Wolf's Surrender: Part of the Immortal Ops World (Shadow Agents / PSI-Ops Book 1) (6 page)

She winked. “Thanks.”

He clucked his tongue on his cheek. “I assumed I’d managed to block your ability to read my thoughts.”

She shrugged. “I hear it quieter in my head now, but it’s not fully gone yet.”

He’d been surprised the first time she’d let on about her ability to connect with others mentally. She’d read that he was working undercover and that he was unhappy with what he was witnessing. And she trusted him because of it.

She also possessed a good deal of Fae in her genetic makeup, as he discovered by reading her chart. The little troublemaker didn’t realize it yet, but she was able to wield magik with the levels of Fae in her. Ezra wasn’t sure he wanted to tell her. She was hard enough to handle as it was. They didn’t need magik coming into play as well.

“Come on,” he said, putting his hand out to her. “You’re being moved.”

She eyed him and then glanced around the room. “Something bad is going to happen and you want to try to move me to safety, right?”

“Alice?”

She stiffened. “If you’re wondering if I got that from you mentally, no. I didn’t. I put it together on my own. Bart and Nile don’t know to block their thoughts from me, and trust me when I say they’re planning to do something really bad.”

His chest tightened. “I know. Come on. We need to get you transported.”

“I’ll be there alone?”

The fear in her voice moved him. “No, kiddo, I’ll find a way to stay close. Then we’ll get you to freedom. Sound like a plan?”

“Thank you.”

Chapter Six

Brad paced the cell that had become the newest in a long string of them, his body on edge. He was no stranger to being held prisoner. He wasn’t sure of the exact timeframe that he’d been held in total, as he rarely saw glimpses of sunlight, or was able to track days, but it was probably a year—or close to it, since he’d been captured while on the trip in South America.

He’d played that fateful day over and over in his head during his time in captivity, always coming back to the same certainty. He’d been betrayed by Professor Krauss and he was pretty sure Vepkhia had been involved. Brad had to wonder if anything he and Vic had been told about PSI was real, or if the organization was simply made up to lure them into a false sense of security before grabbing them and testing on them
.

He sighed.

The blame game would get him nowhere. It wouldn’t change the fact he was a prisoner. That he’d been held in some form another for nearly a year. He felt like a trapped rat, stuck on a wheel with no hope of ever getting anywhere. There for scientists to view and mock at will, his fate in their hands. And most of them were sick bastards. They got off on inflicting pain and being sadistic pricks. When he’d found himself being yanked from the last facility by men in masks, he’d foolishly hoped it was a rescue mission.

He’d been wrong.

Nearly dead wrong.
 

He was back in the clutches of madmen, different ones, but mad all the same. He should have been used to it by now. Used to the constant prodding and poking. Used to guards who took great pleasure in being as brutal as possible.

Brad took in the bare walls surrounding him, feeling as if they were closing in on him. With a growl he spun and punched the wall, cracking the cement block slightly. He hit it again and again, making some headway, but not enough. He knew from practice that there was more than one layer to the holding cell walls. The facility had obviously been retrofitted with supernaturals in mind. And caging one required reinforced everything.

Brad drew his fist back, his knuckles bloody and raw. As quickly as the injuries had appeared, they vanished, his skin smoothing over. He wiped away the blood and there was no sign he’d been hurt.

Healing had been something he’d done quickly prior to his capture. Since he’d been subjected to test after test, procedure after procedure, he found everything that he’d once come to accept about himself was in question. He now healed at a rate that even supernaturals would find impressive. Though, there were some wounds that, while the scars had faded significantly, were still evident. He was also stronger than he’d been. But with great healing and strength came a huge weakness—control. His once semi-solid control over his wolf side was nearly nonexistent. Most of his time was spent trying to keep himself from shifting forms. Each period he did lose control and give in to the beast, he lost track of time and woke in a weakened state. And from the expressions on the scientists and guards’ faces, he’d been a monster while shifted.

The fear of changing and not being able to return to human form was real and always with him. He’d seen other test subjects fall victim to it. Seen them enter their shifted form, only to remain stuck in it. The doctors and scientists performed even more tests before finally putting the test subject down and out of its misery.

I wish they’d put me down,
he thought, lowering his gaze to his fists once more. They’d turned him into something. A monster. He’d end up like the others. He’d get stuck in wolf form before being shot execution style. It was just a matter of time. He could only hope they killed him sooner rather than later. Controlling the urges was getting harder and harder.

The sick sons-of-bitches had been trying to force him to mate from the word go. They tried just about anything they could think of in order to get him to take a woman, use her, spend his seed in her and give them what they wanted—more test subjects. He’d managed to resist it all so far, but his self-restraint was wavering. They kept pumping him with more and more of those fucking drugs and he knew he’d break soon enough. It didn’t matter that a new puppet master pulled his strings, a bad guy was a bad guy. Shades of gray was the shit fairytales were made of and this was no fucking fairytale.
 

“If it is,” he said softly, his attention moving to the cracked wall, “I’m the big bad wolf.”
 

He paced the cell once more, his nerves on edge, heavy with worry for the newest subject they had wanted him to breed. Her name was Mae and she seemed like a nice enough girl. And he had
zero
sexual interest in her. That didn’t mean anything in the world of the people holding him. The vampire who was in charge, or at least pretended to be in charge, was after the same results as the sick bastards who took him from South America. They all wanted more product to sell and test. And in this scenario Brad and the other test subjects were the product, the merchandise to do with as they may.

His thoughts returned to Mae. From the moment he’d heard her humming a soft melody for him, he’d felt somewhat calmer around her and he’d also begun to fear the inevitable. The moment when they’d shoot him up with even more drugs and force a partial or full change on him. He feared he’d do the unthinkable, and in that state force himself on her or rip her to shreds. Neither one was something he wanted to happen. Not to any woman, but seeing Mae in a sexual light seemed extra wrong for some reason he couldn’t explain.

Didn’t want to bother to try.

“Where is she?” he asked of the empty room. He’d become quite good at talking to himself since he’d been taken. Occasionally, someone listening in over the surveillance system would answer, nearly always being assholes when they did.
 

It seemed like hours since they’d taken Mae and he hadn’t seen anyone else since then. He didn’t want to think on what they were doing to her. He’d seen many women come and go since he’d been taken. For a while he’d desensitized himself from it all, but Mae had changed that for him. He felt a strange friendship forming with her. It wasn’t attraction, but he did care about her and her well-being.

He heard footsteps and then smelled one of the guards. A snarl broke free from him and claws threatened to emerge from his fingertips. As his hate of his captors rose, he caught scent of something else. Something that didn’t make him want to kill. Something that seemed very out of place in the holding facility.

Strawberries and mint?

What a strange combination. His wolf took notice of it as well, wanting to know the source. It didn’t take long before his cock took a keen interest as well. He stiffened and tried to will his lower extremity into behaving. It had a mind of its own and currently it was thinking “Get bent, asshole, whatever is coming smells fuckable.”

Blatantly, he reached down, took hold of himself through the hospital-issued scrub pants he wore, and adjusted. He found no relief in a new position. As the scent’s strength grew, so did the urge to screw a hole through the wall. His body was pumped full of so many drugs that he feared he might give in and hump the cement blocks. Rage at his captors rushed over him at the same moment intense need slammed through him as the smell of strawberries and mint grew even stronger.

Looking through the display window into Mae’s cell, Brad watched as the door to her room opened. It wasn’t Mae who entered. A stacked, leggy redhead staggered in, her long hair falling forward, covering her face partially at first. The same need that had hit him at her scent, rushed through him even stronger, centering in his groin once more. With a groan, he held himself, hoping no one would notice just how much she turned him on. The people holding him were hell-bent on breeding the women, and Brad didn’t want them to realize just how much the redhead appealed to him in that manner. For the briefest of moments, he actually had a flash in his mind of seeing her frame swelling with his child.

He had to shake his head to clear the image. As she flipped her long hair back, showing off just how stunning she was, all hope of him erasing the thought of having children with her was abandoned. Her gaze narrowed on the guard who had thrust her into the room. Nothing short of rage burned in her eyes.

“Hey, I told you that Ezra said to bring you to this cell,” the guard said, lifting his hands in the air as if to show he was innocent in it all. “Stop looking at me like you want to rip my nuts off.”

Brad’s appreciation of the woman increased. Anyone who was willing to give the bastards holding them a hard time was all right by him.

“Oh, I do,” she snapped, her voice making Brad’s cock stir more. “I want to spoon feed them to you, asshole.”

The guard nodded, his eyes widening. He made a motion to cover his groin area. “I know. Crazy bitch.”
 

Hearing the man call her a bitch set Brad on edge. His wolf pushed up, wanting out, wanting to rip the guard’s head off for daring to speak to the woman in such a way. He wasn’t sure how long had passed before he got something close to control of his beast. The guard shut the cell door and the woman folded her arms under her large breasts, drawing more attention to them. Not that they needed any help in that department. She was extremely blessed.

He thought quickly of what it would be like to bury his head between her breasts as he sampled them with his lips, before moving down her slowly, tasting all of her.
 

“Dick!” she shouted at the closed cell door, jerking Brad from his sexual daydream.
 

He grinned, liking her fire.

Chapter Seven

Alice adjusted her shirt and blew out a long, annoyed breath as she found herself in yet another holding cell. It was the fourth holding cell she’d inhabited since she’d been grabbed from her university campus while attempting to leave a fraternity party. She’d been terrified to start with, unsure where she was, who had taken her and why she’d been grabbed. Now she was pissed.
 

The guard who had dragged her to the newest cell was one she’d only just met since arriving at the current facility. Apparently, her previous guards had given the man an earful because he’d been leery of her from the word go.
 

Good.

She fought the urge to lift her middle fingers and tell this one to go fuck himself. The last guard she’d tried that with had hit her in the gut so hard she’d had trouble breathing for a couple of days. She was still a little tender but she wasn’t going to let on. Giving them the satisfaction of knowing they’d caused her pain just wasn’t in her personality.

The desire to tuck away and cry until she ran out of tears was still overwhelming, but she clung to her anger. It was the only thing keeping her going. The guard slammed the door as he left and she curled her lip in disgust.

When she was moved from the other holding facility, she’d been both terrified and hopeful. Foolishly, she’d thought she might be able to find the perfect opportunity to escape. That maybe Ezra would change his mind about the risk and just set her free. That hadn’t been the case. Ezra had continued to play the part of dutiful guard, even though she knew he wasn’t with them. He wasn’t a bad guy. She couldn’t say the same for the rest of the men.

She’d been shackled for her transport, a cloth hood put over her head, and for a portion she’d been carried. Mostly because she’d been kicking and hitting at the men trying to escort her out. The ride over had taken
,
by her estimate
,
an hour at most. She’d done her best to attempt to count turns and anything that might indicate the path they’d taken. She was fairly certain they’d driven over at least one, possibly two sets of railroad tracks, and on their approach she’d smelled the ocean and heard seagulls. The telltale sound of a boat blowing its horn had confirmed her suspicion that she was near docks.

It wasn’t much, but it was something. She’d take anything that might help her figure out where she was and who, exactly was holding her. Befriending Ezra had proved somewhat useful, although it wasn’t a total win, as she was still being held prisoner. His promise to get her out and to safety was one she wanted to fully believe in but she was skeptical. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him, she didn’t trust the situation and all the players involved. There were elements out of his control.

At least the new place was cleaner than the last. When they’d taken the hood off her, she’d noticed that much straight away. She looked around at what would be her new home, at least for now. It was bigger than the others. At least double the size and wasn’t coated in mold.