Joss squinted, but the room stayed dark.

And itchy.

She scrunched her nose and felt more scratches there. Through the fog still clouding her mind and turning her stomach, she realized she wore a hood.

She took another long moment to remember why she wore a scratchy, dark hood.

She’d been dosed with something. Joyce stabbed her with a needle and pumped her full of drugs. She couldn’t remember making it out of the bathroom at The Roost to… wherever she’d been taken.

Okay. Time to take stock. Hood, firmly on. Toes and fingers? Wiggling. Arms and legs bound together. Badger? Locked down tight with barely a brush of fur against her mind.

Fudge.

No. Fuck. The word was called for in her current state.

“Are you sure this is the one? She’s as rare as you say?”

Andre. She’d recognize that deep baritone voice anywhere.

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” Joyce snapped. “It’s all over her registration. Plus, I’ve seen her shift. I know what she is.”

Her first kidnapping, and already she was failing. Checking on her captors should have been her first thought.

“Yeah, but these people want trophies. You can bag a bear on any fucking corner these days.”

“Never seen another like her. Surprised the shit out of me when she started hissing. Kinda adorable, actually.”

Joss wanted to scoff. Adorable? She’d bled Joyce in at least five different places. Her ex’s family called her a nasty badger for a reason and only partly because they were intolerant jerks.

“And you’re sure you left everything where I told you? Our friends won’t wait forever.”

There was a rustle of clothing followed by teeth ground together. “Yes. The address was left at my place. They’ll be running in the opposite direction from us.”

“Good. I won’t have this go south.”

“Shut up,” Joyce hissed. “She’s awake.”

“Motherfucker. You could have said something!”

The hood was ripped away from her face with a savage jerk that took a few strands of hair with it.

Joss squinted at the sudden light. It hurt. Side effect from whatever she’d been injected with, maybe, but the brightness pierced her like hot rods entering through her eyes and exiting the back of her skull. She wanted the darkness again almost as badly as she needed to get her bearings.

Andre stood closest with the black hood dangling from his fingers. Joyce perched against a counter with a smug smirk on her face.

Joss inhaled and nearly gagged on the sterile stench of cleaning products that barely hid the underlying odor of animals.

Cute. They’d brought the shifter to a veterinarian’s office.

Smart, she guessed. If she happened to go all furry, they could just say she was a wild creature. Her scent would be hard to trace there, too.

Her stomach sank with the odds of a rescue.

“Any word from our contact?” Andre asked Joyce without turning his head.

“Nothing yet.”

He nodded, then pulled something from his back pocket. He crossed the short space between them and knelt at her side.

Joss swallowed hard when he opened the pack. Inside was a row of syringes. Andre took one out.

Shoot. She needed time. Or a distraction. Something that would keep that needle from her arm and forced sleep out of the picture. She needed to become a super spy in a matter of seconds, but all her mind wanted to focus on was the aching need to get back to Hunter.

Man, she’d have been tossed from spy school in the first five minutes.

Focus.

She couldn’t make anything explode with her mind, nor could she do more than inch away from Andre. Even that was taken from her when he grabbed hold of her arm to keep her steady.

“What are you giving me?” she blurted out.

He rolled the needle between his fingers. “Your side ain’t the only ones experimenting. We had a head start. This here is an injection of silver and sedative. Keeps your furry side out of commission while you sleep it away.”

“You’re a hunter.”

A chill passed through her. He was the boogeyman of her childhood, the threat used against bad behavior, the constant warning from her parents’ lips. Hunters were a danger to supernatural kind. Some wanted them for playthings, others were happy to simply exterminate them as abominations.

She’d gone her entire life without meeting one and now was tied up for his pleasure after being plucked out of a shifter town.

Safety was an illusion.

“Not the way you mean it. I’m a bounty hunter. Have been for a long while. Someone needs a man caught, I’m their guy. Recently, though, those requests have changed. The pay is out of this world.” He patted her cheek. “No hard feelings. You kill two birds. I get a fat paycheck and get to see the motherfucker Shaw in as much pain as possible.”

They were looking for a reaction. Screaming, crying, pleading. Both their eyes bored into her. Joyce nearly bounced on her dang toes with glee. Andre smelled cruel.

Well, she was bound and about to be drugged, which left her limited options over the rest of her probably short life. She could keep her mouth shut and deny them something they wanted.

Joss cocked her head and blinked. Thoughts of pinning them to the ground and stabbing them full of drugs and gnawing off their soft bits ran rampant through her mind. Use her to hurt Hunter? She wanted to let her badger loose on their sorry rears.

When everything else felt like wholesale ruin, seeing their faces turn into thunderclouds felt like a victory.

Andre’s eyes narrowed before dipping back to her arm. He raised the needle.

“Andre. It’s them.” Joyce held out the phone.

With a grimace, he pushed to his feet and stomped toward Joyce. He snatched the phone from her and punctuated a jerk of his chin with an order. “Watch her.”

Joss tracked Andre. Fur brushed faintly against the back of her mind. So soft, she thought she’d imagined it.

Andre took the phone and read a message on the screen.

If he could just take a little longer. She couldn’t be certain, but the ties on her wrists and ankles didn’t sting like silver. He didn’t seem dumb enough to keep her contained without that. Then again, she had silver coursing through her veins.

And growing weaker by the second.

Her badger pushed against her mind, stronger than before. Confused, and pissed about it.

Hurry, hurry, hurry.

Joss dropped her eyes to the ground. She didn’t want to give away any signs of something going wrong for them.

Andre typed out a message with his big, dumb, sausage fingers and turned. His smile didn’t meet his eyes. “They’re ready for us.”

He crossed the room quickly, knelt down, and jabbed the needle into her shoulder.

Joss winced against the wave of nausea that settled in her stomach. Closing her eyes helped, but she didn’t want to give over to the drugs so easily. Even as her limbs tingled and went dead, she tried to wiggle toes and fingers and hold on to the will to keep fighting.

She lost the battle, and the world went dark again.