Page 8 of Imperfect Gifts

His little owlet had spunk, and he couldn’t wait to get to know her better.

However, his next order of business was to get to know his two newest projects a whole helluva lot better.

He parked the coterie’s SUV in the garage hidden under a hill and used his palmprint, code, and voice print to access the elevator. He made a stop in his suite to change clothes before heading to the small dungeon area in this facility. For the most part, Dev approved of modern-day clothing and had no desire to go back in time. However, he preferred the Indian dhoti to sweatpants or other casual clothing, especially when he knew he’d be shifting into his snake form.

It took less than three minutes to wrap the fabric around his waist, tie it, loop one end through his spread legs and tuck it into the back, and then pleat the other end, tuck some of it into thefront, another trip around his waist, and then another tuck into the waist, and it looked as if he was wearing blousy trousers.

Best of all, he couldchangeinto his snake form in these without destroying anything, and then just retie it back on when hechangedback to his human form.

He understood some snakes couldchangewhile in pants, and they simply slid out of the fabric. However, his legs merged into the back part of his snake right off the bat, and destroyed the legs of any pants he wore, even if he shifted into a skinny enough snake he didn’t blow out the waistband — and he rarely shifted into a snake smaller around than his waist. Today, when he’d have to bite and envenomate two people, he’d shift a tad larger than he usually did for this sort of thing. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to show the cougars a snake that could easily eat both of them and still have room for more. If the new pumas were going to be troublemakers then the sooner they had reason to fear him, the better.

He’d asked Remy to come help, as well as a few other shifters and vampires who’d assisted in the past, and he made his way to the infirmary area off the dungeon. The mountain lions were in a jail cell with a concrete slab for a bed and a small hole in the floor near a back corner for body wastes. The cell had double entry doors with a vestibule between for extra security, and he waited while Remy unlocked the first door with a key, and then Dev used his code and palm to finish the unlock sequence.

The first door closed behind him, and the second door needed his code with the outside edge of his palm, rather than his flat hand.

Both of the young men were in the single cell, which normally wouldn’t happen, but Dev could easily handle them both. Without warning the cat shifters of what was to happen, he entered the detention room,changedto his snake form, and struck the naked thigh of one of the men, injecting venom intothe meat of the leg muscle. The brothers were both wearing bracelets that kept them fromchanginginto their cats, so all the other man could do was futilely beat on the snake and scream at him to stop.

But Dev had formed into a snake as big around as a manhole cover and fifteen feet long, his head so massive he could’ve easily eaten both men while they were hugging. Biting them on the thigh took precision, to make sure he didn’t sever an artery.

The first man went into immediate spasms, and Dev turned to the second, who’d jumped up on the concrete slab in an attempt to get as far from the snake as he could while screaming for someone to help his brother.

Without drama or ceremony, Dev bit the second cat shifter and then pulled back and watched this man fall and jerk around, as his brother had.

When the person being bitten wanted to be owned by him, there was a little spoken ceremony, and it made the connection tighter, but the words weren’t absolutely necessary. Still, he said them in his head.I, Devansh, take you, the pumas Ezra and Elijah, into my nest. Snake and cat. Earth and fire. Soul to soul. So be it.

The snake turned to face the way he’d come, and a pig had been put into the small chamber between the doors, with the inside door still open. The snake’s head didn’t fit through the door, and the pig was reluctant to run into the room, so the snake used its tail to whap the pig unconscious and then scoot it out enough the snake could grasp it in his teeth, tilt his head up, and let gravity slide the pig down into his mouth and then body.

The humans stopped shaking and went still, and the snake closed his eyes and let the food digest.

Chapter Six

Dev awoke in his human form, lying on a gurney. He tilted on his side and looked through the glass wall into the largest procedure room, and saw his people working on the two shifters.

It was possible for Dev to bite and then turn right back to human, but it was so much easier to feed and then awaken in his human form. Neither young man would likely remember the first couple of days after the bite. They would puke and convulse for hours and hours at a time, muscle spasms so bad joints would be ripped apart, but they’d be left with a hazy memory of a hellish pain. It was an excruciating process, and they’d remember every second of the final couple of days, but not this part. Sometimes, Dev regretted having to put people through it, but he couldn’t pull up too much sympathy for these two. He’d need the connection to them that allowed him to grab their willpower if necessary because they’d proven they were not trustworthy.

Someone had draped his dhoti cloth over his legs and lower torso, and he stood and took the time to wrap it before he stepped into the procedure room to check on his new cats. The IVs were in their forearms with plenty of tape and the newfangled elastic stuff that stuck to itself. They’d stay hydrated and would get enough calories to keep them functioning. For now, they were bound to the beds at the wrists and ankles with plenty of padding to keep them from further injuries. Nothing more could be done for them, other than putting the joints back together where possible. The rest would have to heal with multiplechangesonce the poison had worked its way out oftheir system, and that could take from three to seven days. Occasionally longer.

He was starving, so he headed to the elevator, intent on making his way to the dining room. However, when he exited the elevator into the common room, Aldrich and Daniel were waiting for him. Daniel took him to the ground, and Aldrich fastened cuffs around his wrists. They each grabbed one of his forearms and stood him back up. Female hands fastened a bracelet around his wrist above the cuffs, and he lost contact with his snake, but not before he scented Claire.

Claire had been turned at seventeen, and she was startlingly beautiful, but she was also fundamentallynot right. The list of vampires who truly scared Dev wasn’t long, but Claire was near the top. She’d been a whore seven hundred years ago. Now she was a sexual sadist who only bowed to the vampires strong enough to defeat her. She was fifth in line, so she didn’t bow to many.

Daniel was brilliant, and in fact worked as a consultant for the Marshall Space Flight Center. He lived in Huntsville, about an hour and a half away, but Brooke called him to Birmingham when she needed him, and he enjoyed punishing people, so it wasn’t a hardship for the vampire.

Dev’s ass clenched with the knowledge of what was likely to come, because Daniel had been part ogre and part human before he’d been turned into a vampire.He was six foot nine inches tall, around three hundred pounds of solid muscle, and his dick was nearly a foot long and bigger around than a baseball bat at the base.

Aldrich was your typicalproper British gentleman. He would oversee whatever the punishment was to be, and would be certain it was carried out exactly as decreed by Brooke.

“Anyone who’s challenged and won a spot in the top ten can watch Dev’s punishment. Our invited guests are already seatedand waiting for the festivities to begin,” Claire told the room, and then sighed before adding, “They’ve been given safe passage.”

This entire building was underground. Usually, Dev had the place mostly to himself, along with those he’d bitten who hadn’t proven they had enough control to live in the main coterie house, which was the goal.

At just under nine thousand square feet, including the garage level, it wasn’t a sprawling complex, but the sparring room had audience seating and was used for both official fights and official punishments, when they happened here.

He considered this his home, and as such, his phone told him when someone arrived or left. However, he hadn’t been notified that more than a dozen people had arrived — another way of Brooke reminding him this wasn’t his home, it was hers, and she let him live here.

Dev’s hands were firmly locked behind his back with restraints strong enough to hold supernatural powerhouses, but he managed to work the fabric of his dhoti out of the waist from the back, and pulled at it enough from there, he had one end on the ground when the elevator doors opened. He stepped on that end with one foot, then the other foot, and then again, until the whole thing came off his waist and he was nude. They’d have cut the dhoti off him once they had him strung up, and this saved it. Probably.

Also, it was him deciding when to show himself, and not his captors.

---