into center stage. Her hands were on her hips as she joked and laughed with the brunette.
Talia Tolstaia.
I searched for lost breath as I stared at my brother’s fiancée; then I ceased to breathe at all when two large arms threaded around her shoulders from behind. The arms were olive skinned and tattooed, and I knew I was staring at Zaal.
I prayed for him to move into the view of the window, but his face never came into view.
I needed to see him.
Wrapping my arms around my waist, my hood firmly in place, I took a deep breath and stepped out onto the silent street.
It was time he knew I was here.
That his bloodline had survived.
2
194
“Get up.”
Coldness ripped me from my sleep. My body was drenched with ice-cold water and shot off the floor where I was laid. I roared as I lurched to my feet, my naked body jerking at the feel of the cold air lapping my skin.
My hands tightened as I turned to the Gvardii, the Georgian guard of my cage. He was nothing more than svin’ya to me, a pig. All of them were pathetic pigs dressed in Wraith uniforms, trying to act tough. One strike from me would bring them nothing but death.
They acted like death.
I was death.
The guard backed away from the metal bars of the cage when I approached. “Stand to attention, Beast!” he ordered, trying to act tough. “She’ll be here soon.”
Then he smiled at me, and I braced for the serum. He pressed the button on his remote; the metal collar around my neck immediately tightened, the needles inside the collar slicing into my neck. My teeth gritted with the pain of the serum injecting into my veins.
Then came the heat. The serum burned as it ran through my muscles, my head snapping back as the poison took its hold. Like being ripped back from my body, a bystander forced to watch, I felt my free will drift away. The need to kill soon became the only thing in my head. The only thing I could feel. The only thing I was—a killer.
Footsteps sounded on the long corridor, the sound of those feet taking me back to before, to that night, the night when they took me.
When they took her.
In a flash the memory left and I shouted, rage pulsing from within. Seeing the guard smiling from behind the bars, I charged forward, slamming my shoulder into the metal. The cage door creaked; he stepped back in fear. The collar tightened even more, my veins throbbing with the pressure.
I stood back, then braced myself to charge again. Just as I moved my feet to charge, a voice made me freeze where I stood.
“Halt!” the female voice snapped, the serum in my body caused my body to stiffen at the voice of my Mistress.
My Mistress that I had to obey.
My eyes stayed focused on the floor and I watched her black boots come into view. My skin pricked as her hand lifted through the cage bars and ran down my chest.
“Leave!” Mistress ordered the guard. I heard him scurry away, leaving us alone. Mistress opened the cage door, and I felt her step inside, slamming the cage door shut behind her.
Her fingers landed on my arm and ran up until they drifted over the black metal collar I forever had to wear. “194,” she whispered, and her fingers ran to my cheek. I wanted to rip her arms from her sockets, snap her thin neck, but the serum kept me still; the serum kept me from disobeying Mistress.
“Lift your eyes and look at me!” she ordered in Russian, and on command my eyes snapped up. I watched her. My eyes bored into hers. Her dark hair was slicked back in a tight bun, and her hard face glared at mine.
Then she smirked. That same smirk I hated so much.
“You have been out for a few days, 194. We had to move locations. You have a new hit.” My blood pumped faster as I knew I was to kill. The serum made me want to kill. When I killed I’d get relief. She wouldn’t know I got relief. This bitch would never know that for me the serum only worked temporarily. She would never know I didn’t become 100 percent obedient, like some other of the test subjects had.
Mistress moved in closer, her tits pressing up against my bare chest. Her mouth went to my ear, as her hand drifted down my stomach,