Page 2 of Lost and Bound
“Brought you something to play with,” the bald guard said, his voice thick with something foul and anticipatory, making my heart skip a beat and the hair stand up on the back of my neck.
And then the door slammed shut behind me.
The scent hit me first. It wasn’t a bad scent, exactly, although no smells in this place had ever been mouthwatering.
It was a terrifying scent. Hot iron and bone-freezing chill, like fresh blood spilled on glacier ice, with a vein of uncontrollable wildness running beneath.
I blinked and stumbled back again, my shoulder blades hitting the door hard. I pressed my palms against it, clammy flesh on unyielding cool metal. A faint chink of metal sounded in front of me, and I blinked again, adjusting to the lack of light. After a moment, dim slits of twilight gray resolved out of the darkness, tiny windows like those in my own cell, high up in the wall across from me. I focused on them, hard. If I looked at those, I didn’t need to see anything else. Whatever was in this cell with me, I didn’t want to know. The scent had intensified, richer and sharper both, becoming mesmerizing.
And the sense of menace that came with it had grown too. Ireallydidn’t want to know.
Finally I had to know. Night had almost come, and in a few moments there’d be no light at all to see what lurked in the cell with me, no matter how much my werewolf senses compensated for the dark.
I looked down, away from the window slits.
Something sat against the wall on a pallet similar to my worn mattress. Something big. Three faint gleams: a metallic reflection, and twin pale stars, the glow of alpha eyes. Not golden, like the alpha werewolves I’d always known before, but bluish silver.
It didn’t move.
I didn’t move.
Whatever it was took deep, even breaths, slow and calm, and it didn’t move a muscle.
My legs started to shake, protesting their rigid tension after weeks of sitting on the mattress twenty-three hours a day without even the exercise of walking to the labs.
I’d long since given up on exercising in my cell.
I slid down the door until my ass hit the concrete, drawing my knees up to my chest.
Darkness fell. I could still see a little, the faint starlight filtering in through the wall slits giving me enough to make out shapes, at least.
My heart still pounded in my throat at first, but after some indeterminate time of nothing fucking happening, it settled down. I got cold and stiff, but at least calm again.
And nothing happened.
Something to play with.
Either I wasn’t a tempting toy, or the…whatever it was across from me wasn’t in the mood to play.
The air between us hung thick with nauseating uncertainty.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I’d almost forgotten this aspect of my own personality, the inability to keep my stupid mouth shut. It’d been so long since I’d had anyone to talk to. My lips and tongue practically ached with the need to move, even though my throat felt so dry I didn’t know if words would emerge.
“Who are you?” It came out a hoarse whisper.
The shape across from me moved slightly. I had the impression of size again, of something massive shifting in the depths of the ocean, or of a predator moving in the darkness of a forest. All my hackles would’ve gone up, except that they’d hit peakupthe moment the guards opened the door.
“Does it matter?” I twitched, adrenaline jolting through me. That voice, oh fucking gods, thatvoice. Deep and raw, and not human. Not remotely fucking human, not even in the way shifter voices were human.
I swallowed hard, peering into the darkness at those faintly glowing eyes.
“Since we’re stuck in here together, it matters to me?” My voice came out high-pitched and weak. “I’m Jared.”
His laugh scraped along every one of my nerves, a rusty knife dragging over concrete.
And it was definitelyhis. No way did that voice, that laugh, belong to anyone not male. What kind of male creature, though…that I couldn’t even guess at. His scent was like nothing I’d ever encountered.
“I don’t give a fuck what your name is,” he said. “It doesn’t matter to me. I doubt it matters to you, either. Not in here.”
