He knew she didn’t like it, but she had little choice. He’d come with her, and he was a part of this. Typically mutants took several Circs to kill. They had a hardier frame, more endurance, and an ability to withstand pain. Alex didn’t have a combative psychic skill. Gideon could smash into minds. Eli secreted poison, and Carter could mesmerize with his gaze and voice.
Alex could only gain insight by touching objects. But he had claws and fangs of his own, as well as a burning desire to kill his sister’s murderer. And to protect Kennedy.
Though Katie sat on the forefront of his mind, he couldn’t forget his new mate. He would die to protect her.
And by the look on Myers’s face, scrunched up into a snarl, it might very well come to that.
Myers finally stopped morphing, his body thick with muscle, his hide dark and scaled and black as pitch. His eyes remained a muddy brown, now striated with a sickly yellow, and his fangs had lengthened, piercing his lips so that blood continued to run down his mouth. His tongue had forked and turned black. It flicked in and out, like that of a snake.
Lovely.Kennedy put enough dismay into her words to worry him.
“You stay back,” he said out loud, again. “Don’t get between us,” he warned.
“Then don’t get killed,” Kennedy snapped back.I told you not to come.
Your cousin said I had to.
Yes, but I didn’t want you involved. Not like this.
Yates frowned at them, then stepped closer to Kennedy. Good. The bastard might want to do vile things to her later, but for now he’d keep her alive. Because if Alex had to worry about Kennedy’s safetyanddeal with Myers at the same time, he didn’t think he’d manage. And he had to survive, if only to protect Kennedy from her cousin—who didn’t feel so on the level to him. He couldn’t have said why, but he trusted his beast’s feelings.
And then he let his beast take over, narrowly avoiding a swipe from Myer’s yellowed claws. Christ, he hadn’t seen him—it—move. Myers’s claws had grown, curling even more, and looked sharp as hell. His spine finally stopped cracking and had grown crooked. When Myers moved now, he was sluggish, but the power behind his strikes couldn’t be ignored.
Alex would have to dodge any blow while striking his own. But where? The man had shredded his clothing as he changed, and black-scaled skin covered him from head to toe. Even his face had small, interweaved protection, to include an arched ridge above his eyes, making Myers look like a Neanderthal.
His legs buckled.Ah, not done changing yet.Maybe Myers would go down on his own, the change to mutant too extreme to handle. Except those knee joints broke and reformed, the knees bending at an opposite angle. Myers screamed, hissed, and suddenly wasn’t so slugging after all. He darted at Alex faster than Alex had anticipated he might move.
Alex took a blow to his midsection that stunned him but didn’t draw blood. He rolled away before Myers could follow with a bite to his neck.
A flicker of the man’s tongue licked his skin, and Alex smacked at it. “You have no idea what you’ve turned into, do you?” He felt almost bad for the guy, until he remembered Myers’s joy in the pain Katie had suffered.
Alex didn’t hesitate. He went for Myers’s eyes, the move so sudden and directly against what Myers might have predicted. Because while Alex managed to gouge out one of Myers’s eyes, he’d gotten caught in Myers’s strong grip.
And the bastard didn’t just use his claws, he held Alex in a bear hug. And started to squeeze.
Squirming and doing nothing but getting himself impaled on mutant claws, Alex found a scrap of clothing still clinging to Myers and reached for it.
The vision that hit him brutally stole his breath, because for a moment he saw exactly what Caldane, Sheer, and even Yates had been doing to their packmate.
Yeah, Myers had been justly dealt with all right. At this point, Alex wanted to only to put the monster out of his misery.
But Myers didn’t seem to feel the same. As he hugged Alex tighter, he nuzzled his face against Alex’s chest, dragging his teeth through the material of Alex’s jacket and shirt to expose flesh.
Far from digging into his skin with teeth, Myers started…kissing him. Then licking at his skin, and running teeth over his nipple. A loud purr vibrated through the creature into Alex, and the unwelcome feel of a spikey, firm, phallus rubbing against his thigh made Alex seriously wish he’d reconsidered his notion to accompany Kennedy without the team as backup.
“Hungry,” Myers rasped. His own blood trailed down Alex’s chest, where Myers continued to pierce his lips with his fangs. Myers licked it, then tried to teeth Alex’s nipple. Except Alex had shifted, and Myers nicked him instead.
The taste of Alex’s blood further aroused the mutant, and Alex knew if he didn’t do something to fucking move, he’d end up being raped and eaten, maybe at the same time, while poor Kennedy watched.
None of the assholes watching the spectacle would intercede.
Jesus. What the hell had he gotten himself into?
