Page 41 of Feral Mate

“That’s right, baby brother, you are a snow leopard; I am a cave lion. Therefore, your kind is beneath me and no longer warrants my concern.”

Carson groaned and rolled his eyes. “Is that going to be your new excuse for everything?”

“Yes; I think so. It seems to be a good general excuse I can adapt to any situation.”

Carson turned serious. “I’m glad you and your team made it out alive.”

“Me too, baby brother, me too.”

Mason’s image faded and was replaced by one that showed the dark, dim interior of one of the tunnels. Perkins and two of her goons had entered what looked like a hub for intersections of the tunnels. They were all sealed shut—rock and debris had fallen in and were wedged inside each of the exits to safety.

On the audio, Emery could hear a deep thudding coming from the same tunnel they must have used to reach the hub.

“I don’t want to die. Find a way out,” said Kam Perkins, whose voice was tinged with fear.

“There is no way,” said one of the goons, who seemed to have given up the notion of surviving the Resistance assault on the NLGP compound.

“There has to be,” said Kam, her voice now edged with fear and panic.

“There isn’t. The exits are sealed. They are imploding and the thudding you hear is the collapse of the tunnel leading in here. We only have moments before we die. I suggest you make whatever peace you can with whatever demon spat you out of hell. None of us is making it out alive.”

“I can’t die. They promised me I would become one of them—turned into an apex predator.”

The thudding got louder. Emery noticed the other goon was already lying on the floor, twitching in his death throes. The one who’d been speaking to Kam bit down on something and foam started to come out of the corner of his mouth as his knees buckled and he landed on them.

Kam rushed to him, prying open his jaws. “What did you take? What’s happening?”

“Suicide pill. I’ll be gone before this whole thing collapses in on you. If you’re lucky it will kill you instantly, if not, you’ll be buried alive and die a slow, torturous death.”

“No!” Kam howled. “I don’t want to die! They didn’t give me anything like that pill.”

The goon looked up at her; the veil of civility left his eyes as he smiled. “Sucks to be you.”

Kam screeched as he keeled over, and the thudding sound became a sound of thunder as smoke and debris began to be expelled into the small cavern into which they’d run—pieces of it making random strikes on Kam’s body as she tried to protect herself from them.

“No! I don’t want to die!”

Over and over, she wailed. The walls of the last remaining cavity of NLGP’s tunnel system began to crumble and the ceiling began to lose its structure and cohesion. The last anyone ever saw of Dr. Kam Perkins was her screaming and raising her arms over her head in a futile act of trying to avoid her end. She was not successful.

“Does it make me a bad person to think she got no more than she deserved?” asked Emery to no one in particular.

“She got what she deserved,” said Mason before holding up the Keurig from her office. “One of the guys snagged it. He thought you might like it back.”

Kam laughed. “No. But if you could see that it got to Terry, I’d be appreciative.”

“Really?” he leered. “Just how appreciative might that be?”

“Appreciative enough to be waiting for you in that slutty nurse costume you seem so interested in.”

“And we’re done here,” said Colby, turning the monitor back. “You and your buddies get your asses back here. We’ll have a party waiting.”

“That’s fine,” said Mason from Reykjavik. “Do me a favor.”

“If it’s within my power.”

“Make sure she has a dress, there’s a preacher waiting and I have a really big selection of diamond rings to choose from.”

Emery gasped and Colby laughed. “Will do. See you soon.”

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