More Than Life (Arcane Crossbreeds) (3 page)

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 bag 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.

Then she wanted to burn this place down.

The grind of metal against metal pierced the silence. Katya knew that sound. Immediately her body tensed, and she rolled to her side, curling down away from the coming light. She clenched her eyes shut as it speared into the room. It was almost as heavy as the blackness. After days of darkness, the light had texture, weight.

The dull
thud
of footsteps echoed in the room as they advanced. Two sets. They sounded loud after the complete silence she’d endured for so long. Whoever they were paused next to her cot. The air in the room shifted with their movements, raising the fine hairs on her skin as it wafted over her. She tested it, drew it in, looking for any information she could use. Her mind jerked back, faltered. Her body clenched in a violent response to that scent.

A full array of emotions punched into her with the force of a physical blow as her mind caught up with her body’s innate recognition. Deep inside, a shadow shifted, uncloaking a place in her mind she’d kept apart from her. Pain. Betrayal. Hatred. Desire.

Raife.

With a cry of fury, she came to her feet and shot across the room, her back slamming into the gleaming silver wall. The light stabbed into her eyes in agony, making them water, but she forced herself to focus on the two men who stood in the middle of the room.

Neither of them was Raife.

Calm down. Don’t give them a reason to restrain you.

“Take it easy, Ms. Schaffer.”

Ms. Schaffer? They’d never used her name before. She’d never seen them before either. Suspicion unfurled in her chest. Were they new? They wore the standard black BDUs, but they felt different from the others. Easing her senses open, she attempted a deeper study. She didn’t sense any psychic reciprocation or evidence that they noticed her telepathic probe at all, but their minds were closed to her. That meant they weren’t human.