Hunter (Beast Warriors Book 2)
By Bliss Devlin and Ophelia Sexton
Published by Philtata Press
Text copyright 2016 by Bliss Devlin and Ophelia Sexton. All rights reserved.
Cover Design by Jacqueline Sweet
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Excerpt
With a soft growl, Brett pulled her against him. His hand tangled in her hair, tilting her head back. Then his mouth came down on hers, hard and hot and ravenous.
Brett's kiss was fierce and urgent…as was her body's response. Throbbing, aching heat gathered between her legs as she devoured his mouth with the same hunger that she sensed in him.
She pressed her body eagerly against his, feeling satisfaction at the hard bulge that pressed into her belly. He wanted her just as much as she wanted him.
She slid her hands around his torso and felt warm skin and taut muscle under her hands. He was fire and heat and hard strength, and for once in her life, Catrina felt safe enough to let go of her defenses and just feel.
Finally, after a long time that was still not nearly long enough, Brett gentled his kiss. He drew away with lingering reluctance.
"I've wanted to do that since I first laid eyes on you," he said, his voice husky.
She chuckled shakily, need pulsing between her thighs in time with every heavy beat of her heart. It was difficult to think—all her thoughts revolved around kissing him again…but this time, with both of them naked.
Her jaguar, normally quiescent when Catrina was in woman-shape, stirred. It liked that idea a lot.
It liked Brett a lot and wanted to rub itself all over him, marking him as hers.
Dedication
To Keri and Andy, with many thanks for their hospitality and support while we were on a road trip to research the area that became “Elysia,” along the beautiful Salmon River in Idaho; and to Commander Elke C., USN (Ret.), with thanks and gratitude for her invaluable comments and critique of the opening scenes of this novel.
Table of Contents
Prologue – Recruited
Chapter 1 – Pursued
Chapter 2 – Questioned
Chapter 3 – Tested
Chapter 4 – Fed
Chapter 5 – Kissed
Chapter 6 – Tempted
Chapter 7 – Fated
Chapter 8 – Warned
Chapter 9 – Desired
Chapter 10 – Betrayed
Chapter 11 – Located
Chapter 12 – Ambushed
Chapter 13 – Vindicated
Chapter 14 – Mated
Epilogue – Reunited
Also By These Authors
Bliss Devlin and Ophelia Sexton – Beast Warriors
Bliss Devlin
Ophelia Sexton
Prologue – Recruited
Chief Petty Officer Catrina Gonzales feels like she's trapped in a nightmare as she runs down an endless series of long hallways lined with locked metal doors. The air is filled with a jumble of shouts and commands in English and Arabic.
The inside of the building is as hot as an oven, dark and stifling. The first thing that her coalition hostage rescue team did was cut the power. She's wearing full combat gear—body armor, helmet, weapon—but her shifter strength allows her to move effortlessly in the constricting gear.
Only the heat is unbearable—112°F outside, and it feels nearly as hot inside the darkened, crumbling building, which looks like it may have been a hotel in a former life.
She and her partner Halliday pass a room furnished with worn divans and a huge television. A local militant group's banners are pinned across torn and peeling wallpaper.
Catrina steps inside and gets out of the way for Halliday to cover her, heart pounding and weapon at the ready but the room is empty.
"Clear!" she shouts, and swings back out into the corridor, following her partner, who's moved ahead of her.
"Start here!" he shouts.
They're a well-oiled team. Halliday cuts the padlock from each metal door in turn and guards Catrina while she swiftly pats down the dazed men and women who stumble out of the dark, stinking cells.
In other parts of the three-story building, her fellow team members are doing the same thing.
"Go! Go! Go!" she shouts at each new batch of hostages after she clears them.
A gentle push in the right direction, and the newly-freed hostages are scrambling past her towards the waiting debrief team.
Most of them wearing medical scrubs or doctors' coats emblazoned with the logos of Neutral Zone Doctors. NZD is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization known for organizing missions of mercy in the poorest and most troubled areas of the world, and recent headlines have been filled with news of militants abducting the staff of an entire hospital camp.
Catrina never expected to find them here, or so many others.
All down the hall, other members of the hostage rescue team are doing the same.
The hallway rapidly fills with a stream of stumbling, dazed prisoners. The glances they give her and the other special operators are filled with apprehension and relief.
Catrina and Halliday continue to work as fast as they can, opening one cell after another. It's becoming apparent that this isn't just a militia safe house, it's a fucking jail, filled with dozens of Kurdish prisoners, NZD staffers, and others.
How the hell had the intelligence reports missed the mark so badly? She and the others, who comprise members of the special forces of several nations, had been sent here on a joint operation to extract five key government officials abducted by this militant group two weeks ago and slated for execution at dawn.
Nothing in her pre-mission briefing had mentioned that the staff of an NZD field hospital was being held here too, though Catrina had seen the news reports. Five days ago, militants had abducted all of the doctors, nurses, and hospital staff working at a refugee camp near Ain Al-Raei.
At the end of the hall, chaos erupts as armed militants boil out of a side room. A barrage of shots starts up with the rapid tut-tut-tut of automatic weapons fire. All down the corridor, hostages throw themselves to the floor or stumble and fall as bullets find their marks.
One of the militants, a wild-eyed teenaged boy, comes out of a cell. He drags a white-coated NZD doctor with him, a pistol pressed against her head.
Catrina makes eye contact with the doctor. Her eyes are wide and terrified below her hijab. She's wearing a grimy white coat that identifies her as Dr. Al-Bayati, NZD.
Catrina takes out the kid with a neat headshot before he can squeeze the trigger of his own weapon.
"I've got you," shouts Catrina and runs toward Dr. Al-Bayati, weapon at the ready. She knows Halliday has her back…
"No! Stay back! Bomb! They've got a bomb!" screams Dr. Al-Bayati in English.
Catrina sees another teenaged boy just behind the doctor. He's wearing a suicide bomber's vest.
Fuck! Catrina grabs the doctor, spins, and shoves her into Halliday's arms without breaking stride. "Get out of here!"
Then she's face-to-face with the kid wearing the bomb vest. He can't be more than sixteen, and he looks terrified. He stands frozen and wi
de-eyed, clearly unsure of what to do next. She tackles him, shoving him backwards into the room, away from the freed hostages in the corridor.
It's the last thing she remembers.
* * *
Catrina became aware that she was lying on a bed in a cool room that smelled of disinfectant and other shifters.
The vivid, violent memories of heat and combat dissipated and instantly began to feel less real.
She heard the low hum and occasional beeping of medical equipment and felt the faint ache and tightness on the back of her right hand that told her that an IV needle had been inserted and taped down there.
Somehow, though, this place didn't have the feel of a military hospital.
Catrina kept her eyes shut and reached out with her other senses to get a situation report. Under a light blanket and sheet, she was wearing something that felt like a hospital gown.
And everything hurt…back, torso, legs, arms. Breathing hurt. Even her eyelids hurt, as did her face, which felt unnaturally stiff and numb.
At the same time, she felt weirdly detached from the pain, as if she were floating a few inches above it. Her thoughts felt sluggish and slow, and she realized that she must be drugged to her eyeballs.
Shit, she thought. Whatever happened, it was bad. Where did they evac me to?
She tried to remember what she had been doing before she woke up here, but couldn't. A few tantalizing wisps of memory floated by…heat, noise, a dark corridor lined with metal doors. A woman's eyes, wide and terrified below her hijab.
But nothing after that.
A slight sound and the stirring of air next to her bed, and she realized she wasn't alone.
"Congratulations, Chief Petty Officer Gonzales," said a smooth, deep voice."I hear that you're up for a posthumous Navy Cross."
Startled, she opened her eyes at last. It took more effort than she thought it would. Straining to focus her eyes, she slowly turned her head to see two figures standing by her bedside.
Neither of them looked like doctors…and both smelled like shifters, though she couldn't immediately identify what species.
One of them was a slender young man with short silver hair in a military cut. He was wearing desert cammies, but without any military insignia, just name tape reading BELL and a logo of a stylized wolf's head framed by the crosshairs of a rifle scope.
Then there was the other man, the one who had spoken to her.
Holy shit, she thought. He's fucking gorgeous!
Like Bell, he was dressed in desert cammies, with PERRY emblazoned on his name tape and the same wolf's head logo. He had golden hair, amazing long-lashed eyes that were a vivid shade of delphinium blue, and a face like a warrior angel, beautiful, stern, and entirely masculine.
"Posthumous?" Catrina felt like she had the world's worst hangover, and her brain felt like it was moving at quarter-speed. It was still trying to process where the hell she was and what the hell was going on.
She felt like she couldn't think straight. And she couldn't remember anything about how she'd gotten here.
She looked around. "This doesn't look like heaven…or Germany."
Speaking was difficult. Her mouth was dry, and her tongue felt funny, swollen and numb. Her words came out slurred.
Her visitor laughed. "I suppose not. You're in a Whitepine Security Services clinic."
"What?" Catrina tried and failed to make sense of this. Wounded special operators were typically sent to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center at Ramstein AFB in Germany. Not to a private security contractor's facilities. "Why?"
"Let's just say that we're keeping you here for your own good," said Bell."Until you recover."
"And if I don't want to stay?"
Bell shook his head. "I'm afraid you aren't going anywhere right now."
"Should I be reciting my name, rank, and serial number at this point?" she asked, tensing.
Pain, oddly distant but definitely there, shot through her at the movement. It seemed to be centered in her knees and her left arm.
"You're not a prisoner, Chief Gonzales." Perry's expression eased into kindly concern. "It’s just that your injuries are far too severe to permit you depart safely right now."
"Wha—?" With a Herculean effort, Catrina craned her head, trying to look down her body.
She now recognized that some of her difficulty in moving was due to thick layers of bandages swathed around her.
"I'm afraid it's your legs, ," Bell said, sounding sympathetic. "And your left arm. You lost them all in the explosion."
Catrina moved convulsively. Pain overcame the fog of the drugs as she moved her left arm out from under the light blanket. She inhaled sharply at the sight of the bandaged stump.
Oh God, Bell wasn't lying!
She craned her neck again, looking down the length of her torso, and saw that her legs looked curiously shortened.
Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.
She couldn't breathe. She panted and gasped for air, hot and cold moving over her in waves.
"Shh," said Perry. "It's going to be all right. You're a shifter, Chief Gonzales. You know what that means."
Catrina did know. And it wasn't helping her panic attack.
This is it. It's over. What am I going to do now?
Fear tore at her. It felt like crawling over rocky terrain, each movement sharp and bruising.
"Take a deep breath now, and hold it." Perry's deep voice was soothing.
She felt the light touch of cool power brush over her, smoothing away the jagged edges of her fear. With it went the worst of her panic attack.
Catrina concentrated on slowing down her rapid panting. It felt like this before every mission, the roiling in her stomach, the pounding of her heart echoing in her ears. She was used to forcing down large lumps of indigestible terror.
But now the drugs were unbalancing her, making it difficult to find her center.
To distract herself, she looked slowly around at her surroundings, automatically gathering data and trying to guess where she was.
The small whitewashed chamber reminded her strongly of a medieval monastery she'd visited during one of her R&R leaves. It was filled nearly to capacity with her hospital bed and portable medical monitors of various kinds on rolling stands.
There were no windows, only the cold white glow of LED lights placed in niches meant for statues.
The fear returned, so she looked at Perry. Distraction, distraction, distraction.
It should be illegal to be that good-looking, she thought, even if she didn’t find him particularly sexy.
She liked her men big, hairy, and down-to-earth, and Prince Charming was a bit too cool and aristocratic for her to want to jump his bones.
As if she even could right now, armless and legless. Weirdly, she felt like giggling at the thought and knew it must be the drugs. She felt high as a kite.
"No reasonable person will think that you survived close contact with a suicide bomber," Perry said, when she had finally brought her panicked breathing under control. "We had to leave some…parts behind during our retrieval."
"For the DNA test that'll confirm you were killed in action," explained Bell.
Catrina stared at him in horror. "But I'm not dead!" she rasped."Look, you have to take me to my FOB—"
Perry shook his head. His expression was deeply compassionate. "And do what? Let you expose your secret to the military authorities? Once you're in a military hospital, you won't be able to hide what you are, not anymore."
"Yes," added Bell. "Especially when your legs and arm begin growing back in a few weeks. How are you going to explain that to a military doctor? To your physical therapist?" He sighed. "With those injuries, Chief Gonzales, you know you'll be monitored closely. You won't be able to hide anything."
Catrina stared at him in wordless horror as his words penetrated the muzzy blanket of the painkillers and sedatives.
Don't ever let them know what you are, Papá had told her years ago, when she had announced th
at she wanted to enlist.
Secrecy was the one ironclad rule that all shifters, no matter their species, obeyed without question. Vastly outnumbered by ordinary humans, shifter survival depended on ensuring that the ancient stories about them remained fairy tales and myths, nothing more.
What am I going to do now? What am I going to do once I'm healed?
Panic started to rise again. She had only ever wanted to serve in the US Navy like her father and her grandfather. She had never imagined any other kind of life.
Catrina wondered what her family would think when they saw the two uniformed sailors come to their house to tell them that she had been killed. Her parents and grandparents had been so proud of her when she joined the navy and when she became the first woman to make the cut for the SEALs.
Her enhanced shifter strength and reflexes had helped her complete the brutally tough 24-week BUD/S training to become a SEAL, but even so, there had been times when she had struggled with the temptation to just give up. She had wondered how ordinary humans survived the harsh training.
Breathe. In. Out. Breathe, she reminded herself.
Perry and Bell waited quietly as she fought a second wave of panic…and won.
Finally, Catrina said, "Okay."
The word emerged on a puff of air, barely audible. She took a slow, deep breath. "But I still don't know why I'm here. And why you're here."
The question was niggling at her. She knew about Whitepine Security Services. All of the shifters in the armed forces did.
But even knowing about WSS's impressive resources, how had they managed to extract her from the site of a covert op?
"I'm here to offer you a job," Perry said.
And she finally figured out who he was. Colonel Lugh Perry.
Commander of WSS's notorious Beast Warrior mercenary teams. A dragon shifter. One of the very few left in the world…they were a dying breed, and a lot of the attrition was due to the vicious infighting and territorial battles between the different dragon families or even within families for coveted positions.
"What kind of job…Colonel Perry?" she whispered, trying to force her brain to work when all she wanted to do was yield to the drugs, close her eyes, and sleep.
Hunter: A Werebear + BBW Paranormal Romance (Beast Warriors Book 2) Page 1