Page 16 of Under a Wicked Moon
“I pick it up, too,” she said next to him. “This is one of the rooms they do those experiments on us. Let me try the door. This time I’ll take the chance of my collar activating.”
“No, wait.”
Too late. She reached out and turned the handle, the door coming open a smidge. She gripped her throat and fell to her knees, head hanging and shoulders trembling.
“Vivi! Fuck.”
She froze, still on her knees One glance up. She was laughing. “Gotcha.”
He scowled. “That wasn’t funny.”
“Kinda was. Your face…” She doubled over, still laughing as she took his hand to stand. “That look when I went down was worth it.”
“Are you always this annoying?”
“Yep. Come on.” She yanked open the door.
Inside, three large screens had been mounted on the wall. Cabinets full of medical instruments lined the walls. In the center was an operating table. Chills slithered down his back. Bingo on alien-abduction-type scenario. A solitary laptop sat atop a metal stand in the corner.
She ran to the computer and typed. “Looking for my sister. She must be in this place or at another facility.” She searched the entire computer for the name “Nova.”
One came up on a list. Looked like a file of captured lycans. He saw his name on the list. There were at least thirty others, none that he recognized.
She clicked on “Nova.” A picture floated into view of a woman he didn’t recognize.
When the file opened, there was no information other than the delineation: “Terminated by Crown’s Wolves.”
Well… Shit.
Vivi couldn’t find out who he was. Thathewas one of the Crown’s Wolves.
Her termination must’ve been carried out by his brothers while he’d been in here.
A blinking light in the upper corner caught his attention. One of the doors they’d gone through was alarmed.
Noises outside the room up the hall. Many boots. Only seconds. He hip-nudged her out of the way and clicked the online icon. Rapidly, he typed a code into the internet search box that would send an encrypted SOS to his brother. He’d never used it before, but Flynn said he could trace it. He needed backup to get out of this hell.
Quickly, he closed the internet icon and slammed the laptop shut.
Lightning zinged through him from his collar and dropped him to the floor.
Chapter Six
They might not allow them together a fourth time. Or worse, they could force someone new in with him. Or her. Ky didn’t doubt they’d keep trying until both of them performed as they wanted, whatever that might be. At this point, he was a little unsure they wanted him to play stud. If all they needed was for him to father a next generation, then the humans needed to do far more research on lycan biology. He was damned proud of his people for not revealing everything, like the fact conception could happen only when a female was in heat.
He’d begun to suspect that them being pushed together was some sort of psychological game. Get them attached and then use the other as leverage.
He shouldn’t want her in here tonight. His resolve to keep his distance from her waned. His wasn’t physical desire anymore, although he wanted her. Badly. He still considered her the most beautiful creature he’d ever met. His interest in her had transformed into a mental addiction. To hear her voice, talk to a real person who wasn’t judging him or torturing him, and experience closeness to another had become an obsession.
As the sun set and the full moon started its ascent, something he felt rather than watched, since he’d been provided windowless housing, thoughts about the bleakness of his existence consumed him. This is why he wanted her, needed her. She was the only positive in his world.
He craved the sun too, not realizing how much he’d taken forgranted its rays on his skin. The liquid food that tasted of kale and other vegetables now made him physically ill every time he drank. Yet, in order to survive, he forced himself to drink and struggled not to vomit immediately. His body required bloody meat, as in barely seared. He’d dreamed a hundred spice concoctions to flavor every possible kind of meat. Boredom and loneliness percolated into a toxic detritus in his brain that fed paranoia.
He hallucinated demons at night with their red eyes, but intellectually knew they weren’t real. He sensed magical and paranormal energy whenever faced with creatures like demons and felt none in this place other than a few lycans and that one witch way back when he’d first entered. The demon eyes were all in his head.
He kept track of days since the last time he saw Vivi by hatch marks on the floor, not that he could be 100 percent sure after they knocked him out that they hadn’t messed with the marks. Since dawn this morning—well, really, since she’d been ripped away from him weeks ago—he hadn’t thought about anything other than getting a few more minutes with her.
He’d considered all possible angles for their game of keep apart and throw together when the drive for sex raged highest. Perhaps they sought to force him to want her more by holding him hostage with anticipation. Or this wasn’t about him at all, and it was about her in some way.
