Mate Claimed

“So we wait,” Iona said.

Reid interrupted by reappearing. Iona suppressed another startled scream and jammed her hand to her pounding heart.

“Who’s next?” Reid asked.

“Iona,” Eric said. “Then come back, but we’re going to look around here for a while. We might need you.”

“No,” Iona said. “If you’re staying, I am.”

“Iona, I want you safe.”

“Not if you’re running around here in danger, especially with your pain attacks. I can’t pull you out of them if I’m not here.”

“And you started to go feral downstairs,” Eric growled, green eyes hard. “You can’t risk that. I might lose you for good.”

“I’ll more likely go feral if I’m forced to sit at home and worry about you. I’ll be tearing my way back here, not caring who gets in my way.” The wild need stirred as Iona spoke, the instinct to protect her mate, no matter what.

“Reid,” Eric snapped.

Reid lifted his hands and stepped away from Iona. “I’m not getting into an argument between Shifters. No transporting against her will.”

Eric didn’t look happy, but at least he stopped arguing. Iona went to him and put her hand in his, liking the warmth of him, his scent telling her he wanted her there despite the danger.

She still saw the pain in his eyes, though, and it worried her. She knew right then that she’d rather risk going feral, or going insane from her mating heat, or being caught as a Shifter, than watch him go through that pain again.

Eric sent Reid to the roof to keep an eye out for activity while they waited for Kellerman, having Reid report via the phones Iona had taken from the researchers. Reid’s first call said that no guards were rushing to the place, and the humans he did see ignored the building.

His observations supported Eric’s idea that no one really knew what the researchers were doing in here, nor did they care. He suspected that no one took Kellerman’s research seriously, or else he’d offered to pay a lot of money to use the run-down facility.

The two researchers on the top floor were just coming around when Eric knelt next to them. Iona had hit them hard in her half-feral state, to which their bruises attested. But they were recovering. The woman wore shorts and a T-shirt with a spangled neckline; the man was still in a clean suit. Both opened their eyes now to find a naked Eric grinning into their faces.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m a Shifter. I’m about to destroy this lab and everything in it, so you might want to leave.”

The man blinked at him. “What?”

“I said…”

Iona leaned down next to him, her lovely face bearing a sweet smile. “You kidnapped me, my sister-in-law, and a newborn baby. You took my niece from her mother and stuck needles into her and wires all over her. I’d say you need to leave.”

“We weren’t hurting her,” the woman said quickly. “Just trying to figure out her gene sequence.”

“So you could clone her?” Iona’s voice continued to be deceptively pleasant.

“We only want to know how Shifters work. They could be the best weapons—”

“Shut up,” the man said quickly.

Eric said, “Is this how you got the government to fund you? Said you were creating secret weapons? You see him?” He pointed to the tiger, who was standing next to Graham, his yellow eyes pinning the researchers. “That Shifter was the only one who survived. The ‘experiments’ were a failure.”

“But we have new—” The woman broke off again when the man elbowed her.

“Shut up.”

“New DNA samples from the Lupine Shifters you abducted,” Eric supplied. “You thought you could revive the experiments, succeed where the previous ones failed. I have news. It can’t be done.”

Both researchers, the woman with her pale, lined face, and the man, younger and angry looking, said nothing.

“But we’re nice Shifters,” Eric said. “At least I am. My mate here wants to disembowel you for touching our niece. The tiger over there wants to gut you for what humans have done to him over the last forty years. The wolf just wants to shoot you because he can.”

Graham’s laughter rumbled. “And it would be fun.”

The woman flinched, but the man looked more angry.

“But I’m going to let Reid take you out of here before we get destructive,” Eric said. “Because I’ve learned how to be kind to stupid creatures.”

Eric unfolded himself and summoned Reid from the roof. The man and woman looked more perplexed than afraid as Reid approached. Lanky Reid in jeans, shirt, and jacket against the winter cold looked innocuous and obviously not Shifter.

“He’ll have to take you one at a time,” Eric said. “The male first, I think.”

“Where do you want me to leave them?” Reid asked, expression neutral.

“I’ll let you decide.”

Reid thought a moment, then he grinned. A dokk alfar was a frightening thing when he smiled, especially when his midnight eyes began to gleam. “I have just the place.”

Reid put his hands on the man’s shoulders, then both he and the man vanished.

The woman screamed. She tried to scramble away from them, but Iona put a strong foot on the woman’s leg and stopped her.

Reid slammed back in a few seconds later and reached for the woman.