Page 67 of Taken for Granite
“No, you daft bunny, this is my gun now. And if she,” pointing to Juniper, “is actually pregnant with a Khargal-human hybrid, she’s worth more to the Rose than all of our lives put together.”
Sunglasses looked up from his phone. “What’s going on? Why aren’t people bleeding?”
“Miss Bouvet claims to be with child,” Rhoda said to Sunglasses. She turned her attention back to the other man. “Stress can adversely impact the mother’s health and cause a miscarriage,” Rhoda said, tone sharp and irritable. “Don’t you think having her sister executed in front of her is slightly stressful?”
“Um, yes?” the hapless agent said.
“Deliver me from idiots,” Rhoda muttered. “So, we’re agreed that stress is bad for the creature’s baby?”
Juniper flinched at the term creature. She hated it and hated that it rolled off Rhoda’s tongue so easily. The agent nodded, apparently mute.
“Get them in the vehicle then,” Rhoda snapped.
Just as rough hands shoved Juniper into the back of a black SUV, she heard Sunglasses ask Rhoda she thought the pregnancy was real or a ruse.
“It doesn’t matter. As long as we have the woman, we have leverage over the creature, so let’s keep the girls happy and alive, shall we?”
* * *
tas
Tas blacked out. The gaps in his memory informed him of this but the pounding in his head confirmed it.
Hands trussed in front of him and his wings bound, Tas lay in the backseat of a vehicle.
Juniper was with child.
His heart soared. At the start of their relationship, she told him it was impossible, at least immediately. How could she know so soon—or did she mean to create a distraction?
It did not matter. He would fight to return to her with the same urgency, child or no child. She was hisHondassa, his mate.
“There’s another signal, further down the pass,” a male said.
“They’re really coming out of the woodwork today.”
The male’s questioning tone led Tas to believe that the agents did not know about the Khargal rescue ship. If fate smiled kindly that day, the agents would wander into a unit of fully armed, highly trained Khargal warriors and would truly learn what it was to be hunted.
“I still think we need to get this thing and the creature banger into custody, but Miss English won’t have it.”
“Can you imagine how hot she’d be if she ever got that stick out of her ass?”
“I bet she’s wild in the sheets.”
“I wonder if Tulip’s ever hit that. You know you would. I would.”
“I’m not interested in fraternization,” a male said in a high-pitched, terrible English accent. “I got something right here to fraternize.”
While the males laughed, Tas focused energy to his wrists, increasing the density and pulled against the restraints. They held.
Apparently, he had to do this the difficult way.
Tas sat up behind the male in the passenger seat. He looped his arms over the male and pulled back, bringing his cuffed hands against the male’s throat. The male gurgled, one hand banging against the window and the other clawing at the cuffs. The male’s face turned red, then purple. His legs kicked.
The driver shouted, swerving erratically to unbalance Tas. Unfortunately for the male, Tas had decades of experience dealing with bound wings and shackles. He was not so easily thrown off.
The male beneath his cuffed hands managed to open the door. With a growl, Tas shoved him out. The male tumbled to the ground, forgotten.
“Get back! I’ll shoot!” The driver twisted in his seat, one hand on the wheel and the other pointing the tranq gun at Tas.
