My first warning was a faint buzzing that wasn’t the insects. It was a drone. The second was the almost-silent crunch of boots behind me.
I forced myself to turn as if I were going back to camp, ignoring the two humans sneaking up behind me.
A sting hit my neck, sharp and familiar.
Then, Tourmalyke spread through my veins.
I let my muscles go loose, my body collapsing forward. My magic and instincts snarled in protest, but I shoved them down, pretending the world went black around me.
Anger, fear, and anxiety came through my bonds from my mates as they realized the plan had fallen into motion.
Hands grabbed me roughly, lifting and carrying me with little care.
My head bobbed up as if I were being shaken rather than carried, and voices whispered around me.
“Check the asset’s pulse,” a man muttered.
“Dude, it’s normal,” another answered.
“Impossible.” My wrist was grabbed roughly before fingers pressed to my throat. “Damn. It is normal. Let’s hurry and take her in before she wakes up.”
“Should we give her another dose?”
“Yeah. Just in case.” A sharp prick hit my neck before they argued about my pulse again.
I counted the steps and turned to the facility, but Worthy manifested quietly as they took me. He reported directly to Slater.
When we entered the facility, it smelled of disinfectant. My rough estimate was that it took them two to three miles to make it there from our camp.
They processed me in with scanners.
I stayed limp.
Tourmalyke burned against my skin as they dosed me three more times, but it did nothing.
Eventually, they strapped me to a metallic table in a small chamber. The Tourmalyke restraints hummed with dampening energy.
When the door shut and footsteps faded, I cracked one eye open.
“Fuck this place,” I muttered.
It looked too much like the real lab I’d been held in before, with the same sterile surfaces, gray walls, and humming machinery. The difference was that the air wasn’t saturated with tourmalyke the way that facility had been. My veins didn’t feel iced, and I could still feel my matebonds. They were fuzzy, but they were there.
They buzzed like a faraway signal instead of dead silence.
I had to assume it was because this facility wasn’t built with the magical energy-sucking crystal like the one I’d been held in.
I pulled carefully at the restraints. They were strong, but I could easily break them if I needed to.
A camera watched from the upper corner of the room. The red recording light blinked.
A grin curved my mouth as Worthy sent me an image of Slater finding the facility on his tablet and locking in on the room I was in.
He’d hacked the feed already.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” I murmured to my chaos manifestation in awe as Slater’s magic sparked through my irises.
“Worthy!”he hissed, his tongue flicking out as he flapped his wings to stay level in front of my face.
