by Jenika Snow
Evernight Publishing ®
www.evernightpublishing.com
Copyright© 2014 Jenika Snow
ISBN: 978-1-77233-021-2
Cover Artist: Sour Cherry Designs
Editor: Karyn White
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
This is to the readers that have stood by me and asked for more. To my family that have put up with me staring at my computer all hours of the day and night, and to Evernight Publishing for being a home to my stories.
Thank you all!
TAMING HER HYBRID BEAST
Sweet Water, 6
Jenika Snow
Copyright © 2014
Chapter One
Roake felt his flesh open up when the whip landed along his back. The warmth of his blood moving down his body stung the already open wounds, but he didn’t wince and sure as hell didn’t show any pain.
“You and your kind make me sick.”
The sound of the harsh breathing behind him didn’t deter Roake from focusing his pain and discomfort. He wouldn’t let these assholes have the satisfaction of letting them see him weak. They may have chains around his legs and arms, even around his neck, but he’d never let them chain his soul.
“I could beat you all day, and you’d never make a sound, would you?” The man spoke harshly, clearly angered that Roake wasn’t giving him what he wanted.
Roake heard the man step forward, scented his panther genes fill the air, and didn’t stop himself from growling out low in his throat.
“Hmm, got a little rise out of you then, didn’t I, Tion? One day your mixed kind will be no more. We will have eradicated all of you, gotten rid of the filth that is everything your breed is made up of, and then we will throw one hell of a party.” He brought the whip down on Roake’s back once more, and he gritted his teeth. The panther unchained his arm from the ceiling, but immediately hooked him up to the wall. The panther made sure the metal collar around his throat was tethered to the stone, and then turned and left Roake alone.
They didn’t care if he bled out, or if his wounds got infected. In fact, Roake almost thought they hoped for a slow, painful death for him. He didn’t know how long he sat there, the feel of his warm blood turning cold and hard on his flesh, but the soft shuffling of someone coming closer had him opening his eyes. He knew who it was before he scented the mixed shifter who stopped at his cell. She gripped the bars, and her small, frightened face looked so white in the darkness. She was a prisoner like him, a hybrid that was half cheetah, half leopard. Her eyes were different shades, one blue, the other a light green. They were a startling combination, and one that had made her an even bigger target in this hellhole.
She was young, so damn young, and had been brought in here within the last year. God, he hated seeing her so scared, and grew sick in thinking of all the vile things they had probably done to her.
“He hurt you really badly this time,” she said softly, and then looked over her shoulder. Her fear filled his nose in a tangy, uncomfortable scent.
Over the last year of his imprisonment, Roake had seen many hybrids come and go in this wasteland of hate and death, but when they left it was in a body bag. They ran tests on them, did horrific experiments more suited in a horror movie. He was a strong male, and one that had always lived his life like it was his last day. He was thirty-five, and although he had been strong there had been too many motherfuckers when they had come after him. And then they had drugged him, and there was no chance for him to get out of it. They had beaten him every day since he had become their prisoner, experimented on his hybrid body, tested his blood, and only let him heal enough that he wouldn’t die. Then they started their torture all over again. They were idiots, psychos, and one of these days he would find the strength to leave, to kill every last one of them, and to never look back.
“I’m okay,” he said, his voice harsh from lack of water, and from the pain he was keeping inside. He saw her glance over her shoulder again. She might be a mixed breed, but they didn’t chain her up, and as far as he knew and had seen, the two of them were the only ones that were still alive in this prison as their captives. But she was their bitch, their lapdog, and did the disgusting things they refused to do. Feeding and giving Roake water were two of the things these bastards didn’t like doing.
She moved close to the side he was at, and got down on her knees. She rested her forehead on the bars, and they just stared at each other for a second. This was the longest she had stayed in his presence, well, when she wasn’t being forced to clean out his “cage”. He straightened, holding in his wince of agony when his raw back scraped along the stone wall. He knew they were underground, knew that this place had to be some kind of war bunker given the set-up he had seen when they hauled him out of this cell. He shouldn’t be talking to her, fuck, he shouldn’t even be looking at her, but having this little bit of interaction with another person that was in the same situation as he was had the two beasts inside of him calming slightly.
“Here.” She reached into the dirty and frayed apron she wore, and held out a small plastic bottle container. Her hands were filthy, and her nails had layers of dirt underneath them. She looked exhausted, and so very young, and it pissed him off even more that they put her in this situation.
He stared at the bottle she held. “It’s water. I snuck it in when they weren’t looking.” She reached her hand through the bar, and he took note that her wrist was bone thin. God, they were clearly starving her, too, and as if to cement that her stomach growled loudly.
“You drink it.” He didn’t want to take something from her that she desperately needed, and he could tell she was thirsty by her chapped lips.
She shook her head. “I have some, too. See?” She grabbed another pill bottle and held it up. “But they won’t let me bring you water when I make my rounds, so I want you to have this now.” She held the bottle out further for him, but he shook his head. “I was able to sneak it when they were bullshitting with each other, but you have to drink it now before they come and we both get punished.”
“You need it more than me.”
She got this little scowl on her face, and he smiled, actually fucking smiled for the first time since he had been in this damn place. “Your animals are coming out, little girl.”
She scowled further. “I’m not a little girl.”
He held out his hands. “Fair enough.” He stared at her for several more seconds, and finally took the pill bottle when it was clear she wouldn’t let up on it. “Thank you.” He opened it, careful not to spill any, and then drank the small amount. It tasted like fucking gold, and he felt his tiger and lion move up closer to the surface of his body. He wanted to shift into his animals, to let his beasts out so they could fuck all of these bastards up. But he was too weak to even do that, and he felt off-balanced. All his life he had done what he wanted, let his animals run free, and not cared what anyone thought. He was more temperamental than most shifters, couldn’t control his anger sometimes, and always felt more animal than human. He had a lion and tiger inside of him, two massive predators that were melded into one colossal entity. They were fierce, and the flavor of blood was always on their palate … on his palate.
“Better?” she asked and held her hand out for the empty bottle.
“Yes, thank you.” He handed her the now empty bottle and rested against the wall once more.
“I wish I could have brought more, but I was lucky to get this much. They don’t keep me chained, and during the day let me roam this place free to do their grunt work. At night I’m put back in my cell, but there are some rare times they are not constantly watching me, like right now.” She shrugged, and leaned her side against the bars.
“How old are you anyway?” he asked, making sure to keep his voice lowered. If they found out she was here and talking to him, they would kill her, or worse. And yes, there were far worse things than dying when it came to these motherfuckers.
“I just had my nineteenth birthday last week.” She licked her lips and glanced down at her bare and dirty feet. “You’re the only one that knows that.” She looked at him and smiled.
“Shit? You’re just a fucking baby.”
She didn’t respond right away, but did keep eye contact with him. Finally she exhaled. “When they took me I was shopping at the mall if you can believe it. I mean there were so many people around, that you’d think someone would have stopped them.” She shook her head, and these big tears started coming down her cheeks. “I used to argue with my mom all the time, told her I hated her, but since being here…” She shook her head and wiped away her tears. The dirt on her face became smeared. “I miss her every day, and wish I could tell her I love her. She was a single mother, and I was all she had. She’s alone now.”
He wanted to reach across and hold her, and for him to want to comfort someone was so fucked up given the reckless and hardcore life he had led. But she was a child, and these fucking pure-breed thinking shifters had stolen that away from her. Roake would most likely die because of being here. But she deserved a life that was not filled with fear and pain. “What’s your name?”
“Annabelle—” Before she could finish telling him her name the sound of keys jangling had her standing quickly.
Roake’s blood started pumping fast and hard, and he didn’t think about his thirst or hunger, and not even the crippling pain on his back. He tried to stand, but the chains kept him stationed to the floor. The guards that came forward wore all grey outfits, held guns, had knives strapped to their thighs, and had mean fucking expressions on their faces. Annabelle held her hands up, shook her head, and started pleading with the two men that came forward. They were jaguar shifters, and the scent of their hatred came at Roake like a crack of the whip to his back.
“Please, please. I was only checking to see if the cell needed to be cleaned.” She begged, but the men didn’t stop. They grabbed her arm and pulled her away.
“We’re going to teach you all about staying where you are told.”
Right before they left Roake roared out, felt his animals fight for the strength to come out, but he failed at the last moment of shifting. “You sorry sacks of shit. Why not come in here, unchain me, and fight me like a fucking male of worth would?” He growled out, pulled at his chains, and ignored the burning pain moving through his body. One of the jaguars came to his cell once more, gripped the handles, and grinned.
“You want me to come in there and play with you, Tion?”
Roake fucking hated that name, one that was created to classify him has a hybrid lion and tiger shifter. To him it was derogatory, and every time he fucking heard it he grew a little stronger inside, a little more volatile, and had more rage brewing in his bones. Maybe he wasn’t strong enough at the moment to escape this hellhole, mainly because of his wounds and being chained, but in time he’d exact his revenge. The jaguar opened the door, and stepped inside, and to Roake’s fucking surprise he unchained him. He fell forward, the weight of having to support his own body having him feeling his weakness full-on. He had been changed up for so long he couldn’t even grasp what it still meant to be “free”.
“Well, come on, you hybrid piece of shit.” The jaguar kicked him in the side, and Roake grunted from the impact. “You wanted me in here, you’re unchained, and now I want to see what you’re made of.” Roake was hauled up by his neck until he was looking at the jaguar right in his cold, dark eyes. “Your kind makes me sick, absolutely fucking sick.” He kicked Roake in the gut again.
“Just leave her alone. She didn’t do anything wrong.” His voice was meant to be a rough growl, but because the jaguar had his hand around Roake’s neck it came out strained.
Right when the jaguar was about to hit Roake once more, he stopped. “Tar, bring that little bitch back here.”
The other jaguar brought Annabelle back. “What?”
“Toss her ass in here with this fucking mutt. He’s gotten a soft spot for her, so now they can rot in their own filth together.” The jaguar started laughing. “In fact, strip her shirt off. I want this fucker to see what happens when she doesn’t follow directions.
Roake snapped his teeth and tried to lunge at the jaguar, but the bastard cold cocked him. Roake fell to the ground, felt everything inside of him drain another notch. He was never this weak, never this vulnerable. But as this fucker started chaining him back up, and then tightened the chains so Roake had to stare at what they were about to do to Annabelle, he realized he was at their mercy.
“Stop,” he said, hoping that he could get their attention off of her and on him.
Annabelle was turned and pressed against the wall across from him. The guard that held her by the neck tore her shirt down the center so her back was exposed. Roake could see the scars of previous whippings lining her skin, and he growled out. The jaguars started laughing.
One of the motherfuckers grabbed a crop he had strapped to a utility belt at his waist, and turned to face Roake. “Wonder what your reaction will be when I make her pretty little flesh turn red with her blood.” And then the bastard brought the crop down along Annabelle’s back.
Roake strained against his bonds, cursed at them, hoping they would come after him with their sick torture, but they kept laughing. One of the jaguars held her against the well, while the other made her back bleed. But Annabelle was strong, and didn’t scream out. The small, muffled grunts of pain she made had Roake feeling fierce, protective, and like he wanted to rip these assholes’ throats with his bare teeth.
They gave her ten lashes, and by the time they stepped away she crumbled to her hands and knees. One of the males stepped forward, and Roake bared his teeth at them. The guard punched him in the face over and over again until Roake couldn’t hold himself up any longer. When he was unchained he fell onto his stomach, breathing in the moist ground as he pushed the pain away, and heard his captors speaking again.
“You sure you want to leave him unchained?” one guard said to the other.
“He’s too weak to even hurt himself, let alone us. Besides, he’s half-way dead as it is.”
And then they were left alone. Roake pushed up and forced himself to move over to Annabelle. “Shit, sweetheart.” He lifted his hand, not sure if he should even touch her. He was not used to feeling any kind of empathy for another person, least of all a young girl he didn’t even know. But she was so young, and had been beaten because these fuckers thought he had some kind of attachment to her. What he’d felt was protective toward her, and nothing more, and he was not about to let her get hurt like this again. She cowered slightly, sniffed, and then faced him. Her face was red and tear-stained, but the strength that came from her was powerful. He had her in his arms seconds later, because he couldn’t stand to see her like this. She was crying hard now.
“It’s okay, Annabelle. I won’t let them hurt you again.” She was so innocent. They had taken her away from her mother, and he didn’t even want to think about the shit they had made her do while she was here.
She pushed away from him and went over to the corner. There she brought her knees up to her chest and rested her head on them. “They are going to leave us in here to rot.”
“Probably.” He moved back to the other side of the cell and rested against it.
She lifted her
head and looked at him. “I heard them talking about this place being compromised. They found a batch of new hybrids, and have them located somewhere else.” She rested her head back against the wall and exhaled. “I don’t know if they just didn’t care what I heard because they knew I’d be dead soon anyway, or they were just carless with what they said.”
“It’ll be okay, Annabelle.” He said the words, but they both knew that having hope in this place was a long shot in the fucking dark.
“I didn’t just come to your cell to give you the water, but to tell you that they plan to get rid of us. They said we’ve run our course, and that this compound isn’t secured any longer, whatever that means.” He’d assumed they would just let them die in here, or that he would die because of the experiments, but if this place had been compromised, and they were trying to get out quickly they might be sloppy and carless. “What did you hear exactly?”
It took her a moment to respond. “All I overheard while cleaning up one of the rooms was that this place will be destroyed.” She shrugged. “In the end it really doesn’t matter, because we were going to die by their hands anyway, at some point.”
He hated that she was giving in so easily, and although Roake knew all about being realistic, he also felt this fighting chance inside of him as he looked at this young life about to be snuffed out.
“Are we the only ones that are hybrid in this shithole?”
She nodded her answer. “Now we are, but like I said, they have a new ‘shipment’ holed up somewhere else. A few months ago they had brought in a male and female bear and wolf species, but whatever tests they did on them killed them right away.”
The Purebred Brotherhood was a group of fanatical shifters that only believed in one species bloodline. Mixing species, kind of like some humans being against mixing races, was a very real thing, but an underground project, too. Frankly he didn’t care one way or another. He just wanted to get the fuck out of here, help Annabelle find her mother, and never look back.