His grin broadened as his eyes shifted up, the hand landing on my shoulder telling me what caught his attention. He nodded to Jai, that shit-eating smirk still plastered on his face, before turning on his heel and stalking out.
“Come, Wilson,” he said.
“You’re gonna do this? Seriously?” I asked, hating the thread of panic in my voice, the pleading hope. But my former boss just avoided my gaze, keeping it trained on the floor.
“You’re not human, Shannon. I’ve seen that with my own eyes in the clinic. I need to find out what the hell you are, see what it means, for humanity, for the world. Shifters, animages…” He shook his head. “Like an apex predator, you’re getting crowded out. This is my last chance to study you. To save you.”
“By caging me?” My voice cracked on the words. I hadn’t, couldn’t deal with what had happened. My eyes saw the cages and the shifter men, but my brain wasn’t processing it. “Stuart, we used to go to the pub on Friday nights and sing karaoke. I always brought you an espresso on the mornings we worked late. I—”
“Controlled animals with your mind, changed them, melded them to your will. There's a point-one percent difference in the genetic makeup of humans and chimpanzees. Who’s to know when that 'twist’ of yours jumps across to sentient creatures? Don’t do this, ask me for your freedom. It won’t be me that gives it to you.”
“Shannon,” Jai said, his voice rusty and rough. He drew me back so my body leaned against his, but for all his warm strength, I could feel the shift and wobble in his limbs. “It’ll be OK.”
I heard the words and felt the push of emotion inside them, coming from a much-weakened version of his alpha whip, but I couldn’t believe them, not for a second. I looked down the line of cages, and eyes all along met mine. Jai’s hand clamped down when he felt me shiver.
Chapter 22
“It’ll be OK,” Jai said, rubbing his hands up and down my arms. The fact that he’d said that more than once was a worry. Well, that and the fact that we were locked up in a glass box along with a whole lot of other people. I glanced around it now, seeing the gurney we’d been lying on. A weird kind of prison cell, it held a toilet, a shower, and a huge bed.
For mating in, I thought bitterly. Stuart and Hollingsworth’s words all started to filter into my head. What I’d heard when coming through, what they’d said to me, it started to make sense. Rob was right, this was a breeding facility, and for some reason, they needed me and some of Jai’s pack here.
“Janey…” I hissed, glancing around at the cages. The men within them were all pressed against the glass walls peering at us, but I didn’t see my friend.
“She’s not here,” Jai said with a definite shake of his head, “but they are.”
He moved away from me reluctantly, hands going to the glass walls. He felt along the joins and base, searching for signs of weakness. He did the same when he got to the back concrete wall and the shower cubicle. He tested the showerhead and the toilet before coming back to the gurney.
“Get inside the bathroom, Shan,” he said, his voice heavy and flat.
“What? Why…” He gripped the bottom edge of the mobile bed, lifting it off the ground.
“Don’t bother,” a voice said, my head jerking around to see where it came from.
“You’ll hurt yourself and her if you try,” said another.
“I told you to get out of Dodge, princess. Tell your man to stand down. Nothing breaks through this glass.”
“Get in the shower, Shan!” Jai snapped in response to it. I scuttled back as he lifted the thing, swinging it around like a hammer thrower would. He twisted his torso back and forth, back and forth and then SLAM! The bed went smashing into the glass. Jai paused for a moment, looking to see what damage he’d done, then slammed it against the glass again when he saw there was no difference.
SLAM!
“You wanna cool your jets. They’ll start pumping a sedative gas inside the cell if you don’t. You want to stay strong and alert for your mate, ready for what they’ll do next.”
SLAM!
“You’ll bring those bullyboys Hollingsworth employs down on you if you don’t stop.”
SLAM!
“They’re just as likely to take shit out on your mate to keep you compliant. They’ve done it before. They’re merciless and cruel and see us entirely as animals. We’re not worth even the slightest respect as sentient beings.”
SLAM!
Over the racket, I could hear the sound of boots clattering down the stairs at a rapid pace.
“They’ll take her from you and give her to one of us.”
The battered bed dropped to the floor, bent now into a twisted mess, and at just the right moment. Black clad men with bloody Diablo in tow came running down the steps, guns raised, red laser sights sweeping over the cages. What the hell they’d do with them against the glass walls, I didn’t know.
“Move to the left wall and put your hands upon the glass,” the leader said, putting down his gun and moving towards us. “Now!”
“And what are you going to do if I don’t, standing outside there?” Jai asked. “You come in here, you’re fucking dead.”
“Jai…” I said, reaching for him, the look on the man’s face scaring the shit out of me.
For good reason, it turned out. The man held up a small remote looking thing, thumbing the button with a sadistic grin before pressing down.
There was a theatre about this whole thing, I realised, and right now, I was at the bloody low point of it all. That man, fragile, stupid thing that he was, he was telling himself a story about this place, these people. I dropped to the ground as Jai did, struggling to stop his fall as his body twitched and convulsed. Tears made a mess of my vision, thankfully blurring the way the man brought my love low with such a tiny little movement. I struggled to hold him, his body thrashing with such violence. The man with the remote, he thought he had power, over me, over all of us, despite the fact that every single one of them was able to burst his head open like a watermelon.
“Enough!” I shrieked, my tears splattering onto Jai’s face. When I looked over at the man, he was little more than a black blur, and my face must have been a mask, of agony but I saw his grin. A crescent of white in all that mess, he just kept on smiling until someone else intervened.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Stuart asked, and he must have switched whatever it was off because Jai went instantly limp in my arms.
“Jai…” I smoothed his hair back from his forehead, scanning him rapidly, looking for signs, of life, of injury. When I held shaking fingers before his nose and mouth, I caught it, the whistle of his breath. Um…um… my brain scrambled, trying to pull together advice from past first aid courses. Roll him on his side and check his airways. My muscles shrieked as I did just that, as he was a massive lump of dead weight, but I got my fingers inside his mouth and felt his tongue was where it should be, that no vomit had been forced up.
“They’ve just come out of heavy anaesthetic and he’s her fucking mate! He’s our best opportunity to build the little army Hollingsworth wants so badly. For fuck’s sake, Williams, go and kick puppies if you want to get your sadism on!”