Laughter rings out from down the hall and I ache to go see what’s amusing my little petal. But I know better.

Lilli is making the most she can out of captivity. Out of this new form of prison. She’s taught Lawrence to add coffee creamer to his hot chocolate packets for a richer drink, in the absence of milk. She and Dreyer have exchanged tips for “fixing” long hair in the absence of hair dryers and whatever the hell a round brush is. Lilli and Zamora tell dirty jokes over dinner, competing to see who can make more people gag and push their food away. Or choke on laughter.

I’m glad she’s happy. But she hasn’t been here long enough to understand the true horror of this place. Brennan hasn’t locked anyone in the breeding room since Lilli got here, nor have the scientists come down for more tests. Or sent us out into the playground to hunt.

So far, her time in zone X has been like summer camp. But eventually that will change, and I’m worried about what that will do to her, if she won’t accept my comfort. Or even my nearness.

Standing in the doorway to my cell, I watch as Lilli emerges from the lounge and heads down the hall with a bundle of fresh clothes tucked beneath her arm. She still smells like unscented shampoo from her last shower, but beneath that, she smells like…

Mine.

She smells like mine.

Days. It’s been days since I’ve touched her. Since she’s let me come close enough to even speak to her, without having to call out to her from across the room. Or, more often, from across the hall.

Forever, the beast insists. It’s been forever.

He’s not wrong, no matter how many days have actually passed. Every minute without her feels like forever.

“Hey,” she says as she approaches my cell, but the casual greeting is a lie. Her gait changes as she walks past me, arousal blooming in her scent. She still wants me, even if she won’t admit it to herself. She fights this all day long, every day, and beneath her easy smile—far below her bubbly laughter—that need is chipping away at her.

I know, because I can feel it.

I could make her happy, if she would let me. Not just in bed. In life. In what passes for life, anyway, here in the land of transparent walls and prying cameras.

“Hey,” I lie in response to her greeting, as if I’m not suffering just like she is. As if we’re not living this lie together. Drowning in denial.

She stares at the floor as she passes me, her steps stiff with the effort to resist me. I feel a little better, knowing this is as hard for her as it is for me. But not much.

She claimed the cell farthest from mine, but she doesn’t sleep well on her cot, and not just because we have no way of knowing when it’s actually night. Whether or not we should be asleep, according to human chronobiological function.

I hear her moan in her sleep. Sometimes she cries out for me, and my cock hardens instantly. Aching for her. But even worse than my lonely cock are my empty hands. I want to hold her. I want to stroke her thighs and run my hands through her hair, and intertwine her fingers with mine.

I want to be near her. I want to be with her. But she gives her presence to everyone but me.

I watch as she heads into the communal bathroom, and this time I can’t help myself. I follow her, silent on bare feet. When I hear her turn on the water, I slip into the outer chamber of the bathroom, where several sinks are built into the wall, opposite a row of three toilet stalls. Her clean clothes are folded neatly on the countertop. Her dirty clothes are piled on the floor beneath it.

The shower room is around the back wall. Out of sight.

The sound of falling water changes as Lilli steps beneath the spray, and though she’s out of sight, I know what she must look like. Water pouring over her head, rolling down her body. Rounding the generous curves of her ass.

My mouth is dry. I want to drink from her body. I want to go down on my knees and open my mouth so I can catch the drops that stream over the peaks of her breasts. I want to slide my hands around to cup her ass and pull her close as I lick every drop of water from her body, glorying in the fact that my erotic task is endless.

Instead, I pick up the shirt she left on the floor and bury my nose in it, breathing her in. Always ready, my cock stiffens instantly.

In the shower, Lilli moans. Her arousal blossoms fresh in the air, and I freeze. Can she smell me? Is that why she’s suddenly fragrant with need?

Take her, the beast growls.

Instead, I stay still. Silent. Simultaneously grateful for this moment—for how close I am to her—and frustrated by the wall standing between us.

Lilli moans again, and my cock strains against my zipper. I run my palm down the front of my pants, trying to relieve a little of the ache, but that only makes it worse.

The rhythm of falling water changes, and a second later, I hear a new sound. A soft, wet sliding sound, followed by another quiet moan.

She’s touching herself in the shower.

You’re a disgrace, the beast growls at me. And I understand his disgust. My mate should not need to pleasure herself, hidden away in the shower. I should be pleasuring her in the shower.

But she does not want me. Or at least, she does not want to want me.

So instead of intruding on her moment, I unbutton my pants and join her, unseen, content, at least for the moment, to find relief near her. Thinking of her. With utter certainty that she’s in there thinking of me.

I picture her as I stroke myself, visualizing her smooth, slick skin. The heavy weight of her wet hair, tangled around my fist. The taste of her lips—the warm depth of her mouth.

In my mind, her hands slide down my chest as she lowers herself to her knees. She grips my thighs as she steadies herself, making no effort to shield her face from the warm fall of water. She takes me into her mouth, licking the head of my cock. Sucking gently, her tongue pulsing against the underside as her head bobs. As her mouth clutches me.

I gather her hair in my hand so I can see her face. She looks up at me as she takes me deep, all the way to the back of her throat, and—

My groan is like the creak of a door in a silent house. Loud. Startling. I freeze with my cock in my hand as Lilli goes silent in the shower.

She heard me. A startled ribbon of fear threads through her scent. Then I hear her quietly sniff the air.

Arousal blooms in her scent again, stronger than ever. And to my utter shock, that wet sliding sound begins again.

She knows I’m here. She knows what I’m doing. But she isn’t shouting for me to get out. Knowing I’m here has only made her more desperate to find release.

Swallowing shame, I make peace with this strange truce and begin to stroke myself again, taking advantage of this compromise between what we both need and what she is willing to accept.

Her moans grow louder as those soft, wet sounds come faster. I match her rhythm, stroking myself furiously while I fantasize about her mouth—a place my cock has never been. When she gasps, sputtering in the fall of water as she wrings pleasure from her own body, I release all over the counter, one hand braced on the cold metal wall for support.

Lilli goes quiet, breathing deeply, and her rich scent thickens with the sweet fragrance of satisfaction. But that won’t last long.

We both know that.

As her breathing slows, the sound of falling water changes again, and I realize she’s standing fully beneath the spray. I hear a soft hiss, and a new scent floods the bathroom—artificial and floral—as she dispenses soap from the fixture on the wall. So I take a rag from the stack on the counter and clean up my mess. Then I leave her to finish her shower in peace.

“What happened?” Brennan demands, staring at me from her stool across the room. I’m cuffed by my wrists and ankles to my chair, even though there are several armed guards against the wall, ready to stun me at the first sign of trouble. They’re wearing long sleeves and gloves, as well as full facial shields, so that I can’t access a single bit of their DNA. “She hasn’t gone near you in six days.”

Six days. Feels like a lifetime.

“This morning’s analysis says you’re pumping pheromones into the air at an incredible rate. We’ve seen evidence that that has an aggravating effect on the other men in the lab, and—oddly—no effect at all on Lieutenant Dreyer. So what’s wrong? Why is Ms. Malone avoiding you, when she’s so obviously drawn to you?”

“She doesn’t want to be a lab rat.” Or conceive a baby in captivity. With me. Or at all, evidently. That knowledge makes me ache all the way into my soul, but I banish pain from my face, before she can see it.

“Well, that’s not up to her.”

“It is, though.” I turn my head to follow Brennan as she paces, stopping to consult something Justin points out on his tablet before turning back to me. “You can’t make her conceive any more than you could make Dreyer.”

“No, but you can. She’s ovulating.” Brennan snatches the tablet from Justin’s hands and holds it up so I can see some chart I have no idea how to read. “According to her biochip, she’s been ovulating for six straight days, as near as we can tell, and I hope I don’t have to explain to you that that’s not normal for a human woman.”

“I am aware.” I didn’t sign up for seven years of military service because I wanted to fight in someone else’s civil war. I did it to earn citizenship and all the perks. Including a parenting license.

“Then get the job done, or we’ll give her to someone else.”

“Give her—?” My hands curl into fists as I strain against my bindings.

“Careful, Captain. You start showing signs of aggression, and this discussion is over.” She nods pointedly at the guards, three of whom are now pointing their pistols at my chest.

Kill her, the beast demands. He doesn’t give a shit about the guards or the guns. Brennan is the enemy.

I focus on her as I try to filter my rage into something she’ll actually listen to. “If it’s my pheromones that are making Lilli ovulate, you can’t just give her to someone else. How would that even work?”

“We ran tests on all of you this morning, Captain, and what we discovered is that even though your pheromones have brought Ms. Malone into ‘heat,’ for lack of a better term, her constant state of arousal has had a similar biochemical effect on two of your men. The ones who’ve spent the most time with her, since she rejected you.”

“She didn’t reject me.” She just doesn’t trust herself around me.

“Either way, two of your men are starting to show low levels of the same pheromones you’re producing. Evidently triggered by the presence of a hyper-fertile woman.”

Hyper-fertile? So…more fertile than Dreyer, on the days she’s locked in the breeding room?

“Our current theory is that the species you were spliced with was highly driven to procreate. Which is no surprise, considering that they appear to have slowly gone extinct over the course of several thousand years. Under that kind of pressure, individuals who survived into the last few generations were probably predisposed through the process of natural selection to pass on their genes at any cost.”

“Meaning that those who survived, survived specifically because they were able to procreate?”

Brennan nods. “No matter the cost.”

Well, that certainly explains the beast’s instinctual drive to claim Lilli. To convince her to “take my seed.” To fuck her all day, every day.

The beast believes that the future of his species—of my species—depends upon it.

“And if you’re unable or unwilling to help us study this phenomenon, I’m going to give someone else a chance.”

“No,” I growl, and Brennan’s brows rise when she hears the change in my voice.

“Justin, note the drop in pitch. The gravelly, aggressive quality of his objection. That’s probably originating from the same laryngeal changes that allow for that thrumming sound…”

“I agree.” Justin taps on his tablet. “I still want to find out whether or not the other female subject displays any physical response to that sound.”

“How are you feeling otherwise? Other than the obvious?” Brennan tosses a clinical look at the erection I can’t seem to get rid of, with Lilli so close, yet completely out of reach. “Make sure you’re drinking plenty of water, to keep up with everything you’re losing in ejaculate.”

Which is her professional way of letting me know she’s seen me jack off several times a day, to keep from pinning Lilli to the nearest wall and reminding her that she wants me, and we both damn well know it.

“Twelve hours,” Brennan says, when I don’t comment on her voyeuristic habits. “After that, I’ll give her to Zamora or Coleman.”

Twelve hours.

I pace up and down the hallway with my fists clenched, inhaling deeply every time I pass Lilli’s room and catch a whiff of her scent.

I have twelve hours to knock her up, or Brennan’s going to give one my men the opportunity to fuck my woman.

They won’t do it. We were in the field together for years. We’ve killed for each other. We would die for each other. Yet…on the playground, during a hunt, when that switch gets flipped, I’d gut any one of them if they came near my kill. Even if I weren’t hungry. Because the kill is mine.

Because in the realm of the hunt, the beast takes over. That’s been true since the day we woke up with seams in our skin and voices in our heads.

Not voices, really. Instincts. Genetic memories and ancestral demands that can’t be ignored, during the hunt. The kill.

The beast feels the same way about Lilli. Somehow, my feelings for her have gotten all tangled up with the beast’s need to claim her, and I’m afraid that if he wrestles the controls from me again, this will not end well. For anyone.

And that’s just my beast. If Brennan locks Lilli up with Zamora or Coleman, their instincts might kick in. Their beasts might want to stake a claim.

They may not be able to control those drives. Either one of them might take her in a lust-fueled frenzy unaware of what’s even happening. And she might like that. Her body might, anyway, the same way it likes me.

But the truth is that it doesn’t matter whether she likes it or not. Whether she wants it or not. If they’re not able to see past that ancestral drive, in the moment, she won’t be able to stop them.

I can’t let that happen.

“You are aware that you’ve been pacing and growling for the better part of an hour, right?”

I spin to find Dreyer watching me, leaning against the door frame to the breeding room. “Did you find a clock somewhere?” I growl at her.

She shrugs. “Feels like an hour.” She glances at the last cell on the right, where Lilli is asleep on her cot. Where—occasionally—she still moans my name and presses her legs together, evidently dreaming of me. “Who exactly are you trying to protect her from? Because none of us would hurt her, and if the scientists come back, there’s nothing you can do to stop them.”

She doesn’t understand.

Several hours have passed since Brennan and her team cleared out, and I’ve spent those hours trying to figure out how to proceed. If I can get Lilli alone, she won’t be able to resist. She needs me as badly as I need her.

She’ll hate me afterward, but that’s better than letting Brennan lock her in with Coleman or Zamora. Especially if they can’t control their beasts.

What if one of them accidentally hurts her?

What if she does wind up pregnant with someone else’s child?

Neither of those scenarios—and they aren’t mutually exclusive—is fair to any of the parties involved. Whichever of them gets locked in with her would hate himself afterward, and she’d hate both of us.

If she has to get pregnant in this fucking lab, it’s damn well going to be by me. But that baby won’t be born here. I’ll die fighting before I let that happen. And if she still doesn’t want a child—I push aside the pain in my chest—she’ll be able to make that choice for herself once we’re away from this place.

But I can’t get us out of here in the next few hours, so the immediate problem is unchanged.

With one more glance at Lilli’s sleeping form, I turn and race back down the hall toward Dreyer, distantly listening to the card game keeping the rest of my men busy in the lounge. “May we borrow your room again?” I whisper.

Dreyer arches one brow at me, her arms crossed over her chest. “You can have the damn room. If she wants to be in there with you.”

“She does. She just won’t admit it.”

“That’s not for you to assume.”

“I’m not— We’re beyond that now, Dreyer,” I whisper. “If I don’t give Brennan what she wants, she’s going to lock Lilli in there with one of the other guys.”

Dreyer snorts. “And you’re afraid of the competition?”

“That’s not it. The way Brennan explained it, Lilli’s body is responding to pheromones my body is putting out. She’s basically in heat. And her scent has triggered pheromone output in both Zamora and Coleman. It’s nobody’s fault, but Brennan’s going to exploit the whole clusterfuck so she can breed Lilli, and if it’s not going to be me, it’s going to be one of them.”

“And you think that if anyone should get to breed Lilli against her will, it should be you? Is that what you’re telling me, Captain?” She blinks up at me with big brown eyes, and I groan. Dreyer’s always had this way of rephrasing things, when she doesn’t agree with me, so that I can hear just how ridiculous I sound. She calls it argumentum ad absurdum, but she laughs when she says that, so I’m not even sure whether or not she’s joking.

“No, Lieutenant. What I’m saying is that I don’t trust either Zamora or Coleman to be able to control themselves, locked alone in a room with a woman who smells…well, like sex dipped in chocolate.” To quote Lilli. “They haven’t had the past week to practice self-control like I have. And if Brennan puts one of those damn capsules in their arms… I can’t let that happen to Lilli.”

“Even if that means you have to happen to her?”

“Don’t you think that’s the lesser evil?” I growl, tired of debating something she clearly can’t understand.

Dreyer blinks up at me, and I know before she even speaks that she’s just going to turn my own question back at me. “Is that what Lilli would think, Captain? If you were to…oh, I don’t know…let her choose? As ridiculous as that probably sounds to you right now?”

I suck in a deep breath, trying to control my temper. “What would you think, if this were happening to you?”

“Captain, you seem to have forgotten how many times I’ve been stuck in that room with men I didn’t want to fuck. This has happened to me.”

“I have not forgotten that. Nor have I forgotten that Lilli spent two years in that very position at the Resort. This shouldn’t happen to her again,” I snap, and Dreyer looks horrified.

“Sorry. I didn’t realize. But that doesn’t really change anything. If Brennan’s going to make her do it, shouldn’t she at least get to choose who’s locked in there with her?”

I think about that for a second. “What would you choose?”

“Between you, Zamora, and Coleman?” She shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. I’d rip the balls off anyone who doesn’t hear ‘no’ when I say it.”

“I’m afraid she doesn’t have your skill set. And Brennan isn’t going to take no for an answer.”

“Well then, Captain, it looks like you have a decision to make. And the only advice I have for you is to keep the beast on a leash.”

“That is the plan.”

Dreyer heads into her room and grabs one of the pillows from the bed, as well as an open MRE from the nightstand. “Are you gonna tell Zamora and Coleman?” she whispers as she brushes past me into the hall.

I shake my head. “If this goes well, they never need to know what Brennan was going to do to them.”

Dreyer tosses her pillow onto the cot in the first empty cell. The one across from Lilli’s. “Good luck,” she whispers. Then she plops down on her cot, leaning against the wall, propped up on her pillow.