“Horrific, yes, now who exploded the human experiment?” a whiny male voice asked.
”Is that all you care about?” Rowan snorted.
”Is that all you care about?” the voice mocked, and I turned to see a slender man who was the same height as Rowan. He had short blue hair and wore thin-framed metal glasses. “Of course it is! That’s why I’m here. It would’ve been lovely to get my hands on one who hadn’t been reanimated. And this one is just a smoothie of flesh—thanks to who?”
“What’s it to you?” Trixie asked, cocking her hip and crossing her arms over her chest.
A smirk curled on his lips as he swept his gaze up and down the length of her. “I’m Norman. The scientist Rowan asked to help study these things. It’d be nice if they were in one piece and fully alive for once. Is it that hard to preserve a body?” He crouched down, sticking a pen in some of the flesh. “Ah, interesting.”
“It was me or him, and I much prefer me,” Trixie snapped.
“That makes one of us,” he grumbled, and Trixie’s mouth fell open.
“You asshole!” She conjured a mushroom in her hand and threw it at his head. The mushroom hit him and bounced to the ground.
Norman raised his gaze from the mushed human and turned toward Trixie, who was fuming. “Mature.”
“That thing knew my species by one touch. My strengths and weaknesses. Yet, it didn’t say anything about my special power.” She pursed her lips. “Any clue how it did that?”
He sighed, getting to his feet with the flesh dangling on the end of his pen and held it up. “If you see the silver specks mixed with the red, you’ll be seeing nanobots. These bots are infused with magical energy of a supernatural nature I haven’t been able to pinpoint. They give these things the power to cross reference a supernatural’s origin and their body and magic’s biggest strength and weakness. From what I can tell, the nanobots carry a signal. The thing was speaking to someone, and that someone could be listening right now.” He angled the pen down, and the flesh chunk fell off and onto the rest with an audible splat.
I cringed.
“How did it get in here without a key?” I asked, and Norman’s gaze narrowed on me in Rowan’s arms.
“Ah, the mate,” he acknowledged with a strange look in his eyes. “Be good to my brother.”
“Brother?” My brows furrowed before I forced a smile. “It’s so good to meet you. I’ll always do my best for him.”
“Not blood brothers, but chosen.” Norman sniffed before throwing his hand in front of what was left of the specimen and freezing it much like I’d seen Thorn do before, but Norman’s magic was more chaotic than Thorn’s controlled magic. “I’m an icedrake. We were both able to escape Blezen. And now that the nanobots are out of commission, to answer your question, the only way it got in would have to be that it was let in. Seeing as there are now two accounts of a woman’s voice talking about the specimens, it’s obvious what the problem is.”
It went quiet for a few moments, and my heart pounded loud in my ears. Thorn and Damien flanked each side of Rowan as the danger rang loud and clear.
There was someone on campus who was working with humans.
TWELVE
Wren
LabelsattachedtoDamienconsisted of psychopath, murderer, freak, and more terrible names—but to me, he was simply perfect.
I knew I loved him from the moment he clasped Trixie’s gift around my neck. There was something pulling me to him in a way I couldn’t explain, but now I knew it was our bond.
I’d noticed the pull with all my mates, but the pull was different with each of them. There was something about Damien’s that was… obsessive.All-consuming.
Rowan insisted Damien take me to his room since he and Thorn were going to stay back and check the campus grounds. Damien didn’t need to be told twice.
Which was how I ended up naked underneath an equally exposed Damien in Rowan’s neatly made bed.
“My little bird.” He ran his length down my center, pressing the pierced tip firmly against my folds, spreading them gently. “So fucking pretty. So fucking strong.”
The heat whirring through my veins stuttered. “Strong? Damien, come on, you know—”
“Know what?” he growled, pushing himself inside of me with one rock of his hips.
“Ah!” I took him, greedily. My body wrapped around him like a vise, and my hands gripped his hair, pulling his lips to mine.
But he didn’t kiss me, he just rested his lips on mine.
