Peace. Find it. Own it
. She could almost hear Granddad’s voice, and she smiled. Then the
knowing
came back full force.
Danger, a new path, a new life
.
She’d have to make some choices in the next few days. And those choices would determine everything.
Tired of all the drama, she dressed, took a nice walk through the woods, and made sure to cover her tracks. She’d seen a few people near the area a few weeks ago. They weren’t like the odd tourist who sometimes wandered too close. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she’d known to steer clear of the big man, and a good thing. He could, impossibly, change his shape. He’d come in many different forms, but in each he smelled the same.
The others with him called him Jack or boss. She’d wanted him gone, but she’d made sure to secretly unleash her pheromones to steer him and his companions away from the Circ threat in her mountains. Now if only everyone would leave her the hell alone.
With a sigh, she trailed down to her favorite spot—a small lake partially buried beneath melting ice and snow. A copse of pines seemed to lean over her lake, as if the trees protected it for her.
She sat down on her sunning rock, where the sunlight cleared the trees and warmed the rock for hours on end. As she sat and contemplated her life, her gaze caught on the moss covering the base of one tree. The green and brown shades caught her attention until a flash of light startled her into looking at the water. It had appeared blue green a few minutes ago, but now the bright blue color meant something else. Something important…
Her stomach rumbled and reminded her she had yet to eat. Her beast chided her for forgetting, and then another part of her, that darkness she tried so hard to keep buried, scented a rabbit nearby.
It took everything she had to rein in the savage lust for blood and the kill. Running back to her cabin and ruining all the work she’d done covering her tracks, she hurried to her meager stash of food and ate. After she’d finished enough to satisfy her beast, she returned to the forest and erased her footprints. Then she hunted down the rabbit and killed it, no longer a slave to her bloodlust.
Unfortunately, though the kill would suffice as dinner after she cooked it, an odd sensation formed in her chest and belly. What felt like dread mingled with
excitement.
They’re coming for me.
The thought grew stronger as the day passed into night, then blended into day once more. She couldn’t think of anything but what the future might have in store.
The breeze blew. The noon sun beat down upon the earth, melting more snow. Summer had come to the mountains. She smiled at the gentle heat warming the plant life to grow.
Then an unfamiliar scent hit her, a scent that promised paradise if she’d follow the trail to its source. Before she could, though, the rotted smell of rogue Circs intruded. Corruption, greed, and lust swirled like smog through the pure air. They shouldn’t have been back so soon. But Trenton must have sent another group to follow the first.
He grew more insistent, more treacherous. She had to kill the bastard.
Danger blanketed her world, and Ali drew on her instincts and her ability to hunt. First she’d take care of the rogues. Then she’d see what smelled so incredibly good. She only hoped she wouldn’t be forced to kill it before she’d had a small taste.
As they scoured the mountains in their
changed
forms throughout the day and into the night, Bas did his best not to think about Gray. He’d taken the east side of the hill and Gray the
west,
and he kept telling himself he wanted the distance. Not talking to the arrogant bastard for the past two days served him right. Who the fuck was Grayson Belle to look down on
him?
Top of his class in college and the FBI Academy, a decorated agent who always accomplished his mission, Bas had never been out of his element until he’d been kidnapped and forced to become something less than human. But even his time as a Circ had been measured with success. He took to the lifestyle, embracing his beast and the
change
while others turned rogue, mutant, or plain crazy. Not ruled by his beast, Bas controlled his actions. Or at least, he had.
He scowled and used his senses to guide him through the trees. The snow didn’t bother his bare feet. When
changed
, his skin was inured to extremes in temperature and surface. The claws on his hands and toes helped him with traction, and though he wore loose trousers and a sweater, he didn’t actually need the clothing to protect him from the weather.
In one hand he held a Circ2000 fit with a silencer. The weapon could pierce Circ flesh and bone without a problem. Attached to his belt was the radio Gray insisted he take with him. As if Bas didn’t know better than to go on a mission without a means of communication.
The bastard.
Arrogant, controlling son of a bitch.
Like I need him to play nursemaid.
He’s lucky I answer to him at all—
The swipe of claws toward his face preceded the sudden smell of decaying flesh. Out of nowhere, a rogue in the process of turning mutant had appeared and roared at him. Bas avoided his jagged claws, and the thing took another swipe.
He’d seen pictures of mutants, but this was the first Circ he’d seen
midtransformation
, face-to-face. The rogue had hardened skin, dark and weathered, but black stripes highlighted his mutation. His fangs and claws were overly large, and his eyes, once normal for a Circ, now had black orbs striated with red, no pupil to be seen. The creature’s scent came and went, as if the thing had a faulty
Off
switch.
When it roared, it conveyed such a sense of unhappiness, pain, and fury that Bas wanted to kill it if only to put the creature out of its misery.
“You Ross?” he asked it as he dodged another blow.
“Need to feed. Hungry.”
It wore nothing but the hardened scales of interlocking flesh that made up its external armor. Bas could see its physical arousal all too clearly. To his disgust, the thing’s cock had spikes and seemed to grow under his study.
“Ah, right. Sure. You’re hungry.” Bas knew Gray wanted him to call the minute he had any trouble. But tired of listening to Mr. Perfect, Bas decided to handle this guy on his own. He looked like a monster, but Bas could handle him.
Unleashing the strength he normally held in check when he dealt with Gray, Bas let loose a torrent of frustration. They battled with claws, bites, and sheer strength, but in the end, Bas won. He pinned the thing to the ground with his weight and leaned hard on its neck.
“
Gimme
your
name,
and you can live.” He just had to confirm Ross’s identity before killing it; then he and Gray could leave this place. Bas loved the mountains, but he could do without all the monster battles. Or the relationship drama, as he now regarded his questionable interlude with Gray. He needed to return home and lick his wounds, then decide what to do about his stubborn, sexy, know-it-all partner.
“Need her. Want her,” the thing under his elbow croaked.
“Are you Al Ross? Answer the fucking question.”
The pathetic yearning on the rogue’s face tore at Bas’s heart, but he had to know.
“Not Ross. Want Ross. Mine.”
Not Ross, and thus not Bas’s problem. Despite the things he’d been ordered to do for his country, Bas wasn’t a murderer. They’d been trying to reform some of the rogues, and depending upon how far gone this one was, it—
he
, he reminded himself—might be capable of rehabilitation.
Bas planned to knock the rogue unconscious and call for backup when another rogue knocked into him and shoved him aside. He swore and rolled to a crouched position, ready to attack, when he noticed not one or two but
four
rogues looking at him with keen desire. For blood or sex, he couldn’t tell. And from the looks on their faces, neither could they.
Two of them looked like him. Normal Circs who’d gone rogue. The other two resembled freakish half mutants.
Let them have it
, his beast demanded. And Bas did, because he knew the danger to him was real. With a hurried press to the radio, he shouted for help as the rogues attacked en masse. A coordinated effort he wouldn’t have credited these monsters.
Slashes to his midsection and back hurt, but he quickly healed. Unfortunately, the half mutants seemed to be playing with him.
Shit
. Gray was right. They were barely manageable one at a time.
In a pack…deadly.
“Pretty.” One of them licked its lips, and a black forked tongue flickered before disappearing into its mouth.
Another growled, “But not her.”
“Who cares?” the other half mutant answered.
“Smells good.
Hungry.”
They rushed him without warning, and Bas sucked in a breath as two of them threw him into a tree, where he landed hard enough to break a few ribs. Before he could recover, they tore into him. He felt lips and teeth digging into his arms, his shoulder…
Oh fuck
.
His neck.
The blood loss wasn’t as bad as the drugging paralysis invading his system. Fuckers are toxic, he thought as his vision grew hazy. But as one of the stronger ones shoved the others away and raked at Bas’s trousers, no doubt intent on sex, a tantalizing scent froze the group.
“Ross,” a half mutant hissed.
The others agreed as the arousal grew. Like a spring rain, the scent of a female Circ in heat drew Bas from his foggy pain to life once more.
“What is that?”
“Ross. Mine,” another half mutant screeched.
Two of the rogues started fighting with each other before the lead half mutant calmed them with a promise to share the female.
It took Bas a few moments to realize Ross and the female were one and the same. Holy hell, but they’d gotten some really bad
intel
. So what did the presence of these assholes and their female target mean?
He tried to reason it out, but he soon lost the ability to do more than lust after the woman.
Even the claws at his throat, his thighs, and belly didn’t disturb him.
And then everyone vanished, and she was there.
Dark brown eyes with slit red pupils, her orbs speckled with black, gazed at him with a curious detachment. She blinked as the wind shifted, blowing her dark blonde hair around her face like a silken veil. Full pink lips quirked to reveal small fangs, not what he would have expected of a female turning mutant. The black of her skin seemed to deepen and fade, as if her heartbeat reflected in the dark patches upon the skin of her forearms and neck, areas her thin T-shirt didn’t cover.
“Rogue?” he asked, his word barely audible past his swollen tongue. He tried again. “Ross?”
She didn’t answer. Instead she leaned closer and sniffed his neck. She licked him, and he felt her raspy tongue against the wound at his throat. The scratchy pain faded, and he could feel his skin knit, an amazing recovery that affected his thought processes as well. As if her saliva had an enhanced healing agent, her tongue had brought him back to full consciousness.
Enough that he knew he wanted this female.
To mark her as his.
To mate her, to share her with…
“Hell. Gray.”
The female said nothing, but the dark look on her face warned him to beware. Before he could say anything else, she put her hands around his neck and squeezed. And he knew nothing more.
Ali couldn’t take her eyes from the rogue bleeding like a sieve all over the forest floor. After stepping past the dead bodies of the rogues and mutants she’d shot and killed, she neared her prize. The way they’d been fighting over him had shaken her, remembrances of her time in the labs not as dull a memory as she’d hoped.
She liked when they fought each other, but this seemed different.
As did this rogue’s scent.
The most delicious waft of chocolate, sex, and mouthwatering need drifted from his pores. She couldn’t resist. Not even when she sensed his own pheromones pulling her closer.
Good Lord, but the taste of him was enough to make her entire body come alive. She didn’t want him to die, but she couldn’t afford to play with him out in the open.
They sent more and more rogues after her lately. Worse, the ones turning mutant were no longer as dull-witted as the first batches sent to retrieve her. Either they’d evolved, or the labs had found a new way to leash their Circs. Oh joy.
With a low growl, she finished choking the male to unconsciousness. Then she hefted him over her shoulder, surprised when she staggered. As a Circ, she grew bigger and stronger than the strongest human men. Yet his size and weight stunned her.
A solid male.
A breeding male
, her beast suggested.
The libido the doctors had tried so hard to start within her suddenly flared to life. And she knew. She’d been waiting all along for
this
male. She leaned her head closer to his and scented something more, a layered perfume that made her head spin.
She pulled her own scent back in and hurried, as best she was able, back to her cabin. Along the way, she wondered where to stash him.
Her bedroom?
The storage cellar?
The cave nearby?
Time to make some of those hard choices.
Her intuition kicked in, and her beast increased the flow of blood to her limbs, releasing more oxygen so that she might move faster. She needed to make her choices before someone—or something—made them for her.