by Vyne, Amanda
“Unfortunately, I don’t believe I will be able to accommodate you. I need you whole and hearty, I’m afraid. We’ve a long way to go, you and I.”
Raife snorted. “And exactly where would that be?”
The Elemental nodded to the woman in the lab coat when she looked up at him questioningly. Raife frowned as the woman wrapped a tourniquet around his upper arm. Were the other missing Drachon whole and hearty as well? He seriously doubted it. They hadn’t exactly been healthy when they were taken. If the best minds in the Drachon community couldn’t figure out how to save the species, he doubted some power-mongering Elemental could do it.
The man cocked his head to the side, those icy blue eyes deepening. Raife barely concealed his surprise as the cold essence of the Elemental solidified in the room, reaching out toward him. His scalp tightened as the man’s power made contact, its presence chill and menacing as it crawled over him, seeking a break in his mental walls. With a frown, Raife reinforced his mental barriers, and his skull thudded with the pressure. He’d been exposed to too many sick supernatural fuckers in his work at Incog Investigations not to have made his barriers rock solid, and he certainly wasn’t going to let some witch go rooting around in his gray matter now.
The Elemental smiled with a strange satisfaction, but the attack on his mind didn’t ease.
“I’ve got big plans for you, Agent Merrick. You’ve been chosen for a special assignment.”
“What an honor. And here I am without an acceptance speech.” Raife flicked a glance at a bag that was beginning to fill with his blood, his vision wavering under the pressure of the psychic onslaught. There was another bag sitting on the metal table waiting to be filled as well. “You want to spare a few details on what I’ve been chosen for?”
What the hell were they going to do with that much blood? More damn blood magic? It was the Drachon’s refusal to play the Elemental’s damn blood magic games centuries ago that had his species teetering on the edge of extinction now. The thought made his dragon shift and rumble menacingly beneath his flesh. He pushed it below the veil-thin exterior of his humanity with a dizzying effort.
Those pale eyes narrowed on him. “Exactly how old are you, Agent Merrick?”
Raife met his frosty gaze. “A gentleman never reveals his age.”
The Elemental turned on his heel with a short laugh and took slow, measured steps to the wall, his hands clasped behind his back. “Seventy? Seventy-five?”
“I am truly offended. Here I thought I didn’t look a day over thirty.”
“You’ve lived longer than any of the others. Have you ever wondered why that is?”
He had. Twenty years ago, he’d left the family stronghold to either find his mate or die in peace, since most unmated Drachon died around the age of fifty. He stopped waiting on the first, which left him only the latter to look forward to. Nine months ago, he’d lost the peace aspect of the whole thing.
“Okay, I give up. Tell me.”
“What is the only way a Drachon can live to old age, hmm?” The Elemental turned and met his gaze.
“What is this? A game? What do I get if I get it right?”
Drachon died shortly after their final heat if they didn’t find a mate. Judging by the smirk, he’d bet the asshole already knew that. Raife turned his head to follow the Elemental as he strolled past him to the other wall. What the hell was he driving at?
“All Drachon yearn for a mate, Agent Merrick. That one other person who can complete them spiritually and make them whole. Give them life. Even you, I would hazard, secretly harbor that desire under all that sarcasm.”
Raife dropped his head back against the table with a shrug. Those words struck too damn close to the truth, and it took most of his waning strength to mask the pain knifing through him, to conceal the overwhelming sense of loss he’d carried for too long now. He knew the crafty bastard was hovering there, waiting for a crack in his barriers.
“I gave up on that bullshit years ago. If that’s why you picked me, then you need to check your sources. I don’t have a mate.”
“Are you absolutely sure about that?”
His dragon hissed and pushed up against the unraveling veneer of civility he’d managed to maintain these past months. Barely. It had chosen a mate that couldn’t be theirs, one they would only destroy if they claimed her.
A powerless growl rattled through his chest. His vision dimmed to the hues of thermal imaging—his hunting vision—before he gained control and pushed his dragon back. After pulling in a long draught of air through his nose, he blinked. “What are you driving at?”
The other man’s knowing smile never budged. “My sources say a mated male bears a mark.”
Raife’s chest constricted. His flesh burned with a phantom ache over the heavy beat of his heart where his shirt concealed four long slashes scored into his flesh. They were supposed to be sacred, a sign of hope for the future of their species. Except there was no future. No hope. They’d become a mockery of his blind faith in the beliefs of his people. A faith that no longer comforted him. A faith that had betrayed him. Now all he had was duty. Clenching his teeth, he caught and held the asshole’s cold eyes.
The Elemental stopped just in front of him. He lifted a long-fingered hand and tapped the smirk on his lips. “Now let me think. I believe the mark is purported to be on the chest. Let’s see how accurate my sources indeed are, shall we?” He raised his arm and flicked his hand through the air with a snap of his wrist.
Raife gritted his teeth in irritation as his T-shirt was ripped away from his body. Elementals and their telekinesis. His muscles bunched beneath the restraints. He didn’t look down when the Elemental leaned in to get a closer study of those damning marks. He knew what was there. The memory of them haunted him no matter how much he drank. It followed him into every dark hell he’d tried to climb inside the last few months.
“Over the heart, no less. How symbolic.”
His dragon seethed, searing him, blackening him from the inside out with the heat of its fury. The very air moving through his nose scorched. Yet Raife controlled it, endured the burn, slowed the rise and fall of his chest. This manipulative Elemental would never find a crack to slither through.
Raife struggled with his dragon, his hunting vision wavering as he fought for dominance. He had a job to do, and he would do it. “Well, since we’re so into sharing, why don’t you tell me who the hell you are and why the hell you brought me here?”
The Elemental pursed his lips thoughtfully as he studied him. “You’re a powerful telepath. Resilient. Controlled. I have no doubt you will be strong. And determined. I imagine you would be ferociously protective of your mate.”
“There was no mating. No mate.” Raife buried the image of cerulean blue eyes and white-gold hair deep into his mind, tucking it away where it couldn’t be touched. Where it couldn’t touch him. She was a continent away, safe from this asshole. Safe from him.
The Elemental lowered his head and nodded. “Right. So you said. Now, tell me, is it true that a male Drachon cannot resist the urge to mate when his chosen is in heat? My sources say that the males are driven to it, driven to procreate. To live.”
Raife kept his expression blank, his mental barriers strong between them. “You tell me. They’re your sources.”
With that smile still fixed in place, the Elemental walked over to where the woman was disconnecting his IV tubing. He lifted a plastic bag of blood between his hands. “All animals have an instinct for survival, Agent Merrick. We are, when it comes down to it, no more than animals.” His lips lifted in a sneer on the last word. “For Drachon, mating is survival. So as long as your sweet little mate is in heat, we need do nothing but let nature take its course.”
It was true. When a Drachon found its mate and that mate went into heat, the dragon took control. It was the only reason he’d been able to stop those many months ago. She hadn’t been in heat. Couldn’t go into heat. Not without his blood. His gaze dropped to the ba
g of his blood in that asshole’s hands, and his heart stalled.
Son of a bitch.
It wasn’t possible. She was thousands of miles away. Mated to another. A male of her own species. He’d made sure of it. He couldn’t mate her. Not truly mate her. She wasn’t Drachon, and he refused to let her watch him die. Refused to let her face the repercussions of a crossbred relationship alone.
The fucker was bluffing. His dragon heaved against his shattering control. His head throbbed as he strained against his restraints. One of the bolts holding the straps around his arm snapped.
The woman taking his blood jumped back with a gasp, but Raife ignored her as his thoughts flashed through him with the force of whip. She was safe. Far away from him. Protected. She could never conceive the child he needed to extend his life, even if they were capable of finding her – there were no Drachon crossbreeds. It was impossible. Yet what if they had found her? Was her uncle a scheming, opportunistic bloodsucker who would sell out his own niece for the right price? Had he lied? Was she not safely mated to one of her own kind?
If she had been hurt, he would kill them all. Honor be damned. His dragon slipped its leash with the threat against their mate, and Raife’s last rational thought was that he would never get him under control again.
“Did you think she was safe, Drachon? Safe from you? From us? Aren’t you a bit old for that level of naïveté? Your little Sanguen was never safe.”
Raife jerked against his bonds. He wanted to rip this asshole’s head from his body, feel his blood oozing between his fingers. Heart hammering heavy beneath the pulsing marks on his chest, pumping adrenaline through his body, Raife no longer felt the pain ripping through his head, no longer remembered why he’d let himself get captured in the first place. All that was clear to him was the threat to his mate.
“She’s mine.”
“YES.” IRIAL CARRICK leaned in close, noting the Drachon’s pupils were elongated, amber eyes fixed intently on him. It was…curious, and not a little unnerving. All the more reason to finish this. “I’m counting on it, my friend.” He turned to the pale lab assistant and extended his hand. “Give me the sedative, and get those samples to Dr. Rupple.”
She jumped and handed the syringe over before darting from the room, the samples clutched to her chest. Irial watched her retreat with disgust. The redheaded female smelled sterile, like the lab she spent all her time in. He would be well rid of the damn place and the smell if this played out like he wanted it to. This whole place sickened him. The depths to which the ruling council would go for power sickened him. The depths he himself had gone to for success sickened him. It left a stain on his soul that would never be cleansed.
The metal straps holding the now enraged Drachon surrendered another fraction of space, and Irial considered the ominous whine of bending metal a sufficient motivation to focus on the task ahead. He pulled energy to himself, shrouding himself in it as he stepped forward with the syringe. If the weakened Drachon did manage to tear himself free of the restraints, he wasn’t about to face down the half-crazed beast with his fists alone. But he didn’t want to kill the man. Without him, all of his work these last years, every piece of his soul he’d sold along the way, would be for naught.
No, Irial needed the Drachon alive and well. Whole and strong. He removed the cap and pressed the plunger enough that some liquid dripped from the tip before inserting it into the open end of the catheter of the IV still in the Drachon’s arm.
Irial slowly depressed the plunger and waited until those strange glittering eyes with the elongated pupils began to glaze. Now the final stroke to push the poor bastard over the edge. He himself always found impending death a fine motivator. He leaned in close, until his lips nearly brushed the Drachon’s ear. “Your mate will die in here, Agent Merrick. That I can promise you.”
Despite the calculated intent of his words, he wasn’t sure the taunt was that far off. The girl was in deplorable shape, and this Drachon was her only chance of survival.
A drawn-out rumble rattled through Agent Merrick’s large body, even as it went slack in the restraints, and those eyes held his. In their depths was a promise of death.
A death he knew he deserved after what he had done.
But not yet.
This final battle had only just begun.
Chapter Two
Katya Schaffer lay on her back, eyes staring up into the ebony nothingness that blanketed her room, and decided death could be no worse than this.
Dark. Silent.
The cool blackness pressed down on her like six feet of earth. She wasn’t a fool. Not anymore. She knew her sanity hung by one straining thread. She didn’t dare move. Didn’t dare close her eyes. Instead, she lay in the silence and focused on her breathing, allowing the sound of her slow breaths to soothe her. She couldn’t open her mouth. She was afraid if she did, she would lose control and start screaming.
And then she would never stop.
No, she lay with hands still and folded over her belly, concentrating on the steady rise and fall. Just a little bit longer. Then she would have what she wanted. In the meantime, she was comforted by the occasional rumble of the hunger that meant she was alive.
For now.
How long had she been in here? Hours? Days? She didn’t know, but it hardly mattered. It may as well be years, because she wasn’t going to give them what they wanted. She would never curl up and beg to be released. Would never cry for light or for food. And she would never again meekly submit to their testing.
They could all go to hell.
She wasn’t broken yet, and she still had a secret left to play.
A couple of them actually.
Besides, it wasn’t the first time they’d thrown her in here. That had been the worst. She’d curled into a ball and cried to be released. Begged. She’d even suffered their tests in silence for a while. That was when she realized this was worse than this sensory deprivation, worse than anything they could throw at her. It was a risk she could no longer tolerate, one that threatened her very soul and forced her to a startling realization.
She was one hell of a fighter, and she wasn’t going to fade away if she could help it. She was strong. These bastards wanted her for some reason, and whatever that reason was, it was important enough for them to work real hard at it, and she made sure they did indeed have to. It was the least she could do. She’d even found the chip they’d imbedded at the base of her skull, which was silver, no less. Since her species couldn’t move through silver, the chip prevented her from shimmering from one location to another.
She’d dug that bad boy out with the sharp edge of a coil from her metal cot. At the time, she’d been too weak from their experiments to shimmer out of the complex once she got the damn thing out, but she had managed to cause some havoc and send the guards scrambling. Then it was good-bye cot, hello silver-lined cell.
A feral smile curled her lips. At least they’d had to pay a ton to keep her in one place. There was some satisfaction to be had in that.
Now she was under constant surveillance. There were probably night-vision cameras monitoring her at this very moment. Analyzing the success of their tampering.
Well, the joke was on them. While they were constantly removing blood and infusing her with who knew what, she was changing in ways they’d never know. Not if she could help it. She was in control in that regard, not them. She could feel their frustration, their desperation, as test after test failed to yield what they wanted. Whatever their goal, they’d made her one messed-up piece of work in the process. A veritable freak of nature. She intended to turn all of it back on them.
It wasn’t like she had a life outside this place anymore. Even if she could escape, she would never be accepted by the Alliance, or her own House for that matter. There would be no place for her in her old world. Even her uncle, her only family, would be forced to turn her away.
Beneath her hands, her belly tensed, and the steady beat of her heart quickened in her ears
. The nerve endings in her fingertips tingled.
Slow down. Focus. One misstep, one single wrong move, and she would lose all control, betraying the secrets she kept, and even though she wasn’t sure what they were looking for, she refused to volunteer anything.
Katya rubbed two fingers absently over the crisp material of her hospital gown. Hospital. Right. This place was hell and gone from a hospital. More like some research facility.
Pain and desolation saturated its walls; the screams and moans that normally penetrated into her cell were a testament to the horror of what was going on in here.
What she wanted to know, what drove her now, was finding out why. She wasn’t a scientist or anything, but she knew they weren’t just randomly experimenting on the people trapped in this place. They had a purpose. She’d heard them refer to the others here as subjects in specific trial groups, none of which made any sense to her. The one thing that did translate was that they had a particular outcome in mind.
For some reason, she was the key to achieving it. That doctor had taunted her with it.
“You’re more than I ever hoped to find.” That cold, latex-covered hand patted her bare thigh, lingering with its corpselike weight against her skin. “Yes, little one, you’re the link to unlocking the whole puzzle.”
Revulsion. Fear. Fury. It twisted and spiraled inside her until she thought she might lose her control, blow her big secret. Then she’d look in those beady dark eyes and promise herself she would rip him apart. Soon. The promise always soothed her.
But first she needed to know. She played the past twenty years of her life endlessly through her mind in the darkness, analyzing every word, every look, trying to determine if there had been a sign things were heading in this direction. Why her? What was so important about her that the person she trusted most would casually hand her off? The answers had become the singular focus of her existence.
Every element of her life had been traded away. Her freedom. Her trust. Her potential as a damn human being. Everything. And she wanted to know why. It was a churning, simmering drive.
