Page 21 of Hunted Mate (Stalked Mates #1)

C alista

The Library at New Orleans is the greatest repository of literature on the supernatural and paranormal in the world, so I am told, repeatedly, by a very proud librarian who has me by the hand as she leads me through the area of the house dedicated to books.

“I heard what happened to your research, and I am so sorry,” she says. “It must have been a terrible loss.”

“It was unpleasant,” I say, deciding to go for an understatement because right now I am surrounded by towering stacks of books that go all the way up to the ceiling in many places, and I am sure contain so much more information than anything I ever had in the basement.

I reach for a book Origin of the Vampire Species , and open the cover.

Before I can so much as read a single word, there is a light prick on the back of my neck. Barely a scratch. I swat at it, thinking some nasty fly has mistaken me for a meal.

Within seconds, I am fading to black.

I wake up in a cool white room, lying between crisp white sheets. My body aches and feels like it is on fire, but there are no flames. When I look down at myself, everything seems proper and familiar.

The scream I let out is one of fear and pain. It doesn’t sound like my voice. It sounds raw, like I’ve been screaming already, but I don’t remember it. What the fuck is going on?

“Be quiet,” an officious nurse says, bustling in. “You’re fine.”

“I don’t feel fine. Why am I here? What happened? Where’s Gray?”

“The doctor will answer all of your questions soon enough,” he says, taking my hand and putting a blood pressure cuff around my arm.

I let him do it, because I assume medical care is better than not medical care, but it still doesn’t feel good.

The hot sensation is starting to subside, and the aches are sort of working themselves out as they move.

“What happened to me?”

“The doctor. Will answer. Your questions,” the nurse repeats firmly, as if I’m inconveniencing him by asking anything, as if you’re just supposed to accept waking up in a weird bed that’s not yours.

“Where’s the doctor, then?”

“Coming soon.”

“What happened to nice nurses?” I mutter the question to myself.

“They’re gone,” he says. “They’re all gone, and we’re back. The nurses who inexplicably choose to be nurses even though we dislike people and would rather they actually die.”

“What?”

“Hm?” He looks at me with a nobody will ever believe you if you tell them I said that expression.

I fall silent. Something is deeply wrong. I let the nurse take my vitals, and then he leaves the room.

I get up. Right away.

I don’t feel sick. I don’t seem to be injured. Those are two very concerning things given I seem to be in a hospital. Usually if you wake up in a place like this, you’re missing a bit of something, or something has gone really wrong in some way.

If anything, I feel better than I have in a long time.

I feel strong. I feel incredibly fucking strong.

And I feel relaxed, too. I’ve been stressed for a really long time, but that low-key anxiety that had started to feel like my personality isn’t there.

I stretch, finding myself wearing a white hospital gown.

I wonder what happened to my clothes. I wonder what happened in general.

I don’t remember anything since getting to New Orleans. That’s suspicious.

I stretch again.

Biiiggg stretch.

As I get up, I notice I just did it on all fours. Naturally, I just put my hands out in front of me, braced against them, and arched and stretched my back until I felt better, then I stood up as naturally as if I always did things that way.

“Huh,” I muse to myself. “That’s different.”

I open the door. It’s not locked. Feels like it should be, but I guess they thought I’d stay where they left me.

I check the label on my door. I’m expecting to see my name, Calista Hart. Instead, it’s a much less personal moniker.

Specimen 001.

Since when am I a specimen?

Looking around, I come even more to the conclusion that this does not feel like a hospital.

Hospitals are busy and have a very particular smell.

It’s not even a private hospital that might be quieter, because those are well decorated and soothing to be in.

This feels more like a laboratory. I can almost feel unseen eyes on me, assessing me. Cameras, maybe.

“You’re supposed to be in your room.”

The nurse returns. I look at him properly this time. He’s quite tall, quite brawny. His hair is cut in a short crop style. He has heavy brows and a slight accent that hints at an Eastern European origin.

“Oh, me? In the room?” I feign ignorance. “Can you tell me why I’m in the room again? Also, where are my clothes? And where’s a phone?”

While I am asking these questions, I am being pushed firmly back into the room, and the door is being shut in my face. This time, I hear it lock.

Oh, no.

I should probably be more worried. I might actually be more worried.

Sometimes you don’t actually know how worried you are about something until a lot later, I’ve noticed.

Sometimes, you think you’re fine, and then six months later you start twitching and can’t stop for two years.

Maybe this is one of those kinds of fine.

Hard to say.

I pace around the room, noticing that I might not be quite as unscathed as I hoped. My bones are protesting, all the way to the marrow. They’re sort of aching in ways I didn’t know bones could hurt. Like I’ve been punched very specifically on the inside only.

Was I in some kind of accident? Where’s Gray?

Does he know I’m here? Is he the reason I’m here?

Did he betray me somehow? He is a filthy arsonist I barely know, after all.

You meet a guy, he burns your life’s work to ashes, then turns into a wolf and you think that’s all he’s going to get up to, but maybe then he also gets you incarcerated in some kind of medical facility?

There are too many questions and no answers and no visual cues. The floor is white tile, and the walls are just plain sheetrock with plaster and paint, and the door is… yep, still locked.

I try the handle, jiggling it to see if I’m just doing it wrong. I push and then I pull, to see if that’s the problem. It’s not.

You have to check, though.

I start to think about ways out. Maybe there’s a handy Mission: Impossible -style air vent? I do find a vent, but I could only go through it if I were the size of a small cat, or maybe a large rat. That’s the only other entrance or exit to the room besides the door.

Or… is it?

I’m not in construction, but I watched a reel once where a dog fell through a wall by mistake while playing. I start tapping the wall, listening for spots that feel more hollow, and others that have a more solid sound. I am not trying to hurl myself into a chunk of wood.

Once I think I’ve worked out where the studs are, I throw myself at the sheetrock next to the door. I use all my strength, figuring I’ll either get out, or maim myself trying. I’m in a hospital-type place either way.

The wall crumbles like an outdated social norm, and in seconds I am back inside the hallway. Also white. Also very little in the way of decoration. The white gown they put me in doesn’t give me much in the way of gravitas, but I remind myself who I am.

I am Calista Hart. I am an important woman, and when I want to get out of a secret laboratory where I am being held against my will for reasons that have not yet been made clear to me, I escape.

I walk briskly through the halls, looking for an exit sign. They’re legally required, and most places, even illicit laboratories holding heiresses hostage have usually been built by a contractor who knows it’s not worth the fines to not have the proper safety signage in place.

I have friends who have suffered the consequences of inadvertently trapping people in a maze with no out sign when they tried to pioneer a new kind of open office concept where actually all the cubicles went floor to ceiling.

It was deemed a fire hazard, and was terrible for productivity because the employees were always getting lost. Some of them worked out interesting ways to navigate the maze, Hansel and Gretel style, but using paperclips or similar.

I don’t find a door to the outside, but I do find a big glass observation window that looks into some kind of clean laboratory. All the workers are wearing big blue hairnets and puffy suits, the kind you wear when whatever you are touching is something that absolutely should not be touched.

I’m wondering how afraid I should be. This doesn’t feel good, but also surely Gray wouldn’t let anything very terrible happen to me.

Where is Gray? Third time I’ve asked myself that, and third time there’s been no obvious answer.

Gray

“Let me out!”

I don’t know that anybody has ever said those three words and had their captor decide to actually let them go, but it’s a reflex to say it anyway.

I was getting the better of Karl until he pulled a stun gun out of his pocket and shoved it into my neck. A hundred thousand volts to the dome is pretty effective at destroying resistance.

I passed out the second time he used it.

And I woke up down here, in the dungeon my father denies he has.

I don’t know how much time has passed, but I bet it’s too much. Damnit. I trusted my father, and that was a mistake.

I rattle the bars of my cage in fury, knowing that somewhere out in the world my mate is scared and in the custody of ruthless pack scientists who are using her like a guinea pig, not caring about what she wants, or whether she lives.

She could be dying right now, agonized and afraid, calling my name, and I am not able to respond because I have been put away like a pet fucking dog in a crate.

“Easy,” Karl says. “You’re only working yourself up.”

“Please let me out,” I ask through gritted teeth. “She needs me.”

“ She needs me ,” Karl mocks me in a high-pitched tone.

“Dude, you’re forty, you can’t talk like that.”