“Jai, you don’t want to—”
Gaden called out the warning, watching Jai’s every move as he approached the glass, my eyes following his, but the shifter’s voice was cut short by a humongous bang. Jai had shoved the metal hard into the recess, thinking he could prise the wall out or something. He was wrong.
“Jai!” I screamed, scrambling to my feet as he went flying through the air. My muscles burned as I forced them to move, move, move, following his body as it arced through the air. My arms reached for him, knowing I’d never be able to catch him but unable to stop. Kazimir and Nero moved like lightning to intercept him, thudding down to the ground as his dead weight collided with them.
Dead weight? A sob, a million sobs kept squashed down so far, more or less, rose at the sight of the shifters splayed on the concrete like downed pins.
I dropped down beside them, my hand going to his face.
“Jai… Jai…” I pleaded, smoothing his hair back. His name became a messy yowl when he groaned along with the other men, his eyes fluttering open.
“Now that was helpful,” Zane said, pointing his plastic fork at us. “I’d wondered if they’d done something extra to the cages to reinforce them.”
“You fucking bastard!” I shouted, getting to my feet and stalking over to him. He just looked pleased with the end result, eyes scanning me, but I wiped that smug smirk off his face when I snatched up an apple and pegged it at his head.
“Hey!” he yelped, plucking it from the air and tossing it to Gaden, who took a bite. “Just for that, I’m not showing you how rough my tongue is.”
“You’re lucky I don’t rip it out by the root!” I yelled back, but he just did that fucking shifter thing—he smiled.
That selfsame smug bastard look they all seemed to sport. Apex predators, they were filled with a kind of cocky bullshit. Well, look where that’d got us. Zane looked across at Gaden, wiggling his eyebrows, but the other man shook his head and finished off the apple in a few large bites, then his gaze shifted to me. He pulled the apple away from his lips, his tongue flicking out to wipe the juice away, and his dark eyes bled away to an almost colourless yellowish grey.
“Ohh…so that’s how it's gonna go,” Zane said. “Don’t mind going kitty, just prefer something a bit more…exotic.”
I jerked my gaze away, rolling my eyes at Zane. “Shut up,” I said, before grabbing a bottle of water and going back to Jai.
“Swear to me that you won’t do anything like that again,” I said, wetting a serviette and pressing it to Jai’s brow.
“No problems, babe,” he said, taking my hand and squeezing it.
“Thank you,” I told the guys who’d caught him. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t—”
“Got squished,” Kazimir said, poking my forehead gently. “We heal easy. You? Not so much.”
“Let’s get him up on your bed, Kaz,” Nero said. “It’s closest.” He turned to me. “He’ll just need to rest for a bit. Keep him calm and still.”
“Not much else to do,” Jai said with a weak grin. “Fuck, that thing had a wallop to it. Come and lie down with me?”
“Ohh, so that was your plan,” Kazimir said, slinging one of Jai’s arms around his neck. “Blow yourself up, get the girl. Maybe I need another crack at that.” He winked at me, laughing when Jai started to growl, but the three of them got him over to the bed and laid him down. “Sleep with your boyfriend. I’ll have sweet dreams tonight, with your scent on my pillows.”
Jai’s eyes flashed, and he struggled to get up to face the man, but the pale shifter just shoved his hand down on Jai’s chest, forcing him flat.
“Maybe talk to us next time you want to stage a jailbreak?” Kazimir said. “We’ve tried many things. We share knowledge. We work together.”
“Speak for yourself, big man,” Zane said, picking idly at the food. It seemed more for an opportunity to snipe than from real hunger.
“Zane gets bored easily,” Caleb said, walking slowly closer. Jai began to growl, only slightly appeased when I curled up next to him. “I’m just sitting down here by the wall.” He put his hands up in peace, then slid down to the floor by Jai’s side of the bed. “I just wanna sit here and talk. That way, Hollingsworth can’t say your mate hasn’t interacted with me.”
“All right, then,” Jai replied. “Talk.”
“Lucky you’re injured,” I said, looking down at him. “You’re being awfully high handed.”
“It’s me and you, Shan. Nothing’s changed. Not being locked up here, nothing.” His eyes burned into me as he rolled towards me. “You’re mine, Shannon Bruce.”
Did he feel how those words vibrated through me, setting every cell alight? We might be in hell, but somehow, being locked up here was better than all those years of having to force my eyes and my heart away from him. He smiled when I leaned down and kissed him chastely.
“Well, I’m going to talk to Caleb, so be a good boy and rest.”
“I had other ideas…”
“Not in someone else’s bed, for everyone to see, you didn’t,” I said, pulling free of his hands and walking around the bed. I sat down on the floor with my back against it and looked at Caleb.
“So what actually happens here? Is it just the drugging and taking samples? Why don’t they just get you to jerk off into a cup?” I asked.
“We’ve only just been allowed to return to human form,” he replied. He nodded when my eyes went wide. “He’s managed a lot with these sensors.” He tapped the spot behind his ear. “Can control when we shift and for how long. Stimulate hunger when we try to starve ourselves. Push us into…” His eyes flicked up to Jai. “Push us into heat when required. It’s all part of his ‘control shifters’ agenda, as far as I can tell. We’re the test subjects, the proof of concept. He’s played with more than that with pretty horrible consequences. One of us, a cheetah…”
The wolf’s eyes strayed to across the room, and when I looked around, I saw a solemn mood had fallen over all shifters, not just him.
“Killed him?” Jai asked.
“Yep. Bleeding from the nose and eyes…” He shook his head. “Hollingsworth gave it a few more goes and then…”
“We’re hard to get and expensive to transport,” Nero said. “Shifters like Gaden especially so.” The man himself paused his eating, putting the rough sandwich he’d created down on his plate. “He gave up on that and changed his plan, to focus on you.”
“What science can’t provide, nature can,” Kazimir said, trying for a smile and failing. “This place… In my culture, when two tigers wish to form a bond, they are locked away, no distractions, no outside influence, until the two walk out as one or none. It replicates this.”
“So…if I take a mate, we walk out of here? Why all the sperm samples then?”
“They’ve already inspected your reproductive system,” Caleb said, looking up at me through dark brows. “What’s to stop them from slipping some samples in there? They’re the insurance policy if this doesn’t work.”