Escape (Project Vetus Book 1)

by Emmy Chandler

  I wrap my arms around her and stroke her hair down her back while she sobs against me. Blessing me with her tears. With the chance to comfort her. To do my fucking job.

  But hugs aren’t enough. For either of us.

  “Hey.” I pull back a little and tilt her face up with a gentle grip on her chin until she’s looking up at me. Then I wipe tears from her face with both hands. And I kiss her.

  Lilli kisses me back, and that soft thrumming echoes from my throat, the oscillations wide and slow. Soothing. This moment is perfect. This moment is right. This is how it’s always supposed to be. When she hungers, I will feed her. When she hurts, I will treat her. When she cries, I will comfort her. When she is in danger, I will defend her.

  That is the way of it, the beast insists. And this feels so right that I can’t argue.

  I lift Lilli, and her legs wrap around my hips while I anchor one arm at her back. Her hands find my face, holding me to her while she deepens our kiss, making soft, hungry noises at the back of her own throat, to compliment the whirring coming from mine.

  I walk us toward the bed and lay her down on the mattress, her legs hanging off the end. Don’t fight it, Petal. Just let me love you.

  I slide my hands beneath her shirt, and she lifts her arms, letting me pull it off, even though the material snags on the sheet beneath her. Then, I can only stare. This is the first time I’ve truly seen her body. Before, there was darkness, ill-lit by a single flashlight. Then, last time, we were covered by a blanket.

  But she doesn’t seem to care about the blanket right now. Her body has won this battle, though there are still tears in her eyes. Though she still clutches at her stomach, as I stand to unbutton my pants.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask as I shove them down, clad only in my shorts, now. Her scent has changed again. That anger is gone, and in its place there is only profound sadness. She’s drowning in it, even as her body calls out to me. Even as her nipples harden and her cunt drips for me.

  She was injured, in her stomach. She told me that, back in zone three. She was the only one who survived the incident.

  She’s clutching at the scar.

  I try to take her hand, to expose the scar, desperate to understand what still gives her so much pain.

  “No.” She pulls against me, her fist clutched to her stomach, fresh tears welling in her eyes. I tug gently, but insistently on her wrist. “No, Carson!”

  “I just want to understand. I want to know what you’ve been through.” I want to make it better. I want to know how to comfort her. But I can’t rip this understanding from her. That will only hurt her worse.

  So I let go.

  Lilli sobs. And finally, she lets her hand fall away.

  There’s nothing there. Her stomach is flat and unmarked, except for a few faint, pinkish…stretch marks.

  Not a knife wound. Stretch marks. My gaze follows them toward the waistband of her panties which has been tugged halfway down her hips. And there it is. Low on her belly. Just above the hairline. A single, clean, straight horizontal line of scar tissue.

  Oh my god.

  “Petal…” I sink onto my knees on the floor. Between her thighs. Then I lean down and press a kiss to her stomach. Sobbing, she clutches at my hair, tearing at whole handfuls of it. But she’s not trying to pull me away. She’s trying to hold me close. So I turn my head and let it rest there as I slide my arms beneath her. Gathering her to me while she cries. Drowning in the despair that her grief wraps me in.

  When her tears have run out, she releases my hair and I lift my head. I crawl onto the bed next to her, and she tucks her knees up to her stomach, facing me.

  I brush damp hair back from her face and wipe tears from her cheeks. “Boy or girl?” I whisper.

  She sniffles. “Boy. Eldon. I lost him. They took him from me. And I can’t go through that again. Not even for you.”

  Lilli cries herself to sleep in my arms, and the beast purrs deep in my heart, pleased that she’s accepting my comfort. His drive to protect her—even from her own demons—seems to be the only thing that trumps his need to have her.

  Finally, another thing we agree on.

  Eventually, the warmth of Lilli’s body and the relative comfort of a real bed lull me toward sleep. And just as my eyes close, I hear a familiar whisper. Like a soft scraping sound…

  My eyes fly open. I sit up in bed. Lilli snuggles closer, trying to reclaim my body heat, but I hardly notice, because my attention is focused on the door.

  It’s closed. We’re locked in.

  No. Nonononono… Lilli won’t be sad forever, and if we’re stuck in here together, we’re eventually going to cave. We’re going to have to touch each other. Which is exactly what Brennan’s counting on.

  Then a soft hissing sound comes from overhead. From vents in the ceiling that are way too high up for me to reach.

  Fuck. I snatch my shirt from the end of the bed and hold it over my nose and mouth, but I already know that effort’s pointless. Synthetic clothing fibers won’t do the job of a gas mask. Yet I grab Lilli’s shirt as well and drape it over her face while she sleeps, because I have to try something.

  And as I lose consciousness, I realize I was wrong about Brennan. She isn’t trying to lock us in here together at all…

  19

  LILLI

  My head hurts. And someone’s groaning. When I lift my hand to my forehead, the groaning sound changes, and I realize it’s coming from me.

  What the hell?

  I open my eyes and drop my hand, because my entire arm feels heavy, but instead of hitting the mattress, it lands with a soft thud on warm, bare flesh.

  Carson. He must have fallen asleep with me. I roll toward him, then freeze. The arm on the sheet between us is bulging with muscle, as it should be, but it’s several shades darker than Carson’s skin.

  Vaughn Coleman.

  What the hell?

  Pulse racing, I sit up and scoot across the bed, and the jostling of the mattress beneath me wakes him up.

  Vaughn groans, blinking up at the ceiling while he rubs his forehead. He must have a headache too. “Damn it,” he mutters. But he doesn’t look surprised to find himself here—until he sits up and sees me. “Oh, fuck,” he whispers. “Lilli? You okay?”

  “What’s happening?” I drag the sheet with me, covering myself until I spot my shirt draped over the bottom of the mattress. So I grab it and pull it over my head. “Why are you here?”

  “Because this place is fucked up.” He stands, and I realize he’s wearing nothing but a snug pair of shorts. “Let me find my…” But after a quick scan of the room, he throws his hands up and huffs. “They took my clothes. Motherfuckers took my goddamn clothes.”

  I don’t ask him why. I’m starting to understand. This is what Carson was trying to warn me about. What he was trying to prevent. “Where’s Carson?”

  “My guess is that he’s in his cell, waking up with a dry mouth and a headache. From the gas.”

  “They drugged us?”

  Vaughn points up. “From the vents. That’s largely my fault. Tranquilizer darts won’t penetrate my skin.”

  I squint at him as I feel around for my pants. But they’re gone. “Your skin looks normal.” There’s no sign of the thick armor Carson gets when he’s threatened.

  “Feels normal too. But it’s not.” He turns and heads back toward me, and I scuttle away from him, pressing myself into the corner at the head of the bed. “Hey? What’s wrong?” Vaughn frowns. “I’m not going to hurt you, Lilli.”

  “Carson said you might not be able to…help it.”

  Vaughn frowns. “I heard what he said, but he’s wrong. If I wanted anything from you, I wouldn’t be looking for something to cover myself with, now would I?”

  “I guess not.” But who knows how long we’ll be locked in here? And what all could change before they let us out.

  “Maybe they at least gave us a deck of cards, or something…” Vaughn mumbles as he heads for the panel i
n the wall. “I’d never even seen an honest-to-god deck of cards until they locked us in here, with no electronics of any kind.” He pulls open the panel and curses. “Nothing but fresh bedding. Not even a change of clothes. Usually they at least give us clean clothes.”

  “Usually?”

  “Yeah.” He slams the panel shut in disgust. “When they lock us in here with Tirzah. Lieutenant Dreyer.”

  I pull the sheet over my lap, hiding my bare legs while I watch Vaughn cross the room toward the bedside table. “You’ve been locked in here with her?”

  He gives me an odd look, then he pulls open the drawer without answering. “Food.” He digs a couple of MRE packets from the drawer and sets them on the table. “At least there’s that.”

  “I mean, Carson said they were trying to…breed her. But he didn’t say who with.” Vaughn glances at me, then looks away quickly. “Does she…like you?” I ask.

  He sits on the edge of the bed with a sigh. “It’s not like that. Tirzah’s great, but I don’t feel like that about her. None of us do. She—” Vaughn takes a deep breath, then he meets my gaze. “She had a man. Love. She had love,” he amends. “He was one of us. But then she lost him. I mean, we all lost him, but it was especially hard for Tirzah. I don’t think she’ll ever look at anyone like that again. No matter who Brennan locks her in here with.”

  “And the pheromones don’t…make that hard?”

  “Pheromones?” Vaughn blinks at me. Then understanding crashes over him. “Oh, god. That’s what’s going on. Why Carson’s beast is being such a…beast. Brennan had this theory, but she’d never actually managed to elicit that theoretical pheromone production.”

  “She didn’t elicit it this time either,” I tell him. “It just kind of happened. And that triggered the weird shit going on in my body, and Dr. Brennan said…” I shrug.

  “She said that the signals your body’s sending out would turn the rest of us into…the Captain?”

  Another nod. “Into the beast, anyway.”

  “Well, either she was wrong, or she was lying. Because you’re awful damn cute, kiddo. But I have no urge to touch you. And even if I did, I wouldn’t do that to the captain. Or to you.”

  Tears fill my eyes, and I blink them away. “Thank you.”

  “No need. But we are stuck in here for a while, so why don’t we eat some—”

  “Coleman!” Something thuds from my right, and I turn to see Carson pounding on the transparent front wall of the room, his face scarlet with fury. There’s a deep aggressive sound rumbling up from his throat. “Get the fuck over here.”

  “Sotelo…” Vaughn approaches the wall as if he doesn’t think it’ll hold. As if he expects Carson to break through it and attack him. “You need to calm down. There’s nothing going—”

  “Don’t you touch her!” His eyes are glowing. He throws his fist at the transparent metal wall, and I flinch at the impact, but the wall holds. There isn’t even a scratch, despite the fact that Carson’s knuckles spikes have just erupted from his hands.

  “Carson…” I crawl off the bed and pad across the floor toward him, barefoot, but he starts growling again with one look at my bare legs. “Hey. Look at me. It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay,” he growls, as his face begins to…thicken. His eyes shine with a deep silver glow. Bone blades grow from the seams in his forearms and sharp spires erupt from his elbows. “It is not…fucking…okay!” He pounds on the wall again and again, knuckle spikes screeching against the transparent metal.

  I flinch with every impact, backing slowly away from the wall. He looks…terrifying.

  “Captain!” Tirzah appears in the hall to his right, and he spins to face her, chest puffed out, fists clenched.

  “Stay back,” he growls. Then he turns back to the wall and starts pounding again. “Let me in!” he shouts, glaring over my head at where one of the cameras in the “breeding room” watches us all. “Open the goddamn door, Brennan!” He hits the wall again, and I jump, startled. Then I back farther away, staring at him in shock.

  “Captain!” Tirzah shouts again. But she keeps her distance. “This isn’t helping. You’re scaring the shit out of her.”

  “Sotelo, stand down.” Vaughn’s voice is calm, but he approaches the wall with tension in his frame. On alert. “There’s nothing going on in here. You know that. You can see that.”

  “Then where the hell are your clothes?”

  “They took them! That’s not on me, that’s on Brennan.”

  “Brennan!” Carson backs up, then runs full speed at the wall, ramming it with his shoulder. “Let me in! You can’t do this to her!”

  “Captain!” This time Tirzah darts in front of him, forcing him to skid to a stop to keep from smashing her into the wall. “Think about what you’re doing to her,” she whispers fiercely. “You can’t control what Brennan does, but you can control what you do.”

  But I don’t think he can. Not without help. So I take a step forward and catch his gaze over her shoulder.

  “Lilli.” He shoves Tirzah aside and plants both palms on the clear wall.

  I move closer, breathing deeply to slow my heart rate, because he can sense my distress, and it feeds his. “It’s okay. Vaughn’s not interested in me, and I’m not interested in him. Locking us in here together won’t change that.”

  “You don’t know that,” he growls softly, and on my left, Vaughn slowly backs away from the wall, obviously trying not to distract Carson with any sudden movements. “Brennan said—”

  “She lied.” I hold his gaze. “Or she was wrong.”

  “How do you know that’s true?”

  “How do you know it isn’t?”

  “What about the capsules? Did they inject you with a capsule? Check your arm.”

  “What?”

  Carson looks over my head at Vaughn. “Anything?”

  I turn to see Vaughn feeling the fleshy part of his forearm, just to one side of the seam in his skin. He shakes his head, then checks the other arm. “Nope,” he says. “No lumps and no puncture marks.”

  “What am I looking for, exactly?” I ask as I feel around on my own arm.

  “When they lock us in there, they inject a time-release capsule into each of us. A stimulant, to keep us…aroused.”

  “Oh my god.” Some sick clients gave my friend Mallory a stimulant, before she escaped forced prostitution into zone three. That shit is a nightmare. But I can’t see or feel any sign of an injection in my arm, other than where they took blood this morning. So I check my other arm. “There’s nothing there,” I tell Carson.

  “I think they’re truly trying to test this biochemical thing,” Vaughn adds. “But we don’t seem have much of that in here either.”

  I lay my hand flat on the wall, against Carson’s, as if there were nothing between us. “Vaughn doesn’t have this mating frenzy. I don’t smell good to him, and I can’t smell him at all, except for his soap and deodorant. I think she lied to you. Or, at the very most, she just threw us in here to test a theory. Or to piss you off. Either way, there is nothing going on in here.”

  “But—”

  “Stop it.” I stare up at him. “If you care about me, you’ll put the beast on a leash and stop enabling his fucking temper tantrums. Okay?”

  “I’m trying,” he growls through clenched teeth.

  “Put all your war toys away,” I say with a glance at his forearms.

  “I can’t—”

  “Try,” I insist. “There’s no one here to use them on. Everyone here cares about you.”

  “Everyone?” His gaze bores into mine, and the vulnerability in it makes me ache deep inside.

  “Everyone, Carson.”

  And finally, he leans forward with his forehead pressed against the glass, above and between his palms. His eyes close, and I can see the effort this is costing him in the lines on his forehead. In the clench of his jaw.

  Slowly, the weapons recede. Which is kind of fascinating to watch.

 
; “Thank you. Now I want you to go eat something. Or take a nap. Or play cards with Tirzah and the guys.”

  “I’m just going to stay here and hang out with you.” He sinks to the floor and sits crosslegged in front of me. Staring into the room. He’s not hanging out. He’s standing guard.

  I glance at Tirzah over his shoulder, silently begging her for help, but she can only shrug. So I sink onto the floor facing Carson, my bent knees pressed to the transparent wall. “So, your plan is to watch us the whole time? You don’t trust us?”

  “It’s not about trust. If something changes between the two of you—chemically—I want to be here to…help. To distract you from the urges.”

  “Carson, even if later something changes, and there are urges, that doesn’t mean we have to act on them. I’m not interested in Vaughn. I only want you.”

  “You… You want me?”

  I lift one brow at him. “Is that not obvious?”

  “Then why push me away?”

  “That’s not because I don’t want you. It’s because I don’t want a baby. I can’t do that to myself again.”

  He lowers his voice until I can hardly hear him, trying to keep the cameras from picking up his words. “But we won’t be in here forever. I swear on my life I would never let our child be born in a lab.”

  I take a deep breath. Then I meet his gaze and try—again—to explain. “Eldon wasn’t born in a lab, and I still lost him. This isn’t about the lab. It’s about what I can survive. I can live on a prison planet. I can live without hot showers or cold drinks. I think I can live without ever seeing the sun again, if that’s what Brennan has in store for us in this fucking place. But I can’t survive losing another child. And the only way to make sure that doesn’t happen is not to have a child. That’s my decision. You have to decide whether or not you can live with that, if you want to be with me.”

  Something flickers across his face. Behind his eyes. That’s a look I’ve started to associate with those moments when the beast is whispering in his ear, and this time, I’m glad I can’t hear it. Because I’m pretty sure the beast is telling him that I’ll change my mind. That if he just hangs in there, he’ll eventually get what he wants.