Page 131 of Tamed By Her Touch

“Yes, I suppose so,” she said, her voice coming out higher than usual.

She picked up a glassberry and shoved it into her mouth as she looked away. Their research was getting entirely too personal.

For several seconds neither of them spoke. Then Clair cleared her throat and tried to change the subject.

“So what else happened today?” she asked. “Did you and Sendar find anything else?”

Kaelus’s expression darkened alarmingly.

“I do not trust Sendar.”

Clair swallowed the berry.

“That makes two of us. There’s something creepy about that guy.”

“He took me into an old section of the Blood Archive,” Kaelus said, choosing another fireplum.

“How old?” Clair asked.

“Nearly a thousand years. Possibly older. There is a containment ward there.” He took a bite of plum.

Clair frowned.

“For what? What were they containing.”

“Males infected with the old savage form of the virus,” Kaelus said.

He described the room—the dark stone walls, the ancient medical equipment, the massive black restraint chairs bolted into the floor with cuffs designed to hold violent males who could no longer control themselves.

Clair shivered.

“That sounds horrible.”

He nodded soberly.

“It was.”

“Do they still use it for anything?” Clair asked.

Kaelus shook his head.

“Sendar said they don’t, but the restraints still function.”

Clair frowned.

“Why would anyone care enough to keep them functional?”

“I asked the same thing,” Kaelus said.

He told her Sendar’s explanation that the old ward had been preserved for historical purposes, then his tone changed as he recounted the conversation which followed.

Clair listened in growing disbelief.

“He said the Titus Four men were chemically enslaved by their women?”

He nodded.

“In essence.”