by Ava Lore
Deep inside she felt a sudden, gushing heat, filling her up until she could take no more. Then it spilled from her pussy and coated her ass and thighs, dampening his already soaked fur. His chest vibrated with a deep growl of release as he pumped into her, more and more, until they were both slippery with cum and sweat.
At last he collapsed against her, rolling slightly to the side so as not to crush her, and Michelle drew a deep, shaking breath. Her limbs were as limp as a rag doll's, all her strength sapped. Every muscle trembled and shook with the aftershocks of her orgasms and the adrenaline of their mating.
Their mating.
God. She had fucked a beast. And loved it.
Biting her lip, Michelle suddenly felt awkward and self conscious. Her coworkers... her colleagues... they'd been watching. She wanted to curl up and hide her face in shame, but as she tried to disengage from Subject Number One, she felt his thick cock inside her grow thicker, and she thought: Of course. Of course they knot. A bulb at the base of his penis ballooned just past her entrance, tying them together and leaving her almost unbearably full.
One moved, twining his arms around her, and she tried not to shrink from him in mortification. Her cheeks burned, but then his cool nose nudged her face, and she forced herself to take a deep breath.
"Trust mate," he whispered. "Es-cape."
Licking her lips, she nodded slightly. For a long while it seemed they lay there, breathing in time with each other until his cock began to subside. When the door at the end of the hall slammed open, he quietly slid out of her and she only closed her eyes rather than try to hide her whole face.
They lay together on the blankets at the back of the cell, his great body curled around her small frame, warming her, and she concentrated on the rise and fall of his chest against her back as footsteps strode down the passage between cells before coming to a stop in front of theirs.
"Dr. Dimaano." Dr. Wells stood just beyond the cell bars. She knew he did. She feigned exhaustion and groaned as though she were falling asleep.
"Are you injured, Dr. Dimaano?"
Behind her she felt Subject Number One tense, and she opened her eyes, blearily, and met the gaze of her boss.
Except she didn't, because he was studying her naked body, clinically, objectively. Yet his eyes gleamed with lascivious thoughts, and Michelle suddenly felt far dirtier just by being subjected to his cool, carnal appraisal than she could ever feel by fucking Subject Number One. At least One had given her pleasure in return. At least One had promised to help her. That was more than Dr. Wells had ever done. Behind him stood her two colleagues, Dr. Martin and Dr. Sandsoff, and a small army of interns and guards. All men. They must be Dr. Wells' most trusted lackeys in this. People who would stand by and let their coworker get raped.
Of course, she'd been willing—very much so—but they hadn't known that. And there were so many of them. So many who didn't want to risk the memory erasure. But then again, she didn't either. Would she have spoken up for another woman in her place and accepted the loss of her memory, even knowing she wouldn't make a difference? She couldn't bear to think about it.
Number One must have sensed her distress, because a low growl sounded in his throat. She saw a flash of consternation cross Dr. Wells' face. "I had hoped the subject would calm after completing intercourse," he said, standing perfectly still. "We will have to subdue him before you can move."
But how would they escape then? She had to stall, to buy them time.
Michelle opened her mouth to protest at the same time Subject Number One sank his teeth into her shoulder, straight down to the bone.
Chapter Five
As her blood flooded his mouth, his mate screamed—a raw, betrayed sound that rent his heart in two.
She hadn't been prepared. He hadn't dared tell her what he needed from her to facilitate their escape for fear that the listening ears and seeing eyes would somehow find a way to prevent him from completing the blood bond.
But he should have told her. Immediately Subject Number One knew he had made a dreadful mistake, but there was no turning back now. He had to move forward. He had to take his mate and escape this place. He could come back for his brothers later, but for now... Find your own high ground. Pull the rest up after you.
The sharp sting of a tranquilizer dart embedded itself in his shoulder, and for the briefest of moments One felt himself slipping, becoming groggy, until he swallowed the blood in his mouth. It flowed down his tongue, cascaded down his throat and into his body, and from there it began to spread out and out, through his veins like the fire of whiskey hitting an empty stomach. Instantly he was awake again, alive, aflame, and her blood, the blood of his mate, completed the promise of his beastly body, bringing forth strength like nothing he had ever known.
Releasing her, he rose to his feet, feeling light as a feather. Blood dripped from his jaws as he stalked toward the bars and the suddenly panicking people milling behind them. More tranquilizer darts were slammed into guns, aimed, fired, and found his flesh, but they had no effect on him. He merely growled and brushed them from his hide before he reached the bars and reared up on his hind legs, his blunt, monstrous hands wrapping around the steel.
The sight of his own arms made him pause for a split second.
His fur gleamed with a hot, shimmering red sheen.
The color of their mate-bond. The outward manifestation of their completed pact. She was his now, and he was hers. With their joining, he had turned into a fearsome, blood red beast, a monster of nightmares.
Then, outside of his cell, one of the guards drew a gun.
As easily as bending river reeds, Subject Number One parted the bars to the sound of screaming steel, and the men before him panicked. In such a small space, it was a recipe for disaster. People collided, fell, were trampled, struggled to get up. The gun went off, shooting wide, and then One was through the bars and among them, meting out his vengeance.
Claws raked over fleeing backs, drawing blood. His jaws snapped at flailing limbs, and the crunch of bones beneath his teeth filled him with a warm satisfaction. Huge hands, pendulous at the ends of his long arms, slammed into each body he could find, sending them flying into the walls and the bars of the other cells, hitting with a chorus of lovely cracking bones. Only a few guards tried to engage him, but he bit through their arms, breaking the bone, severing the sinew so their trigger fingers could not work.
One of them managed to bury a blade in his side, but the power of the blood bond with his mate rendered it merely inconvenient. Plucking it from between his ribs, One actually felt the torn flesh knit back together before he turned it back on his attacker, running it over the back of his thigh and sending him crashing to the floor. Red triumph rose in him, bearing him up and up, they couldn't touch him now, could never imprison him again—
But behind him, he heard his mate screaming.
Captors mostly subdued, One turned and saw her cowering against the back wall, blood running in rivulets over her bare skin, her face a mask of terror.
He'd screwed up badly. But there was no time to fix it.
Leaping back through the bars, One scooped his mate over his shoulder and loped out of the cell and down the hall, raking his claws left and right at anyone who tried to stand in his way. Most of them just crouched down on the ground and sobbed, stinking of sweat and fear and piss. When he reached the door, he wrapped his hands around the handle and pulled.
It was locked from the outside of course. He needed more power.
The man inside him told him not to do it, but the beast knew that it was the only way.
Letting his mate slide down into the crook of his arm, he ran his tongue over the blood coursing down her chest and into the valley between her breasts. Quickly, thoroughly he cleaned her, and she stayed in his arms, stiff as a board, and whimpered in fear, her eyes screwed shut.
Fear. She feared him. His heart cried out in anguish, but there was no time for such things. No time at all.
Po
wer coursed through him, filling him up. He lowered his shoulder, sheltering his mate, and rammed his body into the door.
The steel buckled like paper under his assault, the lock breaking, the hinges screeching as they were torn from the frame and the door shot into the hallway beyond, clattering across the floor. He had to stop for a moment and assess his surroundings. He had never seen this place before. He had always been passed out when he had been transported.
He was in a huge, circular hallway lined with steel doors, each labeled with a letter and number combination and sporting a keypad lock. A whole slew of prisons, housing god knew what. Under the chemical smell of cleaners he could detect a hundred strange scents criss-crossing old and new, delectable and foul, but he had no time to linger and sort them out. Shouting and stamping boots came from above, and as he darted around the circle he discovered that the prison ringed an elevator in a column in the center. He turned to his mate.
"Stairs," he ground out. "Stairs."
Pale and terrified, she shook her head. Whether that meant there were no stairs, or that she was unwilling to tell him, it didn't matter. The elevator was coming down, and that probably meant there were no stairs. He could hear no boots on steps, no echoes of a stairwell, only the humming of the machinery as the elevator descended.
Very well, he thought. He could take them all on.
Gently, he set his mate down on the floor, just out of reach of the elevator doors. He was afriad she would bolt at the first opportunity, but instead she stayed where he put her. Her arm hung limp at her side, and he realized he had injured her more than he thought with his bite. He could heal her... but not now.
The doors of the elevator opened, and he turned and faced his enemy.
They came out, black body-armored and bristling with guns, but their advantage in numbers meant nothing when he had the jump on them. As they exited the elevator he moved, faster than he had ever moved, faster than the eye could see, and plowed through them, claws flying, jaws snapping.
Their well-honed discipline disintegrated in the face of his fury. Guns fired, bullets ricocheted, but within seconds he had crushed every barrel and disabled every guard. Screams filled the hallway, and in the prisons beyond One heard the shrieks and howls of the other prisoners. And above them, he heard the wailing of his brother wolves.
I'll come back for you, he thought fiercely. I will find Four and come back for you. Swiftly he dispatched any guards remaining conscious, making certain they would not get up for a while. He knew he could kill all of them—he should kill all of them for what they had done, for what they were a party to—but he had no time. Instead, the moment the last body hit the floor, he darted back to where Michelle sat, pressed against the wall, her body trembling with shock and horror.
Scooping her up, he dashed into the elevator.
Her blood seemed to have made him taller, or perhaps the elevator was simply small. He could reach the ceiling with no problem, and with one hand he tore it apart and pulled them both up into the shaft above.
In his arms, his mate wept. He wished he could stop to lick away her tears, to heal her wound, and the knowledge that he could not was anguish in his chest.
Forcing himself to move slowly and gently, he placed her over his shoulder again and began to climb.
Swift, nimble, he scaled the inside of the shaft, moving up and up, his body springing from foothold to foothold, his hands crushing wires and steel as he climbed. His keen ears swiveled, catching the sounds of panic above, and he strove toward it without stopping. The shaft was tall, but he was strong, and when at last he reached the doors leading into the lab, it was child's play to him to wrench them open.
Cold white walls and the stench of a hospital greeted him. Tables of medical instruments, computer monitors, strange devices whose purpose he couldn't even begin to guess—all crowded the laboratory. The staff of the facility were scattering, under assault for the second time in as many days. One paid them no mind. Taking a precious moment, he slid his mate back down into the cradle of his arm before surging forward.
Effortlessly he leaped across the room on three limbs, sending delicate instruments and samples flying as he hopped from table to counter to trolley to huge examining table—a whiff of blood there, and other things that turned his stomach before he bounded away—and the few people remaining in the lab screamed and cowered away from him. Against his chest Michelle curled up into a ball, her fingers weaving into his fur, sending a fierce wave of protective instinct through him, and when a young man in glasses was too slow to get out of his way One lashed out furiously and heard the crack of his spine as he went flying into the wall.
Through the doors, into the larger facility. Mostly deserted. The stench of fear hung in the air, and he followed it as it streamed out and out, toward the exits. He took the thinnest route, passing through a locker room and what appeared to be an overnight room, thick with human smells, and then he was moving through an abandoned lobby. The world flashed by in a series of impressions: a front desk covered in scattered papers, a smashed coffee pot, glittering shards of glass swimming in a brown pool, overturned chairs, a television on the wall turned to a news station.
And before him a set of glass doors, leading out into the brilliant sun of a late autumn day.
The sun. He had missed it so much. It would be his enemy now, but he would still be glad of it.
Putting his head down, he rammed into the doors, stumbling in surprise when they gave way easily, and then he was tumbling into the sunlight, and the open air, and freedom.
The lab was remote. It had to be. The parking lot glittered with cars and people fled between them, staggering and stumbling. He ignored them all. Instead he focused on the trees ringing the facility. Shelter. Obfuscation.
One cradled his mate to his chest and loped into the trees.
Michelle sank into a stupor
The world bobbed and dipped, drifting past her as though she were in a dream, but the wave of pain that pulsed through her with each heavy footfall of the crimson-furred monster who had stolen her from her life reminded her that this was very real. Everything had changed.
Everything.
Her crushed shoulder, pressed awkwardly against the beast's chest, was a white hot point of agony in the chill that seemed to have settled into her bones. Her arm lay limp and useless across her body, and though the fingers of her other hand cramped with the effort of holding onto the monster's fur, she didn't dare let go. Not until they stopped. Not until she had a chance to get away.
Trust mate, she thought distantly. Hah. Right.
An open field. The sun beat down on her, but she didn't feel its warmth. She was just cold, inside and out.
Should have taken the devil's bargain, she thought. Should have just chosen to have my memory erased and be done with it when I first realized what was happening in that lab. But she hadn't. And this was surely the price she was paying for it.
All those people...
She didn't dare close her eyes for fear that she would see the broken bodies of her colleagues and the guards again, the blood, the faces twisted in suffering... Her selfishness, her desire to escape had brought this upon them. Were her memories so precious she had to destroy everyone standing between her and freedom?
And Subject Number One. The moment her blood had touched his tongue he had changed. His fur, now red, made him into a terrible beast, a creature from Hell come to wreak vengeance upon the unrighteous rather than a poor science experiment gone awry. No longer did she empathize with him. Now she feared him. She wasn't even sure he was the same any more. Whatever she had felt for him was now buried beneath terror and revulsion.
A beast that could not be subdued, its strength awesome, its rage against its captors towering—and not unjustified. The only thing that had saved her from his wrath was the connection they shared. A connection she should never have wanted.
I should never have touched him the first time, she thought. That was where it had all
started to go wrong. She should have stayed professional. Should never have indulged her curiosity.
But even as she thought these things, Michelle knew that she had been powerless to resist the allure of the beast. Powerless to resist his pleading eyes. And when he had taken her like an animal in a dirty cell, under the watchful gazes of her coworkers, beneath the camera's unforgiving stare, she had still loved it.
Despairing, Michelle closed her eyes and prayed for night to fall.
Her prayers were answered. Eventually.
But night did not come for a long, long time, and all through those hours, Subject Number One ran tirelessly. Michelle let herself drift in and out of consciousness, knowing her body needed to shut her down to begin its healing, and also because the fear was less when she caught snatches of sleep, though she always bolted awake in a panic. She became inured to the pain in her shoulder, and the warmth of the beast brought her a measure of comfort, though she still felt as though her insides had become cold, black ice.
As they ran, she noted, almost dispassionately, that the crimson hue in Number One's fur was subsiding, until after a few hours she could not discern it at all. Curiosity stirred in her head, a habit. Probably a bad one, judging by the predicament in which she now found herself. But she still wondered: was it magic? A chemical reaction?
What was it about her blood?
When at last the darkness covered them Number One slowed. She had no idea how far they had gone, nor even in what direction he had taken them. Nothing made sense. She only wanted to sleep, and she wasn't certain she could do that with the pain. She was cold, too—not the cold of shock, but the cold of being naked in the open air. She hadn't had the presence of mind to grab a blanket, and it probably would have been lost in the escape anyway. Now, however, her skin was growing chilled and the knowledge that they were completely on their own—no money, no shelter, no food—struck a bone-deep fear into her.