The only thing keeping her from losing her mind imagining the worst, was the knowledge that even the old labs had no idea what her friend was capable of, not after she had grown into her power. And if anyone could escape the labs a second time it was Ember. Add in a Tellox High commander...Anything was possible.
"Tell us everything you remember about these labs you were kept it," the female Tellox said. "Start with introductions. I'm Ariel, formerly of Earth and now Tellox."
Lyric met those sharp intelligent Tellox eyes and could not hide her surprise.
Earth? The woman looked all Tellox, but for her smaller height, which could have been explained by her gender. She pondered that as she gave her own name. "Lyric," she said before motioning to Charm. "Charm." Then she told them everything she could remember about the labs and could only hope it would be enough.
CHAPTER TEN
For the second time Ember woke from a drug stupor. She could feel the effects of the drugs inhibiting her senses. Fortunately they were also dulling the pain that she knew from experience spanned every inch of her. If the White coats were anything like their counterparts at her old lab, they were nothing if not thorough in their testing.
But sore muscles, aching joints and a pounding head were the least of her problems and she knew it when she looked around and instead of her cell she was in a room that looked to be all solid white walls, she was completely naked, and she was not alone.
The male across from her was nearly as tall as Farin, but with bulkier musculature. Where Farin looked like a big muscled feline, and moved like it, this beast was built like a wall, and lumbered back and forth before the containment field that separated them.
Since he had been left here with her naked it was easy to see that he had not been in the labs long. Too robust, too energetic looking. He lacked the apathy of a long timer, and the fear. He had four arms and two legs all massive in size, not to mention the rest of him was equally thick and wide and from what she could see through the shimmer of the field the monster between his legs was nearly purple with need.
She had to wonder what kind of hormones they had given the poor male because he looked painfully erect. The longer she watched him watch her the worse it got as both their drugs wore off at different paces. The only surprise in this situation was that she had not been given the same drugs to create sexual desire.
Ember realized she had spoken too soon when she felt a rush of wetness between her legs and her abdomen started to cramp up.
She did not need the cold robotic voice over the com to tell her she was in deep trouble.
"You have been given something to stimulate sexual response in your kinds. Should you choose not to participate in this as a willing subject, the pain will increase exponentially. You are not to harm yourselves or your mated pairing. Any attempt will result in the disciplinary measures of the pit."
Ember might have taken comfort from the warning, but she had a good idea that their version of harm and hers were widely different. Still, it was a good threat. Most people would do anything to stay out of the horrors that would be the pit. If it was anything like the one she had been forced into as a child she could not say she was that different. She even considered, briefly that the smart thing to do would be to just have sex with the male while they were both relatively in their right mind, but even the threat of worse that could, and probably would happen in the pit could not keep her from reacting when the containment field was dropped.
Ember stood slowly, fighting against the drugs in her system, more than one if she was not mistaken, something that had knocked her out and dampened her senses and something else to awaken her sleeping mating drive.
The large male stood as well, his eyes drawn to her face, then they trailed over the rest of her naked form. He stepped forward with a growl and Ember recognized the scales that shivered over his skin and then disappeared again.
A Tuma warrior, nearly as feared as the Tellox, she tried to remember everything she could about the species. She knew that their skin scaled like a dragon when they were in battle and the scales were nearly indestructible. Between that and the venom in their retractable fangs they were a deadly breed. And this one was clearly out of his mind on mating drugs.
As far as she knew their kind did not have fated mates as her people did. From what she knew they were the kind of warriors who would claim and breed with any female they came across, especially in the heat of battle, and they were not that concerned with whether the female was willing or not. In their society might makes right and their females tended to bed anyone strong enough to pin them down.
"Mine," he hissed through fully dropped fangs and a forked tongue. His scales were flowing in and out of existence, but she only had to look into his slitted eyes that burned with lust and madness to know that it was not fighting the warrior had on his mind. He was releasing mating pheromones so hard the room was flooded in scent. A scent that was all wrong.
A spike of adrenaline shot through the mugginess in her mind. She growled her own warning for the male to stay back even as her hair lifted, flowed, and beckoned him as prey. He did not even attempt to fight the mating need. His bulging dick pointed her way and he smiled as he followed.
Ember felt her eyes change so that she could see everything in the room to the sharpest degree. She started to sweat and knew the foreign drugs were getting pushed out. It was not the first time she had been drugged and considering how much was forced out of her she had no doubt that they had used the max dose but once her defenses were triggered even deadly poisons would be processed out quickly. If they wanted a forced mating, or anything else from her, they should have kept her knocked out. Awake, her natural defenses would always kick in to protect her.
She felt her nails lengthen to diamond hard talons and her teeth sharpen and extend in her mouth. Adrenaline and power pushed the last of the suppressing drug out and she felt her natural healing ability kick in taking care of the damage the white coats had managed while she slept. She gritted her teeth at the thought of what they had probably done, but she had no time to dwell on it.
The Tuma warrior rushed her with a roar of an Alpha male going to battle.
Her hair wrapped around him even as her claws slashed, across his throat, and then before he could process the attack she had slashed across both thighs, opening up arteries before his natural armor could react, her hair held him in place, keeping him away from her vulnerable places even as it flayed the skin from his bones.
His roar died out as the scale armor tried to form over him. She stepped back and the Tuma dropped bloody and twitching at her feet while his body struggled to fight the damage she had done in seconds.
The watchers voice came over the com in warning. "Any attempt to dam..." But the repeat of warnings was abruptly halted when they must have realized their warnings were a little too late to be effective. An appalled silence followed as if they could not believe what they were seeing.
Ember looked up into the eye of the sensor where she knew her 'mating' was being recorded and the scientists were watching. She smiled, her hair flipping around her now coated in as much blood as she wore across the rest of her pale skin. Even as she stood there the blood was absorbed through her hair and skin until she was luminescent with power before them. She casually flicked her talons, splattering what blood was left across the no longer moving body of the Tuma warrior.
The floor opened at her feet with a swish of sound. She fell, along with the flayed carcass of her would be conqueror. It was a long way to fall. So far did she fall into the darkness that she wondered if they had decided just to kill her after all. She hit frigid water so hard she wondered how many had died from the fall alone. But she was a Siren, so even as her body was swallowed by the icy water, her eyes opened, and the smile returned to her lips.
Either the Galais did not have a full recording of her files or they did not realize that as dangerous as she was on land, a Siren was even more dangerous in the water.
She had no doubt it was another type of experiment, that they were somehow monitoring her even as she allowed the water to feed her power, healing and empowering her until it was as if she had swallowed power and now it glowed from her skin. A hundred times more powerful than the blood of an enemy, by the time she made the shore and walked out of the water she was a beacon of power that called and lured everything around her. She fought briefly against the pull of her Siren nature but there had been too much in too short a time and the logical part of her mind was no longer calling the shots.
Ember lifted her head and sang, the true power of a Royal Siren flashing through her mixed blood and out through her mouth.
Her hair whipped around her, deadly to anything that came too close, even as it lured in prey. She sang, and nothing within ear shot could resist her call. Many of them came and fell before her with smiles on their faces. Feeding her their magic and power until she felt full to bursting with it, then more came and she kept singing, knowing even as she did that it was too much, too many, and she would either collapse beneath the weight of power overwhelming her, or she would fall when she stopped singing and the rest of them tore her apart.
At least she would no longer be an experiment, she thought, as she started to teeter.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Farin awoke in the dark, his head muddled by drugs and swimming with the rage that had followed him into the darkness. He had fought against their drug laden air as long as he could, and had watched Ember succumb to it, even as he fell.
It worked in his favor because when he woke up with no idea of how much time had passed or what had happened to him or Ember in the meantime, he awoke in the pit. The rage started to eat away the clouds of drugs in his mind even as he opened his eyes.
Though he seemed to be separated from the rest of the moving darkness around him by another containment field, he had no doubt that it would soon disappear, and he would be dealing with what he could hear across the cavernous space. He hoped his eyes had adjusted enough by then to see in the dark. That, along with all his other heightened abilities, seemed to have been subdued by the drugs still in his system.
He could only hope the containment that shimmered around him gave him the time he needed or judging from what he could hear and smell even with impacted senses he might be in trouble.
Then the containment field dropped and the measly light it had shed on the pit was suddenly gone and even his returning night sight could see nothing in the pitch black that was left. Before he could orientate himself to the sounds that were building in the dark something that felt like a wall slammed into him and he went down beneath the weight of it.
Farin roared and the heaviness falling on him was the last push that set him right over the edge. He felt the rage and pain shoot him right into feral and he welcomed it. He clawed and bit and dismembered until his senses were soaked with blood and nothing was left to challenge him. He had no idea how long he fought, or how many died at his claws, but the enemies in the blackness of the pit seemed endless. Until the attacks stopped all together, and he was left breathing hard and snarling his displeasure to the dead space he stood in.
Then something above him changed and he looked up and was nearly blinded by the light after the pure darkness. It was enough for him to catch glimpses of the carnage he had wrought all around him, enough of a look for him to get a feel for exactly how vast and populated the pit was, and to see a flash of shimmering skin and lavender hair as Ember fell in the distance, well beyond his ability to catch her. She splashed down into what looked like a fucking lake on the other side of a vast ruin. He was already running before darkness descended again.
He had thought they were on a moon outpost or a landed frigate but with that one understanding of the pit he realized they were on a planet, one that had been beaten to dust and debris.
Farin used that one flash of sight and all his other senses to get him to Ember. He had no way of knowing if she had survived the drop, or whatever was waiting for her in the water, or any other thing she could be facing as he made his way to her, but he would not stop until he was by her side...or found her body.
He lunged over the obstacles in his path, killing as needed. He was bleeding from numerous cuts and gashes, but they healed faster as the last of the drugs were forced out of his body by his adrenaline fueled need to get to his downed female. He made it over the last of the ruins before he noticed that there was a light in the distance. And it was only as he saw it moving and swaying that he realized it was iridescent hair and glowing white skin. Then he was able to pick up movement all around her in the new shadows she created, and he roared, knowing she was alive, and that every beast in this inferno would be drawn to the light of a naked female. There would be no way he could reach her in time to stop them, and even if he did there were too many to protect her from.
Farin roared again and started running faster, uncaring of the odds. Then she began to sing, and his legs gave out so that he slammed into the rocky ground as if he had suddenly lost his motor skills.
The need to get to her tripled. He slapped weak hands over his ears and immediately felt the difference. He kept them pinned over his ears as he stood and looked back to where Ember was singing. Even though he was blocking the sound he knew she was still singing because he could almost feel the power brushing over him in waves. He started moving again. This time more carefully as he watched the shadowy ferocious beasts of the pit fall at Embers blood splattered feet.
She swayed, not to the music he realized, but in exhaustion. She had a powerful song, enough to take out what amounted to an army, but that power had to come from somewhere and she was paying the price for it. He had nearly reached her when she looked up and locked shimmering lavender eyes on his. He kept walking right into her space as her hair reached up to wrap around him.
He knew, even as he could not stop himself that she was in battle mode, her claws out and her teeth sharp and her hair a weapon as much as a lure. But he could not have stopped himself from wrapping her up in his arms any more than he could stop the growl of possession from leaving his lips. She was bleeding, the smell of her blood calling him through the death and copper tanged air that clung to both.
Her eyed widened in recognition as she swayed and started to fall, her hair wrapping around him like a warm liquid heat just as he caught her up in his arms, the feel of her cooled skin and naked form a benediction to his overawed nerves.
He knew she was his even before his teeth found the bend of her shoulder to her neck and dug in, tasting what she was to him and claiming his mate. The power flowing through her at his bite, passed right over him like a warm caress, then flashed out like a supernova knocking out everything beyond their circle of light that was not already dead. The harsh light winked out and all was dark again, his mates’ skin slowly fading until only a small glow remained.
Covered in blood and surrounded by felled enemies, prisoners in a pit of vipers, his mate passed out in his arms, for the first time in his long lonely existence Farin the Dark knew his true purpose. And she lay, passed out from exhaustion and battle in his bloody arms.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ember woke up in the dark of the pit feeling both warm and safe, something that made no sense considering she had fallen through the floor of the lab half feral from the touch of a male not her mate, knowing she was going to die.
She heard something in between a purr and a growl and should have been afraid, or ready to attack, but instead she felt...soothed.
What the everlasting galactic hell?!
She forced her eyes open thinking she would see nothing but darkness and instead she was glowing like the hot coals of her namesake, and Farin the Dark was holding her
in his arms as if she belonged there. Her own body was creating the light that she could see by.
"Farin?" she said his name as a question, only because his eyes did not look quite right above her. She was close enough to see his black eyes had small specks of silver in them, like stars in a dark sky. It distracted her from the blood that he seemed to be liberally streaked with, and the fact that they were both naked and she was in his lap.
She was so out of it that it took her a moment to realize the hard length beneath her was his hard erect length. She looked into his eyes again with a new worry and swallowed at the heat and possession blasting her from those celestial eyes.
"What did they do to you?" she asked in almost a whisper. The hand that was not wrapped around her waist cupped her jaw beneath her hair and he leaned down even closer breathing her in. He ran his nose over her neck up behind her ear and then across to rub her nose before he growled again. She met those celestial eyes, stiffening in his arms even before he spoke.
"Mine." It was the same thing the other male had said to her, but this time the word did not make her Siren rage.
A new scent caught her attention, even through the blood and death surrounding them. All the rest of it fell away, and there was nothing but that scent, and the hot hard body against hers. She sucked in a deep breath and she knew he was right. Mine. My mate.
The feral beast inside her gave not a single thought to where they were, or the danger they were in. Or the fact that to mate would play into their captor’s hands. All she knew was that she needed. Now.
Ember lunged up and bit him. Her teeth sinking into his chest above his heart. She knew even as he roared that no matter what his ability to heal, her mating mark would be permanent.
Later the pulsing on her own shoulder would finally catch her attention and she would realize why he was suddenly giving off a mating scent when he had not before. For now thinking much of anything in a logical fashion was beyond her. All she could do was feel and yearn.
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