Then Mr. Zig-Zag sat on a chair in the corner of the room, preparing a syringe. “Oh, you’ll love the way we’re going to treat you.”
Fuck. They planned to keep me drugged. The first flutters of fear rose in my stomach. I didn’t want to lose control. The thought that I wouldn’t be able to defend myself made something hollow open in my stomach.
The other guy, the one who still hovered over me, rubbed his hand over my thigh. His touch made my skin crawl, even through the scrubs.
He was close to me, but cautious, not bringing his face into striking range. I couldn’t slam my forehead into his nose or sink my teeth into his throat. I was no vamp or shifter, but I didn’t need to be something supernatural to be mean.
How the hell was I going to get out of this? I looked around frantically. There was a stained mattress in the corner of the room. I sucked in a breath. Did they have other girls in here?
I thought I’d killed these guys. Fury at myself washed over me. How many other women might they have hurt because of my failure?
“It’s going to be such fucking joy to turn you into a breeder,” Mr. Handsy promised me as his buddy Zig-Zag strolled over with the syringe.
I struggled harder, the legs of the chair rocking and scraping across the linoleum. But no matter how much my fingers tensed, I couldn’t move my duct-taped wrists. Zig-Zag kneeled behind me, out of sight, and then there was a brutal pinch as the syringe went into my arm. Whatever he injected burned through my vein.
“Lucky us.” Zig-Zag stood up. “We caught ourselves a Hunter bitch.”
“Unluckily for you,” a voice said from the doorway, “you also caught yourself a Fae bitch.”
The world went blurry around me as the three big Fae men moved into the room. Duncan was flanked by those two enormous black dogs, then they slunk into the shadows and seemed to disappear. I frowned at them. Was I hallucinating them? Were they real? The world seemed to be growing fuzzy.
The gratitude and relief that spiked through my chest at the sight of them could not be real.
Tiron strode across the room, his eyes widening as he took in the syringe. “They drugged her.”
Zig-Zag scrambled to his feet. “Who the hell are you?”
Tiron slammed him against the wall. His eyes were full of protective fury. Aw, that was sweet.
Tiron pulled him away, then slammed him into the wall again, so hard the drywall cracked. His voice was a growl: “What did you give her?”
“My own special blend,” Zig-Zag said, and then Tiron punched him across the face, once, twice. The man fell back against the wall, his eyes fluttering closed.
“Restraint, Tiron!” Duncan scolded him.
Handsy pulled a gun out of the waistband of his jeans, cocking it as he pressed the cold metal to my temple.
I should have been terrified, but I laughed at the cold tickling against my temple. It all seemed so surreal right now. The world tilted.
The third Fae moved so fast he was a blur—was that my imagination or was it real? Because he didn’t move like anything human. A gunshot split the room and splintered through the wall. The dogs snarled. Handsy screamed before he was whipped behind me, out of my line of sight.
The third Fae knelt in front of me. He rested his hands lightly on my knees. His face was careful, worried, and that made me want to laugh too. He looked so serious, and I tried to press my lips together, looking just as serious as he did.
“Look at me, Alisa. How are you feeling?”
“Are you even real?” I asked him. “My Faerie? Do I have a guardian faerie instead of a guardian angel?”
His eyes widened. Tiron tried to cover a laugh, turning it into a spectacularly unconvincing cough.
“If you’re real, I’m thrilled to see you,” I said. There was something that had worried me, something I was forgetting, and I frowned, trying to remember it. “Oh! Could you go see if there are any girls in the house? I tried to stop these guys before, but I failed. I hope they didn’t hurt anyone.”
The thought made my throat close up, the humor fleeing.
He studied me with curious eyes. “Fight their drugs, Alisa. I’ll go check the house.”
He squeezed my knees as he rose. For some reason, I didn’t mind him touching me.
“She’s high as can be,” Tiron said.
“This is another part of human culture you made yourself familiar with, didn’t you?” Duncan grunted.
“Cut her loose,” the lead Fae said as he went to the door. “I’m going to check the house.”
“Still following her orders, huh?”
“Shut up, Duncan.”
Duncan grunted. “I like her better tied up.”
“Why are you such a jackass?” Tiron asked as he knelt behind me. “She must have been scared. Have a heart.”
Cold touched my skin—metal, blade—and then my hands came apart. I shook out my shoulders as the tension released.
“You don’t realize yet that she doesn’t have one,” Duncan said. “You’re wasting your sympathies.”
Tiron knelt in front of me, cutting the duct tape that secured my ankles to the chair. Restless tension swept through my legs in relief at being free, and I stood, only to feel my knees crumble beneath me.
He caught me easily, sweeping me up into his arms. I breathed in his pine scent as he held me against his powerful chest. He carried me as if I weighed nothing.
“You’re all right,” he murmured in my ear, and his voice was low and sexy, a purr that I could feel through my body, into my bones. It made me want to relax into him and sleep.
But it wasn’t for myself that I was afraid, and I struggled to stay awake. “The girls…”
He looked down at me, a frown indenting the skin between his deep green eyes. “You’re nothing like I expected, Alisa.”
“The house is empty.” The leader came back, frowning. “But there are recent signs someone was contained here against their will.”
“Human problems,” Duncan said shortly. “We have our own problems back home, remember?
Wait. They wanted to take me back home. What was wrong there? I tried to ask, but the words came out slurred. Tiron gazed down at me with worried eyes.
“Let’s get her somewhere safe to sleep this off,” the other one said, still standing in the doorway. “One of us will keep a watch on the house. See if anyone comes and discovers the bodies, follow them if they do.”
Relief flooded my chest. I didn’t want to just abandon anyone who might need us. I tried to say something, but by the time I managed to form the first word, I couldn’t have imagined the end of the sentence. I frowned at them all, my head aching as I tried to think.
“Don’t try to talk,” Tiron murmured in my ear. The world was blurring, getting darker at the edges, as he carried me through what felt like endless rooms, as if time were slowing. “We’ve got you now, Alisa.”
Meaningless promises from people I didn’t know. And yet as the walls seemed to fall away around me, as the world seemed to fall away, I felt safe in his arms.
Then darkness washed over me, and there was nothing else.
Chapter Nine
Raile
“Where’s my bride?” I asked Faer as soon as his blank-eyed human servant showed me into his study.