Wild Ride: An M/M Shifter Mpreg Romance Bundle

by Preston Walker

“Eat your breakfast,” he said instead. He could almost feel the curiosity pour in from the other cell, and he grinned. The new kid was precocious. He wondered how long it would last in here.

  “I’m Forest,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  “Uriel,” he replied.

  “Uriel. I like that name.”

  No reaction. They must not have told Forest who would sire him, which helped him. He wondered if they would make it policy to not say his name out loud in the future, should he succeed.

  “Thanks, I’m a fan. So Forest, you said you worked in the zoo? What else did you do? Is there anyone out there looking for you?”

  “I don’t know,” Forest said. “My parents and I only talk a few times a year. They probably haven’t noticed that I’m missing yet. Work won’t miss me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I think we’re there. I think this is the research facility attached to the zoo. I was too foggy to put the pieces together before, or I forgot. Either way, Animus runs the zoo. He owns it. I’ve worked for him for five years now, but I didn’t see his face in person until I wound up in that hospital bed.”

  The zoo, Uriel thought. There was only one near the area he’d been scouting when he’d been picked up by these goons. He’d visited a few times; he made it a point to seek out wolves in captivity, to see if any of them could be rescued and rehabilitated. Not that they were direct kin, but they were close enough to family that he couldn’t bear to let them live on a postage stamp when he knew what it felt like to run free. He called up the map of the zoo, and formed a fuzzy idea of where in the facility he was most likely to be.

  “What about you?” Forest was saying. “Any friends, family?”

  “Oh, yes,” Uriel said, his heart beating a single dull ache. “A pack, a tribe... I led a group of fifty, and we were allied with five other packs. Our tribe was huge. But they won’t be looking for me.”

  “Why not?”

  Uriel sighed and shifted on his cot to lean against the wall. Why not, indeed. In his darkest moments, he regretted it. The rest of the time he knew he’d made the right decision.

  “I told them not to. One of our own had been taken by Animus’ men when she ventured into town one day. She was in human form, but they must have ways of picking us out of a crowd. Anyway, she went into town with her sisters. They came back, she didn’t. They told us that men had taken her, and they had enough information for me to figure out where to start looking. I told them to move on. I told them to go deep into the northern woods, and that I would find them once I had rescued her. I reached them just as they were transferring her to another crew. I attacked and then I woke up here.”

  “Oh,” Forest said. “Wow, I’m... I’m sorry, that must be tough. Have you seen or heard from her since you’ve been here?”

  “No. I know she’s here since every once in a while I can smell her. But they’re probably experimenting on her right now, or they’ve already killed her. Difficult to know for sure.”

  “Difficult not to,” Forest said thoughtfully. “Was she your partner?”

  “No,” Uriel said. “I had a mate, once, long ago. He was killed in a vicious battle between us and a group of soldier scientists.”

  “Odd combination.”

  “Yeah, back during one of the rather large human wars. They were trying to capture us, for the same reasons as these people are now I suspect. But we fought them off. Many of them died; they killed only one of ours. My mate, Michael. It was... a long time ago.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Forest said sincerely. “That must have been terrible.”

  “It was,” Uriel admitted. “And I thought then that the only way for me to be a functional leader was to avoid any more emotional entanglements. My mourning lasted months, and the tribe descended into chaos in that time. Never wanting to put them through that again, I avoided relationships, romantic, platonic, or...otherwise. Now, though... there’s something about these walls that sharpens regret. The loneliness, the isolation, the uncertainty... now that I’m here, I wish I had done things differently. Loved more. Experienced more. You’d think I would have learned that in the centuries before I came, but...one thing nobody ever mentions about immortality is how easy it is to get trapped in your own patterns. Your own...reactivity.”

  He wondered if he was telling too much too quickly, but decided he didn’t care. One of these days Animus would die, or he would; if he could make one final connection before that day, his life might still be worth something. There was no point in holding back the parts of himself that no longer mattered.

  “I understand that,” Forest told him. “I was just thinking about that last night, actually. I’ve never really done a whole lot with my life. I ticked the boxes on the success formula and just rolled with it. If I have two hundred years ahead of me, what on earth am I going to do with it? I mean, assuming we survive this and make it to the other side.”

  Uriel opened his mouth then closed it again. Would it do any good to plan for an uncertain future? Yes, he decided. Forest would need both hope and rage to fight back against them.

  “You could come home with me,” Uriel said. “Assuming, as you said, we make it out of here. You could meet your people, see how we live. If you liked it, you could join us. You’re one of us, after all, and without offspring you will outlive your human family. It will seem like moments, you’ll still be young and strong and unsure of yourself while your human family fades away. It’s a heartbreaking ordeal for most turned wolves, though some take it upon themselves to turn their families, especially if they’re married with children.”

  Forest shuddered at the thought of a child being subjected to the same violence he’d survived.

  “I can’t believe a parent would do that to their own kid,” he said angrily.

  “Hmm? Oh, no, you’re thinking about how you were turned. It’s not like that out there. Accidental, violent turns are rare, and usually lead to an angry wolf dead set on revenge roaming around causing trouble until he’s handled. Natural turning, it’s... intimate. A gentle bite to the jugular, just enough to mingle the saliva with the blood stream. Most people turn their lovers during sex. It’s the same level of intimacy.”

  “That actually sounds kind of hot,” Forest admitted. “So why is it so brutal in here?”

  “Because of the cocktail of chemicals they use,” Uriel said angrily.

  He hated Animus fiercely for what he made him do, over and over again, to so many innocents. “Since turning is an intimate thing, it generally requires a level of attachment, or at least a link. To force a werewolf to turn a stranger for no reason, they have to drive it insane. Temporarily insane, but utterly. It’s almost as if they pump it full of cocaine before setting it on some unsuspecting human. And it’s horrible, really, because the humans are always so frightened and fragile, they don’t know what’s happening, and the wolf can’t help itself. It attacks, without thinking, without warning, without the ability to make itself stop. It’s horrible.”

  Uriel bit his tongue to stop talking before he gave everything away. His guilt pounded in his chest like a second heartbeat, demanding to be released and absolved.

  “Oh,” Forest said quietly. “So the wolf who turned me...”

  “Didn’t want to,” Uriel finished. “Had no intention of hurting you.”

  “I see.”

  Forest turned this information over in his mind. Perhaps the crazed look in his attacker’s eye had been just that; insanity, brought on by drugs. Animus and his team seemed to have created incredibly potent drugs, not just for that purpose, but for whatever it was they were doing to him.

  “Where is this going to end, for me?” Forest asked out loud. “I mean, what comes after the twelve-hour stints as a wolf?”

  Uriel squeezed his eyes shut. Death, he thought, or worse.

  “The last wolf who was in your cell underwent two weeks’ worth of injections. The first lasted twelve hours. The second lasted about fourteen. By the mid
dle of the second week, he was down to moments of humanity before his injections. By the end, he was a wolf all the time. And it wasn’t just his form they degraded. They addled his mind. When he left here, he was more wolf than man; wild, unpredictable, impulsive, and irrational.”

  “Lovely,” Forest said nervously. “What did they do with him then?”

  “I don’t know,” Uriel said. “They led him out on a leash, and I never saw him again.”

  “Can they freeze your form like that? Have they tried?”

  “They try something new every week,” he said. “They haven’t managed to tame me yet. There’s something about a freshly-formed shifter that enables them to do what they do.”

  “How do they drug you?” Forest asked. “You must be stronger than all of them.”

  Uriel sighed. He asked himself that question all the time. How had he let himself wind up in this miserable position? He knew how they controlled him now, but his memory of those first weeks was fuzzy at best, and he wished he could go back in time and shred them before they figured out how to dose him without getting close.

  “Yes, but I still have to breathe,” he explained. “They don’t bother trying to inject me and they haven’t since the first week I was here. They shoot capsules into my cell that explode and fill the air with whatever new or old drug they deem necessary for that day.”

  “Oh,” Forest said thoughtfully. “Well, I can’t let them do to me what they did to the other guy. I’m not going to live the rest of my life on four legs... I won’t do it.”

  “You have a plan to avoid it?” Uriel asked with a little laugh.

  “Not yet,” Forest admitted. “But I will. I’m not going to go down like that. You need to get out of here to take care of your family and live your life. I... I just don’t want to be a dog forever. I honestly can’t think of a worse fate. I’m not a big fan of meat, for one thing.”

  “That’ll change,” Uriel told him. “Your body needs it now. You’re still an omnivore, but you’re half carnivore, and your tastes will change the more you do.”

  “Even so,” Forest said dismissively. “I’m not just going to roll over for these freaks.”

  “I wish you the best,” Uriel told him sincerely. “Though I don’t know if what you want is possible.”

  “I think you’ve been here too long,” Forest told him. “You’re starting to sound like you’ve lost hope.”

  Hope, Uriel thought. There is no hope here. “It’s not about hope,” he lied. “In here, there’s only us and them, and they hold the power. Unless you can figure out how to get through solid metal, past potentially dozens of goons, not to mention Jane and Animus, you’re stuck here. All I can give you are ways to make the best of it. Starting with managing your body’s response to the injections.”

  Forest was quiet for a moment. “If I fight the injections, they’ll be forced to use the canisters. And if they use the canisters, I can reduce the effects,” he said excitedly.

  “How?” Uriel asked with interest.

  “Hold on, I’ve got to look at something.”

  There was one spot in the room that was disconnected from the surrounding air to a certain degree: the toilet. He pushed the disgust from his mind as he examined it. It was just big enough for him to fit his face inside with minimal gaps. If he turned the water off... there. He turned the water off and flushed twice, removing all of the water from tank and toilet.

  “Okay, listen,” he said quickly. “If I empty the toilet, it’s a separate pocket of air. If I soak my blanket, it’s a barrier, like a filter. So, in theory, let’s say they toss the canister in. I’ve already soaked the blanket and emptied the toilet, I shove my head in there. How long does the stuff stay in the air?”

  “I don’t know,” Uriel said thoughtfully. “Maybe ten minutes or so. But I’m pretty sure it only leaves the air because I breathe it in and because they close the vents before they do it.”

  “How long do they leave them closed?”

  “Not long. Ten minutes maybe. I always hear the vents open when the drugs start kicking in, which doesn’t take long at all.”

  “So, I would need to stay isolated for a good fifteen minutes,” Forest said. “And I can hold my breath for two. So let’s say that I do all of that, then hold my breath eight times in a row. I might pass out, but it would be worth a try.”

  “Hm. Let me know how that goes,” Uriel said. “I tried holding my breath once too, but I didn’t consider the rest of that. If it works for you, I’ll try it myself.”

  “Great. So now the only question is, how do I convince them that I’m just too much trouble to bother with injections?”

  “Now that I can help you with,” Uriel said with a grin. “You need to be the most unruly, uncooperative, violent son of a bitch they’ve ever seen. Well, apart from me anyway.”

  “I can do that,” Forest said, though he wasn’t sure he could. “I wish I could shift at will, though. That would increase the drama tenfold.”

  “Maybe you can,” Uriel said thoughtfully. “I don’t know what the drugs do apart from making you shift all the way, but I do know that you were turned naturally. They haven’t managed to create an injection for that yet, fortunately for... some of us. Anyway, if you’re a natural werewolf, which you are, then you should be able to shift at will.”

  “How?”

  A spark of hope fluttered for a brief moment in Uriel’s chest. This might actually work. “You have to get really, really angry.”

  Chapter Five

  For the first time in his life, Forest wished he was a naturally angry person. He didn’t get angry very often, and when he did, it was a passing flash over his conscious. He’d never held a grudge or wished death on anyone. It wasn’t because he was a particularly good or forgiving person; he simply didn’t have the energy to work up a good mad, or the attention span to keep one.

  “Okay, okay, get mad,” he muttered to himself.

  “Hard for you, isn’t it?” Uriel asked, amused.

  “I haven’t really had a lot of practice,” Forest laughed. “I mean, I’ve got every reason in the world to be mad right now, but I can’t seem to rev that particular engine.”

  “Hmm...do you have a sister?”

  “Only child.”

  “Pity. Girlfriend?”

  “Don’t date girls. Barely date, period. Love life’s dead.”

  “Not dead, just sleeping. Also, unfortunate. Your mother, is she still alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well if they get away with giving you that injection, they’re going to rape and kill your mother.”

  “Ugh. That just gives me anxiety.”

  “Really? That doesn’t make you angry?”

  “I mean, I know it should? But I also know that you’re making it up, that she lives a continent away, and that she’s better with a rifle than my dad is, so... I don’t know. I’ve never really felt protective over her, she pretty much handles her business.”

  “Hmm... okay... let’s try some truth, then. If they want to breed you, that means that you will bear or seed children with someone you don’t love, and you will be forced to stand by helplessly while those babies are experimented on mercilessly. They’ll be crying for you, for your comfort, and you won’t be able to reach them because you’ll be trapped in the shell of a dumb animal.”

  There it was. A spark of anger. Forest clung to it, fanned it with images of screaming babies who looked like him, paired with the image of him trapped and unable to help, of that sneer on the goon’s face when he beat him. He imagined Uriel’s family, how lost they must be without them, how they were helpless to rescue him because they didn’t know where he was or if he was even still alive. All of these images filled his mind, fanning the flame of his rage.

  “It’s not right,” he spat. “They can’t just rip families apart like that!”

  “It’s criminal. My family is out there right now, helpless in the face of attacks because these goons decided to use me as
their personal werewolf-making machine!”

  Uriel snapped his mouth shut, terrified at his own blunder. Shit, he thought. I’m all in now, better roll with it.

  “They force you to turn people?”

  “Hell, they forced me to turn you!”

  Rage boiled Forest’s blood. They’d turned Uriel into a monster, turned him on Forest, ripping both of them from their lives and forcing Uriel to bear the weight of their guilt.

  “If you’re good and mad, feel it burning in your gut. You feel that?” Uriel said, focusing Forest’s attention back to the task at hand.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Don’t let that die. Keep reminding yourself what they’re doing and what they will do. Feel that fire spread into your lungs, pant it up to your brain like a pump. You feel that?”

  “I feel that.”

  “Keep visualizing their smarmy faces sneering at you while your baby screams. Spread that flame down to your fingertips. Visualize yourself sinking your claws into their skin, tearing them apart. Feel your teeth ripping into them. Your baby needs you, he’s crying, they’re stabbing him with needles, what are you going to do, Forest?”

  “I’m going to kill them!” Forest roared. His voice was too deep, too wild. He opened his eyes. He’d changed; not into the pathetic dog-like wolf form, but into a massive beast with fangs and claws and an ancient bloodlust that coursed through his veins, keeping the rage fire burning hot automatically.

  “How do you feel?”

  “I want to kill them! I want to get out of here!”

  “Good! They’re coming now. The only limits you have are the ones you set yourself.”

  Forest blew hot air through his nostrils. He stood just in front of the doorway, glaring. He was going to launch himself at the first human he saw. The footsteps came closer, and he clenched his oversized, claw-encrusted fists, digging them into his own flesh. The pain sent a flash of adrenaline through his system, bolstering the rage. The lock slid out of its home, and the door began to swing open.

  “Right love, I have your—” Jane couldn’t finish her sentence. Forest charged out of the room, flattening her. He shoved her, hard, sending her spinning across the metal floor. Her key card lay on the ground. He picked it up and tried to swipe it across the plate next to door forty-three; he wasn’t leaving without Uriel. The card was too small for his massive fingers, and he fumbled with it, dropping it twice. He didn’t notice that Jane had scrambled to her feet and pressed the red button by the door. Within seconds the hallway was flooded with goons.