“Even husband, if you like,” I said, trying to keep my voice light and failing miserably. He reached up with his free hand when he saw the tears forming, but I brushed them away. “Are you…?”
I couldn’t get the words out. What had happened, what I’d learned currently was smashing down into me, and I couldn’t get up and out from under the weight. The guys talking about losing track of how long they’d been kept, the walls, Stuart, but worst of all, Jai thrashing on the floor. To my shame, my throat closed up and my eyes burned as I tried to stop the tears from coming.
“Hey…” Jai said, rubbing a thumb across my cheek. “It’ll be OK. The pack, they’ll come for us. They’ll get us out, all of us. Don’t cry, Shan.” I heard the crack in his voice, felt him rise up, much more slowly than he usually would have, and put his arms around me. “Don’t cry, my love. Everything will be OK. I’ll make sure of it. Now, how about introducing me to your friends.”
Chapter 23
“Um…” I wrenched myself back together, wiping the tears on the stupid gown they’d given me and tried very hard not to think about what they’d done when they put me in it. There was no point going there right now. I refused to give those fuckers even a minute of my time. “Nero?” I called out.
He stepped up to the glass in the cell farthest away from us and waved a hand. A very imposing black man with short cropped hair, the massive breadth of his chest was left on display within the transparent cage. I watched his other hand clench down, the muscles popping in his arms, but he kept his face open and friendly.
“We’ve already established with your mate that no welcome can be given here. All I can say is I wish we were meeting under better circumstances. My beast is a lion. I am a member of the Little Rock Pride. My father led our people.” His eyes dropped down, as if he could see what he described. “I was taken while I was on a hunt on the reserve my family owns. I was brought to an American facility first, then shipped to Australia in animal form.”
“I’m Jai. Wolf.” He rolled to his feet but kept the blanket around his bare chest. He’d been left in just scrub pants as well. “My family came here back in the late 1700s. Land, freedom away from the old country… It’s what brought us over.” He looked around at the facility. “Pretty much thought we’d ensured nothing like this would happen. Shannon’s…” I heard the growl rise inside his chest. “Shannon’s mine.”
This was a fucked situation, and seeing Jai being electrocuted like that would last long after as nightmare fodder, but right now, hearing the possessive ring to his voice… I went to his side, putting my arm around his waist, and his went around mine, holding me close. “She’s my destined mate. I’ve known since my first shift. It’s just her for me, always.”
“And they’re gonna love that.” Our eyes flicked to Zane, who put his hands up on the glass, stretching his spine out as he gazed at us. He had deep olive skin and long black hair, and dark eyes that seemed to see everything and nothing, and right now, they were raking over me. “A mated pair? Just makes it easier for them. You’re gonna be helpless, little girl, riding the waves of a heat, dying for your mate’s cock—”
“Zane,” Nero and Caleb said.
“Struggling to wedge that great big knot into your sopping pussy?” His grin was empty of humour, pleasure, anything. “You’ll be backing up to him, screaming for more dick as you drown the fucking lot of us in your scent.” He jerked away from the glass. “You’ll keep going back, over and over, until you give them what they want—little shifter babies that can control other shifters. Not alphas, not people who’ve proven themselves able to lead our people, that have our best interests at heart, but ones like you. My abuela warned me about your kind, witchy women who take our souls.”
“Zane,” Caleb growled.
“They’re gonna use your kids to control as many shifters as they can get their fucking hands on.”