Chapter Thirteen

'I am so fucking screwed!' Angel thought as he forced himself to take one step at a time. And with every step taking him farther away from her, he could feel his beast feeling restless.

"Calm down, bud, we can't claim her in that way yet. By the way, it's great to feel you again," he muttered to himself.

Angel took a deep breath, feeling the urge to shift and run wild but he knew he dared not. He fought the urge, knowing what would happen if he did. And God forbid if one of the guards saw him, that would mean another agonizing day of getting himself tranquilised and tested on like some lab rat! He growled deep in his throat.

Untamed, primal power coursed through his veins, heightening the urge to go on a rampage. He tried taking breathing exercises, forcing himself to remember all the people raped, beaten, and shot just to get him to obey orders. The horrid memory fueled his anger but cooled the rebellious urge. A flurry of snow drifted in the air and his breathing sounded in his ears. It was freezing but he didn't feel the cold. His kind thrived in cold weather. In their primal form, they have double-layered fur that protects them from extreme cold and even in their human form their body temperature was higher than that of humans, making them somewhat immune. He suspected it was one of the reasons Antonio Rufus kept them here in Moscow.

After walking for about five minutes, the circular entrance of the underground dome came into view.

"Can I come with you? Spend the night with you?" Nadia's voice invaded his head. A sardonic smile tweaked the corner of his lips. He couldn't tell if she was acting or was for real because how could she not know the state of his accommodation here?

He found that quite impossible to believe. Daniel was quite good at reminding them what they were and he was quite loud about it. Nadia lived in the same house with them and had been here for close to twelve weeks. How could she not know? There are a lot of things about her that made it quite hard for him to fully trust her. Yes, she was his mate and seemed to lack control of her need of him just like he was with her. But to Angel, that was a different matter.

Her bond to him was natural and the sex between them would always be intense. If he recalled his father's teachings well enough, the attraction between them would get more intense as they continued to mate until it would be unbearable to be separated from each other. But it doesn't necessarily evolve into deeper emotions. And according to his father, it was even different with the Wulfblood clan. Alphas of a wulfblood clan possess the power to emotionally connect and choose another mate while other regular Weres have to wait to be given a second-chance mate by the moon goddess. It was believed they came from the line of a wolf who had blood ties with the moon goddess, hence the colour of their eyes.

His father, however, warned him it was more of a curse because rejecting their ordained mate could be deadly. He had been young then with the entire world at his feet and she-wolves were never in short supply. He suspected his father had warned him because of his lifestyle. If he had known they had but a short time left together, he would have paid more attention to his teachings. He would give anything now to hear his voice, giving him the lectures he had found exasperating and thought a waste of time back then.

He flinched when the memory of watching his father struck with an axe to the back of the head flashed in his head. He held his teeth tightly together, desperately seeking for any other memory to overshadow that one. He even welcomed the memory of being tortured till he passed out the first time the humans captured him.

Jerking the dome entrance cover open, he climbed in and banged the lid shut, knowing that would secure the lock.

Using the iron ladder to climb down into the 'wolves' pit' as the guards called it, he jumped down when he was a few feet to the concrete ground. The damning smell of despair and unwashed bodies assailed him. It was a mixture of a wet, unwashed dog, and human bodies stench, with body waste.

There were exactly fifty cells with iron bars, caging the captives and twelve of which were currently occupied.

His cell was the last to the left. Most of the Weres were sleeping but when he got to the one before his, the tall male Were lying on the custom made iron bed slowly raised his head to peer at

"Look who finally decided to come down to the real world," he said.

"Shut up, Kurt," Angel grunted. Not in the mood for the other Were's sarcastic needling. Kurt sat up, sniffed the air and shot up from the bed. He leveled an angry gaze at Angel as he unlocked his cell door and walked in.

Kurt walked to the sidebars, separating their cells to glower at him some more.

"I can smell sex and Miss Nadia Rufus! Have you lost your fucking mind!" he said with gritted teeth. Angel marched to join him by the sidebar, leaning close enough that their faces were almost touching. He gripped the iron bar, and snarled, "She is mine!"

"Damn it, Angel. Your actions will get us all killed!" Kurt fired back in a hushed tone.

"I told you, I'm going to get us all out!" Angel said through gritted teeth.

"That's what you have been saying for the past years. Give it up, Angel. You will only get yourself killed. And if they find out, you might get her killed as well!"

"Why would you say that? Why would they harm her? What have you heard?!" Angel fired back as rage surged through him. The thought of anyone harming Nadia brought his beast just skin-deep.

"Calm down, Angel … " Kurt eyed him with somewhat suspicious scrutiny. Angel knew he was doing a poor job in not aggravating his beast but he didn't care at the moment.

"I will calm down when you explain yourself!"

"Remember that day in Antonio Rufus' office, when she came to give him a message from her father?"

"Yes …"

"I smelt her fear…"

"I thought that was because of us…" Angel said, his eyebrows furrowed.

"No, I saw how she looked at her uncle. She was scared, Angel. The emotion wasn't geared towards us and why should it? We were just standing there like some fucking tamed, guard dogs!"

"I hate to state the obvious, bud, but look at us. Kurt, I will be scared of us and I'm not even human."

"Except she wasn't looking at us when she felt that emotion. She didn't want to be in that room," Kurt said meaningfully.

Angel frowned, shrugged, and replied, "She might be acting…"

"You don't trust her and you slept with her? Heavens, Angel!"

"She is mine, Kurt," Angel enunciated, keeping the incident in the experiment room to himself. Kurt sighed.

"Let's say you are right, and she was acting. If she rats you out, they will kill you, and where would that leave the rest of us? Look around you. We were fifty in number and now twelve. And some of us are not even entirely sane anymore," he said.