Page 1 of His Rejected Mate

Chapter 1

Kira

The all-consuming darkness slowly faded, leaving me confused and disoriented. What was this place, and how did I get here? What had happened? I couldn’t remember anything after seeing Leif break off from the pack of feral wolves. Everything else lay behind a gauzy barrier in my mind.

Not knowing who might be around, I pretended to be asleep. Keeping my eyes closed, I focused on the sounds around me and did my best to figure out where I was. I heard bubbling, faint beeps, the scratch of a pen furiously scribbling on paper, and most disconcerting, the soft and disturbed chuckle of a man laughing to himself.

In an instant, it all came back. The jungle, Leif, Simon. I’d been taken. A dart or spell or some sort of gas had knocked me out—I couldn’t remember exactly what. The last thing I remembered was Leif dragging me toward the volcano.

I was a prisoner. The thought set my heart hammering. It took all my training to keep the placid, slack look of sleep on my face.

Speaking of training, Ihadto get my bearings. One of the first things I’d been taught as a Tranquility operative was to gauge and memorize your surroundings, especially if you weretaken as a hostage or prisoner. The only way I could truly do that was to open my eyes and look around, but a strange, pervading dread swelled within me at the thought. I didnotwant to see Simon again. Something about the look he’d had in his eyes made my blood run cold.

I wanted Wyatt. I’d never been the type to want or need a man to save me, but lying there, helpless… I wished he was there. If nothing else, he’d have given me strength, and knowing we were going through this together would have given me comfort. Had he gotten back to Haven? Was he still searching the jungle for me? If nothing else, I had to get out of this alive to make sure Wyatt was okay.

Steeling myself for what was to come, I inched my eyelids open. Bright spears of light sent pain spiking into the backs of my eyes, and for a moment, the harsh glare blinded me. Blinking, I managed to look around the room. No windows—only bare, solid concrete walls. The entire room had the sterile look of a lab, with stainless steel shelves and tables, autoclaves and incubators, Bunsen burners, racks of glass beakers and cylinders. There were also strange magical implements on several tables: stone runes, flasks of brightly colored potions, dried herbs, and ancient-looking texts that lay scattered across benches and shelves.

A faint but unyielding ache and burning sensation tickling at my wrists and ankles pulled my attention away from the room. Glancing down, I found the cause. The acrid stench of wolfsbane finally registered in my mind. Strong leather cuffs buckled around my wrists and ankles held my arms and legs in place. Another larger band crossed my midsection an inch below my ribs. The leather was saturated with wolfsbane oil. The stink of it burned my nostrils. I should have been able to snap the cuffs easily, but with that shit soaked into them, it was impossible.

My senses continued to return and strengthen as the effects of the drug they’d given me wore off. The disturbing laughter had given way to a haunting humming. The tune came from above me, relative to the table I lay on. Craning my neck did no good, and there was no way to see what awaited me in that direction.

A familiar scent caught my attention. Leif. He had to be in the room, too—the scent was too strong for him not to be. Closing my eyes again, I tried to send all my power to my sense of smell. That was my best bet to garner as much information from my surroundings in my current state.

My nostrils filled with the smells of Leif, dozens of chemical and plant residues, and a very slight whiff of coppery, metallic smell that told me vampires were nearby. Strange. Stranger still was the scent of another alpha wolf in the vicinity. Most of the smells were too feeble and too far away for them to be in the room with me. How big was this place?

The humming grew louder, the voice more distinct. My skin pricked with fear. Up and down, the song became a leech, latching onto my brain, filling me with a bit of Simon’s madness. He had to be the one humming, but it still made no sense. How was he alive?

For over a decade, I’d told myself that I’d torn him apart in the madness of my first shift. Hell, I’d been covered in blood when I woke up sprinting through the forest. Now here he was, alive and well.

On second thought, he definitely wasn’twell, not mentally. That had been obvious even as the drug had begun shutting my mind down. Even there, strapped to a table with wolfsbane, a small sliver of my mind leapt with joy and relief. Ihadn’tkilled an innocent person all those years ago. The weight of that sin had warped and shaped me into the person I was, but now I could finally peel off that shame.

The humming stopped, and my thoughts froze. Theclap-clapof hard-soled shoes on a stone floor drew near. Simon. Every part of me screamed to run, to get away even though that wasn’t possible.

Cool, latex-encased fingers slipped across my forehead, making me flinch despite my wishes to stay motionless. A moment later, the finger lifted my eyelids.

“Ah, yes,” Simon said. “She is awake. Did you have a good nap, my dear? I do hope it was refreshing.” He gave a mad little chuckle. Leaning over me, his face upside down, he appeared even crazier than he had in the jungle.

“Why am I here?” I asked, my voice a rasp.

Simon walked around the table until he could look me in the eye straight on. “Oh, that is averyexciting question indeed.” His eyes glittered with menacing excitement. “Now that I have my first success back, we have a lot we need to do together. I’m sure you’re as thrilled as I am.”

Now that my mind had broken free of the drug he’d injected me with, I could see something was deeply wrong with this fae man. Corruption was my first thought, but he didn’t have the telltale look of pale skin and blackened eyes. Nor did he have the spoiled-milk scent I’d always noticed from corrupted fae. No, something else was going on here. Simple madness, perhaps? Whatever it was, his very aura and presence near my body made me mentally recoil from him.

“What’s that?” I asked as I spotted the strange device in his hand.

Simon’s eyes widened, as did the freakish smile on his lips. “This?” He raised the device. “A little toy of my own design.”

He held it closer for me to see. A leather cuff of some sort, with buckles to strap it to something. On the outside, a few small devices and magic stones were attached to a small mechanism. A long, thin, and flexible hypodermic needle protruded from theinside of the cuff. It looked like a torture device, and cold sweat sprang out all over my skin.

“See?” Simon asked, pushing the device closer to my face. “Maybe you need a better look?”

He lowered it inch by inch, until the needle filled my vision. The hair-thin metal drew nearer my right eyeball. Cold panic burst through my heart as I tried to pull my face away. Was he going to stab my eye with the fucking thing? The thought nauseated me. I imagined it piercing my eyeball, the quietpopas it burst through and slipped all the way down to the optic nerve, then toward my brain. Breath hitched in and out of my lungs in panicked bursts.

Simon pulled the device back and let out a manic titter. “Oh, that was good. You looked truly scared.” He shook his head and wagged a finger at me. “Silly. This must be placed in the bloodstream to be effective. A direct injection to the brain would have, um,verybad results.” Again, that awful laugh echoed throughout the room.

Simon bent low and attached the cuff to my bicep, buckling the strap tightly to my arm. I winced and hissed as the needle threaded itself into the muscle.

“What the fuck is it?” I gasped, unable to hold my tongue.

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