Desire Unchained

She knew what he meant, and almost as if his words reminded her inner werewolf that it should be starting to shift, her joints began to pop in excruciating bursts of pain.

“We have to go,” she gasped. “But how?”

“We run right through it.”

Voices rang out in the fog. They were out of time. She was out of time. She might think that running headlong into one of the scariest-looking demons she’d ever seen was a bad idea, but she’d have to trust Shade if she wanted to live.

“Whatever you say,” she breathed.

He cocked an eyebrow at her, and then they were running. Shade threw out his arm as though to push the thing out of the way, and his dermoire began to glow. They hit the beast, and the sensation of a million jellyfish stings exploded all over Runa’s body. She fought the urge to scream in both terror and agony. Tears burned her eyes, and she stumbled. Shade caught her, held her upright against the solid wall of his body.

The vapor wraith screeched, and suddenly they were past it. Shade dragged her inside the Harrowgate. Darkness closed on them, the pitch black broken by glowing symbols and maps etched into the smooth obsidian walls surrounding them.

Pain still rolled through her body, and beneath her skin, her muscles stretched tight, tugging on her joints as her body began to morph into her beast form. Hurry, Shade.

“What happened to the demon?” Her voice sounded rough, guttural, and she knew she was speaking through a half-formed muzzle.

“I used my gift to scramble its insides. Didn’t kill it, but it stunned the creature enough to get us through.” He cast her a sideways glance. “Oh, hey … let’s not do that yet. Sit. Stay.”

Oh, he was hilarious. She was going to bite him as soon as the transformation was complete.

Shade tapped some etchings. A heartbeat later, the gate opened, and they stepped into a wall of heat and humidity. A jungle. Instantly, the sense that she was going to explode out of her skin faded. Her blood tingled with the upcoming full moon event, but the immediacy of the change had vanished. Best of all, her body parts had popped back into place.

“Um, where are we?” A cacophony of sounds surrounded them, bird calls and insect buzzing, as well as unidentifiable creatures screaming in the treetops.

“Costa Rica.”

“Central America?”

“You know of another Costa Rica?”





Smartass. She jumped at the sound of something hissing. This place was going to give her a heart attack. Bad enough that demons were after her. Now she had to worry about poisonous snakes and hungry jaguars.

“Will those demons follow us?”

Shade shook his head and started moving through the brush.

She hurried after him. “What about Roag?”

He halted, his dark eyes scanning the surrounding jungle. “It’s difficult to track someone through Harrowgates unless you can sense them. You need a hellhound.”

“Okay, so why here?”

“You’ll have a few extra hours of daylight. And,” he added, “my second home is here. Roag doesn’t know about this one.”

Well, color her stunned. “You never told me you had a second home.”

“It’s not someplace I take humans.”

Lovely. She pictured him bringing his demon sex partners here, to this steamy jungle where they probably rolled around like wild animals. All the reasons she hated him came roaring back, along with hackle-raising anger. That, combined with the premoon jitters, made for one caustic mood.

“It’s not someplace you’re taking me, either,” she snapped.

“You have a better idea?”

“You can do what you want. I’ll move in with my brother until this thing with Roag blows over.”

Displeasure wafted off him in waves. “Out of the question. You stay with me.”

“Think again.” She crossed her arms over her chest, trying to ignore the trickle of sweat running down her back as the tension between them grew thicker than the sticky air. “I’m not the na?ve, spineless little twit I was when we were dating.”

“I liked you a lot more when you were spineless,” he muttered.

“Yeah, well, I liked you more then, too.”

“Dammit, Runa. The thing with Roag won’t blow over. You killed his female. He will stop at nothing to get at you. And once he has you …” Shade’s hands fisted at his sides, and he swallowed hard.

Her imagination took what he hadn’t said and went to all kinds of horrific places as she cast a worried glance back at the Harrowgate. The shimmering arch hung between two rocks, identical to the one they’d entered in Ireland. Except this gate didn’t have a creepy demon guarding it.

“Why can’t I sense it?” she asked, more to get her mind off the reality of what Roag would do to her than to satisfy her curiosity.

“Newly turned werewolves are still too human. As your humanity fades with time, your nonhuman instincts will sharpen.”

“How long? I mean, it’s been almost a year.”