coming for me.
The sharp comfort that thought inspired was disconcerting. Was she a damsel in distress? Did she just lie there and wait to be rescued? Tyler would always come for her, her certainty of that fact was unshakeable, but she refused to be declawed by that certainty. She was a lioness, dammit. She didn’t wait for a white knight.
Even if she was still dopey from sedative and strapped to a bed. She wasn’t without resources.
Zoe tested the restraints, but they were no looser than before. She was going to have to shift. It would destroy her clothes and hurt like hell—changing the shape of her body while restrained felt like her joints had been repeatedly jerked out of their sockets and rammed back in again. But she wasn’t afraid of pain.
Zoe reached for her lioness form. There was a minute delay, thanks to the sedative still slowing her reflexes, but when it came, the change ripped through her hard. The force of the shift shredded the leather of the restraints, and she gave a feline hiss of pain. Shaking off the remnants of leather, she sprang to the foot of the bed on four paws then abruptly shifted back again, coming to her human form with her arms wrapped around her middle like she could hold the broken pieces of herself together.
“Shit.” Yeah, it definitely hurt. Lurching to her feet, she staggered from the wave of dizziness that always accompanied changing form twice in quick succession. She groped at the door, fumbling with the knob for several seconds before her fuzzy thoughts cleared enough for her to realize it was locked. Brilliant, Zoe.
She was doing a pretty shitty job of rescuing herself so far.
She didn’t know how long it had been since she’d eaten, but it was too long to risk another shift—she’d just pass out in lioness form. Helplessness churned sickeningly in her gut. Then a pair of gunshots echoed loudly in the room beyond her cage.
“Tyler!” she screamed. Claws sprang from her fingertips, her teeth sharpening to fangs as she barely stopped a full shift from incapacitating her.
A fraction of a second later the door sprang open, and Zoe saw the blood.
It wasn’t the pain of the bullet punching through his shoulder that brought Tyler back to humanity. It was the sound of Zoe’s voice screaming through the door.
The pansy-ass science geek who had fired wildly into the room retreated behind the shut door to the lab again. Taking advantage of the cowardice and his own sudden clarity, Tyler shifted back to human form. Blood gushed from the hole in his shoulder, running faster with the reconfiguring of his body. It streamed down his torso in thick rivulets, but he didn’t care. He threw back the bolts on Zoe’s cage and yanked the door open, his heart jerking spasmodically at the sight of her, clothing shredded, claws sharp, fangs bared. She was an Amazon warrior ready for battle.
Sweet Jesus, she was gorgeous.
He reached for her, needing to touch her, but though she rushed forward, it wasn’t into his arms. “God damn, you’re bleeding a ton. No spurting, that’s good. Not arterial, then.” Her hands slapped his shoulder over the bullet hole, bearing down on the wound. Tyler made a sound that wasn’t remotely human, and Zoe’s wild eyes jerked up to meet his. “Who shot you? How many are left?” Her words were choppy, efficient and emotionless—crisis mode.
As gratified as he was by her confidence that he’d already eliminated some, he couldn’t live up to her expectation. He shook his head as he pulled her behind a filing cabinet so they’d have some cover if the bastards opened fire again. “I’ve heard two men and one girl.”
Zoe nodded once. “The girl’s scared shitless. She shouldn’t be a problem. The one guy I saw was sort of thinnish, but if they’re armed—” She broke off, her eyes scanning every surface of the tiny office even as she applied pressure to the wound in his shoulder. “D’you see anything I can use as a shield? Kevlar would be nice, but I doubt they left a flak jacket lying around for me.”
Tyler wrapped his fingers around Zoe’s wrist to get her attention, focused on the one part of her statement that scared him most. “You aren’t going in there.”
“You want to wait ’em out? I gotta say that’s a pretty crappy plan, Tyler, since I’m pretty sure the exit to this tin can is through that room. Unless you’re feeling