Page 30 of Bad Blood Alpha

Chapter 11

Kira took a long, hot shower in the giant bathroom, and then changed into an oversized t-shirt she found in the guest room. It said, Some days I have to tell myself, it’s just not worth the jail time.

Ha. She wondered who that belonged to.

She puttered around, opening drawers and closets, until she finally had to admit it: she was scared to go to bed.

Not because she was afraid of the crew—they were definitely dangerous, under the right circumstances, but after what she’d seen, she was pretty sure none of them were going to attack her in her sleep.

Of course, she still concealed a knife under one of the bed pillows, and a gun under the other one. Just because you weren’t feeling paranoid didn’t mean someone wasn’t out to get you.

It was the voices she was avoiding. They always came when she was on the edge of sleep. Other times too, like in the truck—but most often, they crept into the gray place between sleeping and waking, trapping her there. She’d begun to dread going to sleep. But she was so tired…

Maybe Flynn’s territory magic would keep them out. That would be heaven.

She wished she could go upstairs and get drunk on Alexander Grant’s liquor with Flynn. But the mood he was in, she was pretty sure he’d try to throw her over the balcony.

Stubborn, moody lion.

Fatigue pulled at her, dragging her toward the bed. She could at least lie down.

She slid between the soft sheets, stifling a moan of ecstasy. This was the most comfortable bed she’d ever been in. Maybe she’d just close her eyes…

The visions came screaming back, clearer than ever before. This time it wasn’t just voices. She saw a young woman strapped to an upright chair in the middle of a room that looked like Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. The walls were stone, like the castle she’d grown up in, but lined with modern computers and lab equipment that looked out of place in the medieval-like setting.

And somehow made it even scarier.

Tubes and wires connected the woman to the machines. Her eyes were wide with terror and rage, her face contorted with her screams. But her mouth was…

Oh, god. It was sewn shut. The screams were inside Kira’s head.

Help us! You have to help us! You can’t let us die like this…

The perspective moved, so that she could see what was behind the woman, in the back of the lab. A huge cage, with a shadowy misshapen creature…

A dragon. Black as night, blending into the shadows. He was screaming too, but his jaws were wired shut with some kind of muzzle and he couldn’t make a sound. Neither of them could make a sound, and they were screaming, screaming, screaming…

Dimly, Kira felt something inside her head go “pop.” She went cold all over, as if she’d been plunged into an ice bath, and then her back arched and her body seized.

But the screaming wouldn’t stop.

Flynn woke abruptly. Something was wrong.

He’d fallen asleep in the leather chair in his office again.

With the whiskey bottle dangling from his fingers. Again.

Half the time, the only way he could sleep was when he was drunk. But with his shifter metabolism, he could never get quite as drunk as he’d like to.

That sense of wrongness sliced through him again, and he sat up, all his senses on alert. Was it enemies in his territory? The magic let him sense when people crossed onto his land, and whether they were friend or enemy.

He went still, listening with his inner senses.

No. It wasn’t that.

But something was wrong.

Instinctively, he reached for his weapons. The ones he’d worn tonight were still in the back seat of his truck cab, where Kira had dumped them, but that was no problem.