They had fed her, and there wasn’t any poison running through her system. She wouldn’t be able to tell, but her animal knew. She could rest some more. How many hours had she been asleep and why did she still feel tired?
“I don’t know your name.” The words came out a little grudging like she might be thinking about his offer.
“My name’s Dev.”
“Dev.” She liked it. “Is that your real name?”
“My dad named me Devon, but he split shortly after my birth, so my mom had my birth certificate changed to Dev. I am Dev Miller and proud of that fact.”
“Dev Miller, it’s a good name, a strong name. Well, Dev my name is Rissa. It’s nice to meet you.”
“The pleasure is all mine, Rissa.”
He had a way with words. Her name on his lips was making her heart pound. Even her animal had stopped growling to take another look at him. His hair was darker in the SUV, but when the light touched it, there was no doubt it was auburn when she paired with his brown eyes something inside of her reached for him, she found herself wanting to get closer. Those eyes looked like home, but she knew better than to make snap decisions about men.
“Your friends?”
“Lore is driving.”
“Short for Lorenzo, but everyone calls me Lore.”
“Ben’s in the passenger seat.”
“It’s short for Benet, and I will answer to either name.”
She looked at them, sizing them up. They gave off that don’t mess with me vibe, and she decided to heed the warning. Now they were waiting for her to make her decision. Did she stay or go? It would be so easy to melt away in the next town.
They fed her, and she could go days without eating. Walking wasn’t a problem she’d been doing that for days now. She should leave, but she was lonely. Her entire body wanted to stop and beg for someone to be her friend, and she wasn’t social.
“What if I slow you down and get you caught?”
“If we’re caught it won’t be because you’re with us. Either we screwed up. What?” Dev looked up. “It could happen.”
The males up front nodded their heads to admit there was always that chance.
“Or the government has gotten better. That could happen too. I do want to get those trackers out of you, even if you choose not to stay.”
“Why do you want me to stay?” She was looking at Dev now because his was the only answer she was interested in.
“I’m drawn to you as I have never been drawn to another person.”
She understood that feeling, and he had been honest she could feel it in her bones. If she were honest, she wanted to stay.
“How about you get the trackers out of me, and then we see what happens next.”
“Alright.”
She leaned back into the seat taking her fingers off the door handle. She watched as he inched over a little. Not enough for his body to touch her, but enough for his heat and his scent to cover her. Her hand inched over the seat until her fingers were next to his. He tangled his fingers with hers, and she laid her head back against the seat letting the stress that she was living in recede for a few minutes.
Ben turned around to look at them. They were asleep, but he focused on their interlocked fingers.
“I don’t know whether to be happy for him or jealous. Is it possible to be both at the same time?”
“Yeah, it is.” Lore looked at them through the rearview mirror.
“What do you think happened to Tane and Leza?”
“I think they are safe on their way to our land. If something went wrong, Dai or Jay would have found a way to let us know.”
“Your right.”
“Should we take this exit or look for a town?”
“I think we're damned either way.” He took the exit and drove until he found an out of the way motel.
“Dev, we’re here.” His eyes opened taking in the area around where they were parked.
“It’s as out of the way as we could get,” Ben said before he opened the door and got out.
“What’s happening?” She sat up to look around.
“We stopped here to take out your trackers. Ben is doing reconnaissance on the property. I’m going to go inside get keys to the room and make sure it’s safe to spend the night here.”
She nodded and looked at Lore. A smile curled her lips up even as she made a plan of escape if he tried to hurt her. Men stuck together she remembered that much from her old life.
Dev frowned at the tenseness of her body before he left the vehicle.
She inched back over to the door checking to make sure the locks were up.
“I won’t hurt you, but my word won’t assure you, will it?
“No, it won’t.”
“Whoever hurt you must have been bad.”
“Maybe it was the military or the government who said they had my best interest in mind, but made me into a freak.”
“Maybe. If that’s the case, you can trust me. They did it to everyone in this car and many more.”
He was right, but she wasn’t willing to give anyone her full trust again.
Ben slid into the SUV.
“No signs of any traps.”
“Then we wait for Dev.”
He came minutes later with keys in his hand.
“I got two rooms.” He told them where they were, and Lore moved the car.
“I want us on shifts tonight.”
“I’ll do the whole shift and sleep in the vehicle tomorrow.”
Lore took a good look at Rissa, she was ready to bolt, and Dev would bolt after her. He didn’t like it, but they would have to be in a room alone for the night.
“Let’s do this. Dev I want to be there when you take the trackers out. We don’t want any surprises.”
He nodded and handed a key to Ben as Lore pulled into a parking space.
“What floor are we on?”
“Second, it’s the closest I could get to the ground floor.”
Lore opened the door and gave a small grunt to acknowledge that he heard. Ben got out leaving Dev and Rissa in the back seat.
“What are you going to do?”
She turned to look at him. His eyes were tracking her like he could read her every thought. That by itself was enough to make her nervous. Her hand ran through her hair another nervous tell she had.
“Are there really tracking devices inside of me?”
He gave a sharp nod of his head. “Yes, there are. Leza had thirteen of them in her body. That’s overkill, but that’s our government.”
“It doesn’t matter how far or how fast I run, they know where I am.”
“They did. That’s why we turned on the jammers. We’ll have to put as many miles as possible between this way station and us tomorrow.”
“I…I want the trackers out of me. I should warn you that I don’t know what I’ll do tomorrow. Also, I won’t repay you with sex.”
“No, you won’t. Who asked you to repay them with sex?”
She shivered and slid closer to the door. His voice dropped becoming deep and gravelly. There was a growl that he was barely holding back and his body was still, ready to hunt. She had been right in her first estimation of him. He was good to his core.
“Doesn’t matter, it won’t happen again.”
“We’ll talk about it later.” He turned purposely and reached for the door handle.
When he left the car, she slowly moved across the seat and followed him out the same door. She still knew better than to trust, but a life lived without it wasn’t worth living. With a deep sigh and a quick prayer that she was making the right choice she followed him inside the motel.
Chapter Five
The walls were a dingy yellowish white that comes from age. Someone had washed them recently hoping to give them a boost of color, but nothing but a paint job would bring life back to them. She ran a critical eye over them finding lots of places that had been missed and almost cracked a smile.
She was used to sle
eping in back alleys and the corners of buildings. To her, the motel room was welcoming and warm. What bothered her was the fact that she was stuck in this room with three males and a bed. If she were alone, the bed would call her name as if it were the most luxurious bed ever crafted. Instead, she held her body still and eyed Ben who was leaning casually against the door that had been scuffed multiple times.
There would be a fight, the likes of which they had never seen if they attacked her. Dev turned to look at her before he turned to look at Ben. He gave him one look making him move. He went deeper into the room and Lore followed him.
She took a deep breath that was the only action that betrayed how she was feeling.
“Rissa.” Dev was looking at her giving her a smile that said everything was fine. “Ben is going to have to get to the door. I’m going to need my tools from the SUV.”
He held out his hand.
He wanted her to trust him. Not going to happen. The room wasn’t that big. Dev was standing in front of the bed. To one side was a chest of drawers on the other side was a chair and a television. The wall in front of the bed held two doors one was the closet the other led to the bathroom. She edged towards the door.
His hand never wavered even as she contemplated escaping. He would reach her before she ever made it out the door. It was a risk either way, but the yearning to be able to trust was telling her to move towards him and not away. Her hand trembled before she curled it into a ball. The last thing she wanted to show was a weakness. Taking her time, she took one small step after another until she was finally close enough to grasp his hand.
His fingers closed around her drawing her in closer, but that was it. He didn’t try to touch her anywhere else or claim her. He turned his head and nodded to Ben who left the room never making eye contact with her.
Lore stayed in the corner of the room leaning against the wall. His arms were folded across his chest, he was the epitome of the relaxed male, but she knew better.
“Someone hurt you. Someone other than the assholes at the military compound.”
The words weren’t loud, they were pitched just right to tickle her ears. She might have even been able to ignore them if there wasn’t an undertone of anger on her behalf.
Her shoulders shrugged. That subject was off limits. In life, people get hurt, or the government placed animals in their bodies. You live with what happens to you. It was her motto and one of the reasons she was still standing tall.
Ben walked into the room carry several bags and a portable table. She turned her head to look at Dev.
“I need the table to lay you on. The bed is too soft and low. The rest is what I need to get the trackers out.” He walked away from her and picked up what looked like a portable X-ray machine.
“This is almost what it looks like, but it will look specifically for the trackers in your body and gives off considerably less radiation than an actual X-ray machine.”
He went into the bathroom and washed his hands before he came out and set up his portable field surgery unit.
“I’m going to need you to go to the bathroom and change into this gown.”
Her eyebrows shot up as she looked at him. He must have lost his mind.
“You can leave your lingerie on.”
She simply stood and stared at him. He picked up his field device and began to run it over her.
“You have three trackers that show up from the initial sweep of the front of your torso. One is in your thigh. To get to it you either need a gown on or you will have to take the jeans off or I will have to cut through them, but the tracker has to come out.”
She picked up the gown he laid on the bed and walked to the bathroom. The door clicked behind her, she leaned against it hoping her weight would hold it close if someone tried to come in.
“No,” she murmured to herself before giving her head a hard shake. They weren’t like that. They didn’t attack females or anyone that couldn’t defend themselves. Even though she knew she was right, it was hard to relax.
One look in the mirror showed the face of a female that she didn’t know anymore. Her eyes closed picturing herself as she used to be. The funny thing was she didn’t know that female anymore either. Turning away she slipped out of the pants she was wearing and the top. She put the gown on it reminded her of the one’s found in a hospital. She took a deep breath, nowadays it felt like every action needed to start with one of those, then she turned the knob on the door. She was going to do this because it was the best chance of survival she had.
Dev looked up and smiled at her. She walked over to him making sure that Ben and Lore were as far away as possible in the small room.
“What do I need to do?”
“Lay on the table, I want to run the machine over the front of your body again to see if I missed any trackers and then turn over. I’ll repeat on your back.”
The table was black with a slight cushion on it. Climbing up was easy, she lay stiffly waiting for him to start.
“How did you end up with the military?”
“It’s a long story.”
“We’ve got time.”
She nodded thinking back to a time when things were normal.
“I worked for a corporation that managed the accounts for the government, we handled several government corporations. The ones I worked on were your average run of the mill accounts nothing that demanded a security clearance or an oath that I wouldn’t tell anyone about them.
“One day two nicely dressed men entered the office going directly into my supervisor’s office.” If she were superstitious, she would say when they looked at her she knew her life meant less than nothing at that point.
Truly she wasn’t the gossiping type, but she joined her co-workers in the kitchen to hear what they had to say about the strangers.
Gossip was rife from them being IRS agents sent in to close the office down to them being secret military or government officials. No one knew for sure, but they all said something bad was on the horizon. It turns out they were right.
“No one knew why they were there, but speculation was running rampant. The next day I came in and was called into my supervisor’s office.”
It was called the walk of shame when anyone was called into Sally Dupree’s office, her immediate supervisor.
“I was accused of not doing my job properly to the point that I allowed several vital accounts to lapse.” Accounts that had never been assigned to her.
She protested of course, but that only made the situation worse. Her supervisor refused to look at her when she said ‘Collect your things and leave. Here is your severance pay. You’ll find it all there.’ The whole office watched, everyone refusing to talk to her as she left never to return. What was she supposed to do when no one else was willing to hire her?
“I was fired. That fast I had nothing.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“Thanks.”
“I found an additional tracker just below the knee. The one’s on the front of your body aren’t deep. They will be easy to get out. Before I turn you, I want to get those out.”
“Alright.”
“Tell me what happened next.”
“Funny to think that there was a next. I was at a loss of what to do. I looked for jobs, but I was getting nowhere fast. Eventually, I started spending time in Starbucks drowning my woes in designer coffee that soon I wouldn’t be able to afford.
“That’s when I heard her. Renee Glee was sitting behind me talking way too loudly about needing an assistant. Having no other choice, I asked what she needed an assistant for. That’s how I started working for Paranormal Today; they were going to be the hottest new show on television as soon as they had thirteen episodes under their belt. We were filming episode eight when they asked me to climb this altar. The thing I remember after that was waking up tied to a bed.”
“They seem to be abducting females for the change but not just any females. They have targeted them, I bet the governmen
t has been watching them and even have genetic information on them. You weren’t a random target they wanted you.”
He took the last tracker out and inserted a needle. She needed to sleep for the next part of the abstraction.
They waited until she fell asleep before any of them moved.
“Do you need help turning her?”
“No.” He knew Ben meant well, so he tamped down on the growl and tried to control his teeth.
“I hoped it was just a coincidence when they abducted Leza. A case of being in the wrong place at the right time.” Lore was pacing the room throwing Dev looks as he searched for any trackers.
“They didn’t mean to lose Rissa. There are only three on her backside, and that includes the one near her spine. This one isn’t buried, so that will make this easier.”
“They’re abducting potential mates from their lives. How do we stop this?”
“We’re on the run trying to get to our safe house. Tell me honestly do you want to stop this?” Ben ran his hand through his hair even as he turned away from Lore.
“That’s a hard question. Leza came into our lives because of the government, and now we have Rissa in our lives. If you want me to say I don’t want a mate I can’t, I won’t. At the same time, I won’t say I condone the government ripping women out of their lives to become shifters. I don’t condone them doing it to us.”
“You’re right. It puts us in a hard place.”
“No, it doesn’t. There’s nothing we can do to stop the government at least not right now. We keep moving until we get to our safe house. When we’re all together, then we’ll come up with the next move. Right now we need to stay alive. Dev how are you doing?”
“Last one out now.”
She was going to be upset with him rightfully so. He did what he thought was right if she got any more nervous, she was going to move, and he didn’t want that when he was playing with her spine.
“We’re going to spend the night here and dump the SUV in the morning.”
He nodded. “Bring us something to eat when you come back.”
“You got it.” They strolled out the door looking relaxed, but he could see from the way they held themselves that they were on guard.
Dev's Mate (Shifters on the run Book 2) Page 3
