Page 23 of Flawed Fate
The feed is grainy but clear enough. A cell like mine, with concrete walls, no windows, a drain in the floor. And in the center of it, sitting on the bare floor with her back against the wall and her knees drawn to her chest, is Tara.
She’s got a collar around her neck. Her dark hair hangs in tangles around her face, and there’s blood on her shirt—not a lot, but enough. She’s conscious. Alert. Her green eyes are scanning the room with the sharp focus of someone who’s already tried every way out and came up empty.
Cold nausea grips me as I watch her. My sister. My blood.
I’ll kill every single one of these fuckers.
“Either you mate with Iris,” Moore says, his voice as calm as if he’s discussing the weather, “or your sister pays the price.” He looks up at the camera in the corner of my cell. “I’ll be watching.”
The orderly releases my shackles. “I wouldn’t consider it,” Moore murmurs when instinct makes me sit bolt upright, readyto tear them both to pieces. All it takes is a glance toward the monitor to get the message: whatever I do, Tara will pay.
He leaves without another word, the orderly on his heels. The door locks behind them, followed by the heavy thunk of a deadbolt.
I stare at the monitor. Tara stares at the walls of her cell. Iris whimpers on the gurney beside me, lost in whatever hell the serum is putting her through.
My wolf is howling. Not with hunger, not with want. With rage. Pure, black, bottomless rage. The collar keeps my wolf caged, and Moore knows it. This is what it looks like when a man who’s spent years studying us puts that knowledge to use.
And the part that makes me want to tear my own skin off is how my wolf wants her. Even now. Even like this. The bond doesn’t care about consent or coercion or the fact that a man is watching through a fucking camera and using my sister as a bargaining chip.
But this is wrong. All of it. Iris can barely open her eyes. Even if the bond is real, even if she’s my mate, completing it like this would mean giving Moore exactly what he wants. It would mean he wins. It would mean everything he’s done was justified. Because it worked.
I can’t do that. I won’t.
On the monitor, a door opens in Tara’s cell. Two men walk in. They’re big, dressed in the same tactical gear as the ones who invaded our territory. They approach her slowly, deliberately, and she presses her back harder against the wall, her chin lifting, her jaw set.
The feed cuts out. The screen goes black.
And then I hear it. Even through the concrete, even through the walls, and the distance and the hum of the collar at my throat. Tara’s scream.
It’s not like Iris’s. This is my baby sister screaming because someone is hurting her, and she can’t stop them, and I can’t save her.
The sound cracks something open in my chest. Moore’s voice filters through a speaker I hadn’t noticed, mounted somewhere above the door. Calm as anything. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
This monster. This fucking pig. I would give anything for the ability to shift here and now, to seek him out in this hellhole, to find him and tear out his throat for what he’s forcing me to do. What he’s forcing both of us to do.
The fact that Iris is only half aware of what’s going on around her—if that—doesn’t help. It takes the guilt and hesitation that already live deep inside me and makes them spread like ink dripped into a glass of water. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, but the words fall flat. It’s also so damn flat and empty.
The disembodied voice rings out behind me. “Get to it. Time is of the essence.”
I bare my teeth at the camera. It’s an empty gesture, but it’s all I can do.
In some ways, I realize as I climb off the table, the collar around my neck is a blessing. It’s keeping my wolf at bay. He would hurt her, weak and human like she is. I’ve never needed to be careful the way I do now, as I slowly, reluctantly, take Iris by the hips and pull her to the end of the gurney, letting her legs dangle limply over the edge.
The memory of Tara’s scream sends a bolt of rage up my spine, tinged with worry for her. Every moment I stand here, staring down at Iris and dreading what has to be done while my wolf howls ineffectively in my head is a moment closer to Tara screaming again. I’m supposed to be able to perform for the good doctor with my sister’s safety on my mind?
The thing is… it’s not going to be a problem. I’m rock hard, throbbing by the time I begin working Iris’s thin gown up over her pale, lean thighs. She’s reaching for me blindly, lips moving, eyelids fluttering. “I’ll do my best,” I promise, while excitement builds against my will. Just like the rest of it, against my will. “I’ll try not to hurt you.”
Only I’m not sure how much of that will be under my control because all it takes is parting her thighs for her scent to reach me. That deep, secret scent that belongs only to me in this moment, sweet and musky, making me clench my jaw against the impulse to shove myself into her deep, hard, fast.
I owe her more than that. None of this is her fault, and she’s just as much a victim here as any of us.
“What’s stopping you?” Because the psychotic prick can’t let me forget he’s watching every second. “Do what you were made to do. Mate her. Now.”
That’s all I am to him. An animal. Some mindless thing.
And part of me is. With my teeth grinding and my fingers curled into something close to claws, I run my hands down her sides, taking hold of her hips, pulling her even closer to the edge of the gurney. Her bald pussy—did they shave it? Did she? Another mystery—calls out to me, all swollen and pink and starting to glisten.
She’s wet. Did they give her something to make her that way? Did they prep her for me? I don’t know who I hate more as I lift my gown over my rigid cock and drag my swollen, purple head through her pink folds. My wolf howls, but the sound is muffled. My eyes drift shut as the sensations of heat and silk wrap around me and demand more. There’s no such thing as enough.
