Desire Unchained

He ground his molars. Good gods, they’d been mated for all of a day and already he was growing close to her. Wanting her.

It could not happen.

Anger replaced the anxiety, summoned from that dark place inside that was a bottomless well. He grabbed her wrist, dragged her into the room. “Time for a little lockdown,” he growled.

“Shade! What are you doing?” She struggled in his grasp, but the additional strength her lycanthropy had given her didn’t come close to matching his. At least, not while she was in human form.

As gently as he could, he took her down to her hands and knees, held her immobile with one hand on the back of her neck as he reached for the morphestus chain that had been secured deeply in the rock. The links, reinforced with demon magic, had been designed to hold even the strongest beings, and the cuff he snapped around her ankle would adjust to the correct size automatically, so when she shifted, it would expand to accommodate her larger frame.

“Nightfall is coming.”

“Yeah,” she snapped, “in what, a couple of hours?” Her foot struck out, nearly catching him in the thigh.

“Something like that.”

His gaze drifted over her, the way her head was down so her hair formed a curtain around her face, hiding what was no doubt an expression of fury. Her perky ass was raised up, rubbing against his hip with every angry motion. He could take her like that, right here, right now. A flick of his wrist would tear the flimsy boxers away. A twist of his fingers would free his throbbing shaft.

His instincts fired even as his mind screamed at him to resist his urges. Cursing, he released her and leaped away. She let out a furious, base curse of her own and lunged, grabbing for his leg. She missed, but barely. “Don’t do this!”

“You’ve given me no choice!” he thundered, knowing it wasn’t fair to punish her for his lack of self-control, but fair wasn’t something he was concerned about at the moment. “You make me want you, and that can’t fucking happen.”

She recoiled, her mouth falling open. “Well, excuse me for being in your brother’s dungeon and having absolutely nothing to do with any of this.”

Now he felt like an ass. He stared down at her, the way she sat back on her haunches, the huge T-shirt hiked up enough to reveal the cotton boxers stretched tight over the hills and valley of her sex between her spread thighs. She looked vulnerable and sexy at the same time, but mostly vulnerable. This had to be terrifying for her, mated to a demon without her consent, chained up in a strange place, and on the verge of changing into a werewolf.

Oh, hell. He squeezed his eyes shut, willed himself to come down a little. “Look, I don’t like this any more than you do. But I’ve got to head to the hospital. I’ll bring you back some steaks or something. Before morning.”

He knew, thanks to Luc, their werewolf paramedic, that if wargs didn’t feed in beast form, didn’t feel the tear of flesh and crunch of bone between powerful jaws, they woke up in their human bodies feeling ravenous, grumpy, and still craving the taste of raw meat. An unsatisfied were-beast would rampage in human form even after changing back at sunrise.

Runa looked away from him. “I don’t want you to see me like that.”

“Like what? A warg? You think I’ve never seen one? Honey, I’m a hundred years old. I’ve seen them, treated them, screwed … ah, yeah, I’ve been around a warg or two.” She said nothing, and since he still felt like he’d just kicked a dog, he sighed. “I’ll toss the food through the door and I won’t look. Okay?”

“Whatever,” she muttered. She tugged on the chain. “This is going to hurt when I shift.”

“The cuff will expand.”

“Of course. One size fits all is probably a necessity for you, isn’t it?”

Feeling her angry gaze on his back, he stalked to the kitchen, grabbed a pack of gum from the cupboard, and wondered what he was going to do now. Wondered how he was going to tell his brothers that he was bonded, that Skulk was dead, and that their deceased brother was not only alive, but behind the organ-harvesting ring that had recently been plaguing their people. E would probably go all stiff and silent. Wraith would hit the ceiling. They’d react differently, but he had no doubt they’d agree on one thing.

In order for Shade to live, Runa would have to die.





Kynan stood in the staff break room, listening to Wraith and Reaver, a fallen angel and damned good healer, poke fun at the slasher movie playing on the large-screen TV. It wasn’t Kynan’s first choice of brain-drain programming, but he wasn’t going to complain, since this was the first time in days that Wraith had done more than pace and snarl. He was just happy Shade had called and was okay.

He glanced up from grabbing a sandwich from the fridge in time to see one onscreen couple go at it, which pretty much guaranteed they were going to get slaughtered at any moment.

Wraith shot Reaver a grin. “Bet that’s one of the bennies of falling, huh? Pleasures of the flesh?”