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Tess opened her eyes and blinked. She was lying on her side and pushed up on an elbow. Slowly the inside of an enormous room came into view. Concrete floor and steel walls. Four chairs were casually tossed around a table, but no sign of a guard.

A dark hallway stretched away from her at the opposite end of a room over fifty feet long and twenty feet high.

No windows. The air was moderately cool.

Was she underground?

She’d been in her apartment and ... the phone message.

Oh, Cole would lose his mind if he found out she’d voluntarily left the apartment on a stretcher. She’d walked into a kidnapping, but what had been her other option?

To have her father’s hands cut off?

She didn’t even know where he was. The minute the ambulance pulled away, she opened her mouth to demand to see her father and felt a prick on her arm. At least she didn’t feel badly drugged.

Moving to sit up, her leg yanked to a stop.

Twisting, she found her leg chained to a thick metal plate anchored with bolts as thick as her wrist.

Once she managed to get up, she had six feet of chain.

And an unconscious man was piled two steps away on her left.

“Hey you,” Tess called, her words echoing. She had no reason to think this guy was a friend even if he also had leg jewelry.

“Wake up,” she said, stepping closer. When she could reach him, she used the toe of her shoe to nudge the body.

He’d been turned away from her and now flopped to his back, groaning. He had a wound in his shoulder.

Crap. She dropped down next to him and opened his shirt to find blood oozing from a hole. Lifting his shoulder, she could see the exit wound. Bullet.

Lowering him back down, she went into action yanking up the end of her T-shirt and biting a spot to get a rip started.

That was not as easy as it looked on television. When she had a sort of patch, she pressed it against the wound.

“Ow,” he grumbled.

She eased up on the wound and explained, “You’ve been shot. You’re bleeding.”

His face was paler than his arms, which were a tea color. Sleek brown hair fell over his forehead. He had a face carved for modeling, right down to the perfect eyebrows and mouth. His body was cut up with muscle, too.

None of that interested Tess one bit.

Her patient opened his eyes, which were an interesting gold-brown color.

She only had eyes for one man, who topped all others from his body to the endless blue of his gaze. Cole.

Her energy hadn’t increased at all, clearly in agreement with her.

Her new friend closed his eyes.

“You need to wake up,” Tess said, not really sure if that mattered. Her specialties were shifters and legalities. Beyond pressing on a wound like this, her medical expertise extended to a box of Band-Aids.

Golden eyes opened again. “Oh, hell, you’re Tess.”

“How do you know me?”

“I was watching your apartment while Cole was out of pocket.”

“You’re a friend of his?”

He moved his bad shoulder and grimaced. “Yes.”

“Are you a wolf, too?”

He slashed those eyes at her and the gold deepened, making him appear not quite human. “No, I’m not.”

Shifter etiquette required not asking, but she wasn’t in a social mood. “What are you?”

One of those attractive eyebrows lifted. “Impertinent little thing.”

“Yes. I tend to get that way when I’ve been kidnapped. What’s your name?”

“Rory.”  Moving his arms, he worked his body to a sitting position.

She warned, “You should be careful or you’ll bleed out.”

“I appreciate your concern, but I’m not bleeding out. I’m just not healing as fast without shifting.”

“Why aren’t you shifting into a ... ?” She let that half question hang in the air.

“Persistent, too,” he muttered. “I can’t do what I need to do in my animal form right now. Why don’t we forget about me and figure out how to get you out of here.”

“You mean us, right?” she corrected.

“Okay, sure. Us. Once you’re safe, I’m coming back to have a chat with the kidnappers.”

She knew without asking that the chat would involve claws and teeth.

The sound of someone approaching, and not trying to be quiet about it, drew Rory’s attention. She followed his gaze to look toward the dark hole that had to be a tunnel to this spot.

One of the jackal shifters from SCIS appeared and kept walking toward her. She tried to recall his name. Something like Leonard.

Tess stood up. “What the hell is going on?”

Leonard never slowed and slapped Tess sideways. Her head spun. She shouted and hit the ground.

“Touch her again and die, jackal.”

The thud of bodies being hit hard echoed in the room.

Flipping around, Tess shook off the stars she saw and took in the fight.

The jackal pulled a three-foot-long, half-inch-thick pipe from a holder on his back, then cracked it across Rory’s head, knocking him down.

Tess yelled, “You bastard. He’s chained.”

“Don’t, Tess,” Rory called out, rubbing his head.

The jackal kicked Rory over on his back, catching Rory’s wounded shoulder.

Hissing at the pain, Rory tried to lunge, but he was no match for that miserable coward Leonard who beat a wounded man chained to the ground.

Leonard’s pipe weapon had been sharpened on one end into a tip. Now Tess noticed sharp metal thorns sticking off the outside of the pipe every two inches.

The jackal lifted his pipe and shoved it down through Rory’s abdomen.

Tess fought to keep from throwing up. Every muscle in her body clenched at the brutal attack.

Rory howled in a sound that made her think of a large jungle cat that had been wounded. He gripped the titanium rod and jerked up, then sucked a breath in and stopped, doubled over.

“There you go, you fucking cat,” Leonard chided. “Give me any more trouble before my superiors arrive and the next one goes through your balls. They have plans for you.”

She waited as Leonard walked out, disappearing in the dark tunnel. Once his footfalls silenced, she rushed to Rory. “Oh, shit. What can I do?”

“Nothing,” he gritted out.

“We have to do something or you’ll die.”

He gave a mirthless laugh. “No, they won’t kill me yet. This is titanium. It won’t allow me to heal while it’s in my body. If it stays in long enough, I’d die, but that would be wasting a Ga... shifter. I could rip it out, but I’d need to shift immediately to heal all the new damage I’d cause.”

“That sounds awful, but if you can handle the pain, then do it. I’ll help.”

“No. I can’t heal fast enough to be of any help to you.”

“I’ll watch over you. Just fix yourself. You can leave me and go for help.”

Rory finally took a long look at her. “I can see why Cole chose you. You’d make an excellent mate for him.”

That was flattering, but Rory was still bleeding out of two wounds now.

He said, “Tess, I’m not going to die. I won’t lie. Hurts like a ... son of a gun. But I need you to stay safe as you can until my people show up. Don’t antagonize that jackal. They follow orders, but only to a point.”

“Will your people find us?”

“Eventually. I’m just hoping they find us here, before Leonard’s boss shows up with whatever plans he has or they move us. Or they separate us. None of those are good scenarios.”

Rory didn’t sound like he was trying to unnerve her but only trying to prepare her for potential situations. She appreciated his simple honesty. No trying to convince her all would be well, when it clearly didn’t look possible at the moment.

She was going to have to finally accept that jackals who had traveled to this country to work as mercs could possibly have criminal intent. It went against all she believed in to consign one group with a predetermined evaluation, but from now on she would at least be on her guard.

She shoved loose hair off her face, no doubt still looking like hell, but she couldn’t feel in control with her hair in her eyes. “I hear what you’re saying and I won’t antagonize him. I’m sorry if he did this to you because I yelled at him.”

Rory unleashed a smile and she could see women falling all over themselves to catch this one. He said, “You didn’t cause this. He had already planned to pin me with this pipe before he walked in.”

Tess sat down next to him, trying not to think about how bizarre her life was at the moment.

She was in love with a wolf shifter.

She’d been captured by jackal shifters and locked in the basement of some building.

And she was sitting here carrying on a conversation with a man who might be a jungle cat shifter and had a three-foot pipe driven through his stomach.

Got it.

She murmured, “I have no idea why I’m here.”

“I’ll make an educated guess,” Rory offered.

“Go for it.”

“They plan to use you as bait to bring Cole in, then use you as motivation to make him do what they demand.”

Tess had actually considered that but was hoping they wanted ransom money instead. “But what do they want?”

“We’d like to know, but I’m guessing they might think you and Cole were bonded. If so, it seems as if they’d have plans for both of you, but not to be together. If they know you aren’t bonded, then there are many possibilities, none of which I want to go into.” 

She could push him, but she’d rather not think about how awful this could all get and focus on not letting any of those possibilities happen.

Rory pulled in a shallow breath and flinched, then grunted. He said, “It would help to know more about this group so we could get a step ahead of the Black River pack.” 

Her ears perked at the mention of that pack. “Is this the same group that has Sammy?” 

“Probably. I’m pretty sure Sammy is being set up to take the fall for the couple murdered on their honeymoon.”

“Sammy? He’s the bear shifter SCIS has been hunting?”

“Yes, but Sammy has never harmed a human. He put his life in danger many times to save them.”

“What about the mating curse? Would that make him lose control and kill someone?” 

Rory gave her a long look as if surprised she knew about the curse, then explained, “It would if Sammy reached full loss of control. When that happens, the animal takes over and remains in that form until he does something self-destructive or is taken down, which usually happens first.”

Silence trickled along between them for a moment.

Turning to her, Rory asked, “Do you love Cole?”

“What? Why do you ask?”

“Just ... answer,” he ground out, clearly in pain.

Unwilling to make this moment any more difficult on Rory than it was, she gave him the truth. “Yes, I do. I don’t care that he’s a shifter. He’s my Cole.”

“Good. Then you can ... ” He stopped talking and lifted a finger to keep her quiet.

A high-pitched noise deep in the tunnel shattered the quiet.

Rory went into what sounded like a combat tone. “Be quiet and don’t react to anything.”

Tess couldn’t move a muscle out of pure terror.