Aiden's Charity (12 page)

Aiden stepped out onto the porch of the cabin, gazing out at the darkness of night, which had fallen over the compound. He could barely glimpse the high walls that ringed the ten-acre compound. Set with motion sensors and guarded by a team of highly trained enforcers and guard dogs, the chances of the area being breached were slim. But they were still enclosed, imprisoned in many ways. There was no place on earth that was truly safe.

The compound now held over two hundred Wolf Breed inhabitants, from the ages of sixteen to early thirties, and more straggled in monthly. There were several small prides of Feline Breeds that had come in, but they were quickly transferred to Callan in Kentucky, where a similar protective area had been set up.

Six years after the breaking story of the Genetics Council and their horrors, and still there was no resolution. The monsters still practiced their evil, and finding and destroying their Labs was becoming harder each year. Aiden often feared that it would never end.

“Aiden.” Dr. Armani stepped from the shadows of the night, joining him on the porch.

“She’s asleep. Let her rest for now,” he bit out, his body tensing at the thought of Charity being awakened by yet another scientist set on more experiments.

A sigh broke the night. Regretful, yet tinged with mockery.

“I never knew how selfish you could be,” she snorted. “I thought you were more the beta type. Where did you hide all these alpha tendencies over the years?”

He crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned against the rough wood of the cabin and stared at her. He was the damned security expert here, what made her think he didn’t know how to fight?

“Even genius doctors can be wrong, it seems,” he said as though in regret. “I’m sure you’ll survive the mistake, though. This time.”

She grunted in disbelief. “I need to see her when she wakes up. You know that. I would have preferred to have seen her before you mated her.”

“We’ve discussed this.” He tensed as he watched her. “She’s not strong enough for more tests.”

“I need samples, Aiden. I don’t need her body to run the preliminary tests. If she conceives, then your opinion won’t matter. Charity knows the score here. When she’s more herself, you won’t be able to stop her from coming to me.”

Aiden bared his teeth at her statement. “You forget, Armani, she is in my cabin, in my care. My mate. She will do as I say.”

Armani smiled. Just like that, her teeth flashing in the dark as she sat down slowly in the wide, rough wood chair he had made weeks before. She crossed her legs casually, adjusted her light jacket and regarded him with a mocking glitter in her gaze.

“How the mighty will fall,” she sighed sarcastically. “The male mind truly amazes me. The male Breed mind astounds me. What makes you think you can stop her, Aiden? Will you tie her to your bed?”

“If I have to.” He wanted to snarl, but he knew exactly how cutting the little woman could be. He had no desire to be on the wrong end of her cutting sarcasm.

She shook her head sadly. “Charity is well aware of the importance of what’s going on here. Trust me, Aiden; you can’t control her just because it’s your wish to do so. She’s stronger than that.”

“I won’t argue with you, Armani,” he growled, careful to keep his voice low.

“Aiden, I have never considered you a stupid man. Don’t start playing the role now.” Her voice was cold, lethal in its sarcasm. “Not just Charity’s survival, but the survival of your race depends on her at this point. Don’t let your possessive instincts destroy the good that came of what they did to her. She would only hate you for it.”

“And how do you know this?” he bit out. “You have no idea who or what she is.”

“Ah, and here is where you show your ignorance once again,” she sighed in regret. “Charity was, from the very beginning, a plant within the Council, Aiden. A very well hidden mole whose job it was to keep a careful accounting of everything that went on, day by day. All the tests, all the results. How do you think we’ve gained the information we have so far?”

Aiden’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Who is this ‘we’?” he asked her carefully.

She sighed again. “Do you think I am the only doctor who turned down the Council and suffered for it? There were several of us. You know how hard I’ve worked, Aiden, for your people. There are others who have worked with me.”

“Why didn’t you mention this before?” he asked her coldly. “This information seems rather convenient, Armani. More of a carefully prepared lie than any hidden truth.”

Yet, hadn’t Charity told him that it had been she who had contacted the journalists six years before? She had finally been caught in her deceit against the Council while helping the Winged Breeds. She had been in three of the Labs the Wolf Breed Enforcers had received information on, only to escape with the scientists before they could be caught. She had been in several of the Labs that freed Feline Breeds had sworn she had aided them at, in various ways.

He cursed. A low, vicious sound that grated on his own ears. Armani’s chuckle didn’t help the anger growing inside him.

“The fun part in dealing with judgmental assholes, is watching them fall when the truth finally hits them. Welcome to the real world, Aiden. Let’s see, you’ve hated and reviled your mate for six years, and still you haven’t even questioned how she came to be your mate. Or if she is even truly your mate. Have you even considered thinking past your dick yet?”

The woman had an evil mouth.

“She is my mate.”

“Yet days ago you stood before me and said quite the opposite.” She tilted her head as she watched him knowingly. “What changed your mind?”

“Does it matter?” he snapped out.

“Actually, it does. Let me tell you what I know, that you are unaware of, Aiden.” She held up one hand and began counting down. “Number one; six years ago, to save your worthless hide, a virgin went to her knees and forced your erection when you would have died instead. In doing so, to hide the sudden swelling beneath her hands, she was forced to swallow your semen. The change in her body began days after. I have all the tests she ran on herself carefully documented. You didn’t mark her, so the saliva where the Breed hormone is more prevalent didn’t create the same effects Faith had from Jacob. But your semen created changes in Charity that were not apparent in Faith until after her mating with Jacob, and her ingestion of…”

“Dammit, I don’t need to hear about my sister’s sex life.” He pushed his fingers through his hair, trying to fight the knowledge that they were trembling.

“You are missing the point,” she sighed in exasperation. “The point is, certain changes begin with certain sexual passages. Faith was merely in heat for six years. Uncomfortable, at times painful, but Charity has gone farther than this.

“The hormone in your semen reacted in an entirely different way. I won’t get too technical on you, as I’m certain you wouldn’t understand,” she said, her tone superior, knowing. “But the fact of the matter is, she was the perfect specimen for the Council, because her body already had your DNA infecting her, slowly, too slowly, shaping itself and her ovaries, to prepare her to accept your unique sperm.”

“Get to the fucking point,” he snarled. He was sick of the lesson in biology and her careful sarcasm.

“The point is,” she said with heavy patience. “The scientists found a way to advance the ovarian change. Her eggs must be compatible with your sperm to breed. To this point, neither my colleagues nor myself have figured out a way to do this. Charity’s body holds the answers. To help your sister and your Pack Leader’s mate, we must know those answers, Aiden. Charity knows this, the rest of us know this, now you must accept it.”

“They hurt her,” he said softly, unable to still the rage that climbed inside his body at the thought of it. “She nearly bled to death in my arms, whispering of rest. She sleeps now as though she hasn’t slept in years.”

“She hasn’t, Aiden.” Armani’s voice was now filled with regret, with compassion. “She has worked tirelessly to help others, even though she knew time was running out for her. Her body was making demands she couldn’t answer, and the Council was growing more suspicious of her. Now that she’s free, you won’t be able to control her; you won’t be able to bind her. You have no idea the nature, or the training of the woman you have taken. But I trust it will be amusing watching you learn.”

She stood to her feet then, her dark eyes glittering from the rays of the moon, mockery lining her expression.

“You’re too smug to suit me,” he bit out. “What are you not telling me, Armani?”

She shrugged slowly. “There are some things, Aiden, that you must find out for yourself. I look forward to watching you struggle through it. I expect it to be amusing.”

“You find too much amusement at my expense,” he grunted in disgust.

Her laughter was light, amazingly feminine. “I must find my pleasures, small though they are, where I can. I gave up my fiction fetish for this practice,” she growled irritably. “I should be amused somewhere.”

She moved away then, obviously finished with him.

“Armani,” he called out softly.

She paused, glancing over her shoulder questioningly. “I pity you should a Breed mate with you. You may find we’re a bit more intelligent than you give us credit for.”

“I never imagined you weren’t, Aiden.” Her smile was less than comforting. “I’m just waiting on you to prove it. As for a breeding; ah well, we will see should it happen, perhaps. We shall see.”

She turned back and walked away from the cabin slowly. Her shoulders were stiffly straight, her stride determined, though not hurried. A grin edged his mouth. Damn, he wanted to be there should it occur that she did mate with another Breed. Watching the doctor fall would be more than amusing.

Chapter Fifteen

Charity came awake slowly, for the first time in more months than she could recall there was no pain, no racking shudders twisting through her body. But the depths and severity of the arousal had changed. What had once been agony was now a deep-seated compulsion.

Behind her, Aiden slept deeply. His arm was wrapped around her waist, keeping her back locked to his chest, his body sheltering hers. His heat surrounded her, warming her. That cold core of agony that had once been lodged in the very depths of her midsection was no longer there. Instead, heat burned.

She could feel the arousal tingling over her body. Like starvation, or an unquenched thirst, she couldn’t convince it to ease. There, of course, had to be a scientific reason for the change, she thought, concentrating on the clinical rather than the physical aspects of the changes overwhelming her. Which meant she needed a lab. She needed blood work, vaginal and saliva samples; the list went on. If Nicole Armani were here with the Breeds, then she would have a lab. She would have the supplies and the equipment needed for the tests.

“Do not move.” Aiden’s voice was husky and deep as she prepared to do just that.

Charity bit her lip as she felt his breath fan over the tender wound at her shoulder. When she felt the long canines bite into her flesh the night before, she had expected to awaken in more pain than she had started out with. The wound wasn’t painful. Rather it was sensitive, receptive to his lightest breath and aching for a deeper caress.

She fought to keep her mind distant from his touch as his hands stroked the clenching muscles of her abdomen, easing the ripples in her womb. She needed to keep as much information as possible in the forefront of her mind. The changes overwhelming her once again were varied and intense. The pain was gone, but she didn’t like the sensations that had moved in instead.

She closed her eyes as she fought her response to him. His cock was swelling along her buttocks now, thick and hard. The thickness of the Breed cock was overwhelming anyway. Talk about being packed. It had taken both hands to wrap around it in the Lab, and hiding the fist-sized knot that had risen halfway in the shaft had nearly been impossible.

What it had done to her cunt amazed her, even now. She should have ruptured. Should have been so filled with him that she was damaged forever. Instead, the overly sensitive tissue of her cunt had relaxed, eased, accepted the possession rather than tearing in protest.

“You’re thinking too hard,” he whispered at her ear. “I remember that look on your face, Charity. As though your are deciphering a particularly difficult puzzle.”

Her eyes opened, her head tilting to glance at him as he watched her from behind her shoulder.

“You used to watch me?” It had been so long ago, but she thought she remembered every detail of their time in those damned Labs. “I never saw you watching me.”

“I didn’t want you to see.” He lowered his head, his tongue swiping over the wound at her shoulder.

Charity couldn’t control the shudder that worked over her body. Oh, that felt good. Better than good. It was almost climactic, almost a sexual act itself. She bit her lower lip, fighting the moan that would have escaped her throat.

“Why?” she asked breathlessly. “Why didn’t you want me to see?”

“If you had thought I was watching you, you would have changed,” he breathed at her ear, his voice smoky, rough with arousal as his cock heated her backside. “I wanted you to react naturally. I wanted to see your expressions, see the myriad emotions that would chase across your face when you thought no one was looking.”

Charity whimpered in longing as he turned her more fully to her back. He leaned over her, his silvery eyes gleaming with sexual intent as his hand stroked her tight abdomen almost absently.

“Every time I looked at you, all I could think about was fucking you,” he said ruefully. “Do you have any idea how hard it was to control my body? My need for you? Each drug injected in my body made me weaker, took more strength to fight. I cannot tell you the times I nearly lost all control.”

Her eyes widened in surprise, then in shock as his palm slid between her thighs. Charity couldn’t halt her whimper of desire. She lifted to his touch, her thighs falling open of their own accord, giving him easier access to the flesh he now cupped in his hand.