It was difficult. She had to constantly readjust, and just as she thought she had found the best path through the woods, more lights flashed at her, this time at her left. They were herding her, closing in on her in a pincer movement. Perhaps if she ran back the way she had come—
No, she realized, looking behind her. There were lights there, too. They had landed circling her, hoping to catch Number Four in a tightening net.
A grim satisfaction sliced through her exhaustion. I helped him, she thought. He'll escape. The thought filled her heart.
Then light flashed in her eyes and blinded her, and her shoulder clipped the trunk of a tree and she went down, hitting the ground with a thud that rattled her brain in her head.
They were upon her almost immediately. The cold was affecting her thoughts, her blood was sluggish in her veins, and she realized, in a distant sort of way, that she had already begun the process of freezing to death. Time was becoming distorted, and she reeled as a man, seemingly as large as a mountain, grabbed her by the arm and hauled her to her feet.
"You're safe now," she heard someone saying. "You're safe. Where is it?"
She wanted to laugh, but she was too tired to do so. Safe? The only way she'd ever be safe again was if she could turn back the clock, turn it back to before this began. But then Four would still be out in the wilderness, half-mad with the light of the moon.
And now she was captive again.
But with humans, she thought. With people.
Perhaps it would be all right.
She tried to ignore the pain in her chest that told her otherwise.
Chapter Seven
Bonnie closed her eyes as something warm settled around her shoulders, wrapped her body. Not too hot, obviously, but just warm enough to speed her blood back up, just warm enough to bring her back to life. After a second she opened her eyes again, but now she was on the ground, a man in dark clothes stooped over her, taking her blood pressure. Somewhere close by, but not so close it deafened them, a helicopter still ran, while she heard others buzzing around in the sky. She'd been dressed in thick, thermal pants and a sweatshirt and something else. A hat swaddled her head and a cowl snugged her throat. She must have slept for a moment...
The man turned to her. Like her first captors, he was wearing a ski mask so she couldn't see his face, but in the light from the lamps around them, she saw he had bushy red-brown eyebrows riddled with white, and crinkling, smiling blue eyes.
"You're awake," he said. "Good. You'll be just fine. You need to rest up a bit..."
From her other side, someone turned her head and she was looking at another man, this one slighter and clearly younger. They were in a small clearing, surrounded by gadgets and equipment. Other men melted in and out of the trees, and she frowned at them, uncomprehending, before her the second man guided a straw into her mouth and she sipped water.
For a long, strange moment, Bonnie wondered if it had all been a hypothermia-induced dream, a delirium brought on by the cold invading her brain. These people seemed kind enough. Perhaps she had seen them coming to rescue her, and they had been incorporated into her standard dream realm, the realm where her beast-lover took her night after night.
Had Four just been a figment of her imagination?
For reasons Bonnie couldn't quite explain, she began to cry.
Then the kindly man with the crinkly blue eyes took her hand, shrouded in a mitten, and patted it in his own bare hands. "There, there," he said to her. "That monster won't touch you again. You're safe now. We'll catch it."
The cool, analytical side of her realized that yes, these were her captors. They were Four's captors. “What... what's going to happen to me?” she said, reclaiming her hand and wiping the tears from her eyes, where they were freezing on her lashes.
“We'll get you warmed up, and you'll be paid. Quite a bit more than promised. I'm so sorry this happened to you, some wires were crossed. You were simply meant to be bait, not fall into the creature's hands. We'll provide all the counseling you need, if you would like. Or we can attempt to suppress the memory, if you prefer to forget. We... have that ability.”
Suppress her memory? Like they suppressed Four's memories, she realized. A sharp cold sliced through her gut, though it had nothing to do with the cold of the night.
I can't trust these people, she thought. How long had they been chasing Four? Had they really not meant for Four to mate with her? They must have known something would happen, seeing as how they'd removed her underwear. And if they'd only meant to capture Four, they would have come riding to the rescue the moment he showed up...
Licking her lips, she tried to look lost and uncertain. “And what will happen to... to the creature?”
She saw the bushy brows twitch. “Did you speak to it?”
Bonnie did her best to feign ignorance. “What do you mean?”
The eyes narrowed slightly, but he only said, “The creature will be recaptured. Don't you worry. It won't ever hurt you, or anyone else, again.”
She heard the implication in his reassurance, that Four had hurt others, and she thought of Four's beautiful, burnished red-gold eyes, the gentle way he had touched her, even as their fucking had turned wild. The way he had stopped when she asked him to.
Fuck you, Bonnie thought.
She sat up, and she realized she had been cleaned. The oily scent of Four's fur still lingered in her hair, but between her legs there was no stickiness. These people had touched her—again—without her consent or knowledge, and that scared her far more than Four ever could.
A heavy hand landed on her shoulder and tried to gently guide her back to the makeshift bed on which she had been lying, but Bonnie twisted away, instinctively falling back on her training. She saw the crinkly blue eyes go wide with surprise as she slipped from his grasp, and then she was on her feet.
She streaked across the clearing. There was no hue and cry, not at first. The men who had been nursing her were too shocked to draw attention to her escape for a moment, and with that moment she bought time.
Her brain, always analyzing, was ticking over a million miles a second.
They touched me, she thought. They know my name. Even if I escape, they will always know where to find me. They know I am Four's mate. They know he will try to come back for me. They can erase my memory.
I will not be bait for him. I will not forget him.
Maybe that was stupid. Maybe it was naive and childish. But she didn't care. People who would steal memories, who would keep a sentient creature locked up, who would send a virgin out to be ravaged by a beast—they couldn't be trusted. They should never get what they wanted.
She had to save him somehow.
But how?
“She's getting away!” The shout came from behind her just as she slipped between two large men, staring at her, dumb and surprised, and disappeared into the trees. One of them made a belated grab for her, and she felt fingers brush against the ends of her long hair before she vanished from the clearing. Yells rose behind her, around her, and she darted away from them.
She had no shoes, though her captors had put her in socks, and she felt every rock and stone and stray acorn embedded in the ground. Lances of pain speared up her legs, but she kept running. She would be numb again soon enough.
Bonnie didn't bother trying to figure out where she was going. She only ran in the direction that she knew was away from where they had taken her. Away from the light and the warmth. Away from whatever horrible things they had in store for her and Four. Away, away, away.
A dark figure loomed in front of her as she broke through the trees. A man in black. He seemed startled by her appearance, but he reached for her anyway. They must have been alerted of her break for it over a radio. Bonnie breathed in and pivoted neatly as his hand closed over her wrist. Her training came to the fore, and she led the man around in a swift circle before quickly reversing and sending him crashing to the ground. He wore heavy armor and hit the earth like a falling tree, an
d in a flash she was leaping over him and back into the undergrowth.
As she dodged branches, Bonnie tried to ignore the fact that she had no plan. She wasn't used to having no plans. She always had plans.
Kind of hard to plan for this, though, she thought to herself. Best to just keep going with it.
She flashed through the trees, dodging this way and that. The lights above her began to go wild again, searching for her. She shouldn't have separated from Four. They should have gone together. There was no way she could escape, even as she ran straight into another group of dark-clad men standing in a dry stream bed. Planting her feet wide, Bonnie whirled away from them, leading them off-balance until she found an opening and took it.
But of course, all the training in the world couldn't save her from a stun gun.
She didn't even hear it fire. All she knew was one minute she was running and the next her whole body contorted, spasming, and she lost control of her limbs. Like a puppet with her strings cut, Bonnie dropped to the ground, and as she did, she heard a roar.
At first she thought it was her heart exploding, blood rushing in her ears, but then the shock began to fade and she realized that no, it was the roar of an animal. A beast.
Her beast.
Four, she thought, and he crashed through the trees, into the long, narrow clearing.
Searchlights panned wildly over the landscape, flashlights wheeled and turned. Men shouted.
Four's beautiful red-gold eyes found her limp form, and even from thirty yards away, Bonnie saw them flush crimson just as a tranquilizer dart hit him in the shoulder.
“No!” she screamed.
Her body wouldn't cooperate with her, but she managed to get to her knees, lurching towards Four as he howled and twisted, ripping the dart from his hide. His long, dagger teeth flashed white in the chaotic darkness.
Someone straddled her back and huge hands covered in black leather gloves reached down and circled her wrists before wrenching her arms back behind her. Bonnie squealed as her shoulders creaked under the pressure.
“Don't hurt her!” she heard someone cry. “Don't let her bleed!”
Bleed? Bonnie thought. What would happen if she did?
Four roared again and another dart sprouted from his throat. Bonnie cried out as he stumbled. Fallen leaves went flying out from beneath his paws, and they fluttered as they reached for the sky then slipped back to earth, gilded silver by the moon and the wild lights. At the edges of the clearing the men in black were surging, forwards and backwards, a confusion of tranquilizer guns and winter gear and heavy armor. The hands holding her wrists together tightened and she whimpered, feeling the bones grind together, the pain keeping her on her knees.
She knelt on the ground and watched as Four's movements became stiffer, slower. He struggled toward her, the majesty of his form melting from grace to clumsiness.
Desperation welled in her chest, yanking her forward. The grip on her wrists tightened as Four lost his footing, splaying out on the ground, mere yards from her. His beautiful fur bristled with tranquilizer darts. They were going to kill him.
Blood, she thought. They don't want me to bleed. Therefore I need to make myself bleed. But she had no blade, no knife, no weapon. No fingernails. Held tight.
But what about teeth? wondered the detached, curious part of her, the part that had always wondered what people looked like inside, how they worked, why she was so strange, why she couldn’t come. The part that had led her to med school in the first place.
Bonnie rolled her tongue in her mouth, feeling the blood-rich veins pumping on its underside.
This is really going to hurt.
She stuck it between her teeth and bit down.
A flash of crimson pain consumed her, and when it receded her mouth was full of blood, a gash across her tongue. Blood dripped down her chin as she held her jaws open, tears streaming from her eyes at the agony of it.
None of the men noticed her blood pattering to the forest floor. None of them expected it.
But Four lifted his head and she saw his nose quiver, scenting the air.
Then he put his arms out and clawed his way forward, toward her. The man holding her didn't know what she had done, and stood there stupidly while she dripped blood from her mouth and Four strove toward it.
Other men started screaming, but their message was lost in the confusion. Bonnie ignored them. She stared into Four's glowing eyes.
Come on, she told him silently. We can do this.
With one final surge he landed at her knees, his tongue lolling from his mouth, tasting her blood on the ground.
Then he began to glow.
At first Bonnie thought it was her starving body and exhausted mind playing tricks on her. Then she thought it was a searchlight from above illuminating him.
But no. With every lap of his tongue, his fur became paler, turned silver, and caught the light of the moon, and within moments he lifted his muzzle to her mouth and greedily lapped at the blood still pouring from her lips.
When at last he retreated, he shone, the borrowed light of the moon turning him into a celestial being.
Bonnie sagged and watched him, knowing, somehow, that it would be all right.
*
Subject Number Four tasted the blood of his mate, and shed his constraints.
That was what a mate did. A mate provided strength. A mate gave purpose. As long as he had his mate, none could hold him. She gave him that which he did not have. She was the shadows on the moon, the dark country no sunlight touched, and yet without it the moon would spin off course, careening into the cold reaches of space.
She completed him.
Four threw back his head and howled.
The sound flooded the clearing, deep and haunting and so loud that men dropped like flies, their hands covering their ears. He felt the howl in his entire body, ringing through his flesh and bone, grounding him to the earth and connecting him to the moon.
The moon. He understood it now, knew it gave him power, as long as he had his mate with him, his anchor to humanity, to sanity. He let its light pour over his body, gilding his fur, and then he reached out with one great paw—was it larger than he remembered?—and knocked his mate's captor off his feet in one blow.
The impact was nothing to him, like a cat swatting a butterfly, but he knew the man weighed more than two hundred pounds. Almost gracefully, the man's feet left the ground, his hands on Bonnie's wrists loosening as he sailed gently into the air, up, up, and then down and down, until he landed with a thud twenty away. He slid another ten feet through the loose, frosty leaves before he smacked into a tree trunk and was still.
Around him the men were recovering from his howl. One or two of those still sharp enough to think were jamming fresh darts into their guns, but they couldn't touch him now. He had her.
Bending down, Four scooped his mate up in one huge arm and cradled her against his chest. She sagged against him and let him carry her as he surged forward on three legs, his claws slashing out left and right, scraping over body armor and sending men flying. They wouldn't die, but they would have bruises that would last for weeks. Maybe a broken rib, or two. Once or twice, he felt them crack.
But mostly he felt the silver fire of the moon mingle with the red blood of his mate in his veins, and he rode it high and well.
Helicopters still reeled above him as he dispatched the last of his hunters, and he knew they would not leave him be. He needed to get rid of them, too.
Four disappeared into the trees, his long limbs eating up the ground, not so monstrous now. Above him the helicopters searched, and one even found him, training its terrible light on him.
No, he thought. That wouldn't do at all.
It was flying perilously low to the forest, and Four glanced up as he ran, searching for just the right tree.
There. Ahead of him, to the left and up a sharp hill. He veered off course and in the cradle of his arm, Bonnie turned her face to his chest, hiding her eyes. She
had felt the tensing of his muscles. She knew what he was going to do.
He came to the base of the tree. Her blood pounded in his veins. Reaching up, he captured the lowest branch in his hand and vaulted them upwards. It felt like flying.
From branch to branch he leaped, flinging them both into the air where he would land on the next branch. In seconds he had scaled the tree and, at the highest branch that would hold him, he looked up at the helicopter hovering just above them, its searchlight waving frantically, trying to find them in the forest below.
Four tensed. Then he launched himself at the skids.
He felt Bonnie shriek into his chest, but she held onto him, and his hand found the runner of the helicopter.
For a moment they hung in the air, weightless. Then gravity caught up with him and they plummeted. His grip faltered, and the skid slipped from his fingers, but the jerk of his great bulk was enough.
The helicopter tilted wildly, the blades whistling past them as they fell and the pilot struggled to regain control of the machine as it veered off course. Confusion reigned in the sky as he hit the topmost branch of the tree below him, mostly bare, and began the painful slide through each subsequent branch beneath it. Wrapping his arms around Bonnie, he held onto her tightly until he landed on the ground with a thud that knocked the wind from him.
Gasping, he rolled to his hands and knees and gave his mate a once-over, checking her for damage. She stared up at him, shocked and amazed, and with something akin to admiration in her eyes. It kindled a tiny flame of joy inside him. Funny how all his joy seemed to come down to her.
But there was no time to revel in it. Scooping her up, Four bounded through the trees until he found a stretch of thicket, and, slipping through it, he lost their pursuers.
Time passed.
Four refused to stop, refused to give their captors the chance to take his mate from him again. Instead he ran and ran, until he felt the power of the moon fading.
Then the silver light on his fur dimmed, and he finally slowed down. Bone-deep weariness overtook him and he sniffed the air. He had been all over these mountains and valleys, and he knew this place. There were small caves nearby, a good place to hide from the encroaching morning.
Baiting the Beast (Virgin Werewolf Beast Erotic Romance) Page 7
