Theron
I could smell her before I saw her. The dripping and damp basement that I had been held in was sinking into my bones, drowning out the hope that I would see daylight again. But the dulcet notes of my mate’s perfume stirred the monster in my gut, drawing him to the surface as my captors titrated up the dosage of sedatives.
“Fight all out of you, beast?” snarled the one who brought my food, chock full of drugs. The chemical taste lay thick on my tongue since the first day of my captivity. I had held off eating until I no longer could, hunger gnawing at my gut bringing visions before my eyes. Visions that couldn’t have been real. “Fucking finally. Holding up the fucking job by being a raging asshole, you have.” The zip from his cattle prod sizzled through my nerves, until I just lay there, my brain hazy at the edges.
I knew what they wanted. None of them had been particularly quiet about their plans. Afterall, I was the last of my kind. Using me as a stud was the easy answer for them to get what they wanted. Not that there was any guarantee of my pedigree. Father had seven children, only I was blessed–or cursed–with his monster. All of my siblings were grizzlies, just like Mama.
“Get him chained up,” the scientist that stood in the hall, watching every indignity. “The female has been prepped. We don’t have all day.”
“Thought that was the point, ‘cause these animals ain’t going nowhere. All dosed up on the drugs, they barely keep from pissing on themselves.” The guard manhandled me until I was on my stomach, face pressed into the damp stone floor as he clasped manacles around my wrists and a collar around my throat. I suppose it was to prevent me from shifting. I couldn't even if I had wanted to. The drugs that coursed through my system stripped me of control of the monster in my belly. He could rage and howl as much as he wanted, the skin was mine and mine alone until the chemicals were out of my system.
Getting me to my feet and moving proved more difficult than they anticipated. They had to pull a second guard into the room to heft me to my feet, then ran into the problem where my legs didn’t want to cooperate due to the overuse of sedatives, which had them all screaming and cursing. Finally, they dumped me on my cot and gave up, slamming my cell door so hard that the iron bars rattled, dropping sodden concrete from the ceiling.
“You could have just asked nicely,” I mumbled, my words little more than language salad with my tongue heavy in my mouth. “I find using some good old fashioned magic words get you everywhere with civilized people.”
“You aren’t people,” the guard hissed, spitting at the floor just inside the bars of my cell.
“And you aren’t civilized, we all have our faults.” I turned my head to look up at the ceiling, drugs already starting to burn out of my system. “I don’t mind being a monster,” I said. “Seeing what your kind is doing to your own, makes me glad to know I am fundamentally different.”
“If he can talk, he can walk.” The woman in white tapped her pen on the clipboard in her hands, ever-present since I had arrived months ago. Always scribbling down everything. “Get him in with the sow. Give him another dose of X before you leave them.”
I knew what X was. A hormone cocktail that both my beast and I took exception to. It didn’t do what they thought it would, not anymore, not now that I’d scented my mate. Kicking up my sex drive wouldn’t work a tick, especially if they put me in with a female who wasn’t mine. With the scent of her musk dripping into my lungs like warm honey, they could dose me all they wanted, my cock belonged to my fated, and only her. No babies would come out of my genetic stock unless they were hers. I was bound to her for life. Without ever seeing her.
No, what X did was piss me the fuck off. Riled my monster good and proper too. But I knew where to direct that rage. As the last of my kind, a beast that had fallen into myth and legend, I had spent my life honing my skills at appearing human, and had staked a full on career on it. That meant incredible control over my natural instincts.
“And who is this poor unfortunate soul that you are attempting to breed?” I asked, raising a brow as the guards hefted me to my feet again and pushed me out of the cell. I wasn’t too proud to say I didn’t stumble. Being a shifter meant my body processed things faster than a human, but the size of the needle they had used to shoot me up had been impressively ludicrous. “Because I don’t know if you’ve noticed.” I turned to the guard holding me upright, steering me around the corners as we got closer to the gorgeous scent of the one woman I wanted. “But the wrong female, and I’ll tear her in two,” I whispered. “I can’t breed a sow who isn’t built for me.”
“Don’t rightly care, there’s more than one bitch in this facility. We’ll pair you until it takes. Kill all the sows you want on the way. Fewer mouths to feed, and fewer mistakes they throw to the blood suckers later.” The guard grumbled as I leaned more on him, letting my weight sag the longer we walked. The sedative was nearly out of my system, close enough that there was a sinking in my gut when vampires were mentioned. Those shit eaters were more trouble than they were worth, and fucking hard to get rid of.
If I hadn’t had the fucking collar around my throat, I would have taken the bastards by surprise and torn my way out of their little basement science experiment, but not without my mate. If they had nightwalkers in the facility, it was only a matter of time before we were all fucked.
“Get the fucking door open, David,” the guard hissed at the creature standing in the hallway. “Fucker is heavy.”
And then I saw her and all human reason left me. Thrashing, I tried to throw off the guard, but the lizard man was stronger than I had thought, using the leashes attached to my collar to hold me still and maneuver me into the cell.
“I do hope that your stay here has been pleasant, my lovely.” The reptilian creature the guard had called David leered at the beautiful female in front of me, and I could feel my monster stir in my gut, hating the traitor all the more. I was practically salivating at the thought of tearing him apart, one fang at a time pulled from his jaw and jabbed into his eye sockets for daring to look at what was mine. Instead I got a cattle prod to the spine, making me taste electricity. “I have a present for you.” He stepped away, and I got an uninterrupted look at the beauty, only slightly dimmed by our surroundings and the heavy scent of chemicals coming off of her. “He isn’t as excited to meet you.” The snake elbowed me in the face as I was shoved past. I snapped at the offending appendage, but missed by millimeters, much to my animal’s disappointment. “But nonetheless, I do hope that you two find a detente.”
Porcelain skin covered in a heavy layer of tattoos, bleached blonde dreads hanging down her back until they brushed the swell of her ass. Slight with modest curves, the cheap fabric shift they had her dressed in hid nothing as it clung to her skin with the damp.
She gave the creature a dangerous grin that looked slightly wrong on her sweetheart face. “I’m sure we can make it work.” Her voice felt like honey dripping with poison. The weight of her power pressed against me as I stumbled into her chamber. An electric fizzle–that had nothing to do with a cattle prod that was in liberal use–went up my spine as our eyes met. Her beast shone in her black gaze, pulling my monster closer to the surface than I liked him, especially with the fucking collar circling my throat. “An interesting specimen, what do they call him?”
Her eyes never left mine, completely ignoring the enemy in our midst. She was a confident creature and I found myself more intrigued by the moment. More than her scent called to me. I was more than positive we could find a detente, indeed. My eye teeth itched as we gazed at each other. The need to sink my fangs into that ivory throat and bind her to me beat inside me with every breath. She was glorious. And she was mine.
“I’m sure he has a name.” The soldier behind me huffed a mirthless laugh. The keys on his belt rattled as the cell door screamed its angry tune. “But you can pull that out of him.” With one last shove, I stumbled forward. “I’m sure your interrogation skills are up to the task. We just call him the Beast.”
My feet caught on an uneven bit of floor, and I hit the ground with a grunt, my pride only mildly bruised.
“We’ll leave you two to get acquainted.”
I knelt there as the sounds of the guards retreated.
“Well, isn’t this a predicament.” Her feet moved over the floor, taking me in. The warmth of her scent built. “It seems that you are a gift for me. Pity they don’t know what kind of gift you really are, huh?”
My beast rushed to try for my skin, needing the touch of our mate. He hit me with a jolt that brought me to my feet. My cock strained in the presence of her perfume, thick and syrupy around me in the humid air. The monster in my breast growled as I took my full height. She was tiny before me, but I knew when my beast was bested. Unbidden, my fist circled my dick, giving it a hard tug as she watched me.
“You could at least tell me your fucking name.” Her words had me stopping in my tracks, my heart kicking up. She might smell fucking amazing, but the bitter taste of rage slipped through the lusty haze of my mind. “Before you attack me, huh, big boy?”
“Mate.” The word tore from my throat, a desperate plea for her to understand. For a moment, a softer gaze latched on to mine. One that I would have done anything to cradle in my arms, before it disappeared again. “Little bear, you are mine.” My hand came up to cup her cheek, her skin like satin under my fingers.
“Not if I bite first.” The grin that split her lips was nothing if not feral. “Not if I take you first.”