Page 53 of Cruelly Bitten

Whoever had hacked the system had allowed the Blessed Ones to escape their cages, as well as over a dozen other research subjects.

Mira and the others were still deep underground, chasing them all down.

I’d left them to clean it up since it was their faulty systems that had allowed this mess to occur. Because if a lone hacker could wreak this much chaos, then the team who’d built this facility deserved to learn from their own ineptitude.

My final words to Mira had been “Find me when everything is in proper order to house our experiments. Only then will we wake Fen.”

The last thing we needed was the unequivocal father of the lycans to add to this catastrophe.

“My liege,” Michael started, interrupting my thoughts. “I?—”

“Take my laptop down to be inspected and bring me back the scanner. If Ismerelda has a chip, I’ll find it and we can go from there,” I told him. “But I still want proof that this is Damien.”

Which perhaps the chip would demonstrate.

However, I highly doubted we would find anything. Mostly because there hadn’t been any notice that Ismerelda would be taken here. Implanting a chip required foresight, and I very much doubted anyone had seen this coming.

“Of course, my liege,” Michael replied, bowing deeply. “I shall return.”

He left without another word, but I caught a whiff of his satisfaction on the wind.

I ignored the irritating scent and rotated toward a far more intriguing one—Ismerelda’s blood.

She had moved to brace her back against the wall, her legs tucked at an awkward angle. Tears glistened in her pretty eyes, her jaw tight.

A fighter, I thought, compelled by the sight of her refusing to let those treacherous emotions fall despite the agony she clearly felt.

I took in her form, noting the scrapes again on her knees and elbows. She had more on her forearms, but the primary source of her sweet fragrance still came from between her thighs.

That drew my attention to her legs, the beast inside me longing to spread them and devour a splendid meal of pussy and blood.

Only the bruising on her lower leg momentarily distracted my inner predator, drawing out a growl of a different nature. Primal. Vicious.Furious.

I crouched before her to get a better look and noted the bruising on her ankle. Her other blemishes were clearly from landing on a step or perhaps on this cement platform. They were smaller. Round. Blistered with blood.

But this one… this one was longer. With imprints digging into her skin.Imprints that resemble a boot print…

“What happened here?” I demanded, my fingers flexing with the need to touch her delicate skin and trace the foreign marking. It was definitely going to form a ghastly bruise, marring her otherwise flawless features.

Only I can mark her,I thought.And never like this.

I blinked, the reaction so deeply profound that I barely recognized my own mental voice.

But Ismerelda didn’t give me time to reflect as she replied, “Michael wanted to remind me of my place in this new world.”

My jaw clenched. “What?” Oh, I’d heard her just fine. But I needed her to say it again.

She blew out a breath. “Michael used my ankle as a reminder of my mortality. Or maybe it was his way of proving his own immortality.” She lifted a shoulder and winced. “The last time I saw him, he was human. And I thought he was dead. I guess he didn’t appreciate my curiosity.”

I reached for her ankle, giving in to my need to touch her.

And almost instantly regretted it when she flinched away from me with a hiss that ended in her clamping down on her lower lip.

Another hint of her essence warmed the air, taunting my taste buds and making me long to lick the blood away from her mouth.

But a stronger part of me needed to fix her.

To heal her.