Wild Hunt - Kali Argent Page 0,11

station toward a set of heavy double doors. She was obviously inside a hospital, but she couldn’t be sure if the entire building was a medical facility or just that particular wing. If it was anything like the compound she’d come from, there could be dozens of Hunters waiting for her beyond those doors.

Unfortunately, she didn’t even make it that far before she realized the true extent of her predicament. People started spilling into the hallway from the various rooms she passed. Men and women, some children, all of them wide-eyed and curious as they watched from their doorways.

Two males stepped into her path, both of them large, imposing figures who blocked any avenue of escape. Mackenna ducked the first set of hands that reach for her, but she couldn’t avoid the second male. Arms like iron bands wrapped around her, pinning her own arms to her sides and lifting her off the floor.

“Let me go!” she screeched. When the other man came forward, she kicked her feet out, doing her best to connect with any part of him she could reach. “Get away from me!”

“Christ,” the guy holding her grunted. “Calm down. No one’s going to hurt you.”

They had a pretty funny way of showing it. “Get your fucking hands off me! I’m not going back. I’m not!” She screamed her denial, her voice ringing throughout the corridor. “I won’t. I can’t go back there.” Tears filled her eyes now, streaming hot and fast down her cheeks. “Don’t make me go back.”

The double doors burst open, and several more people filed into the hallway. Their presence only intensified her panic, and she redoubled her efforts, kicking and flailing, contorting her body in every direction to try to break the hold. When that didn’t work, she jerked her head back, wincing when her skull connected solidly with her captor’s nose. The loud crack and resulting curse said she’d broken it.

The arms around her middle vanished, and she fell to the floor, but there was nowhere left to go. Surrounded, she scrambled across the tiles to a bare space of wall and pressed her back to it. She pulled her knees up to her chin and rounded her shoulders, trying to make herself as small as possible as if that might somehow save her.

“Please,” she sobbed. “Just let me go. I’ve never hurt anyone, I swear. I just want to go home.”

The drone of hushed conversation buzzed in her ears, but she couldn’t focus on what was being said. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. She’d failed, and now, she’d never be free.

“Mackenna?”

She recognized the voice, but not from a memory. It felt more like she’d heard it in a dream. A familiar scent accompanied it, cool and earthy, like the forest after the rain. The sense of peace and safety she’d remembered from the previous night surrounded her, warmed her, and eased some of her panic.

“Hey, it’s okay. No one is going to hurt you.” The male crowded closer, crouching just inches away, but he didn’t reach out to touch her. “It’s Cade, remember? We met last night.”

Cautiously, Mackenna lifted her head to meet his gaze. Eyes so dark brown they looked almost black stared back at her, intense but not unkind. Beneath the scruff of dark hair on his face, she saw his jaw tick, as if he wanted to say something but held back. She detected nothing in his scent to indicate fear or unease. No trace of malice or ill intent.

He was incredibly handsome, but that wasn’t why she couldn’t look away. It wasn’t what made her throat tighten or her heart flutter in her chest. Like a siren’s song she couldn’t ignore, everything about this human called to her, lured her in, entranced her. It was primordial, instinctive, a feeling that enveloped both her mind and senses, and it could only mean one thing.

Cade was hers.

“I…” He’d carried her to the car and held her against him in the back seat. She couldn’t picture it clearly, but bits and pieces were returning. “I remember.”

“That’s good.” His smile was electric, and it transformed his entire face into something too beautiful to look at.

Mackenna ducked her head. “Where am I?”

“Technically, we’re in a hospital about forty miles outside of Denver. It was abandoned after the Purge, and the Revenant took it over as a safe house.”

The name sounded vaguely remember, but if he’d told her who or what the Revenant was, she couldn’t remember. “What does that mean? What