Setting the tray on the narrow cot that was the only furniture in the cell beyond the small TV, she turned back to the man with a mocking smile. She didn’t know why she found it so important to remain defiant in front of her guards. She was trapped like a rat. Helpless. Abandoned. And closer to the edge of insanity with every passing day.
What was the point?
But some stubborn, rebellious part of her refused to accept defeat.
She would spit in the face of fate until the madness consumed her.
“Come and get it, fucker,” she taunted.
He deliberately licked his lips. “Someday.”
It was a constant threat, but so far the guards hadn’t sexually attacked her.
Not yet.
Keira didn’t know why they hadn’t. They’d humiliated, shamed, and taunted her in every other way. But if sexual assault was coming, she desperately hoped her luck held until she was too insane to know what was happening.
“Yeah, and someday I’ll rip your heart out and eat it with special sauce on a sesame seed bun,” she retorted.
“Naughty kitty.” The bastard touched the band strapped around his wrist, sending a jolt of electricity through the collar around Keira’s neck. She hissed, her heart missing a painful beat. “But don’t worry. You won’t be in your cage for much longer.”
Keira frowned. “Why?”
“The word has started to filter down the ranks. Our time is finally here.”
“Your time? You sound like a cheesy super villain.”
The Ferret stepped forward, his eyes glittering with a fevered lust. “You won’t be nearly so funny when we don’t need you anymore. I’m going to fuck you to death.”
She kept her smile in place even as a sick dread clenched her gut. There was a smug cockiness in his voice that warned her it wasn’t yet another empty bluff.
He was truly confident he was soon going to get his hands on her.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“With that miniscule dick?” She tilted her chin, refusing to let him see her fear. “If I’m going to be screwed, at least send a man to do it.”
“You bitch.”
He pressed his finger onto the switch that sent the electrical pulses out of the collar. But this time he continued to hold it down, sending jolt after jolt through her body. Keira’s teeth ground together as she fell to her knees. Holy shit. She’d gone too far. The bastard was going to kill her.
Her head was bowed and her mind going dark when the sound of a male voice floated from the doorway at the bottom of the stairs.
“Roger.”
Roger? Her lips twisted despite the agony searing through her rigid muscles. His name was Roger?
Ferret fit him better.
Abruptly the pain stopped as the Ferret muttered a curse. “What?”
“Meeting.”
“Another one?” the Ferret shouted. “What the hell is this one about?”
“I didn’t call it,” his companion groused. “We leave in ten minutes.”
The Ferret moved to stand near the bars of Keira’s cell, his stench only adding to her misery.
“Maybe it’s good news. Maybe we’re going public and I can finally have you flat on your back where you belong.”
With a laugh, he turned and left the attic, allowing Keira to take a deep, cleansing breath as she struggled to clear the fog from her mind.
“Be careful what you wish for, asshole,” she muttered, pressing her fingers to her temples that throbbed from the massive amount of electricity that had scorched through her.
Remaining on her knees she waited for the nausea to pass, surviving the time by picturing the various ways she could kill the Ferret if he was stupid enough to unlock her cell.
Snapping his neck would be the most efficient, but it was far too clean a death for the loathsome creature. She wanted something slow. Something that would cause maximum pain.
An hour passed. Then two. Darkness slowly filled the attic as she wearily curled into a tiny ball on the floor. Later she would try to choke down the sludge they called food. For now, she was alone with no need to act brave.
“Keira. My name is Keira,” she murmured. “I’m strong. I’m brave. And those bastards aren’t going to break me.”
Softly chanting the words over and over, Keira nearly missed the faint sound of footsteps that crept up the stairs. She frowned, a strange fear clenching her heart. Those steps were too light, too graceful for a mere human.
What was coming?
She remained curled on the floor, lost in the shadows as she glanced warily through the gathering gloom.
A large, male form appeared, but with obvious caution, he circled the entire room, searching for hidden enemies before at last turning his attention to the cage in the center of the floor.
Only then did he suck in a horrified breath as he caught sight of her cowering form.
“What the hell?”
The man stepped forward and Keira’s heart missed a beat as she took in his golden male beauty. He disturbed her. Not like the ferret-man. Or his various human partners. This was…different. Somehow more personal.
“Is this a trick?” he breathed.
She scowled. “I don’t understand what you’re asking.”
“You’re dead.”
His stark words sliced through the muddle in her mind. She blinked, struggling to process them. Dead. Bizarrely, the thought didn’t frighten her.
Actually, it explained so much.
“So this is hell?” She gave a short, near hysterical laugh. “I hope I earned a spot here by partying my ass off. Laissez les bons temps rouler.”
There was a short, nerve-scraping silence before a soft word floated on the air.
“Keira?”
A startled hiss was wrenched from her throat. Her name. It was the one thing that she’d been able to cling to from her past. It had kept her grounded when her captors did everything in their power to crush her will. Or when her mind threatened to become lost in the dark depths of despair.
And through it all she’d kept it protected.
No one knew that secret, precious name.
No one but her.
“Don’t,” she breathed, her voice humiliatingly weak. “That’s mine. Only mine.”
“Holy shit.” The man took another step forward. “Is it really you?”
Keira scrambled backward, her defiance forgotten as she caught the warm, male scent. Pantera. He was like her.
“Who are you?” she rasped.
With a graceful leap, he was standing directly in front of the cell door, his beautiful leaf green eyes serrated with gold, glowing with a stunned joy.
“Oh my god.”
“No.” She held up a hand, her heart racing. She didn’t know what was bothering her. On some level she knew she should be fiercely relieved. This man was one of her people. But there was a part of her that was terrified by his scent. “Stay back.”
He frowned, watching her with a searching gaze. “Keira, it’s me. Bayon.”
Bayon. She silently tested the name. It was…familiar. He was familiar.
But the confusion in her mind was too tangled to pull out the memory.
“Stay back,” she repeated, her voice harsh. She didn’t understand what was happening, and that was as terrifying as any torture.
“Is it a trap?” He tilted his head to the side, sniffing the air. “Keira, honey, will I trigger an alarm?”
She shook her head, her mouth dry. “You have to go.”
He studied her pale, frightened expression, then without warning he grabbed the bars and ripped the door off the cell.
Keira vaulted onto the cot, her palm pressed to her thundering heart as he ruthlessly moved toward her. He reached out a hand, but rather than grabbing her as she half expected, he ran his fingers over the collar around her neck.
With a hiss he yanked his hand from the metal.
“Shit. There’s something toxic in the metal.” He gave a shake of his
head. “I have to find a key. I’ll be back.”
She watched in silence as he ran lightly back down the stairs, leaving her alone.
Mutely she studied the mangled door of her cell, a voice in the back of her head urging her to make a run for it. She could slip out one of the windows, drop from the roof and take off down the road before the…before Bayon ever realized she was gone.
Her limbs, however, refused to move. They felt as if they’d been locked into place by a compulsion she couldn’t understand.
Instead she remained crouched on the cot, her breath a loud rasp as she heard the sounds of Bayon moving through the house. There was a tense wait before he was jogging back up the stairs and returning to the cell.
She hissed as the warm musk of him filled her senses, reminding her of…what?
Something her mind wasn’t ready to accept.
She trembled, shaking her head as he slowly crossed the cell and perched on the edge of the cot.
“Just hold still, Keira,” he urged softly, his gaze never leaving her face as he reached to unlock the collar and remove it. With a grimace he tossed it aside.
Then, his fingers returned to her throat to lightly soothe the flesh that had been rubbed raw by the metal. Instantly she was pulling away, her heart slamming against her ribs at the odd sensations that streaked through her at his soft caress.
“No.” She surged off the cot and pressed against the bars of the cell, hating herself for acting like a fucking mouse, but unable to halt her violent reactions. “Don’t touch me.”
“Okay.” Rising to his feet, he held up his hands in a gesture of peace. “We have to get out of here.”
“Out?” She licked her dry lips. “Where are you taking me?”
“Back to the Wildlands.”
The rising panic flooded through her, closing her throat until she struggled to draw air into her lungs. “No. I can’t.”
Bayon frowned, his fingers twitching as if he was battling the urge to physically force her from the cell.
“Keira, we can’t stay here,” he at last managed to murmur in soothing tones. “Will you come with me? Please.”
Keira glanced toward the door. She wanted out. Desperately. And some part of her understood that this man wouldn’t hurt her.
Still, it took every ounce of her willpower to give a jerky shake of her head. “All right. Just…don’t touch.”
“Okay.” He backed out of the cell, watching her with a carefully controlled expression. “Whatever you need, honey, just tell me.”
“I need space.”
“You got it,” he promised without hesitation. “Follow me.”
She did. But it was at a cautious distance as they crept silently down the stairs and then out a small kitchen with cracked linoleum floors and a pile of filthy dishes on the counters.
Once in the backyard he paused, searching the darkness for any hint of a trap. Behind him Keira trembled, her dulled senses tingling to painful life.
Christ, was this real?
The brush of a warm breeze on her cheek. The grass beneath her feet. The distant sound of a child laughing.
Over the years she’d too often dreamed she was free, only to wake and discovered she was still trapped in her cage.
She couldn’t bear to discover this was just another hallucination.
At last convinced they were alone, Bayon led her toward a gate that had been left unlatched and into a narrow alley that smelled of rotting trash and human feces.
She slapped a hand over her sensitive nose, grimly concentrating on placing one foot in front of the other. Nope. This was no dream. Her imagination wasn’t capable of producing such a foul odor.
Relief surged through her even as her weakness increased with every step. Grimly she refused to slow her pace. She didn’t care if she had to crawl. Nothing would make her return to that prison.
They reached the end of the alley when the Pantera male halted, motioning her to stay behind him as he peered into the window of a derelict garage.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, nervously glancing over her shoulder.
Dammit. Why was he hesitating? Her guards wouldn’t be gone forever.
“We can travel faster in a car,” he muttered.
“No.” She shook her head, a painful flash of memory searing through her confusion. She was hogtied with a hood over her head as rough hands stuffed her into the trunk of a car. There were male voices that sliced through her with the pain of a dagger. “I can’t,” she muttered.
Bayon glanced over his shoulder, his expression concerned. “Why?”
“It’s a cage,” she muttered.
A stark, brutal regret darkened his eyes before he gave a sharp nod. “Then we run.”
Running.
The wind in her hair. The earth pounding beneath her feet.
The stench of the humans fading from her senses.
“Yes,” she breathed. “God, yes.”
Chapter 2
Bayon fought for control.
He was acutely aware of the woman sprinting mere inches behind him even as they moved through the thickening shadows of Melton, the small town several miles north of the bayou where he’d tracked the bastards who’d attacked Ashe. Keira needed him calm. His mind focused on escaping into the nearby swamp before the humans returned to discover she was missing.
Not acting like a raving lunatic who wanted to grasp her by the shoulders and demand to know what the hell had happened to her.
Holy shit.
The memory of the day she’d disappeared was seared into his brain.
Twenty-five years ago, she’d left the Wildlands to visit her human lover and then…nothing.
Her brother, Parish, had sensed she was in distress, but he hadn’t been able to reach her before she’d vanished off the face of the earth.
Eventually they’d had to accept she was dead, and Bayon had secretly gone into a mourning that had matched Parish’s. Only his was worse, because while Parish had received the sympathy of the entire Pantera community, Bayon had been forced to keep his own grief shoved deep inside, pretending as if his life hadn’t come to a shattering end on that day.
Now…now, he didn’t know what the hell to think.
Keira was alive.
But she wasn’t the same bad-ass female who’d been the leader of the Hunters.
Once she’d stood tall and proud, her body lean but powerful. Her dark hair had been threaded with hints of fire and her skin kissed with a deep honey tone. And her eyes had been a magnificent gold with starbursts of emeralds in the center.
Now her hair was limp, her skin pale, and her eyes so dull he barely recognized her. Even worse, her mind was obviously broken to the point she couldn’t even remember him.
But she was alive.
His cat snarled deep inside him, struggling to reach out to the woman who’d once touched him at his most primitive level.
His emotions were a dangerous brew of elation, shock, guilt, and overall a murderous rage at whoever was responsible for keeping this exquisite woman locked in a cage like a fucking animal.
Keeping himself from exploding was taking everything he had as they traveled silently through wetlands surrounding Melton, the dusk turning to night as they left behind civilization and eventually arrived at the edge of the Wildlands
Which explained why he hadn’t immediately noticed, when he passed over the magical border, that she’d halted on the other side.
Belatedly realizing she was no longer behind him, Bayon whirled around to discover her crouching at the edge of their territory, that look of terror marring the beauty of her face.
His heart twisted as he cautiously made his way back to her shivering form. He could sense her bone-deep weariness, but this was more than just collapsing in exhaustion.
She was being tormented by some inner demon.
“Keira?” He kept his voice soft. “What is it, honey?”
She shook her head. “I don’t remember.”
r /> He reached out to stroke a hand over her dark head, only to yank it back. She’d asked him not to touch her.
It was a request he intended to honor.
“Remember what?” he prompted.
“Anything.” She frowned, her fingers twisting together as she stared at the lands that she’d once known with the intimacy of a lover. Her duty as the leader of the Hunters meant she’d patrolled every inch of the Wildlands. Night after night. “No, that’s not right. I have memories, but they’re like puzzle pieces I can’t put together.” There was a long pause, her heavy breathing emphasizing the effort it was taking not to bolt in terror. “How long?”
Bayon frowned. “What?”
“How long was I gone?”
He grimaced. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have. Not until she was stronger.
“Keira—”
“How long?”
“Twenty-five years.”
“Fuck.”
He crouched beside her. “It’s going to be all right.”
There was a flash of fire in the dull eyes. It was a painful reminder of the old Keira.
“Don’t patronize me.”
He bit back a curse. Dammit. They didn’t have time for this. She was sick, and exhausted, and in dire need of shifting.
“Keira, I don’t know what the hell happened to you, but I can sense that your cat has been forced into hibernation. The only way to heal you is to get you into the Wildlands.”
She licked her lips, her heart pounding so loudly he feared it would attract the natural predators of the swamp.
“I know I need it.”
He inched closer, hoping the proximity of his cat could offer comfort. “But there’s something that bothers you?”
“It frightens me.”
“I’ll take you to Parish,” he promised. The two siblings had been closer than most since they’d been destined to be Hunters together. “No one will bother—”
“I can’t.” She reached out, her nails sinking into the flesh of his arm. “Not Parish.”
Bayon frowned. “Do you remember him?” he asked.