Serengeti Sunrise - By Vivi Andrews Page 0,35
wasn’t at the pride, where was she?
The last thing she remembered…huh. What was the last thing she remembered?
Tyler’s face pushed to the front of her fuzziness. Tyler. She remembered the shock on his face as he told her to run, the sickening dread and fear that had hardened in her stomach as he’d collapsed at her feet, the sting in her upper arm. She remembered running for help, though everything in her screamed to stay and guard him. Then nothing.
Chills shot through her blood, but Zoe couldn’t let terror freeze her. They’d been taken. Were they being held together? Was he all right? Was she?
She flexed her muscles as much as she could without moving, careful not to alert their captors that she was awake. She tested her extremities. Everything seemed to be working, but she felt…odd. Achy, hot, and like her skin had been stretched too tight.
“I can tell you’re awake.” The voice was feminine and high-pitched, young. Not one of the voices.
Zoe opened her eyes. The room was tiny and poorly lit, the walls and ceiling corrugated metal, like a container from a cargo ship. But they were in west Texas, or at least they had been when they were captured, not exactly close to a port. The room barely fit the narrow twin bed Zoe was strapped to and a pile of unidentifiable medical equipment.
The girl who’d spoken stood in the corner, as far as she could get from Zoe without leaving the room. She was older than Zoe’d guessed from her voice, but still couldn’t be much more than twenty-five. Thin and nervous, she clutched a water bottle against her breastbone, her wide eyes fixed on Zoe as if she might leap from the bed and eat her—which she would, if she weren’t strapped to the bed tight enough to restrict circulation.
“Where am I?” Zoe tried to say, but her voice came out a ragged croak. Her throat was raw, as if she hadn’t swallowed for days. How long had she been out? She felt nauseous. From lack of food? Or the aftereffects of the drug? She hadn’t completely shaken it off. The room still seemed to lurch and sway around her.
“Are you thirsty?” the girl asked, though she showed no inclination to give Zoe the water.
Zoe ignored the question as beyond idiotic. “What do you want?”
She fidgeted with the bottle. “I’m not supposed to be talking to you. They only let me check your vitals.”
A low growl and a shuffling thud sounded through the wall. Zoe’s heart rate quickened. Tyler.
The girl made a keening noise and scuttled away from the metal barrier. “You need to get him to calm down,” she whispered urgently. “They want him alive because they’ve never been able to capture a breedable pair before, but if they can’t keep him sedated, they’ll kill him. You have to make him stop.”
“Untie me and I will.”
She shook her head frantically. “I can’t.”
One of the voices filtered through the wall. “…half dose should do her. Use the rest on him.”
The girl shuddered. She was terrified. Of Tyler, of Zoe, but also of them.
“I’m not even supposed to be talking to you. You need to use your mate-link thingy to tell him you’re okay, or they’re going to shoot him with something other than a tranq.”
Mate-link thing? “We don’t have—”
“Candice!” A piece of the wall slid open and a slim, dark-haired man with a ponytail appeared in the opening, holding a syringe. “Out. Now.”
The girl sucked in a sharp breath and darted past the ponytail guy.
He advanced toward Zoe, never looking at her face, his eyes flicking over her body like she was nothing more than an animal or a specimen on a table. Which to him, she probably was. Zoe jerked against her restraints, baring sharp teeth and releasing her claws in a partial shift, but it didn’t do any good.
The plunger on the syringe pressed down. The world blacked out.
The last thing Zoe heard was the unmistakable roar of an enraged lion. Numb lips twitched in a smile of vicious satisfaction. They’d messed with the wrong lion.
Tyler was coming for her.
Tyler swam up through a yellow haze, desperately clawing his way to consciousness even though he couldn’t remember why he felt such violent urgency. He knew only that he needed to be awake. To be strong.
He heard a snarling roar and realized dimly that it was coming from him. His fur felt sticky—blood?—and his claws were extended with the awareness of a threat.