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CHAPTER TWO

NERI

Neri wondered why the scents surrounding her were different and despite her mind going into panic mode, she tried to catch her breath.

Calm the fuck down, Neri. You are fine. You are not vulnerable anymore. If you need to, you can fight.

As she repeated the words in her head, she calmed herself enough to think.

Every morning she woke to brewed coffee and the distinctive scents of the varieties of wood she worked with during the previous day. They always kept her calm whenever she awoke from the inevitable dreams.

But now, the scents were unfamiliar. And because she had, by choice, kept her interactions with others at a minimum, she couldn’t distinguish scents whether they were human or immortal.

She inhaled and when she still didn’t identify them; she used her other senses. There were footsteps, several strides, but they weren’t an immediate danger to her so she ignored them and tried to tell if anyone was in the room with her.

Neri heard fabric brush together and then scented the panther shifter. Dr. Stevens’ was right; she was a failure as a shifter if she couldn’t detect someone in the same room as her.

But something inside her chest tingled knowing he, Hunter, was near. She wasn’t sure she believed him when he called her his mate, but there was a lot about immortals she didn’t understand. And because she didn’t sense a threat, she opened her eyes.

Silver eyes similar to the ones she saw in the mirror every morning widened in front of her face and Neri’s body flooded with danger warnings. Before she realized she had moved, she found her back pressed in the corner of a room. A fucking glass room. Her eyes darted around, looking for an exit.

“Where did she… Oh?”

When her eyes glanced back to where she had been, she blinked as she took in the smallest woman she’d ever seen. She had to be around five foot even, but her curly brown hair that surrounded her seemed bigger than her actual body.

The woman didn’t seem to take offense that Neri had disappeared after opening her eyes because she held her hands out, palms up, as if she wanted to reassure her she wasn’t a danger.

I’ve never seen so many curls on anyone before. And they looked so soft.

Neri shook her head at such inane thoughts that kept circling around how tiny this woman was. The smile looked genuine and Neri relaxed, until someone walked into her peripheral view and she jolted backward, almost hitting her head on the glass behind her.

She blinked again and Hunter came into view. His hand prevented her from smacking her head against the thick glass. And that brought thoughts of her being trapped and scared they might use her for another fucking science experiment. She freaked out again.

Hunter’s mouth turned down in confusion and before he opened his mouth to speak, she beat him to it.

“Let me the fuck out of here. Now,” she growled.

Neri was hyperventilating. She hated being trapped, even in a house. It’s why she had built her house and her workshop with huge bay windows that allowed her to gaze out onto the mountainside whenever she needed to breathe.

For a long time, years even, she wasn’t able to sleep inside. Every time she smelled the damp earth or heard the birds in the trees, she understood she was free. But now, she was in a glass enclosure with no exit, and all her senses flooded her body, telling her to get out.

Hunter moved to touch her, and she slapped his hand away. “If you don’t open a door in the next five seconds, I will destroy everything in this room. Everything.”

The door hissed open. Without waiting, she darted past the others who were standing around and up the stairs and out the first door that looked like it led outside. She had passed them so fast she didn’t see their faces. Before she blinked, she found herself outside.

She might be a failure at everything else, but she was fast.

Neri stopped by a tall pine and placed her hand on the rough bark, allowing the bark to dig into her skin and ground herself. She took deep breaths, trying to get her heartbeat back to a normal rhythm and her breathing to slow. She centered herself enough to regain her senses, and after a few minutes, she breathed without taking big, gulping breaths.

Every time panic flooded her system without warning, her thoughts and reason scattered and her body forgot everything but flight. She had tried meditation and immersion therapy, but there were so many unknowns in life she hadn’t been able to tame her first reaction.

When her mind calmed, she blinked open her eyes and froze as she took in the huge mansion in front of her eyes, but it was the group of men and women in front of her that made her freeze.

Hunter stepped toward her, and she relaxed a fraction. But at the first sign of attack, she would run without Hunter.

Despite her recurring thoughts, something about Hunter called to her. Neri leaned toward him and breathed him in. After a few moments; she lay her head on his solid chest.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to feel trapped in Liv’s lab.”