“So the Council is not only pissed that rules are being broken they are mad because they aren’t getting paid.”
“Yep.” She nodded.
“Nicole!” Tess screeched from the open doorway of the store.
Sarah whirled and saw two men advancing rapidly. One grabbed Nicole around the waist, and the other lunged toward Sarah. She ducked, but his hand clamped around her arm, twisting her off balance and into his chest.
He smelled strange. Like...
“A cat! He’s a cat!”
She watched Nicole shake her attacker. He lunged at her again, and she sent him sailing across the parking lot with a well aimed power-hit to the chest. “Jackass!” She whirled to face the store and shouted. “Lock the doors, Tess! You hear me?”
Sarah struggled against her attacker, stomping on his feet and trying to get a good elbow into his ribs. It wasn’t working. Cold steel ran along the side of her neck, freezing her in place.
“Don’t move,” he breathed into her ear.
Nicole ran toward the man she’d thrown. He was starting to move again. She took a gun from her purse, and a shot rang out across the parking lot. The fallen man’s body jerked and was still. Several people screamed and took off, tires squealing out of the parking lot.
“Shit.” The large cat shifter hissed and pressed the knife harder into her neck.
A warm trickle of blood ran down her collarbone and between her breasts. I’m going to die.
“You’re not going to die.” Her wolf assured her calmly.
If he cuts my throat, I’ll bleed out before you can heal me.
“No you won’t. Keep it together, Sarah.”
Anxiety was building, and it became difficult to pull air into her lungs. She wheezed and began to struggle again. “Let me g-go. L-let me go!” The wheezing became worse. Now it felt as though she were breathing through a soda straw. Black spots danced through her vision.
Nicole stalked toward them, eyes glowing bright gold and the tips of her fangs showing between her red lips. She stopped about ten feet away and tilted her head to the side. Her eyebrows raised and her fangs disappeared. Her brow scrunched and she looked very confused. Then she spoke. “Look, you want me, right? Not her. She doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
He hesitated before speaking. Sarah felt his breath hitch in his chest. Something was bothering him. His muscles tensed.
There’s no way this giant is afraid of her.
“He’s not,” her wolf answered. “Smell him. He’s aroused.”
Ewwww. I don’t want to smell that on him. God, now I did. Thanks.
“At least it slowed down your anxiety attack,” her wolf pointed out proudly.
She was right. Her breathing had slowed, and the black spots in her vision had cleared for now as oxygen made its way to her starving brain.
“There’s a kill order out on all the Antipas descendants. She’s an abomination and the Council wants her dead.” He paused and took a deep breath. “Your grandmother wants all three of you, Nicole.” His voice rumbled, sending vibrations through her body. The terror returned quickly, wrapping its cold, slimy fingers around her consciousness.
Her mate bond flared with emotion. Chris was angry, and he was close.
“You can’t have us, and Grandmother knows that,” Nicole spat back. “She was stupid to send you after us. You’re in bear territory. Agent or not, you won’t last a minute against a bear.”
“Fuck the bears. Get your claws away from my mate!” Chris leapt in front of Nicole and lunged for his mate but stopped short. His eyes glued to the knife at her throat. Then his gaze moved up to meet hers. His eyes were gold and flashed with heated fury. Sarah shivered from the flow of magick rolling off of him. A warm trickle ran down her shoulder. I’m bleeding. I don’t want to die.
“You’re not going to die. Chris won’t let that happen.”
“Smart doggy.” Her assailant chuckled. “Come any closer, and I’ll show you more of what flows in this mongrel’s veins. All I came for were the Demakis girls. I will have them.”
Sarah whimpered, the pressure of the knife increased, and more blood ran down her chest. Most of her shirt was stained now and sticking to her body. The coppery smell was nauseating.
“Nicole, get to the store and inside with the others.”
“But…”
“Now,” Chris snarled.
Nicole darted across the darkening parking lot and into the store.
“No!” The agent growled angrily and cut a little deeper. The black spots were returning but this time for a different reason. She was losing too much blood. With the spots came a cold, listless feeling. Blood had soaked her tennis shoes, and a slick pool had formed at her feet.
“Let her go.” Chris sounded worried.
“She’s probably going to die anyway. Most of her blood is on the outside now.” He licked the side of her neck and purred. The sound sent chills down her spine. His mouth on her skin made her want to retch. “Tastes like death warmed over.” The tone of his voice held desperation and anger. He licked his lips, smacking them right next to her ear. “Too bad for the baby you’re carrying,” he whispered, releasing his hold on her waist and neck. Her legs gave way, and the pavement met her face with a hard jolt.
Chris leapt over her body and knocked the giant feline shifter to his back. Sarah closed her eyes and focused on breathing. She had to breathe. Magick swirled around her, tingling against her skin. It was trying to heal her, but she’d lost so much blood. A baby? How could he know? It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since she and Chris had marked each other.
“It’s in your blood. He could taste the hormones,” her wolf murmured softly.
Thumps and groans and the sound of crunching bone made Sarah open her eyes again. The stranger was standing over Chris. His knife was in her mate’s stomach.
“No!” She struggled to her hands and knees.
He turned and met her gaze. “Stubborn little mongrel, aren’t you?” He leaned over Chris and twisted the knife. A tortured cry echoed across the night. Had it come from her mate’s lips? Or from hers? She lunged at the stranger, but he caught and dragged her across the parking lot. She screamed but didn’t have the strength to fight back.
Chris wasn’t moving. She couldn’t lose him.
“He’s still alive, Sarah. Feel the bond. You have to hang on too. He needs you to fight.”
The black spots were returning. He’d thrown her in the back of a car. But all she could remember was Chris lying on the pavement, unmoving and silent.
CHAPTER TEN
“Chris?” Kate’s voice cut through the pain. He groaned and tried to sit up, but the movement made him want to puke. “Chris lie still. I’m trying to speed your healing process.”
“Sarah?” he croaked, his voice breaking. God, he sounded terrible. How did that fucking cat move that fast?
“I don’t know. He took her,” Kate answered quietly.
“Why didn’t you stop him, Kate?” He opened his eyes. They were moving. The vehicle jolted suddenly, and pain lanced through his gut. He growled, his hands clenched into fists.
“Chris, you know I can’t use magick like that in the open. It’s against everything I’ve protected for thousands of years. It was bad enough you three were throwing each other around like rag dolls in the parking lot, snarling like a bunch of rabid animals.
A growl rumbled from his throat, but Kate was right. “Where are we?”
“A few minutes from Woodhaven,” Nicole answered.
“We have to go after her,” he said, trying to sit up through the fiery pain. “Which way did he go?”
Kate pushed him back down on the bench of the seat. “Be still. I’m trying to save your life, you idiot. You still have multiple fractures.”
“Sarah,” he cried.
“Only you know if she is still alive,” Kate answered.
He felt for the bond. It was there. Weak, but present. He couldn’t feel emotions tho
ugh, so she was unconscious. He grimaced through the pain as the Kate’s magick mixed with his and knitted his wounds, healing him cell by cell. “She’s alive.”
“Thank the gods,” Kate replied. “We will find her, Chris. He wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of taking her, if he didn’t plan to use her. Remember, he’s really after Nicole and her sisters.”
“I know.” Tears stung his eyes. “Kate, he told her she was pregnant. She can’t be. Can she? I thought I tasted something odd the last time I bit her, but I dismissed it. I knew it wasn’t possible.”
“I don’t know. For the average werewolf, the first heat usually occurs several months after the mate mark, but she’s been fertile for years because she was human. She wouldn’t have recognized the heat for what it was. She would have just felt horny.”
He’d just found his mate. Over a century waiting for her and some damn cat nearly kills them both and steals her. He pushed up on the seat and forced his body into a sitting position.
Kate griped, but he ignored her complaints. The wound in his stomach had knitted over and wasn’t bleeding anymore. The magick was working its healing miracle. Whatever spell she’d used to speed up the healing was doing a good job. His strength was returning and with it his rage.
***
Sarah opened her eyes and peered at her surroundings. Wood. More wood. A roaring fire in a fireplace to her right. The scent of the cat was all around her. Black spots filled her vision, and she was freezing. The mattress beneath her body was lumpy and the thin blanket was no more than a sheet. Her magickal blanket of warmth abandoned her, along with most of her blood, in the store parking lot.
Why am I so cold?
“We are dying.”
But they said magick would heal me. I still have my head.
“He’s blocking it with the iron manacle around your ankle. That’s why you’re so cold.”
Her teeth chattered. Survival instinct said she needed warmth. The fire was close.
She slowly rolled to her side and dropped one arm off the bed. It hung limply over the edge, unwilling to support any of her weight.
Footsteps sounded like thunder in her ears. Suddenly he was looming over her.
"Stubborn little thing, aren’t you? I figured you would have died on me." He pulled another blanket from the foot of the bed and stretched it over her. It wasn’t much, but it helped.
“Why didn’t you kill me, if that’s what you wanted?”
“I needed the Demakis girl to think there was a chance at rescuing you. Guilt is a powerful motivator.”
Chris. God, was Chris alive?
“Until that iron comes off, we won’t be able to feel him.”
“They will kill you,” she growled.
“I’m sure they would if they could find me. But I’m not careless enough to let that happen.”
His phone on the table rang, and he moved to answer it. “Carlotta...I’m still waiting. Did you send the email to your granddaughter? You’re fine with only getting one? As soon as she arrives, we’ll be on the jet. Yes, ma’am.”
Sarah closed her eyes. Nicole was giving herself to this stranger, this agent for the Council.
“Why do you want her?”
“Orders.”
“You work for the girl’s grandmother, but you’re a cat. Aren’t you?”
He stared at her and sank into the lonely chair next to the table. He rubbed his hands through his thick black curls and sighed. "Carlotta Antipas is a smart and vicious woman. I follow her orders to ensure my sister’s life is not forfeit. My loyalty to that bitch is forced, but solid and forever. All the royals hold their soldiers with blackmail. It makes us mean and very effective. We have everything to lose if we don’t succeed.”
“That’s why you were so angry. You missed your chance to grab all three. What about me?”
“You can easily be caught later. As far as the other two sisters, the twins are young. There’s still plenty of time to recover them. Nicole is of age. A mate hunt has already been planned. She is the most important target. Her recovery ensures my sister’s continued breath.”
Sarah’s eyes widened. Nicole had told her about Sam’s mate hunt and the barbaric way she’d been just given over to four strangers. If Chase hadn’t been there, this whole rebellion would have gone another way.
“I-I’m so tired. Were you lying to me when you said I was pregnant?” Tears welled in her eyes, and she turned her head toward the wall so he wouldn’t see them.
When she turned back, he was sitting next to her on the edge of the bed. She gasped. Was this it? Was he going to kill her? Had he changed his mind?
“You’re not crazy,” he murmured and removed the manacle.
Magick surged around her as though she’d been dunked in a bath. She coughed and moaned in pain as it began rebuilding her from the inside out.
“Thank you,” she finally managed to whisper.
“They’ll never know I let you live,” he said, moving back to the chair by the table. “And no, I wasn’t lying. You’re not very far along. I can’t hear the heartbeat yet, but the taste of hormones are a dead giveaway.”
“One day,” she whispered.
His eyebrows arched, but he remained quiet.
“Why would you think I was crazy?”
“The Council’s kill order on Stefan’s latent descentdants is validated by the assumption that your animal halves are uncontrollable...crazy, if you will. It helps make killing innocent humans more palatable to their soldiers. To me.”
“Like Renata?”
He scoffed. “That woman has killed every agent who’s gone near her. The Council thinks it has a never-ending supply of soldiers, but she will systematically wipe us out if they keep sending us in one at a time. She has contacts all over the world and an abundance of funds.”
“So you jumped at a chance for a different assignment.”
“One I could survive...yeah. I did. I’ve served Carlotta and Reginald Antipas for over two hundred years, and I’m doomed to continue doing so for the rest of my miserable life. Just like my sister is doomed to remain locked in their palace as collateral if I should fail them.”
“They have a palace?”
A grin tugged at the corners of his mouth, softening his granite features. He was handsome. Long black curls brushed his shoulders, and bright honey-brown eyes twinkled with a long forgotten sense of humor. He masked the amusement quickly and set his face back to emotionless stone.
“Yes, the family has been around since the golden age of Greece. They have a palace.”
“What are you going to do with me?”
“Nothing. You were merely the bait. Once Nicole arrives, we will leave. The wards guarding this place will dissipate in a few hours, and you will be free to leave.”
“You will doom Nicole to the same fate as your sister.”
“Better that than my sister dead,” he snarled, showing his fangs angrily. Flashing golden eyes replaced the warm brown ones. His fingers elongated, and claws appeared, curling into razor-sharp talons.
Sarah held her breath, waiting for him to strike. Instead, the terrifying moment was interrupted by a knock at the door.
“Come in.”
The door creaked and sighed. Nicole popped her head in then hurried to the side of the bed, completely ignoring the giant of a man seated at the table. She ran her hands over every inch of Sarah’s body, checking beneath the blood-soaked clothes.
“I’m okay. He took off the iron and let the magick do its thing. I’m going to be fine. I already feel a lot better.”
“What about the baby? I heard him say you were pregnant. You know that’s like a record for the shifter community.”
“Yay me. Insta-pregnancy.” She feigned a laugh and glanced at the man sitting at the table again. He still hadn’t moved.
“Kate says it has to be connected to you being a latent.”
He stood abruptly, knocking the chair onto it’s back. “Kate Aribas is here?” he hissed. �
��In Utah?”
“She’s a member of the pack, you overgrown, spotted fur ball,” Nicole spat back. “Did dear old Grandma leave that detail out of the report?”
“Nicole!” Sarah gasped. “Why are you antagonizing him?”
“Don’t worry. He won’t hurt me. He’s still trying to figure out how the hell he can fulfill his duty to my grandmother and claim me as his mate.”
“He’s your mate?” Sarah squeaked.
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