Page 9 of Savage Mates (Ruthless Instinct #2)

Titus

Slipping into the shadows, I stopped long enough to look over my shoulder, longing to feed the intense hunger lurking in my system.

The human female backed away slowly, pressing her small hand against her lips.

All while a crackle of electricity drifted back and forth into the dense jungle.

“She saw us,” Zeus hissed.

“She felt us.” A deep rumble pushed up from Thor’s throat.

“She’s breathtaking.” The words whispered in my mind were met with low, rumbling growls from my companions.

The female wasn’t anything that we’d expected. Nor was the hunger gnawing at our loins. I didn’t need either lion to share their desire with me. I could easily read their minds.

How, I had no clue.

We were different species.

From different prides.

Different worlds.

Yet connected.

If you could call suddenly finding ourselves with the ability to shift into human form connected. The mental tethering had been annoying at first. We were all alpha beasts, dominating kingdoms prior to being captured and caged by men in uniforms.

After dozens of painful experiments, we’d suddenly become who we were today. Monsters.

There were creatures who’d fared much worse. At least we have the strongest abilities of both, easily able to shift when necessary.

Not that I’d wanted to.

However, I was beginning to see a benefit to doing so. Even now, my cock twitched with need, a stronger desire than I’d ever felt.

The yearning was powerful.

She turned around, rubbing her arm before starting to walk away. Yet as we’d done, she stopped, tipping her head over her shoulder. The breeze brought another strong hint of her scent straight to my nostrils. The hunger increased.

This time as she walked away, a slow growl dripped from my muzzle and I dragged my tongue across one side of my jowls to the other.

The noise of the failing engine had caught our attention hours ago, long before the plane had been sighted.

I glanced at Thor, sensing both anger and hunger. He remained perfectly quiet while scanning the dark perimeter. These weren’t like the others on the island, but all three of us had sensed danger.

Two of them were armed.

Just like the men we’d encountered in recent weeks.

Emotions were running high between the three of us. The strange crackle of electricity continuously sweeping through my fur was annoying as fuck. I’d never experienced vibrations so powerful. They’d caught me off guard.

We’d been twenty meters away from the old military compound when her scent had drifted toward us. Hitting us like a concrete block.

We’d been drawn to her as if by a magnet.

We’d encountered humans both on and off the island. None of the vultures had captured our attention like the copper-haired beauty. I could only imagine what her long hair looked like in the sunlight.

Hmm…

My human side was becoming annoying, longing to escape his cage. Not tonight. Although I had to admit that after seeing her, it was the first time I wouldn’t mind shifting into my human form.

“What the hell are they doing here?” Zeus snarled.

“They have equipment,” Thor added. “We need to remain vigilant.”

I certainly understood his caution. We’d been dumped here months before, left to fend for ourselves. While the area provided some food and shelter, both in animal and human form, there was no way off the island, no way to return to our former prides.

Not that Thor had one to go back to given his rise from the dead, his DNA scraped off a corpse and resurrected.

While all three of us had a basic understanding of the science used to alter our DNA in the first place, the realization that his kind had been extinct for over two hundred years remained fascinating.

Although he hadn’t taken the news well, almost disemboweling the first human he’d managed to get his claws into.

We were freaks of nature, but we weren’t the only ones.

We were also restless, angry, and forced to remain on edge given the arrival of another group of men with weapons.

Intent on killing us.

They’d brought friends with them, other beasts used for hunting purposes. They’d fared much worse in the devastating experiments performed years before, a failure of nature that had left them bloodthirsty and violent, mutated physically in horrific ways.

We were trying to pick them off one by one without getting shot by the men keeping them in cages.

“There’s something about the human female that is off,” I told them, something I’d felt when standing only a few feet away.

“You mean she’s dangerous.” Thor slowly shook his head. “You are right. I don’t understand why.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Zeus insisted. “We leave her and the others alone. They don’t belong in our world.”

Huffing, I trotted further away and deeper into the forest. Whatever the powerful draw to the human couldn’t matter tonight.

We were hunting.

We’d learned a long time before that humans were our enemy. I’d known that even before being captured, poachers all but destroying my pride. Killing my mate.

Thoughts of her drifted into my mind for unknown reasons.

Lions weren’t known for maintaining an emotional bond after death.

We didn’t mate for life nor would we be monogamous, yet seeing her bloodied, lifeless body had set the wheels in motion.

I’d slaughtered the poachers, but had fallen into a trap.

What surprised me about the human was that my instinct wasn’t telling me she was dangerous. Quite the opposite. It was telling me she was the one in danger.

The nagging feeling remained with me as we ran through the jungle. The night air was humid, creatures foraging in the dampness, but her scent lingered in my fur.

“We need to be careful heading to the camp,” Thor instructed.

Tell me something I didn’t know.

Since the first sightings of the men carrying weapons weeks before, we’d been on constant edge. There’d been one attack on our pride, but we’d moved from one side of the island to the other putting miles between us. At least the new site was much more secure.

Yet we’d stalked them, watching what they were doing.

And from what we could tell, they were using another group of lions against anyone who came to the island for business or pleasure.

We’d heard screams in the middle of the night after spotting boats seeking refuge from storms. We’d been near the shore when a body had washed up and had witnessed the marauders storming boats, stealing whatever they could find.

They were brutal men with malintent in mind. And the lions were being used as weapons against anyone daring to defy them.

While the lions were mutations, nothing like any other beast we’d seen in our natural environments, they were still victims in our minds.

Although the one who’d attacked our pride had been killed simply to keep our female lions and the newborn cub safe.

There was no doubt the marauders had witnessed the arrival of the group with the woman. While it wasn’t our place to interfere, we were well aware that without our interference, additional innocent lives could be lost.

Even if the new group had weapons. The small number of them were no match for the vicious group of men.

After the recent attack on our pride, this was about getting even.

We rushed through the jungle, closing the distance on the camp, the group of buildings more fortified than where we were staying.

Yet we knew our way in and out of the secured encampment.

The danger was ripe. The lions could alert the men of our arrival.

But one thing we did know about them from watching their behavior was that they drank themselves to oblivion night after night.

We would use that to our advantage.

There was no moon on this night, clouds intensifying the darkness. We moved together toward the group of buildings and the makeshift cages where the lions were being kept.

As soon as we were close, I heard voices and stopped.

“They have a fire going,” I told the others.

“And music,” Thor added.

I snorted, turning my attention to Zeus. “Their scents are ripe.” Meaning the lions, mostly female. We’d speculated that the scientists who’d abandoned us had also done so with an earlier group, lions where experiments had failed.

They were malformed as if having partially shifted then becoming lost in the transition. I’d felt their pain. We’d heard their anguished cries. They were hopelessly caught in bodies no longer belonging to themselves.

We couldn’t set them free. Just the opposite. They were even more dangerous to our pride given their unpredictability.

We crept closer, remaining in the trees. With billowing smoke from the fire the marauders had built and with the wind going in an opposite direction, it was possible our scent would be masked.

A single roar cut through the night sky, the sound creating a rush of adrenaline flowing through my body.

We moved even closer until we were able to see a group of men, almost all with bottles of booze in their hands.

Roars sounded off, echoing in the trees.

A loud crash.

Laughter.

If there was anything for us to be grateful about given the horrific experiments that we’d lived through, it was that we’d retained life experiences and memories from the scientist who’d helped alter our lives.

It had been a pleasure to gut him when the facility had been burned to the ground.

He’d provided us with enough knowledge and understanding of who and what we were to guide us into reasons for our hatred.

We’d believed we’d escaped, but months later we’d been rounded up, eventually brought to the island.

A series of growls drew our attention. The men were laughing, taunting the lions. Poking them with sticks.

“What the fuck is that?” Thor growled, his predatory stance an indication he was ready to lunge toward them.

I moved closer, risking being seen to understand what was unfolding. There was a female lion outside the cage, her four legs chained. She was thrashing, roaring in protest.