Jennifer Ashley - Mate Claimed

She looked at the cages again, all empty except this one. Tiger Shifter was number twenty-three. Numbers one through twenty-two were all dead.

“Why?” she asked in horror.

“To fight for them.”

“But Shifters aren’t allowed to…”

Collared Shifters, Shifters acknowledged by humans, weren’t allowed to be in the military or law enforcement, the human government reasoning that dangerous Shifters couldn’t be trusted with weapons. Shifters might turn the guns on their human masters.

But Shifters bred in secret, in this building in the middle of who knew where, un-Collared and allowed to go feral…Were humans trying to create Shifters they could control to fight for them, the same reason the Fae had bred them long, long ago?

Shifters they could control without Collars…Iona thought about what Eric had told her about the experiments done on him twenty years ago, and the pain he was experiencing now. Liam and Eric had surmised that Eric’s adrenaline spikes were causing the pain, as though the Collar was doing its job without actually going off.

Iona went cold. Had the experiments on Eric been a precursor to this? If the humans had been trying to develop Shifters to fight, they’d have to be un-Collared so they could battle without restriction. But the humans would need another way to control the Shifters when they wanted to—had they been trying to find a way with Eric? And now, twenty years later, whatever they’d done to him was biting him in the ass.

And how long had the humans been doing this? Experiments had been forbidden on Shifters, but if Tiger Man was Jace’s age, apparently they’d gone on all these years in secret.

The experiments couldn’t be going well though. Not with the first twenty-two Shifters dead. Was that why they’d wanted the wolves’ blood and DNA? To try again? What if it hadn’t been just blood and skin that the researchers had taken, but eggs and sperm?

“Oh, Goddess.” Iona had never thought about the pagan deities much, but right now, the Goddess, with her moon shining high above them, was the only thing available to give her comfort and strength. “I’m taking you out of here.”

The lock on the tiger’s cage was thick and electronic, and opened with a magnetic key card. Of course. They’d need to make sure Twenty-three was securely confined. If Iona broke the lock without swiping the electronic key through it, the cage door still might not open.

Iona heaved a sigh. “I’ll be right back.”

She shifted to her panther again as Tiger growled, not believing her. She sprinted to the stairwell, then through the door and up all the damn stairs again.

Iona peeked into the lab at the top before she went in, to find the two researchers sprawled on the floor where she’d left them. She wondered, as she went to the niche where she’d found her purse, whether she’d hit them hard enough to keep them out awhile, or so hard they’d never wake up again.

She broke the lock of the cabinet next to the niche and found the researchers’ personal belongings. They had phones, which she took, and keys, which she also took, and felt grim satisfaction when one of the key rings had an electronic key card attached to it.

She stayed human this time to run back down the stairs carrying all the goodies. Iona set everything out of harm’s reach and approached the cage with the key card.

“Let’s hope,” she said, and swiped the card through the reader.

The lock’s light went green, and the cage door clicked open. At the same time, Tiger Man slammed himself against the bars, his eyes red and enraged. He barreled out of the cage, straight for Iona.

In their trek through the desert, Eric and Graham had passed several guard posts containing men in SUVs with high-powered rifles, and signs posted everywhere warning people to stay out or expect to be shot for their pains. Eric and Graham had moved like ghosts in the night, flowing against the black desert, never spotted.

They now looked down from the top of the knifelike hill they’d crested to the heart of Area 51 spread out before them.

A long runway stretched north toward the huge dry bed of Groom Lake, the lake bed stark white in the moonlight. A few planes were on the airstrip running in the night, lights blinking. Hangers clustered in tight formation near the end of the runway, illuminated, work going on even now. Other buildings filled the spaces to the west of the runway, but Eric was fixed on one a little way away from them.

The humans hadn’t bothered to put fences around the building to which Xavier’s directions had brought Eric. He studied it—a military rectangular block a few stories high with antennas on top, one narrow door, which was guarded, and few windows. The windows Eric could see were narrow and set high in the walls, all too small for a man or large leopard to squeeze through.

Eric shifted to human in the darkness, and Graham rose into his man shape next to him.

Without speaking, Eric moved on down the hill toward where he knew Iona to be, Graham right behind him. Never mind Xavier’s GPS coordinates, Eric knew Iona was there. He felt the pull of the mate bond leading him straight to her.

The mate bond told him now that she was in deep trouble.

Eric halted again to crouch in the darkness a few yards from the building. “You sure?” Graham whispered to him.

“Yes.” Eric took the camera phone he’d worn on a pack around his waist and snapped a few pictures.

“Brilliant ideas on how we get in?” Graham said, lips nearly touching Eric’s ear.

Eric scanned the building, which didn’t seem to be as heavily guarded as the hangers and the airstrip, though it did have one guard, standing upright and alert, at the front door. No cars were parked around it, though the other buildings had plenty of vehicles in their parking lots. This building looked deserted, ignored by the humans, which meant something pretty bad must be going on in there.

“Roof,” Eric said. He looked at Graham. Eric knew he could scale the wall—he was a cat after all—but could a big wolf?

“I’m right behind you,” Graham said.

“Don’t get caught.”

Eric put away the camera, morphed back into his leopard, slunk forward, and moved stealthily to the building. He hoped no humans had come up with the idea to put land mines around it, but too late to worry about that now.

He made it to the building, found a dark corner, crouched down as far as he could, and sprang upward. He caught bricks and window ledges with his paws, and when he got high enough, a fire escape. At one point he found a CCTV camera, which he smashed.

Eric reached the top and pulled himself up, hearing Graham panting and climbing behind him. Graham made it over the lip of the roof, and Eric saw that he’d chosen to climb in his wolf-beast form.

In silence they searched the rooftop for a door that would take them inside. Then they’d scour the entire building for Iona, Cassidy, and the cub, and pray they found them alive.

Tiger Man’s half-Shifter beast grabbed Iona by the throat, madness in his eyes. Iona gasped for breath and found none. His fingers bit into her windpipe, starting to crush, points of pain. He was strong, enraged, crazed.

Iona fought him in watery terror; then that terror snapped something inside her. Iona’s control dissolved as blackness filled her vision.

She shifted to her half beast without realizing she’d done it, her neck muscles hardening under the Tiger’s hands, until his fingers could no longer crush her. Iona brought her hands up between his and snapped apart his hold on her.

Tiger let her go, but he took one step back, flowed into his pure tiger form, and attacked. The tiger’s eyes were bloodshot and feral, and the feral inside Iona responded.