8

BYRON

My wolf is restless as I pace the cell, waiting for Aida to return.

I can still smell the sharp tang of her fear as she rushed to see to her daughter.

I should have known she was a mother when I first saw her.

It's been there all along, a sweet undertone to her scent that hints at giving birth, nurturing, and the kind of unconditional love that comes with bringing another life into the world.

It's attached to her stress, making me wonder about her life.

I pause in my stride when I hear her approaching from the hall. Her heart beats fast, and I know right away that anxiety is for me because of what happened before she left.

I wasn't surprised at the suddenness of our coming together. It's the way of shifters, primal and frantic. We wouldn't have lasted this long if she was one of my kind. She would have been compelled to jump on my dick the moment she had the dream, as much as I would have been powerless to stop myself from mounting her to fuck her senseless.

This may all seem sudden to Aida, but for me, it's the only way to be.

And it's only going to get more intense.

She's not a shifter, but our desire is just as bright. That's why every beat of her heart gets my wolf increasingly riled up so that he's burning through my eyes when she walks through the door.

"Is she okay?"

She pauses just inside, the dark arches of her brows tilting down. "Your eyes."

"Aida, is she okay?"

"Who?"

"Your daughter." I move closer to the glass, trying to see into her, to find the source of that anxiety that's back in place.

The only time it wasn't there was when I was between her thighs. Then she was light and open, free. She was gasping out an orgasm that rolled through me like a tsunami.

"Oh. Yes, she's fine. It was something—stupid." She blinks, finally moving into the room and going to the desk, where she picks up her tablet, her eyes roaming over the screen.

I believe her daughter is okay since I could also hear the girl accompany her back. But I don't believe that everything else is fine.

Whatever made her rush out of here the way she did, I'll need to know what that is at some point.

But not now.

For now, she's back in my sights, and that's all that matters.

"I finished the run." I put a hand to the glass.

I want to touch her again. It was so heated earlier that I didn't get a chance to use all of my senses. I want to feel every bit of her skin. My wolf wants to drag our tongue down her spine, suck the fat little clit I pinched to make her come.

"Mm hm, I see. You did—amazing. I mean, these readings are incredible." Her voice rises at the end, her gaze glued to the tablet.

I smirk. She's so full of shit.

No doubt, my performance, purposefully scaled down as it was, is impressive to her, but that's not why she's so intent on staring at that screen.

"Look at me, Aida." There's a chuckle in my voice that I can't hold back, and I see her back go up before she slowly lifts her gaze to mine.

She tries to look tough, but behind the bravado is a hesitancy that makes my wolf crouch low, baring his teeth, ready to eliminate whatever is the cause of it. And if the cause is me, he's ready to pounce again and remind her of just how good it is when she gives in to fate.

"I meant what I said earlier," she raises her brows to indicate the notes. "But what happened after that," she swallows hard, keeping her voice low and her gaze focused beyond my left shoulder. The words are soft enough that whatever she says will register as nothing but muffled mumbles. "That probably shouldn't have happened. It was—"

"Amazing."

Her eyes snap to mine, and I hitch my brows, daring her to contradict me.

Crooking a finger, I urge her closer. I doubt she even realizes she takes the steps until her breath puffs out in a cloud against the thick fiberglass.

"It was amazing. Don't try to deny it, and you're insane if you think I'm going to act like it never happened. How could I? You were so tight you nearly bent my dick in half." I palm my crotch where I'm quickly rising to a painful length, wanting inside of her again.

Her eyes dart down quickly, lingering for a second before she meets my gaze again.

"And I know you still feel me."

She's panting, the cloud of condensation getting wider and wider, her lips nearly touching the wall separating us.

"Tell the truth, Aida. You didn't hate it."

Her head shakes, the loose curls around her face fanning back and forth over her temples. "I didn't."

I nod in approval. "It's going to happen again. It has to. We won't be able to help it."

That snaps her out of it.

She backs up, pressing a hand to her chest to slow her breaths, tapping with the flat of her fingers like that's going to disperse whatever she's feeling there.

I don't try to call her back. The connection between us can't be severed that easily.

Nothing but death can come between us now, and like I said, even then…

"I won't deny how I responded to you, but it shouldn't have happened. I have a lot of stuff on my mind: this place, my daughter, getting you out of here." She inhales and blows it out, still speaking at a near whisper. "I don't know how you plan to leverage it, but," she jumps when I growl and slap the glass.

My eyes narrow as I watch her try to distance herself from what's happening between us. "I wouldn't hurt you, and I don't leverage my mates. That's not what this is. I believe what you said about helping me, and I think we can get out of here together. But you have to trust me. Trust what you feel inside ."

Her eyes widen, and after a moment, she nods.

"Good." Before she can think too hard about it, I step back and pull off my shirt.

She turns abruptly.

Reaching for her tablet, she fumbles and nearly drops it. "Right, Mr. McCanty," she says extra loud. "Let's get on with your tests."

"Great, what's next?"

She smiles, relaxing when I wink and play along. "Actually, I don't know. They're all pre-programmed. I just have to start them. I mean, the one earlier was obvious, but I'm not sure about these others." She says this with ease, but her expression registers discomfort.

She's worried it will be something that will hurt me.

"I'm sure it'll be fine. Plus, I don't want her here any longer than she has to be."

"Who?" Her brow furrows in confusion again.

"Zora."

"How did you know her name?"

"Aida, let's get going. Hit it."

She stares at me for a long beat before she taps the screen.

Right away, I know what this test is. The soft whir of the temperature regulation system shifts, and I immediately feel the subtle switch from cool to heat as the ducts pump hot air into the room.

They're trying to force a shift .

I wonder about the tactic since I'm pretty sure Aida doesn't know what I am. What do they think will happen if I fold into my wolf in front of her? Are they banking on her being so fascinated that she'll continue to help them without question, or do they really want to test how much I can endure?

Another thought has my wolf baring his teeth again.

Like leaving me alone with her earlier, maybe they don't care about me shifting in front of her because it won't matter. They may not plan on her being around to tell anyone what she's seen.

I doubt they know that the hormone that causes the wolf shift only produces out of our control under extreme moments of duress.

That's the reason my clanmates' mate, Samiah, was able to salvage samples from our former disgraced chief Delon's gland. It was ripped out at the height of a power battle and would have been flooded with secretions. The fact that it happened in the snow also slowed the breakdown process. Otherwise, the small knot at the base of my skull is just a ball of flesh.

If Umansky is going to use my time here to force a shift, I'm not sure to what end. I'm stronger as my wolf, faster—deadlier. It's not like he can subdue me easier in that form. Whatever his motive, it will take more than a bit of heat to break me.

My wolf sits back, settling down onto his haunches. His ability to regulate our body temperature pushes to the front, calming us as the room gets warmer.

"Uh, I'm not sure what's happening." Aida taps at the tablet, trying to stop the flood of heat, but nothing happens.

I chuckle. "It's just getting hot. Don't panic."

"Yeah, but why is it getting hot? What the hell are they doing?" She stabs at the tablet again, trying to stop the flow of air.

"At this point, forcing me to give you a show." I peel off my pants, tossing them to the side. The sweat-soaked fabric makes a splat against the concrete floor.

Aida looks up, her eyes going wide. They track down my body, lingering on my pelvis.

Most of my concentration is being used to keep from shifting, but when Aida pulls her bottom lip between her teeth as she eyes my dick, I jerk, feeling myself rise even as my wolf struggles to get free.

Her expression temporarily takes my mind off needing to cool down as a haze of lust falls over her face. The sweet scent of her arousal reaches me from the other side of the glass.

She still smells like me.

"Aida." It comes out on a growl.

"What?" She blinks up and then looks away, swallowing hard. "This is ridiculous, and I'm putting a stop to it right now. I'll be back."

She rushes from the room, taking her sweet scent with her, and I lose my point of focus.

I may have spoken too soon about a bit of heat being nothing.

It's hot as fuck, the temps probably creeping up in the high nineties.

I open my mouth, letting the air pull through my parted lips, trying to quell the urge to shift, which would do wonders for taking the edge off.

Rolling my shoulders, I slowly walk the floors, closing my eyes and letting the pant go full blast.

Unbidden, my thoughts go to my first job with Qamrah, our first time on ancestral land. We'd run the plains, the sun beating down on us, fucking in all of our forms before we tracked and eliminated the group of European hunters who had trapped one of our own.

It had been our initiation mission, a way to prove ourselves to the elite group of African shifters who'd felt unsure about letting their American cousins join the cause.

That had been hot—stifling—and we'd made it through together as fated mates.

I take that same power from my connection with Aida, my second chance at something that I should have only been blessed with once.

I center myself, imagining the coolness of the room beyond the one I'm trapped in. I let it wash over me so that by the time I hear footsteps coming toward the lab, I'm so wrapped up in staying calm that I almost miss the difference in the tread.

We pick up strange things from our parents.

A way of walking, a way of talking, even our smells, but there are always subtle differences.

I catch the variation just before the door opens, and a round, brown face peeks inside.

"Mom?"

The fold into my wolf is instantaneous and complete before her eyes reach where I pace within the glass cell. When they light on me, a small gasp escapes from her as she rushes forward.

"Wow! Are you a wolf?" She stops at the glass, pressing her hands flat where I've stopped to stare at her. "Holy shit, you're gigantic."

I frown, knowing her mother probably wouldn't like her cursing, and she hunches her shoulders, looking back like she expects to get caught.

"Don't tell my mom I said that." Her brows dip as she takes in the enclosure. "Are they experimenting on you?"

I jump to the side, trying to look less like a trial animal. I let my tongue loll out of my mouth playfully, and she laughs but still looks around warily.

Her eyes fall to the pile of clothes on the floor before she looks back at me. I can see her brain trying to work it out and make sense of it.

Kids are more unrestrained than adults. They'll accept possibilities that wouldn't make sense otherwise.

I yelp, bounding back and forth in front of her, creating a distraction and drawing another laugh.

"You want me to let you out, huh? Where's the door?" She goes over to the secured entrance, searching for a way in. When she finds nothing but the flat card scanner, she sighs. "Sorry, buddy. You're stuck in there. I got lucky getting in this room. All the other doors were locked."

I can tell by the way the girl smells, the piney scent of trees layered over the grit of a city, that wherever we are, it's not in the middle of any major hubs. The distinct synthetic tropical pineapple of car freshener lets me know she was sitting in one long enough for the smell to stick to her, an hour at least. So we're at minimum an hour outside the city.

If I could shift and ask her what I want to know, it would make things easier.

Another change in the air alerts me to the release of the gas they pump to knock me out when they're too far away to use the guns. They used it over the weekend a couple of times when I didn't respond to them, and when I woke up, my heart beat with the distinct rush of having been given a stimulant. They hadn't gotten any response, so they gave up on that tactic.

Whoever's monitoring the room must have realized I've shifted, and they think it's their chance to get to the gland while it's active.

That they know so little about how our bodies and chemistry work is good.

If they knew what I know, they wouldn't be pumping me full of sedatives or flooding the room with hot air. They'd be making it as cold as possible, slowing down my metabolism so that maybe they could delay the decomposition of the wolf hormone, which only stays active and traceable for an exceptionally short period.

It's another evolutionary bit of shifter genius.

In fact, in our wolf state, the constant secretion from the gland is the only thing that keeps us shifted. Stop it, and there's nothing to trace almost immediately.

I hold my breath as the metallic scent of the drug permeates the air. The girl is still staring at me, and unless I want to collapse as a naked man in front of her, I need to get her away.

Swaying dramatically, I stumble and fall to the ground, lifting my head weakly before letting it drop heavily to the concrete floor.

"Oh, shit!" She drops down in front of me on the other side of the glass, the concerned tilt of her brows making her look just like her mother.

I stop myself from chuffing at her use of profanity again and concentrate on looking pitiful while keeping my lungs closed to the sedative. It's concentrated in the room now, and I'll have to take a breath soon.

I must look dire enough because Zora jumps up and holds her hands out in a wait motion.

"I'm going to go find my mom. Hold on. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit." She mumbles quietly as she runs from the lab, her footsteps quickened on the linoleum as she rushes in the opposite direction as the steps headed toward the door.

Less than a minute later, Max bursts into the lab. His gaze falls to me slumped on the floor in my wolf form.

His mouth turns up into a sly grin, only for it to disappear when I shift, finally dragging in a lungful of air as I feel my wolf recede.

Only when I'm sure I've completely turned to my man do I let myself succumb to the tranquilizer, my hand lifting to give Max the finger as he growls, slapping his fob on the lock to my cell so that the door swishes open.

The last thing I see is his snarling face coming toward me before he lifts his boot and smashes it to my head.

My wolf licks his lips as we go down.

Before this is done, I'm going to gut him.

I fall quickly into scenes of the past.

Qamrah padding beside me in the grasslands of Northern Africa. Kofi is leading the way, although he never quite felt right doing so since hyaenas are matriarchal.

It's a contradiction in shifter clans, borne from the conflict of most human cultures, that males usually lead them, but it's also known that the strongest packs have a woman at the head as well.

I always felt my strongest in family and clan when Qamrah was with me.

That night, when we hunted on ancestral land for the first time as our wolves, we'd been full of frantic energy. It had made our bodies shake as we stalked through the grass.

Our humans had been restless, too, and hot in our wolf forms. We'd had to stop several times, to the annoyance of Kofi, to fuck behind some bush or against a tree.

Those moonlit joinings were primal and rough. I'd clamped onto the back of Qamrah's neck with my teeth and driven into her hard and fast until we both collapsed from exhaustion.

It was a satiety that was short-lived.

These scenes play out in real-time in my subconscious, calming my wolf with familiar sensations until they suddenly begin to change.

I'm standing in the grasslands as my man.

Qamrah is here, too. Her wolf's shiny reddish-brown coat shimmers under the moonlight. Her brown eyes, which were always so kind despite her being one of the fiercest soldiers I knew, shine at me across the distance.

I know what this is right away.

It's the goodbye we never got, the one I've needed for the last twenty years.

She dips her head, the bow a sign of respect and love.

I do the same.

The words that were left unspoken between us are said in these motions, and then she's gone.

I'm about to turn away when something in the distance catches my attention.

It's Aida. I'd know her tall, graceful form anywhere already. I break into a sprint, ignoring the slap of the grass against my bare legs.

She starts running, too, and when we meet in the middle, colliding with a force that borders on violence, I waste no time dragging her to the ground and thrusting between her thighs.

She gasps, her back arching as I flex my hips to fill her. Her mouth opens on the exhale, and I cover it with my own, stroking through to tangle with her tongue.

"Mm," her moan is sweet as she returns the kiss, her hands sliding up my back as I take my time dragging free from the tight grip of her pussy only to thrust back deep.

She chokes, pulling away to suck in more air, and I clamp onto her bottom lip, sucking the plump flesh and nicking her with my teeth.

Nails rake down my back, the sting of the flesh breaking making me fuck harder. Our pelvises meet with a sharp slap that sends a prism of pleasure surging through my middle.

"Mine." My man says it, but my wolf follows with a long howl.

The sound brings Aida's eyes wide as she stares up at me. The shadows of the tall grass draw lines across her beautiful face.

"Wha—Oh, god." Her eyes roll back as I grind my dick deep, stroking so I glide right against the place she needs it.

Her legs start to tremble, her hips jerking up to get more.

Using my weight, I crowd over her, pinning her down to drive into her over and over. The tension winds tighter and tighter until I can't hold on anymore.

I slam to the back of her pussy and start to shoot, my entire body twitching as I empty myself inside of her.

The pressure of my weight on her clit sets her off a second later, and her mouth parts on a hoarse cry as she trembles out her release.

***

"Are you safe?"

We're lying in the grass. I've shifted us so I'm on my back, and she's resting on my chest.

My wolf loves this. He's purring at the feel of her against us.

Her head shifts. "We went home. I'm sorry. I didn't want to leave, but—"

"All that matters is that you're safe."

She sighs, turning to press a kiss to my chest. "We have to get you out of there. You're not safe."

I chuckle. "You'll come to learn that danger for my kind is relative. I'm fine."

She ignores the ‘my kind' comment, and we lie in silence for a few minutes until she lifts her head and perches her chin on my sternum to regard me.

"I know what this place is now."

My brows lift before I tilt my head back to take in the thick reeds that we've made our bed. "Yeah?"

"Mm hm. My mind has created this dream as a kind of safe space where I can figure out my feelings for you and how I'm going to get us out of this."

"Is that so?"

The point of her chin digs into me as she bobs her head. "Yup. It's like how people make memory rooms. This is the place my brain has chosen to deal with what's happening."

"And what's happening." I hold her gaze, needing to see what she's truly feeling.

Her lips fold in as she thinks, then she sighs. "I'm attracted to you, maybe in ways I didn't think was possible. I feel safe with you, but I also need to protect you. I think it's guilt because I agreed to do this work when somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew it wasn't right."

The guilt she speaks of rolls heavily off her, and I tighten my arms, holding her close.

She lies her head flat, pressing into the hug, and I know that even though she doesn't believe this is real, she needs this.

"Well, if this is a safe place for you, let it be that until we get to our safe place out there. When we're here, everything you need can happen. And you don't have to feel guilty about it or question it. What happens outside of here, you let me deal with."

She hums. "Maybe I'm going crazy. I mean, after all that crap with Lonny, I wouldn't be surprised."

"Who's Lonny?" The question comes out in my wolf's growl, but she only chuckles.

"Yeah, this is definitely a safe space if I've chosen for Lonny not to exist here. If only." She releases another contemplative sound. "I've made such a mess of my life, Byron. I'm trying to put it back together, and maybe how I feel about you is a mistake, too." She lifts to look at me again. "But I don't think it is. I don't care what you did. Whatever they want from you probably isn't going to do the good they claim."

"It's not—" My eyes widen as pain shoots through my skull.

The sedative still has me under, but whatever they're doing to me while I sleep, I can feel it.

The savannah disappears, Aida gone from where she was cradled in my arms.

And then there's nothing but the void again, pulling me away from the pain.