Page 30 of Inflamed By an Incubus

“I would do what the incubus is asking, Annette. Release Evelyn.” That male voice held a note of authority, had Evelyn tearing her gaze away from Fenix to look to her right.

Mark’s clear grey eyes remained fixed on Annette, and the two hunters that stood behind him looked ready to leap the moment he issued an order. He folded his arms across his chest, causing his tailored dark grey suit to stretch tight over his shoulders and biceps, and stared the scientist down.

“Release her.”

Annette obeyed this time, loosened her hold enough that Evelyn could wrench free of her grip. Evelyn fought the urge to lash out at her, to hurt her as repayment for what she had done, aware that Mark was watching both of them. He signalled his men and the two hunters were quick to rush forwards and seize hold of Annette to drag her away.

“I’m right,” Annette yelled, her voice growing quieter as the hunters pulled her towards the entrance of the cellblock. “He’s exhibiting behaviour we know nothing about. It’s my job to document…”

Mark heaved a deep sigh and looked Evelyn over, a flicker of concern in his gaze as he checked her from head to toe. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head.

Fenix rammed the glass with his shoulder, landed a punch on it that left a bloody smear, and then paced away from her, luring her gaze with him. He turned his back to the white wall and slid down it to his backside, rested his arms on his bent knees and hung his head between them. He muttered in the fae tongue, and the only words she caught weren’t good ones. It sounded a lot like he was planning all the ways he wanted to kill Annette for hurting her.

Evelyn looked at his reddened wrists and shifted to face him, barely leashing the urge to press her palm to the glass and tell him that she was fine, that she hadn’t really been hurt. His markings swirled with vivid colour, violently churning, but they slowly settled as she gazed at him, as if her eyes on him was enough to calm him.

She lingered, some part of her wanting to offer him this comfort and make him see that she hadn’t courted Mark’s concern, that she hadn’t asked for it, and that she wasn’t interested in him. The need to show him all those things was strong, like an instinct, one she didn’t understand but one that controlled her all the same.

Her gaze slid to the ring on his finger.

What was she to him?

What was he to her?

She had read about mates in the world of the non-humans, how the males of some species grew violent if they felt another male was making moves to take their mate from them. Fenix’s behaviour had all the hallmarks of a mated male.

“I’m sorry,” Mark sighed those words. She glanced at him and found his grey eyes fixed on the incubus. The hard edge to his expression as he ran a hand over his sandy hair and his gaze drifted back to her told her that he wasn’t happy about what had just happened, but she didn’t care about what Annette had done to her.

She only cared about what Archangel had done to Fenix.

“Did you sanction whatever they did to him?” she bit out, refusing to back down when the sensible part of her warned her that talking to her superior—to one of the senior commanders in Archangel—in that way wasn’t going to get her what she wanted—it was going to get her fired and kicked out of her home.

But her blood was running too hot now, the sight of Fenix in pain and how Annette had thrown woman after woman at him seared on her mind to keep her anger at boiling point.

“I’ve been away, dealing with business at one of the satellite offices. I came back to find a report on my desk that someone had witnessed the subject restrained and screaming in one of the labs. I tried to locate Annette to question her about it and received word she had been seen heading towards this cell block. I came here directly.” Mark slid her a look that had her shoulders locking up tight and her gaze darting away from him before he could see in her eyes just how upset she was by how Annette had treated the incubus.

Her gaze landed on Fenix.

Screaming. Restrained.

She swallowed hard. She didn’t have the stomach to ask for more information and was glad she hadn’t looked at the recording from today now. She wasn’t sure what she might have done if she had seen how terribly Annette had treated Fenix.

Regret washed through her as she looked at him, and for the first time since joining Archangel, she felt terrible about something she had done. It was her fault that he was in this condition. It was her fault that he had been subjected to awful things, to what amounted to torture. She felt sick as she crouched at the glass of his cell and pressed her hand to it, no longer sure this was the place for her.

How many other non-humans had been treated like him?

She glanced over her shoulder into the cell behind her, where a tall, handsome man stood with his silver eyes locked on her, throwing off a dangerous vibe that had her wanting to keep her distance from him. That gnawing feeling of guilt in her gut only grew worse as she looked at his stomach and saw the healing stitches there. Had he deserved to be cut open like that?

Did any of them?

“Evelyn,” Mark murmured and moved a step closer to her. “What Annette did was inexcusable. It is not how we work.”

It was. It was exactly how Archangel operated. They brought in non-humans and ran tests on them, studying them and calling it vital research that was necessary in order to protect innocent humans.

But what about the innocent non-humans that had no doubt been captured in raids or while they were out living their life? She was sure plenty of them were captured too and treated abominably by Archangel.

Possibly even killed.

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