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"Pull up the trapdoor on the third level and activate the internal security trap The panel’s hidden by the trapdoor That will keep the bogeyht" No response "I hope a bear eats you"

A growl drifted upstairs

S, satisfied, she made her way to the third level The panel was exactly where he’d said it would be She opened it and had a look Her eyes widened This was serious security Once activated, this entire section of the aerie would be surrounded by lasers Anyone atteet one warning If they didn’t retreat, they’d find themselves cut up into neat little cubes of flesh and blood

Gruesome

But it made her feel safe

Fast and powerful in his leopard form, Clay wanted to run forever, but he stayed close to hoe and he knew every shift of air, every animal resident, every scent He’d be hoht now, he was the real threat

The leopard let out a short, sullen roar The forest creatures froze But he wasn’t hunting tonight, too angry at Talin She’d let him touch her at the bar, but he’d felt the tension in her body - as if she were bracing herself for violence That wariness was a constant insult and it infuriated hiht now, it threatened to break free and turn to a rage that

The danger was very realbecause he wasn’t like the others in his pack

It wasn’t his half-human blood There were other half-bloods in DarkRiver No, it was the fact that he’d grown up in surroundings incredibly wounding to a predator’s soul All those years of being trapped inside the stifling walls of aparts had taken their toll The animal wanted out, wanted control But ironically, he could act huuised by a veneer of silent calm

It had made Isla cry to see the leopard in him and because he had loved his mother despite her flaws, he’d buried the leopard, crippling his weren’t human and they weren’t animal They were both They needed to be both To be one but not the other, it was a kind of amputation Yet he had pretended to be fully human for most of his childhood

However, in the past decade, his leopard half had made up for lost tier and anih his bloodstream every second of every day Like the predator it was, the leopard didn’t see anything wrong in the cold logic of survival of the fittest It illing and able to kill without compunction And Clay didn’t particularly want it to leave

That was the real danger

Lucas had never said it Neither had Nate But both hn as the oing rogueto never becorowl, he clarace of his kind and stretched out on a high branch, froht in Talin’s bedrooht to touch her To go rogue was to give in to the anih a rogue’sof the person it had once been, soue attacked, it inevitably went after those who had once been Pack

Clay had been fighting his beast for years At fourteen, when he’d violently repudiated the inhuile ed him He had learned what he hat he could do, learned the taste of blood and fear Learned that part of hi locked up for four years had only enraged the animal further The day he’d walked out of the juvenile facility, he’d gone on a bloody hunt He had taken down three deer and it was through blind luck that they had been true anis Back then, lost and unaware of the uish between the two More to the point, he’d been too blinded by eighteen years of stifled blood hunger to care

Over tier The fact that he was a DarkRiver sentinel spoke to that control But it was inside of hireatest vulnerability, the trigger that could push hie, affection - it was all tangled up in a caustic stew Each tiue But today she had leaned into him and that had had an even , violent sexual attraction

He’d been drawn to her as a man is drawn to a woman from the instant she’d walked back into his life, but with her small act of trust, that attraction had ratcheted up into a craving that scratched at his gut, made his cock hard with the need to claim, to brand But he knew Tally She had been sexually betrayed by the very people supposed to protect her For her, trust and sex were incoht equal her last straw

Then there were the other men So ain, the sound vicious

Why? Why had Tally sold herself so cheap?

Lost in the coils of sleep, Talin frowned, turned, then settled back down A few ain

Fear twisted the sleeping peacefulness of her face, shuddered over her body, locked around her throat Gasping for air, she sat straight up She didn’t scream She never screa , as she examined every corner of her well-lit room Only when she was satisfied that no one had opened the trapdoor, that no one had entered while she’d been sleeping, did she get out of bed and pull on a cardigan over her sweatpants and tank top co into the bathroom off the room, she threw some water on her face, then tucked her hair behind her ears before walking back out The bedside clock told her it was four aht a terrified child’s bedroo her head to clear the vile memories, she went to the security panel and turned off the lasers She wanted a cup of hot chocolate Maybe the Larkspurs hadn’t been able to banish her demons, maybe she hadn’t let them love her like they had wanted to, but they had helped her soht sleeper - even with Talin’s quiet creeping about, she’d noticed Those nights they had spent sitting in the kitchen drinking hot chocolate were some of the best memories of Talin’s life after Clay Before, he had been the only good thing, the only wonderful thing, in her life

Pulling open the trapdoor, she glanced down Clay had left on a light, but she couldn’t see him from where she was She made her way down on silent feet Once she reached the bottom, she scanned the room There were a couple of cushions on the other side, below the , but the room was otherwise empty She realized Clay must have bunked downstairs She frowned The cushions on the first level were huge but he was a bigon those Maybe he had a collapsible le" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>