Adrian [Whitedell Pride: 8]

by Catherine Lievens

  Sometimes you have to sacrifice everything for family.

  Adrian is a geneticist for the Glass Research Company. He’s the one who has been turning humans in shifters, but he did it only to save his brother, even if he knew it was a horrible thing to do. The company kidnapped him, and Adrian hasn’t seen him in nearly two years. Thinking Gabriel is probably dead, Adrian decides to run away from the company and turns to the only people who can help him—the Whitedell Pride.

  Joshua has known Adrian was his mate for months, but he doesn’t want to mate someone who experimented on humans and shifters alike, not after what happened to his sister thirty years earlier. Still, when Adrian is in danger, Joshua knows he’ll help him.

  What will Joshua do when another shifter steps in and decides he wants Adrian? Will he let Soren have his mate, or will he finally realize that Adrian is his?

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Adrian

  Copyright © 2014 Catherine Lievens

  ISBN: 978-1-4874-0284-6

  Cover art by Latrisha Waters

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by eXtasy Books Inc or

  Devine Destinies, an imprint of eXtasy Books Inc

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  www.eXtasybooks.com or www.devinedestinies.com

  Adrian

  Whitedell Pride Series 8

  By

  Catherine Lievens

  Dedication

  To Beany...just because I can!

  Chapter One

  Adrian bent over his microscope, trying as hard as he could to ignore the two men standing in his lab. He hated working for the Glass Research Company with a passion, but he had to if he wanted his brother to live. God, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen Gabriel for nearly two years already. What if he was already dead? Adrian wouldn’t actually be surprised to find out the company had eliminated him, but he avoided thinking about it. It was too hard, too painful, and there was nothing he could do.

  Sure, they made him watch a video of Gabriel every month or so, but how could Adrian know it was really recent? For all he knew, they had filmed every single one of those during the first weeks or months his brother had been imprisoned, then they had killed him. He couldn’t know for sure, though, which was why he was still here, hurting people who didn’t deserve any of what was happening to them and feeling guilty as hell. He wasn’t sure it was worth it anymore, not after meeting Oliver.

  Adrian had told his superiors over a year before that it was too soon to even think about experimenting on humans. Of course, they had dangled his brother’s life in front of him, so he’d had to do what they asked, even if reluctantly. He had been somewhat relieved that the people he had worked on were all volunteers, but he should have known something was off when he’d found all of them already asleep. Oh, he knew something was wrong, but he just never had the guts to stand up against the company.

  Oliver had changed that. Adrian had been distraught to see what he had done to the man, and he had sworn to himself that he would never do that again.

  Adrian loved his brother. Gabriel was his only family and they had been very close, but Adrian knew he wouldn’t have wanted this. It was going to kill him if something happened to Gabriel, but he couldn’t do this anymore. Who was he to decide that Gabriel life’s was more important than any of the people he had been forced to experiment on?

  Adrian had destroyed so many lives to keep his brother safe, but he had made peace with the fact that he would never see Gabriel again. He was probably already dead, and Adrian couldn’t continue doing this for a ghost.

  “Are you done?”

  Adrian looked over his glasses at the man who had spoken. He couldn’t actually see that much without the glasses, but it made it easier to answer in his best arrogant, I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-what-you-think tone. “Obviously not. As I already told you and your boss, I still haven’t figured out exactly what the problem is, so I can’t solve it. Having you breathing down my neck is not going to help me work faster.” Adrian was actually impressed with himself. He might be shaking in his boots inside, but his voice dripped disdain.

  Erick Talley, the man who had talked to Adrian, was his liaison with Rayford E. Glass, the president of the Glass Research Company, which meant that as soon as he stepped out of the room he was going to call his boss and repeat what Adrian had just said. Glass was then going to call Adrian and threaten him to kill his brother if he didn’t work harder and faster. It was routine by now. What was different was that Adrian wasn’t going to actually do it this time. He wouldn’t even answer his phone.

  “We’ll leave you to your work, then.”

  Adrian didn’t even look up this time. He listened as Talley and his bodyguard exited the room, wondering once again why on earth the man needed a bodyguard inside the secured building the lab was in. It wasn’t like Adrian could kill him by throwing distilled water at him or something.

  Adrian relaxed only when all the sounds outside his lab vanished. He didn’t need to check the microscope, not really. He already knew what the problem was, and he had already solved it, but Glass didn’t know that. It was the reason why Adrian was against human experimentation.

  Shifters were born sharing their body with their animal half. They might have looked completely human, but there were huge differences with the human body. Their bones were both stronger and more malleable than a human’s, as weird as that might sound. It was what they needed to change form, and humans obviously didn’t have this, which was why the ones he had injected with his first serum had never been able to shift. He had found out how to correct this only recently, just in time to help Oliver. The man would have to take the serum for life, but it was better than dying.

  Adrian wanted to stop doing those experiments. He wanted to help people, not kill them. He wanted to help those that had been hurt in the labs, but he couldn’t do anything while he still worked in the Glass Company.

  So Adrian had a plan, and he sure hoped it was going to work, because the company was going to kill him once they found out he’d done what he was about to do.

  He was going to run away. He was also going to erase every single formula and whatnot he could find in the company’s database before destroying all the samples in the lab. Adrian had no doubt that they had other samples stashed around, but they were all old ones, therefore useless, because they couldn’t use them to create shifters. There was only one sample of the new serum, and Adrian had it.

  He knew he should have destroyed it, that nothing good would come out of it, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Years of research and hard work were concentrated in that small syringe. It almost felt like destroying a part of himself.

  Adrian nervously looked at the clock, his fingers thrumming on the metal table, the noise loud in the deserted l
ab. It was almost time. He was one of the few to stay and work until ten PM every night, and he was glad he had started doing that. No one would find it weird for him to stay late today, and it gave him about an hour to destroy the database and the samples before leaving.

  Adrian was going to do what he had to do, walk home like always and sneak out the back. His car was already packed with his most important belongings, the things he just couldn’t abandon. He knew he would never go back to his home in New York, and he didn’t really care as long as he had the few things that were dear to him.

  Adrian had planned to drive all the way to Whitedell, and he hoped the pride would accept him in at least for a while, or help him find a safe place. They were his only hope, and they had been understanding when he’d been there to help Oliver. He had explained to the Alpha exactly why he had done what he had done, and while they didn’t condone it, they had seemed to understand.

  Sebastian, Oliver’ s mate, had even told him that he would have done the same thing if it had been Oliver or any other member of his family who’d been kidnapped, and even if Adrian didn’t really believe him, it helped knowing they didn’t condemn him, at least not all of them. Most of the shifters had been nice after knowing what had happened to Adrian and Gabriel, and even though Adrian had been with them for only a few days, he had felt accepted.

  The only one who seemed bent on hating him was Joshua. Oh, Adrian knew what mates were, and that apparently he was Joshua’s. As much as he wanted the man, as much as he needed to feel loved, he understood why Joshua had kept his distance, even when he and Soren had followed Adrian back to New York to make sure he was okay. He had seen the way his mate avoided even looking at him, and he wasn’t going to force the man to be with him. He would have avoided going back to the pride if he could have, but he had no other place to go, and he needed to give all his research to Dominic.

  Only then would Adrian be able to move and find another place to live, and hopefully the shifters would be able to take out the company before the company found Adrian.

  * * * *

  There was something to say about babysitting the brats when they went dancing—Joshua wouldn’t have problems finding a hot piece of ass and getting laid. He had been less than thrilled when Dominic had asked him to take Keenan, Jayden, and the twins to the club. True he and Soren were the only unmated males in the pride, and since the tiger had been on patrol duty, the choice of who would go with them had not been hard. All the other guys wanted to spend their Friday night with their mates, and Joshua couldn’t help the twinge of envy and jealousy tearing through him.

  He couldn’t help it, but he could push it away. He didn’t want to think about his own mate, because they would never have the loving and caring relationship Joshua had seen between his friends and their mates. Adrian was a monster, and he had no excuses whatsoever for what he had done.

  Joshua didn’t understand how the others could so easily forgive that Adrian had done horrible experiments on both shifters and humans. How could Oliver forgive what had been done to him? And yet the man had actually befriended Adrian during the few days the guy had been in Whitedell, and he often asked Joshua if he’d heard about Adrian, if the man was all right.

  Joshua never actually talked to Adrian. Yeah, Dominic had said that he had to be the one to keep Adrian safe and to always know what was happening to him, but they didn’t need to talk for him to do that. Some shifters of a nearby pride were keeping an eye on Adrian, and Joshua had asked him to send him at least one email a day. That way he didn’t even have to hear Adrian’s voice, thank god. To hear the husky tones and wonder how it would sound while Joshua made love to Adrian...

  No. Joshua couldn’t think about that, because it would never happen. Oliver might have been able to forgive, but he couldn’t. Not after what had happened to his sister. Delilah had died almost thirty years ago, but the situation had been awfully similar to this one. She had been kidnapped and used for some mad man’s experiments, and she had died before Joshua could help her. His baby sister had been broken, her skin so full of wounds and blood that Joshua hadn’t even been able to see the pale pink color under it.

  So no, there was no way Joshua could even think about mating with Adrian. Even if god knew that he was attracted to the man. Adrian was tall and lanky and so cute with those glasses he hid behind. He made Joshua want to throw him on the nearest flat surface and have his way with him, and walking away from Adrian when he had taken him back home was the hardest thing Joshua had ever done, especially knowing that he was literally leaving him in the hands of the bad guys.

  A hand trailing down Joshua’s chest distracted him and he looked down at the man in front of him. He was actually relieved to be able to focus on something that wasn’t Adrian or the labs, and he winked at the guy that was obviously making a pass at him. The guy plastered himself against Joshua’s front and looped his arms around his neck, pulling him down.

  “Hello, sexy,” the small human purred in Joshua’s ear. His tone made it clear that if Joshua wanted, he could get laid tonight. Maybe, just maybe, this was the first step to forgetting Adrian. Joshua examined the man in front of him. He was as far away from Adrian as he possibly could be. The guy was small and dark haired, his expression one that said that he wanted Joshua and that he would have him before the night ended. No glasses, no hairpins to keep his hair from falling in his eyes when he looked in a microscope. Perfect.

  Joshua leaned down and nibbled on the guy’s earlobe, making him arch against him. He wished he could take him back in the bathroom, but he couldn’t leave his charges on their own. God only knew what the four brats would do if left alone. “So, what’s your name?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I’d rather have your name than wonder about what to call you.”

  “Wes.”

  Joshua looked up to see if he could find his friends, shivering when he felt Wes’ tongue tracing a path along his neck. He saw the twins dancing with Jayden, but Keenan was nowhere in sight. Joshua knew there was no way the man could be frolicking with anyone that wasn’t his mate, so he had to be in the bathroom. Still, he didn’t like the fact that he couldn’t see him.

  Joshua’s attention was divided between searching for Keenan and the tongue that was now licking the corner of his mouth. He had to stop the guy, at least for the time it took him to find Keenan. Putting his hands on Wes’ shoulders, he pushed lightly. Wes looked up at him, the confident expression from earlier now hesitant. “You don’t want me?”

  Joshua could literally see the thoughts churning in the man’s mind and the doubts in his eyes, but he didn’t even have the time to answer the question himself, because Keenan had found him. “No, he doesn’t want you, or am I wrong?”

  Joshua held Keenan’s stare, knowing very well what the human was telling him with his eyes.

  “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t know he was already taken.”

  The change in Wes’ behavior was astonishing. He stepped away from Joshua, looking completely defeated. He was so cute in a lost kitten kind of way that it made Joshua want to pick him up and reassure him, but from the look in Keenan’s eyes the man would kick his ass if he did anything like that. Joshua had to talk to Keenan, because he couldn’t remain single all his life just because the man thought he shouldn’t have anyone other than Adrian.

  “Don’t worry, I don’t have anyone in my life right now,” Joshua said, stroking his hand on Wes’ back in a reassuring way. He scowled at Keenan, but the man was far from impressed or scared. He bared his teeth at Joshua in true shifter fashion, and Joshua had to admit that he was impressed. Still, he might not like the little shit, but he was actually kind of glad that Keenan had interrupted whatever was going to happen with Wes. It was obvious Wes was looking for something that Joshua couldn’t give him.

  “I-I’m sorry. I’ll go.” Wes stepped away but Joshua stopped him. He didn’t know why, but Wes looked so fragile and vulnerable.

&nb
sp; “Give me your phone.”

  Wes’ eyes were huge as he handed it to Joshua and watched as he entered his number.

  “If you ever need something, anything, call me.”

  “But why?”

  Joshua shrugged and smiled. “Everyone needs a friend.”

  “What makes you think I don’t have friends?”

  “Am I wrong?”

  Wes didn’t answer this time, but he did smile a small smile before waving and disappearing into the dancing crowd.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “What, I can’t have friends?” Joshua answered bitterly.

  “Oh, I didn’t say that, but the guy sure looked like he wanted something different than friendship from you. Are you going to cheat on Adrian?”

  There, that was the problem. “To cheat on him, I would have to be with him in the first place, and I’m not.”

  “But—”

  Joshua pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to keep his calm. “Look, I don’t care that Adrian is my mate, okay? I have no intentions of mating with him, or even of talking to him more than I need to in order to do my job. There’s nothing between us and there will never be anything, so I suggest you just give up and leave me alone, because next time I won’t take the time to nicely explain this to you.”

  He didn’t wait for Keenan’s answer. Palming his phone, Joshua called Dominic and asked that someone come and take his place as bodyguard, because he needed to get away. He needed to be alone.

  * * * *

  He knew they were following him. Oh, they were good, but Adrian was sure about it—or maybe he was just paranoid, which was entirely possible, given the situation he was in.