Page 95 of Reaper Unhinged
Ha. Backup.
I’m packless, for fucksake. Mated to a Loup who hates my guts and chose my brother.
Fee…
Thinking about her makes my chest ache.The way she looked at me when I took her, the vitriol in her tone, so at odds with the way her body responds to mine.
I close my eyes and summon her face and heat blooms through my limbs. My Loup is suppressed, but it isn’t dead.
The memory melts, and I sigh. Nothing can distract me from the fact I’m trapped in a cage, a fucking guinea pig for human experimentation. Fucking humans!
The gall.
They’re building soldiers. Vamps juiced up on fuck knows what. I’ve seen them.
And the human prisoners they’ve collected are a food source for their army.
But what do they need an army of vamps for? What are they planning?
I need to know.
I rub the needle marks in my arm. I’m not healing as quickly as I usually do. This place is saturated with magic, and it’s blocking my Loup power. I wager it’ll render an outlier mortal. Clever humans.
This evens the playing field, except that the juiced-up vamps seem to retain their strength. Which leads me to conclude their power doesn’t come from magic, it comes from biological tampering. I’ve seen the vials in the lab where they work on me every day.
They’ll come for me soon. It’s almost time. I can feel it. They have me in a lone cell, in an empty block away from the human prisoners and the vamps they’ve rounded up, ready for altering, but I’ve seen the other blocks. They drag me through them every time they need more samples from me. Up a staircase and past a door, which screams no access. I can feel power radiating off that door. There’s something behind it. Something important.
My hand goes to my neck, but I don’t touch the chafed and bruised skin. The fucking collar they use is brutal. Able to administer electroshocks if I get out of line, and in the first days, I got out of line, a lot.
No point in fighting it, though.
Best to lie low and gather intel until they come for me.
If they come for you.
My stomach twists. No. I’m not hearing him. He isn’t real. Fee will come for me.
Right, because you mean so much to her.
I’m her mate.
A mate she rejected.
She isn’t the kind of Loup to turn her back on someone in trouble.
But when the someone is you... Face it, Hunter, no one wants you. No one has ever wanted you. Needed you, yes, but wanted…Nah. This is where you belong. This is what you deserve. Your father knew it. He knew you were bad luck from the moment you pushed your way out of your mother’s womb, squalling like a little bitch. Your mother died rather than stick around to suckle you.
Anger races, hot and potent through my veins. Fuck off.
Not this time. I clawed my way back, and I’m not leaving.
I’m not listening to you.
You can’t not.
I stand tall, fighting the tremor that wants to take over my body. You’re not real.
Oh, Hunter, I’m real, all right. I’m all the shit you hate about yourself pressed together and given life. I’m self-loathing, and buddy, I ain’t going nowhere.
