Page 16 of Feral Mate

“I’m so relieved to hear you say that, Emery. I think with you on board, we’ll be able to save Dr. Payne from himself. Why don’t you knock off for the day? I’ll have Terry move your things down to your new office.”

“Tell him to leave my old coffee maker. A parting gift to the team. I’ll buy a new one and bring it in with me in the morning.”

“That will be wonderful. Terry will have your security clearance upgraded and will show you to your new office in the morning.”

“Great. Thanks, Kam. And Dr. Payne, I’ll be working hard to see you restored to your former self.”

When the door closed, Perkins lost all her warmth and charm. “If her theories are correct, when she overlays your genetic sequences in charge of memory and intelligence, it’ll be as if you never knew anything different. She’ll be able to help us program you to be exactly what we need.”

She turned to leave, stopped, and turned back to him. “You have no idea what you took, and even if you did, it won’t be long before you know nothing other than what we have programmed you to know. You need to get well, Dr. Payne. We need both you and Dr. Smoak to reach our goals. We are on the brink of a new age—one which you and Dr. Smoak will have helped to bring about.”

The door closed behind her. The woman was certifiable. Slowly but surely, he could feel the sedation kicking in, but Perkins hadn’t noticed how far back Emery had dialed it to begin with. This time as the darkness closed in, it wasn’t nothingness that he succumbed to, but rather a dream sequence with his mate.

He could scent her and her arousal long before he could see her. Once she was in sight, she whirled and ran. Mason gave chase, his blood and arousal rushing through his ears. He galloped along the frozen earth, his feet pounding through the snow.

For the first time in all his dreams, he unleashed his snow leopard, shifting as he ran, chasing her down with total abandon. He was stronger, faster and would be able to shift and pin her beneath him when he caught his quarry.

As he galloped over the hill, he caught sight of her—only she wasn’t a snow leopard. She was a much larger, far more prehistoric beast than he was. If Deke Campbell hadn’t been his friend, Mason wouldn’t have known that Emery, his fated mate, was a cave lion. This could prove interesting.

Knowing the terrain gave him an advantage and he was able to anticipate some of her turns, lessening the distance between them. Finally, she was within his maximum leap capacity and gathering his strength, he leaped, closing the distance between them and slamming into her haunches, dragging her down and grappling with her until she submitted and shifted.

He did the same but held her in place when she struggled. Shifting back, he settled between her legs.

“I told you all would be made clear in time,” he purred, drawing her arms over her head and holding them tight.

They were both naked, their bodies slick with exertion and need. Mason leaned down, pressing his nose into the crook of her neck, inhaling deeply. As Mason filled his lungs with her scent, he purred deeply before dragging his lips and tongue across her skin in something that was a cross between an open-mouthed kiss and a sensual tasting. There would be more to taste at a later time.

He spread her thighs with his own, settling in a place made only for him. His cock throbbed between them. There would also be a time to explore and savor to learn every intimate inch of each other’s bodies, but for now he needed to be buried deep inside her, to feel her sheath spasming along his length.

Unerringly the crown of his cock found its way to her swollen labia, parting them as he used her free-flowing honey to lubricate his staff to ease it inside her. As it began to penetrate her, she bucked up, trying to impale herself on his rigid member. Releasing her hands, he wrapped his around her hips and then pressed in. One single long, hard, pass and he was inside—all the way to the depths of her core.

It was a tight fit, but he held still, allowing her body to accommodate his. Her inner muscles clenched around his shaft, trying to draw him in deeper. Holding her steady, Mason began to thrust in and out. Everything around him blurred as it faded away until there was nothing left but the feel of her beneath him as he pounded into her over and over again.

Mason thrust harder and faster, his barbs rubbing against her as he pushed forward and elongating and becoming rigid as he drew back, scoring her inner walls to accept and nurture his seed.

Emery’s body tensed as she clung to him and called his name—his name, not his brother’s. Her moans became pants and then mere whimpers as she yowled beneath him. He could feel the moment she flew free of her body and into the freefall of a powerful orgasm that left her clinging and writhing in his arms. Holding her tight, having given her what she needed, he began hammering her pussy—harder and harder until at last he felt his balls draw up and he drove deep with a final, brutal thrust that triggered a feral response as she yowled in complete ecstasy, her pussy spasming and as she clamped down hard, he filled her with his seed, her sheath greedily milking him for every last drop.

As he collapsed on her, wanting to burrow into her as he pressed her into the earth, the darkness overtook him completely and he lashed out, wanting to roar in defiance but knowing it would do no good.

His mate was here, and she was in danger. He needed to succumb to sleep and let his body begin to heal itself. Tomorrow would see the dawn of a new day. They would cripple NLGP and obliterate as much data as they could. Once he had her safe, Mason would rendezvous with his brother and together they would coordinate with the Resistance to destroy NLGP and its masters, the Shadow League.

CHAPTER 8

EMERY

Cloning? Was NLGP trying to clone humans? That would be bad enough, but trying to clone shifters or worse yet, shifter/human hybrids? Madness.

Emery walked rapidly down the hall, shedding her lab coat and popping it into her cubicle as she picked up her purse. She chanced a look behind her, aware of a growing sense of danger and perhaps even paranoia. She had begun to wonder if there wasn’t a dark side to what NLGP’s ultimate goals were, but never would she have expected them to be involved in any kind of cloning. She had sensed both Mason’s distress and veracity. If they were willing to do that, what else were they willing to do?

What the hell was the NLGP up to? Kam Perkins wasn’t talking about trying to repair Mason’s DNA; she wanted to overwrite it. Kam might not be a geneticist, but she had to have enough education in genetics to understand that. They wanted to reprogram him, but to what purpose? And if they were willing to do that to one of their own, what other evil designs did they have for her research? Stopping the NLGP was paramount, but even more important was getting Mason out of there.

She’d known from the beginning that not everyone at NLGP was a shifter, and she’d figured out early on that most of those who weren’t shifters had no knowledge that shifters even existed. She could tell Mason was a shifter and having been able to spend some time with him, she knew that he was most likely feline, which was good.

There were parts of Mason that would take months to heal if he remained human. Even in his shifted form with its greater capacity and speed for healing, she didn’t like their odds for keeping NLGP at bay.

As she drove home and made dinner, Emery came to what she believed was the logical and most sensible solution, although she was pretty sure her mate wasn’t going to like it.

In the shifter world, the stronger shifter’s DNA overwrote the less robust strain. Turning a human was relatively simple as shifters had the superior DNA. Turning one genus, e.g. canine to feline, was usually fairly straightforward, as once again the stronger DNA would overwrite the other. But, oddly enough, turning one species from the same genus to another seemed to be fraught with complications and dangers. The two DNA sequences were similar enough that they seemed to fight one another. The stronger always won, but irreparable damage could be done.

---