werewolf was a strong one. Their captors did not know the difference.

  "I hunger still," Four had answered in their guttural, growling language. "Will you help me, brother?"

  "Always," One replied, and tossed his own meal across the room. He was sure it had given their captors something to think about, to write down and study from every angle. Let them. They operated without complete information. It would be their downfall.

  Four had devoured One's meat, too, and when he was done he brimmed with energy. That would never do. "Sleep well, brother," One had told him, and he'd taken the hint.

  Now he slept. And the pack waited. Two and Three calmed, and Five eventually subsided.

  One let himself relax, and didn't even react when the door at the end of the hall opened, until the marching feet passed him by.

  Subject Number One turned and watched the men in body armor troop down the hall, past their cells. They walked in time, disciplined, but their captives could smell their fear. Number One liked to stare them down, hot and intense. The twins paced. And Five... Five stood in his cage like a coiled viper, a growl forever lingering in his throat, his teeth forever bared. The men hated coming here, hardened though they were from other battles. Those battles had been with men, though, and not with monsters. Here, they were filled with fear.

  They feared Number Four the least, however. He had lulled them, tricked them into a false sense of security. Even now, he slept, or feigned sleep. It didn't really matter.

  "Hey, big guy," the leader of the men said when he reached Four's cage. "You ready?" He sounded as though he were talking to a dog. It made Number One want to laugh. A dog is a tamed wolf, a wolf half-human. But Number Four, all of them, were werewolves. One remembered they were werewolves, despite whatever had been done to their brains to make them forget.

  They were werewolves. Mutated to be sure, trapped between forms except at the dark and the full of the moon, but werewolves all the same.

  A human, but half-wolf. Trickier. Stronger. More savage.

  The head guard lifted his tranquilizer gun and aimed it through the bars. It hit Number Four in the shoulder, and he jumped a little, then heaved a sigh and sank further into sleep.

  A ruse. A clever ruse.

  A pneumatic hiss and one whole side of Four's cell retreated into the ceiling, allowing the guards to climb the steps up into the cell and lay the tarp next to Number Four before heaving his limp body onto it. With a great struggle, they lifted him, letting his bulk sway between them, and trooped back down the hall.

  The door opened. The door closed.

  Whatever happened now, Number One knew, it was out of his control. As he waited for the screams, he lifted his nose to the air and inhaled deeply, straining to catch the scent that had anchored him throughout his captivity.

  A whiff. There it was.

  After a while, the screams began, and Number One began to gnaw on the bars of his cage, displacing his anxiety. Number Four had to escape, no matter what the price. And if the price was...

  Well. He didn't want to think about it.

  The commotion went on for a long time, until at last it subsided. No one came to their cell block. Number Four was either dead... or gone.

  At last the door opened again. A small battalion of guards shuffled down the hallway to inspect the cages, making certain no one else could escape, and he heard arguing in the rooms beyond. Angry. Only a trace scent of Four, but a thicker smell of blood mixed with caustic chemicals floated down the hall to their cells. The twins started to slaver. Number Five began to clamber up the walls, howling. But Number One picked through the scents until, at last, he found the one he was looking for.

  He breathed a sigh of relief and settled back down. He would retain his sanity. The others yipped, barked, howled, but Number One remained still and calm, the scent in his nose soothing him.

  She was still alive, and he could endure another day. Like he had since the day he woke up in this cell, his memories gone. The others struggled under the weight of lost memories and confinement and whatever experiments were being performed on them. But not Subject Number One.

  Subject Number One had kept his head where the others had fallen apart, not because he was smarter or more dominant. No, it was for one reason only. He lived for the moments the door at t end of the hall opened. He lived for the times his captors pumped him full of tranquilizer. He reveled when he woke up,
groggy, in his cage once again. One thing, and one thing alone contented him: the scent he caught from the door. The scent he had been bathed in when he returned from the examining room. The scent that brought him sanity. She was here, in this very building. She was among his captors. The scent of her filled him with restless joy, completed his half-bestial thoughts, smoothed them down until they made sense again.

  The scent of his fated mate.

  Chapter One

  Fur. Fur on her skin. Claws on her flesh. She was nude, stretching, reveling in the sensations. The warmth of her lover filled her up, and the scrape of fur on her inner thighs was enough to arouse her. Tangling her fingers in her lover's fur, she climbed his body like a tree, twining her arms around his broad neck, her legs about his waist, her breath coming quick and fast as he panted in her ear.

  Heavy breaths, sweet growls. Great weight.

  The tip of a cock—foreign, strange, delicious—nudged her entrance, the entry to her core that had never before been touched in such a way.

  The beast rumbled, pleased, and she moaned, waiting for him to enter her. She wanted him. She needed him...

  The shout of a man. The pounding of booted feet.

  "No!" she cried, but as always, she was voiceless. Her beastly love made a questioning sound, turned his head, but not fast enough. A zip and whine, and a dart was suddenly embedded in his throat.

  She cried out, reaching, grasping. She needed him, had to have him, it didn't matter to her what he looked like, she knew that underneath was the one she was meant to be with, meant to love, meant to cleave to, but confusion descended on them as his eyes slid closed and her body filled with fear rather than desire.

  The dark changed. Became bright. White. Strapped to a table, she stared up at the faces of her colleagues.

  "Subject Number Six," one of them drawled, and a scalpel descended as the monitor keeping track of her heart climbed and climbed, going into overdrive, beep, beep, beep, beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeeeeeeeeeeee—

  The ringing of the phone in her ear pulled Dr. Michelle Dimaano from her troubled dreams, and she grabbed it from the bedside table before she was fully awake. The number of the lab flashed on her screen, and for a long moment she thought she was still dreaming.

  The lab was always in her dreams, and always intruding on her waking as well. Stark white walls, sterile, hopeless. The stink of animals and the despair of men seeped in from the holding buildings, and the creatures under her charge left her aching and sad. Most of them she could only observe, and her dreams and days were filled with creatures writhing in pain, or drugged into incoherence, while her useless hands ran over their fur and flesh, unable to soothe, unable to save.

  But she dreamed of the strong one, too. The one who never whined, even during her waking. The one who bore it all stoically. The beast in the wolf wing.

  Subject Number One.

  She didn't want to think about what she dreamed about when she dreamed of One, but she always woke refreshed and stronger, as if he had lent her his strength in her dreams. His strength... and other things. Except lately. Lately, they had been interrupted, and though she was glad, intellectually—because of course she shouldn't feel such things for a monster, no matter what he'd looked like before—she felt the loss as sharp as a shard of glass. What little pleasure she had in her life was now slipping away. The lab intruded. Despair reigned.

  Pushing away her thoughts, Michelle glanced at the clock. Almost eleven at night. She had called in sick today, needing a break from the oppressive atmosphere of the lab. Number One hadn't been scheduled for tests today, so she hadn't felt any great loss by staying home and eating ice cream in bed and watching television. Now, however, the lab needed her. Something must have happened.

  The phone died in her hands, and Michelle bit her lip, hoping that it wouldn't come to life again; only in an emergency would they call someone who had called in sick. The nature of some of the experiments demanded it.

  But it did, vibrating and buzzing, and, with a great sigh to steel herself, she hit answer.

  "'lo?" she said, hoping she sounded sick enough to wiggle her way out of whatever duty called.

  "Dimaano?" Her boss, Dr. Wells. Never one for pleasantries. "Dimaano, we need you at the lab immediately. Subject Number Four has escaped."

  In her bed, Michelle froze. An escape? An escape she hadn't seen coming?

  The psychological interpretation of the subjects was her domain. She was going to get raked over the coals.

  "Dimaano? Are you there?"

  Michelle coughed and cleared her throat. "I'm here, sir. I'll be right in."

  "Good. See that you are." And he hung up.

  Fingers numb, Michelle cut off the call and scrambled out of bed. Did she have time for a shower? She hoped so. She stank. Staying in bed all day would do that to you. Sprinting to her bathroom, she cranked on the water and stepped in, shivering as it warmed up and she scrubbed her skin down. Her dream, the dream she'd just awoken from, had been confused and jumbled, but she remembered that Subject Number One had been there. She'd run a hand through his fur, and a shiver had run through her in return...

  A zip of pleasure whipped through her at the memory, and, frustrated, Michelle pushed it away before frantically scrubbing down with a washcloth. There was no reason for her to think about that sort of thing. It always led to disappointment, anyway. She'd never had an orgasm, except in her dreams, and she refused, absolutely refused, to entertain thoughts about the monster under her care. She was simply... troubled. That's what it was. She was troubled. The stresses of her job were getting to her. Her soft, sympathetic heart had endeared the monsters to her. They had manly forms, but most of the time they were creatures unlike any she had ever seen, only imagined in fairy tales. Their study was important, but they were living creatures, and often coherent. They could speak.

  But of course, men didn't even care about other men, as history had proved over and over again. Why would they give a crap about monsters?

  Finishing her shower, Michelle hopped out, dried off, and dressed quickly before aiming the hairdryer at her hair for a moment or two, just enough to put off the beginning chill of winter creeping up on them. Grabbing her purse, she headed out the door and to her car.

  The only thing she allowed herself to think as she gunned the engine and drove off into the dark was, Thank god it's not One.

  The lab was in an uproar when she arrived. Scientists and interns raced from room to room, busy, frantic, at odds with each other. Arguments broke out. Shouting ruled the day. It was so different from the sterile, staid atmosphere that usually pervaded the place that for a moment Michelle wondered if she had stepped into the wrong laboratory.

  Then Dr. Wells, rushing by on his way to somewhere else, spotted her. He stopped, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her toward the wolf wing.

  Michelle knew she was light as a feather, but she hated getting dragged around. Men did it to her all the time, as if they thought she was just an object to be maneuvered from one spot to the next. She kept her mouth shut, though. More important things were happening right now.

  "We need you to speak to the wolves," Dr. Wells said.

  Shock ran through her. "What?" She had never spoken to them. She had determined that it would be too difficult to communicate with them in their beast form, and damaging to do so when they were men. Speaking to a female captor the one night out of the month they were human? That sort of thing invited only attachments she didn't think would be healthy.

  But Dr. Wells seemed determined. "You heard me," he snapped. "But first we need you to observe the videos from today and see if you spot anything unusual at all. If they knew he was going to escape, they might know where he's gone."

  The idea of one of the wolfmen free sent a shiver through Michelle. Though they retained coherence, especially when the moon was new and their human forms returned, the waxing and waning moon destroyed their minds. There was no telling what one of them would do out in the real w
orld. Though the labs were situated in a fairly sparsely populated area of east Texas, there were still plenty of animals—goats, cattle, horses—and plenty of farmers and ranchers willing and able to shoot at a monster on sight. And that, Michelle was sure, would just make them mad, and blow the lid off of the lab's secret work. They'd all be in deep trouble then...

  Her conscience pricked her and she winced. She tried not to think about the implications of her job—what it said about her as a person. She was sworn to secrecy, had top level clearance... and if she wanted out, she was certainly allowed to do so.

  For a price.

  Swallowing her pang of regret, Michelle followed meekly behind her boss.

  Dr. Wells led her to the observation room. Intensely familiar to her, it was dim, filled with screens, and cloying with the musk of people who sat still and watched television for a living. The smell of Doritos never quite left the room.

  Now, however, the atmosphere fairly hummed with tension. Dr. Wells commanded a terrified tech to pull up the video reel for the day, then hovered over her as she sat down. Shifting uncomfortably, Michelle forced herself to concentrate on the screens in front of her instead of the oppressive presence of her boss just over her shoulder. Squinting in the dimness of the room, she watched four cameras, each trained on a separate cell, speed through the day, starting with six in the morning. An arbitrary time, since the wolves slept in patches through the days, like dogs. But, she had to remind herself sometimes, nothing like dogs at all.

  She saw what she had seen most days. The beasts awoke, or shifted, or grew restless. Feeding time was near. They were fed only every other day, in accordance with how a wolf might eat in the wild, though Michelle was not convinced this was a good practice. The brain of humans was what demolished calories. The wolves' brains still retained much of their human structure despite the monstrous bodies that housed them.

  It didn't matter, though. Today was a feeding day. The twins began to pace, the way they always did, incessantly, passing each other by on their opposite circuits of their cell, touching noses as they did so. They had been housed separately at first, but that had quickly proven to be a mistake. Without a counterpart, Number Two languished, refusing to eat, and Number Three chewed his limbs down to the bone. He still bore the scars. Number Five paced as well, though he pressed himself against the door of his cell, hoping, waiting for the day when it would open and he would be free to devour the captors he hated so much. Number Five scared her.