Page 21 of Marked

K endra

The door slid open to reveal an enormous room with a ton of scientific-looking equipment.

I couldn’t even hazard a guess at their function.

I’d never been very good at biology, or science in general if I was being really honest, but these were most definitely alien and far more advanced than anything I’d ever seen or heard of back on Earth.

But none of those held my attention, not even for a second. Instead, my eyes locked on the massive clear glass cage on the other side of the room. It wasn’t the cage itself that I focused on, though, but who was inside it.

Alaric.

He was here with me. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of dark-colored boots and his jeans.

And he looked fucking pissed.

His dark eyes centered on mine, and he pressed a single hand against the glass. I smiled softly, his presence comforting me a little even though he was caged just like I had been.

I stared at him for several more moments before my core cramped hard. I curled my pelvis inward, unable to cope with the sudden painful reminder of the arousal I had been fighting off for so long. The so-called heat that Alaric was supposed to help stop.

Bastard pressed a slimy palm against my forehead. Gross.

“Ahh. Just as we thought. The presence of her mate renders the heat-reducing medication useless, and her temperature is rising once more. Increased liver function is likely the culprit for the breakdown of the drug,” he said.

“Interesting. So just the sight of each other causes the progression of her heat then,” Attitude replied thoughtfully.

“It’s about time the military brought us the male Lupenii mate.

I swear they’re practically useless sometimes.

Having the male here for the first time will be incredibly novel and crucial to understanding the induction of the process of the Lupenii female heat,” Needle said.

He was the whiniest of the three, and I decided his voice reminded me of nails on a chalkboard.

Bastard picked up a metal bar off the counter and it expanded into a tablet-sized see-through screen. He swiped his fingers along its surface, and a spot in the center of the floor started to rumble.

A slat opened and a strange capsule emerged from beneath the ground.

The surface of the egg-shaped object peeled away, and I jerked backwards when I saw what was left.

There was a metal plate at the center, with four metal arms extending outward in the shape of an X.

At the end of each arm was a large circular metal cuff.

They appeared too large for my ankles and wrists, but I knew enough in my short time here on Ghengra that alien technology could change shape or do something else entirely.

Attitude swiped his finger across the central point of the metal rope that held my wrists captive, and they recoiled back into the small rectangular device he’d pulled out of his pocket some time ago. I rubbed my wrists, trying to chase away the feeling of the metal on my skin.

“Strip,” Needle commanded.

I looked around and tried to find an escape, but there was none. The door we’d entered from had slid shut, and a thick white metal bar had come down across it in what looked like a very effective lock. No one was coming in, and I certainly wasn’t getting out.

Needle held up his very ominous syringe, and I practically snarled back at him.

“You don’t need that,” I retorted. I glared at the floor as I knelt down and untied the laces of my boots, before angrily kicking them off.

I pulled my socks off next and shivered as my bare toes pressed against the cool white stone floor.

I unclasped my jeans and pushed them down over my hips.

When they fell to the floor, I kicked them off too.

I paused, standing there in only my panties and t-shirt.

I hadn’t put my bra back on that night when I’d tried to escape the Ghengrills, and I was more than aware of that fact right now.

My nipples hardened into tight little points, and Bastard cleared his throat. I cursed them out in my head, too terrified of Needle and his threats to actually voice them out loud. I grasped the bottom hem of my shirt and pulled it up and over my head as though I was ripping off a bandage.

“Underwear too,” Attitude said rather bluntly.

Alaric roared in his cage. I turned my head to look at him, and it was quite possible that he was even more furious than before.

With a heavy sigh, I pushed my panties down my hips until they fell to the floor. I gingerly lifted one foot and then the other out of them, leaving my clothes a crumpled mess on the floor. My arms wound around my chest, covering up my breasts as much as I could.

It was painfully obvious now that there was no out for me. There wasn’t even the slimmest possibility of escape. Alaric was trapped and so was I. There were three of them, and only one of me. I had no weapons and no hope of stopping whatever was about to happen.

“Get her in the scanner. I want to start recording the physical changes she’s going through as she fully enters her heat,” Attitude ordered.

I wanted to cry, and I turned toward the only one of them that had shown me any sort of kindness since I had met them.

“Will it hurt? Am I going to die?” I asked, capturing Attitude’s eyes with mine. For a split second, I thought I saw something that resembled sympathy there, and he shook his head.

“We aren’t going to kill you. You’re too valuable of an asset for that. We aim to study you, and we aren’t going to hurt you unless you force us to,” he answered.

Needle and Bastard came toward me, and I suddenly realized I very much didn’t want them to touch me.

“I’ll go. You don’t need to use force,” I squeaked, nervously taking a step back.

“I’ll put her into it,” Attitude said. He gently placed a hand on my naked back and guided me forward.

I tried not to flinch or make a sound as I walked toward the scanner.

Attitude slowly turned me around so that my spine pressed against the metal plate.

With relief, I realized that it was warm and not cold as I had expected.

He lifted one ankle and placed it in the center of the large circular metal band. Then he lifted the other.

“Put your wrists in the center of each one,” he directed.

I obeyed. I didn’t want to, but I did.

Once I was fully situated, another steel band wound around my waist. Attitude pressed a palm to the back of the metal plate behind me and the entire contraption started growing warmer. It began to tingle.

Electricity buzzed from the metal bands, expanding outward and circling my wrists like the handcuffs I’d worn not long ago.

After a second or two, the electricity seemed to expand and solidify into a force that served to imprison me.

I couldn’t get out. I could hardly even move. I was a captive once again.

The scanner began to rotate, facing me in the direction of Alaric’ cage. He looked back at me in horror. The look on his face was one of pure rage.

“Get your filthy Ghengrill hands off my mate,” he roared, and I swore his glass cage rattled.

“You sure that’s a high enough grade to keep him in there?” Bastard asked.

“It’s sturdy enough to hold the Uruk-Zuk, so it should hold him,” Needle answered.

“What an Uruk-Zuk?” I asked, desperate to distract myself with something.

“It’s a really big animal that lives here on Ghengra. Very strong. Something like your Earth bears, only about three times the size and much meaner,” Attitude answered, his voice oddly scientific.

Alaric pounded on the glass walls again.

“Maybe we should get it reinforced. This has never been tested against a male Lupenii before,” Needle said. There was a slight strain to his voice that I recognized as nervousness.

I recalled that they had mentioned that the military had never successfully captured a male Lupenii before, which meant that they’d likely never held one captive before.

Alaric was strong and now the only question that remained was whether he was stronger than whatever kind of beast an Uruk-Zuk was if either of us ever got out of here.

The scanner tilted backwards about thirty degrees to a point that still allowed me to watch Alaric in his clear cage. He was pacing back and forth now, the tension radiating off him in waves, but somehow, he seemed different.

His muscles looked denser, his entire frame somehow broader, as if his body was stretching, thickening with power. His breaths came out in heavy, uneven exhales, his fingers twitching, flexing like he was fighting something deep inside. And then, right in front of me, it happened.

With a low, guttural snarl, his body broke .

At least, that’s what it looked like. His spine arched, his shoulders snapped forward, and his skin rippled as if something beneath it was shifting, fighting to be free.

A sickening series of cracks echoed through the cave, bone rearranging, muscle expanding, his very form twisting into something impossible.

He staggered back against the cold stone wall, gripping it for balance as his hands contorted, fingers elongating into claws.

His face stretched, his jaw widening, his teeth sharpening into deadly points.

A wolf. A massive, terrifyingly real wolf now stood where Alaric had been.

His thick fur was pitch black, as dark as midnight. His deep blue eyes burned in the firelight, locked onto something unseen, something not me. And yet, I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. He shook himself once, a slow, deliberate motion, and the sheer size of him was staggering.

I had seen a lot of shit in my life. I had fought. I had survived. But nothing— nothing —had ever made me feel this small, this helpless , as the massive predator in front of me turned and kept pacing, his sharp claws clicking against the stone floor.

I had known there was something different about him, I just hadn’t expected this. Not this different!