Page 40 of Elusive Mate

Along, mournful roar split the night. Surely, she was too far for that to be Lucian. It sounded heartbroken. Zenya had to fight back every instinct to answer his call and return to him. She shook her head. Could it be that he really cared for her? Did it matter?

Her feelings towards him were complicated, but they had softened. But, she reminded herself, she had been claimed without her consent and forced into a pair bonding not of her choosing. Just because she found the man wildly sexy and a good alpha who, for the most part, looked after his people, didn’t mean he got to make her his mate just because that’s what he wanted.

The good thing about Alaska was there was a lot of wilderness. It was easy to move in a shifted state. It was easier for some than it was for others. For instance, if you were a moose-shifter, you could pretty much travel as you pleased—meadows, woods, rivers, even towns. But animals not native to the area—jaguars, cave lions, and the like—stood out like a sore thumb against the stark landscape. Those who were blessed with a white coat, though, such as snow leopards, white lions, and white tigers, while not native, at least could blend in.

Zenya reached the nearest human town. Mystic River would have gotten her to Windsong, but she wasn’t sure she trusted any male shifters at the moment. Right now, the Resistance needed the Baihu Clan more than it needed to take up the cause of one female tiger-shifter. Arriving at a small town that had bus service to Anchorage, she found an alley beside a bar, shifted back to her human form and pulled on her clothes.

Tucking her hair up under a knit cap and putting on an oversized anorak—a kind of waterproof parka used in particularly cold or polar regions—with a fake fur collar, she turned the collar up and headed out of the alley. There was a bus station nearby, and her plan was to buy a ticket to Anchorage. She’d find a place to hole up and decide what her next move might be.

Just as she was about to exit the alley and head for the bus station, the entrance was blocked by several men. Not wanting to get into an altercation, she turned around, thinking she could leave from the other end. Not as direct or convenient, but better than getting into a conflict with several drunks.

As she turned on her heel, she found that the three up front had been joined by three men behind her. How had that happened? She’d been in the alley alone and now, suddenly, there were six men surrounding her. Sniffing the air, she realized they didn’t smell exactly right, and she was defining ‘right’ as human or shifter. They were neither—and that wasn’t good. The only beings that fell outside of those two categories tended to be the type of individuals one really didn’t want to have anything to do with: demons, banshees, angels, vampires, and the like.

As she stared at them, their skin began to pale, and an ethereal glow could be seen around and behind their irises. She’d read enough fantasy and horror books as a kid to identify them as vampires. This wasn’t good.

She could shift back to a tiger, but that was problematic in that she would lose the clothes she was wearing and up against a six-pack of vampires, that wasn’t a fight she was sure she could win.

“Did you guys get a whiff of her?” asked one of the vamps.

“She’s not human,” said another.

“Shifter,” said a third. “What kind of shifter are you, honey?”

“Not the kind you want to mess with,” Zenya answered, hoping she might be able to bluff her way to an opening and get free.

“Probably a predator. The Master might pay extra for her.”

Their invocation of the name of the leader of the Shadow League made her blood run cold. Shifting might be the only way out of this, but even then, she wasn’t sure she could get away. Lucian’s warning about how it wasn’t a safe time for female shifters or humans to be out on their own came to the forefront of her mind, suddenly making a horrible kind of sense. Too many had gone missing. Zenya had a very real fear she was about to become another statistic.

The group of vampires rushed Zenya. Zenya was a black belt in krav maga. The problem was that up against a group of strong supernatural beings like vampires, that black belt designation wouldn’t do her much good. But better to go down in a fight than to do nothing.

She set her feet, balancing and waiting for the first one to get within her strike zone. Instead of splitting up, though, they attacked as a well-coordinated unit, immobilizing her swiftly and efficiently.

Before she could call forth her tiger, she felt the prick of a needle in the side of her neck. Her last thoughts were of Lucian. Even though she couldn’t see a life with him, there had been a deep connection—one she couldn’t deny and one she would never feel again. Bittersweet.

She hoped he and the clan would survive whatever was coming before everything went dark.

Zenya clawed her way back to consciousness. Her mouth was dry, her throat felt parched, and all of her muscles were cramping. She opened her eyes, trying not to call attention to herself as she took stock of her surroundings. Not seeing anything or anyone moving, Zenya sat up to find herself in a cage, in an echoing laboratory-like room lit by nightlights. It was eerily quiet, as if everyone was asleep. Given how she felt, she suspected the other occupants in the room had been drugged.

Grabbing the bars of the cage or cell in which she found herself, Zenya managed to stand—the view even more frightening. Scores of cages were gathered into the center of the room with two or three occupants in each. Around the periphery of the room were cabinets with a bench counter interspersed with what looked like refrigerators and refrigeration units. There were microscopes and various other medical or at least medical-looking supplies.

When a hand grasped her foot and then her ankle, Zenya couldn’t help but give a small, startled cry. She looked down; lying on the floor of her cage was a woman with startling blue eyes and coal black hair looking up at her.

“Give me a hand,” she managed to rasp out in a thick brogue, extending her other hand to Zenya.

Zenya leaned down to help her up.

“So much for the ‘maybe if I slip back into the drugs, it won’t look so bad when I wake up’ theory. It looks as bloody awful now as it did haunting my dreams.”

“You woke up before?” asked Zenya.

The woman nodded. “Aye. My body doesn’t assimilate tranquilizers very well. I’m Adriana.”

“Zenya. Do you have any idea where we are?”

“No, and there’s nothing I can see that will tell us.”

Suddenly remembering the vampires in the alley, Zenya reached up to touch her throat, relieved to find no evidence of a vampire’s bite. It would seem the only bite mark she had was the one Lucian had inflicted on her.

---