Chapter 8
“Are you awake? I hear someone coming.”
“Yeah, I’m up. Been listening to you bite your claws.”
“I was not,” Amara hissed. “Besides, they aren’t bitable. They are like titanium.”
“And how would you know that?” he teased her softly as he sat them up to face whoever was coming to the door.
Amara didn’t dignify that with a response.
Okay, so maybe she had been nervously nibbling a little.
It had been two days since Dr. Paulson’s visit and his ominous threats of releasing them into the general populace.
Since then they had discovered they could, indeed, eat.
They had not needed to drink blood, although it was tempting when they were having sex to indulge in the act.
Which made for a lot of temptation, because closed up in such a small space there was nothing else to really entertain them. Not that they wanted any other entertainment. Nick and Amara couldn’t seem to get enough of each other.
Amara’s worrying was doubled, however. Not only did she dread what would happen next, feeling the ponderous wait of the forward-ticking time as if it were set on an explosive device, but Nick had warned her of another danger she hadn’t even considered.
“You’re going to begin ovulating soon,” he had said softly as they caught their breath from their latest sensual attacks on each other’s bodies.
She had jolted in surprise at that at first, and then realized that once she thought about it, she knew it was true.
“I can smell the change on you. I can feel the imperative inside of me that’s eager for it.
I’m terrified to think that’s exactly what they want.
I’ll be damned if I will breed my children for them. ”
“Me, too,” she agreed with a little shiver.
Now Nick pulled on a fresh T-shirt and they both got to their feet as the door slid open.
Amara knew he wanted to step in front of her, but she stubbornly kept to his side and ignored his dark frown.
He might be feeling all kinds of butch and manly because of his alterations, but she wasn’t in a very submissive space herself any longer.
The orderly was armed.
It was the first thing she noticed. Granted, it was with tasers, obviously a little added security after what Nick had done the last time.
Also, there was a significant change in uniforms. While they remained the same annoying white, they were now boasting armored vests, padded sleeves no doubt meant to protect from sharp claws, gloves, and helmets.
They looked like a contingent of guards, which in actuality they had always been.
They just had not looked so much the part before.
Taser guns and nightsticks at the ready, they made way for Nick and Amara to move out of the room.
Their sharp gestures said there was to be no argument, and Amara couldn’t see any point in doing so.
They eased out of the cubicle room side by side, Nick’s arm tight around her shoulders.
As if everything were the same and it was just another normal day as involuntary lab rats, they were marched into the common area.
Only there had been significant changes.
The common room had all been caged in. Steel bars disrupted the perfection of white everywhere there was a section of glass or an opening leading out of the common area.
The exterior access had been cut off and was now guarded heavily, but not from inside the room.
The guards all remained outside the caging.
They came from four compass points, small groups of them being hustled and even shoved into the common rooms all at the same time. Nick and Amara were the last to step inside from their section and the steel gate rang with finality at their backs as it slammed shut.
For a moment, everyone was quite still. Hesitant. Amara gripped at Nick, feeling the tension in his muscular body. She automatically looked for the familiar faces of her friends, having been worried about them since this had started.
That was when she first noticed the smell.
Then came the sensation.
Her skin felt as though it were vibrating in a supersonic dance, the hairs at the back of her neck pricking up even as her nose began to sniff out all the signals it received.
“I can sense them,” she breathed. “I can tell which are still human and which are Morphates.”
“You’re not the only one,” Nick whispered grimly as he drew her back against a wall where no one could come up behind them.
He nodded toward a human male who had approached someone else as if he recognized him, greeting him.
He now suddenly found himself the focus of two and then three Morphate males who began to actively sniff him.
“I have a feeling this isn’t going to be pretty,” he warned her softly.
Amara was in agreement with that. She watched as the three males started to shove at the human, batting him between them like cats toying with a ball.
Claws appeared, and then fangs. The human male screeched in fear when he saw it alter them into feral-looking beasts.
Amara sniffed, smelling how the keenness of his fear called like a sweetly baking treat in an oven beckoned one’s hunger.
Then it was ending in a sudden flash of violence as the first Morphate male sank his fangs deep in the human’s shoulder. The second chose the opposite bicep, and the third, heedless of how it nearly ripped him apart, grabbed up a leg and tore into his thigh.
Once the feed was on, the rest of the room erupted into a frenzy of reaction.
Other hungry Morphates tried to find their way into the feast, only to be viciously rebuffed.
Humans began to scream and clamor for release at the exits, terrified they would be the next meal for these inhuman beasts.
Then there were other Morphates who seemed to have no appetite or simply no care for the tableau that played out.
Amara felt Nick’s awful tension and sensed how badly he wanted to do something.
But there was an entire pack of feeding Morphates now, other humans being picked off to satiate those who either had not been fed properly or enjoyed satiating themselves on the bloodlust and power of their new forms. They could clearly see a good deal of both.
There was blood and human death everywhere by the time the furor for feeding had died down and the worst of the pack had grown too full to continue to drink or they were just growing bored of the easy prey. The remaining humans were huddled and sobbing or simply sitting in traumatic shock.
Amara scented something familiar and turned her attention to the approach of a beautiful female Morphate.
It was Mina, she realized with no little shock.
Mina had always been a confident and sexually attractive female, but now with her Morphate enhancements she positively reeked alluring femininity.
Readiness. Sex. She was not marked by a male, not like Amara at all.
It was obvious, though, that she had been with more than one male in the last block of hours.
And she was in search of another.
Mina practically slithered up to Nick, the slink in her spine and the sway in her hips so suggestive.
Her nipples stood out under her tee attentively, and Amara could smell her ready excitement as she approached her desired target.
She saw Nick’s nose twitch as he took in her scent as well and felt the knee-jerk male response of interest. Mina was in a full-blown heat, and that was designed to attract any viable mate.
Even her mate.
Amara reached out and smacked away the hand Mina reached out toward Nick’s chest hard enough to get her message across. She even backed it up with a growl of threat.
“Back off,” she hissed, placing herself between Nick and the trashy little Morphate seeking to usurp her place at Nick’s side.
“Come on, Amara,” Mina scoffed at her. “There’s no way you’ll ever keep all that to yourself.” Amara’s friend sniffed at her in disdain. “Why he ever picked you is beyond me.”
“Because I ride his cock like it’s an Olympic event,” Amara retorted smartly. “Just the feel of my teeth in his skin makes him come as hard and fast as lightning. He knows a good thing when he finds it.”
“Holy shit,” Nick whispered just behind Amara. She was standing right in front of him, her back brushing his front, so she was immediately aware of his bodily reaction to her words even before his hands clamped onto her waist to cuddle her backside back against his jutting erection.
“Mmm, perhaps. But maybe he wants a little changeup. Some variety.” Mina’s tongue appeared between her lips to lick them with appetite as her eyes dropped to where Nick’s hips were flush with Amara’s rear.
She could smell his arousal and it made her willing to risk the threat Amara might pose.
Mina hardly even saw the other female as an obstacle.
She’d been a weak, apathetic little thing for the entire time they’d known each other.
So Mina doubted she’d put up much of a challenge when push and shove might come into the picture.
“What do you say, stud? You seem more than a little ready to have some fun with an energetic woman. The girl is nice in a pinch, I’m sure, but you need something a little more hot-blooded. ”
Mina ignored Amara’s presence and sidled up to Nick’s side, rubbing her eager tits against his arm as she fondled the shape of his muscular shoulder.
Amara hardly knew what happened next. She could only recall the feel of her mate tensing in response against her back, and then a blinding wall of possessive fury.
She literally saw red, that was how hot her temper was as it bolted through her.
She was all fangs and fearsome talons in a heartbeat and she tackled her competition with a wild snarl of rage.
She did not take their former friendship into consideration for even a second.
On the most primitive level of instinct she had, she was realizing that Nick could be stolen away from her.
All it would take was a woman who wanted her mate badly enough to be willing to kill her for him.
They would all want him, of course. He was the most beautiful male specimen in the entire room.
Biological imperative demanded they try to mate with the strongest and most powerful genetics available, and Nick was 100 percent prime DNA real estate.
Unless she set an example, one that was brutal and definitive, she would find herself fighting challengers to her position all the time. They weren’t playing by human rules any longer and she couldn’t afford to be nice. She would end up dead, and Nick would belong to someone else, if she did.
It took only two rolls across the floor for her to gain the upper position.
She hissed down at the other woman in warning, giving her the opportunity to put up her hands and slink away alive but smacked down in defeat.
Mina was all about sex and getting what she wanted.
She had been that way even when she’d been human.
She wasn’t about to give up her target and she delivered that message with a swipe of deadly claws that raked Amara from her right ear to her jaw and throat.
It was just enough to really piss Amara off. The blonde reached out and caught Mina’s head between her hands just as she had seen Nick do to the orderly, and with all of her inhuman power, she wrenched it completely around.
Amara let go of Mina, her face dropping against the floor in grotesque opposition to the faceup position of her body.
She ripped wild eyes completely around the room as she surged to her feet.
The fight had drawn bloodthirsty attention and she could smell the sexual interest from the women who could see Nick was the point of contention.
But the moment Amara barked out a savage warning to all other females nearby, there was an immediate exodus of women stepping back so she wouldn’t mistake their presence as a challenge.
In a matter of seconds she had proven herself capable of defending her position as an Alpha mate.
She turned to look at Nick, furious with him for how he had reacted to the stimulus of another female.
Logically, she realized he had little control over his urges and interests at the outset.
She also knew that he would never take another woman so long as she was alive.
Still, jealousy and hurt made her belly ache as though it were filled with weighty lead.
He quickly crossed over to her and took her into his embrace.
He held her tight and secure, drawing her up to the powerful body she had inspired to feel amazing pleasure just as she had claimed.
With comforting strokes of his hands, he reassured her that there was no other for him.
Nick hugged her warmly, her back to his chest, and drew her head aside so he could touch his tongue to the gashes Mina’s claws had left behind.
He licked away the blood until the wounds closed and she was relaxed and all but purring her forgiveness in his arms.