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Calculating. Manipulating. A woman who was there for much more than what she claimed.
As Alaiya’s lips pressed harder to his, her tongue against the closed seam of his lips, his hand released her arm, shot out and gripped the wrist of another hand nearing him. He tightened his hold on Alaiya’s other arm and peeled her from him easily, despite her struggles.
She had been attempting to gain access to the hormone filling his tongue now, his mouth. The hormone that had begun racing through him as he danced with his mate earlier, the scent of her panic and fear jerking at the animal until it stretched, paced and reached for her.
That had been the first moment Mercury knew his animal wasn’t dead. The first moment he had known that everything his soul had told him was true. Ria was his mate.
He drew Alaiya away, ignoring the scent of her desperation, the scent of her anger, and turned his head to see Jonas, the extraction vial in one hand, the determination to take blood filling his silver eyes. But there was no threat—only concern, only a need to know.
He stared into the other man’s eyes, swirling silver with power, and knew the reasons why he would attempt to take rather than ask. Because they knew the animal screaming inside him now. Jonas knew. And he might not fear it, but he did fear for it.
Mercury smiled. A baring of canines as he took the vial, shoved the needle in his vein and watched the blood, brilliant red, fill the small attached canister.
“Is this what you need?” He pulled the needle free and looked around.
He knew Ria was gone, but he could still feel her. Her agony was reaching out to him, causing the animal inside him to roar in rage, to shred his control with the overwhelming fury within it.
He tipped his head back and roared. Anger was a living, breathing entity inside him now. He was no longer half a Breed; parts of him weren’t even human. More parts of him than ever before.
He slapped the vial into Jonas’s hand, a small part of him realizing that the community as a whole would need the answers within it. They couldn’t confine him simply because the animal was back. And if they tried, they would die.
He moved to follow his mate.
“Mercury, where are you going?” Alaiya was on him again, blocking his path, her body slithering against him as he snarled in distaste.
“Mercury, she’s safe.” Jonas’s assurances behind him did nothing to ease the fury tearing at him. “Let’s take care of this first. Dane, Lawe and Rule are watching over her. You can go to her soon.”
“The hell he can.” Alaiya’s hands were digging into his shoulders, her expression twisting in anger. “Do you think I’ll lose you to that weak little human?”
A hiss of silk at her movements and she rubbed against him as he inhaled her scent. The smell of other men clung to her body, the scent of anger and jealous rage. The smell of a woman who wanted things, simply because they weren’t hers.
He remembered that about her. He remembered a time when it had been a challenge to him, the thought of taming that part of her. She had pricked the animal’s sense of fairness, and he would have taken her to mate because she was the strongest female, the most defiant and, at the time, the one he felt the most need to fuck once her body matured.
But that was no longer true. Now her scent was an affront to him. It was nothing compared to the sweet scent of his Ria. With all her little contradictions, her honor and her fears. It didn’t compare to Ria’s warmth, her gentleness or the pleasure he found in each smile that he drew from her.
The scent of his mate was an elixir. It was nectar to his senses. And the scent wrapping around him now was waste and blood. It was death and disease.
He allowed her touch. Allowing her, for only moments, to cling to him again, staring down at her, letting her realize there was nothing here for her. Her touch was an abomination to him. And the only way her animal would realize it was to sense the feeling of it.
Then he gripped her arms, ignoring the discomfort in his palms at touching her. His tongue was thick and swollen, the hormone pumping furiously into his mouth now, and he swallowed. He swallowed and snarled in triumph.
The animal that had slept, that he had feared would return, was merging with his mind, tearing its way to that cold, empty place that had only been filled when Ria touched him.
And he realized it was because Ria had allowed the animal to awaken from whatever isolation those drugs had forced it into. That cold, empty place inside his mind had been a result of the drugs, and Ria had saved the animal now filling it.
“You’re my mate.” Alaiya’s claws dug into his forearms, pricking him with anger rather than with desire, as she refused to acknowledge every instinct he knew she felt, that she was touching something that could kill her for the insult she was dealing to his mate.
“So where have you been then?” he asked her, his voice dark, fury pouring through him.
The need to get to Ria twisted inside him. He reined back the animal, just for the moment. Ria’s turn would come, and he would make certain she never walked away from him again.
Alaiya’s eyes dilated and he felt the lie before it ever passed her lips. He scented it, a dark, acrid smell that offended him.
“I was kept from you,” she whispered.
“You lie.” He shrugged from her touch. “You’ve played as you always played. You’ve done as you wished and given little thought to those you left behind in those labs. You were fucking your trainer, Alaiya. I knew it then. You killed him and you escaped, and you hid like the coward you’ve always been. And I ask you again, why come here now?”
Her lips thinned.
