His mouth opened, his canines piercing her silken skin as she screamed out beneath him, her body arching to him, her pleas shattering him. She was chanting his name now. Begging him. Her cries echoed around him until he felt everything around him explode. The room shook, brilliant light exploded around them as pipes burst exploding with a hiss of steam. The earth rocked as walls crumbled in a cascade of steam, shattering glass and screams.
Chapter One
Six years later
She could feel Jacob watching her. She could always feel him watching her. As long as Faith had memories, she had memories of Jacob and those light blue eyes as they followed her wherever she went. Or they had, until their escape from the Labs. Until he left six years before.
Since his return several weeks ago, he was never far from her though. He hovered over her now, making her feel self-conscious, on edge. She was a Liaison of Pack Security, not an Enforcer. She negotiated peace between the Packs, and carried information from the various informants within the secret Genetics Council members that still existed within America. She wasn’t a killer. She wasn’t a soldier. Not that she couldn’t do her job now. She could do what she had to do. But Jacob’s obvious concern that she couldn’t do it rankled.
They were Wolf Breeds. Created in a Lab, raised beneath the cold, unfeeling regard of the scientists, doctors and soldiers assigned there. Their DNA had been re-engineered at conception, their sex determined, their strength enhanced, their senses altered. She wondered if even the scientists who created them had known what to expect. She knew the soldiers that hunted them now could have no idea what they were walking into.
Faith watched the soldiers move silently along the mountain face. She held the automatic rifle close. She watched them with narrow-eyed intent, remembering so many more like them. The soldiers at the Labs. Those who held her down as Bainesmith injected her with the drugs that tortured her body, drove her insane with need. The same soldiers who had viciously whipped her brother Aiden weeks before that for halting their attempt to rape her. Soldiers who had in every way made the Pack members’ lives hell. They all deserved to die.
For the moment, the soldiers weren’t moving in her direction, thankfully. There were two teams, six men in each, scouring the lower point of the mountain. She was reasonably confident they wouldn’t find her, but one never knew. She fingered the trigger. They would be so damned easy to take out. She could blow their heads off with one bullet and no one would miss them. They were evil. Black hearted, inhuman, more animal than they claimed she was.
She could feel the adrenaline pumping through her system, the rage and anger filling her. They were there to destroy her, to destroy her Pack, and she was supposed to have mercy. Have mercy to ensure the approval of a government that had secretly backed the horror of the Genetics Labs. Have mercy to ensure her own survival. She was rapidly running out of mercy.
“You okay, Faith?” Jacob’s voice was a soft intrusion in the headset she wore.
She breathed in deeply. She fought to still the raging beat of her heart, the hatred that made her want to cover the forest in bullets. Screams resounded in her ears, memories, dark and brutal, threatened to rise up to swamp her.
“Aidan, take her position—”
“Leave off,” she hissed into the mic. “I’m in control, Jacob.”
Her voice was hard and cold. For a second she imagined the flare of heat and anger her tone would bring to his eyes. Another hard breath. This wasn’t the time to allow the anger to take control of her, to let her emotions surge so dangerously.
“Three are breaking off, heading up the mountain,” she reported, watching the camouflaged figures closely as they moved through the forest. “Looks like advanced scouts.”
They couldn’t afford to let them get too far up the mountain. The cabins, though well hidden, were not impossible to find. They were out of Pack territory though, so that made it harder to secure their location, and their safety.
“I have them.” Aidan’s voice had her lips twisting in anger. Of course, he was closer, but it was the need for violence that spurred her disappointment.
“Let’s see if we can’t find a way to push them back without a confrontation, or giving ourselves away,” Jacob told them quietly. “I don’t relish the thought of finding another mountain to hide in. We don’t strike unless they break the perimeters of the cabins. Remember that.”
The reminder was directed at her, Faith knew, it was also an order to move.
Staying low, she began a slow path parallel to that of the soldiers moving in a canvassing motion through the forest. As though they expected to find one of them hiding behind a tree. Or up a tree, or in a bush. They were morons.
She kept her eyes on them, the rifle ready, her finger on the trigger. She bit her lip, wishing this mission were over, that Wolfe and his mate were safe so she could return home, return to the comforts she had surrounded herself with. They were cold comforts. Replacements for the man who had never returned, but for now, they were all she had.
The mark on her shoulder throbbed in reminder. Jacob’s mark. Her blood thundered, her cunt clenched. Faith fought to breathe. She had done that before. When the merciless bastards injected her with their drugs, making her body and her mind betray her. Her pulse thundered, rioted as arousal, stark and all consuming, filled her once again at the memory.
Her breath hitched.
“Faith.” His voice was soft, gentle, but she could hear the command beneath the tone. “Fall behind me, Faith.”
“I’m fine,” she whispered, almost stumbling as the dark memories poured over her.
Was it reality or a dream? How often had she questioned her memories of that evening? Jacob, his voice hard and dark, thick from his need as he touched her. His hands hadn’t been rough, yet neither had they been gentle. His mouth had been ravenous, his tongue destructive, sweeping over her cunt, plunging into her vagina.
Then his hands, harder, rougher as he turned her, positioning her before him, preparing her, not for the invasion she had expected, but one more primal, and much more dominate than she had ever expected.
A sound to her right, faint but warning, had her turning in alarm. The heavy male body tackled her. For a moment, Faith didn’t know if it was reality or memories that had her falling beneath the heavy weight as hard hands groped at her br**sts. She could hear Jacob screaming in her ear, the retort of gunfire, the screams of wounded.