After Kragen left her alone in the candlelit bedroom area of his creepy warehouse lair, Andie sat there like a dumbstruck…dummy. For longer than she’d like to admit.

She was his mate? And that meant she would submit? That meant her body belonged to him?

What in the actual fuck?

Andie wasn’t super sexually experienced, kink-wise, in the real world, but she did have the internet. She knew what all of that implied. More than that, she felt it—as much as she wanted to deny it, there was some kind of crazy bond between her and Kragen. Whatever he’d done to her, without even touching her, had been amazing. It had felt like there was a real, tangible connection between them, somehow, like they’d been…feeding off of it. That felt weird to think about. But when he was done, she’d felt better than she had in years. Definitely not like she’d just worked a twelve-hour shift, been accosted by her worst ex, and then been kidnapped.

She sat back down on the mattress with a plonk, put her head between her hands, and tried to ignore the pounding between her legs and the burning mark on her breast. She had fantasized about something like this. No, she’d never had the imagination to fantasize about something this nuts. This was beyond her fantasies.

Kragen was beyond her fantasies.

Careful what you wish for, right?

Andie had never truly submitted, not in real life. She’d only ever played stupid games with her boyfriends, but none of them had ever really put the effort in. But Kragen…with Kragen it was just…he was beyond a Dom. He was a Leonid.

He’d ordered her to take her shirt off, and she’d just done it. She’d obeyed. She’d wanted to obey, and even thinking about it now gave her a little zing of pleasure that arced through her body.

He was, physically, all she’d ever wanted. But he was also apparently hiding from both the Leonids and the Alliance, for some reason, and he was also literally keeping her captive. So those were some pretty massive red flags.

And, of course, he didn’t want her. He’d told her as much. Can’t forget that. In about two seconds, Andie had been an ugly duckling all over again, vulnerable to whatever guy gave her attention. She hated that that part of her still existed.

“Ok, well, this is all garbage nonsense,” she muttered to herself. Even if she was in this super romantic-looking candlelight, this was total silliness. She was getting out.

She looked around, and found it was way easier to pay attention when she didn’t have a giant, sexy alien staring at her. This was the basement of the warehouse, with windows near the ceiling. What she had thought were walls were actually makeshift structures, mostly built out of old machinery or whatever. All of it looked either ominous or romantic in candlelight, depending on your inclination.

Andie's body had a definite opinion on which it was. Her brain disagreed.

“You are leaving,” she said to herself. “You have a sick grandmother at home.”

Gramzy would kill her if she knew she’d referred to her as “sick grandmother,” but Gramzy also wasn’t here.

Kragen had left through the passageway he’d emerged from, going deeper into what he called his “sanctuary,” a.k.a. the McCreepy Abandoned Warehouse Murder Palace. Now that she had wandered out of bed, Andie could see exactly how run down the building was. Its windows were caked with grime, its roof leaky. The place was furnished with a combination of scavenged, broken furniture and alien spaceship remnants. The candlelight didn’t go very far, but it went far enough for her to see that, down that passageway, there was another makeshift chamber. There was light coming from that chamber.

She snuck toward it, as quietly as possible. The mark on her breast flared briefly, before subsiding to a low simmer, as though urging her forward. Within a few steps, she could hear rhythmic sounds coming from the chamber, the light dimming in time.

And when she saw what was inside, she suddenly forgot to breathe.

It was Kragen.

Shirtless.

Sweaty.

Exercising.

He was working out his energy by fighting holographic figures. Kragen wielded massive blades in both hands, his muscles bunching and sliding as he fought with shadows.

The holographic projectors had been set up around the room so that fake enemies could attack from any angle. They emerged from behind shipping containers, rolled across the floor, and dropped from the ceiling. It looked startlingly realistic.

The holograms sure fooled Andie. She had to smother a gasp behind her hand when a giant spider-like monstrosity hurled itself from the rafters.

It didn’t surprise Kragen. Nothing surprised him. The expression on his face was intense, fierce. He was working off steam, but he moved like someone who was born to do what he was doing.

He needed this. To kill. To dominate.

The very qualities that made him so very, very wrong for Andie were mesmerizing. The rippling muscles. The trickling sweat that drew a line from his collarbone’s hollow down the ridges of his abs to be absorbed by bandages. The way his gritted teeth made this jaw muscles turn to cables.

When the last of the holographic figures was finally destroyed, only Kragen remained in the center of the room, kneeling and drenched in sweat.

Andie wanted him. She wanted to wipe the sweat from his body and press her heart to his so that the aching would go away, and they could glow together.

She was as hypnotized by the sight of him in stillness as she was by his fighting.

“Again,” he rasped, and the holograms started again.

With a curse, Andie forced herself to step away, her back flat against the makeshift wall of the hall that separated this chamber from the bedroom. It was all so crazy, but the proof was on her body. In her body. She hadn’t been at war with the stupid thing like this since puberty.

She shook her head, and forced herself to move down the hall, deeper into darkness. There was no obvious way out in the bedroom, and no way to climb to those windows. But Kragen had brought her in somehow. There had to be a way out.

With every step away from the sweating Leonid, the mark burned a little hotter. Her head felt a little lighter. The ‘mating bond,’ whatever the hell that was, wanted her to go to him.

Suck it, mating bond. I go where I want to go. And I am going to have you removed the very first chance I get.

Someone at the Alliance would have to know how to do that, right?

Cross that bridge when you come to it, Knowles. Focus.

She was in complete blackness now, but the hallway kept going. There was something there; she could feel it. She suddenly remembered she had her phone in her scrubs pocket, and while it had no reception—thanks, abandoned warehouse deadzone—it still had some battery life left. Which meant it could shine a light on whatever was at the end of this pitch-black hallway.

Andie shone the light.

“Holy shit,” she whispered.

The hallway ended in a giant pile of old, rusted equipment and furniture, a pile so high it nearly reached the ceiling, but that wasn’t the main feature. The main feature was the door.

A door obscured by as much metal and wood and random detritus as a male of Kragen’s size could pile against it, but a door that still shone in the meager light from her phone. Because it was a door made from Leonid metal.

It had been one of the first things the Leonids had shared with the Alliance. It was stronger than anything on Earth, had insane material and engineering properties. It glowed various colors, seeming to undulate and seethe, almost like it was alive. And it was supposedly the only metal that could bind a Leonid.

And it wasn’t just the door. The door itself was crisscrossed by a network of heavy chains and locks, all made out of that same metal.

This was a door meant to keep people out. Or meant to keep something in.

Swallowing slightly, Andie raised her phone to take a closer look at the pile of stuff blocking the door. The stuff at the edges had a layer of dust on it, but the stuff right in front of the door didn’t. Like it got moved every once in a while. It probably wouldn’t be hard for Kragen to move stuff around and give himself access, but it would make it hard for anyone who wasn’t a Leonid. And it would mean that, if anything ever came through that door, the crash of metal and wood would instantly let Kragen know.

This was not a good door.

Crazy kinky libido and bizarre alien mating connection aside, Andie needed to get the hell out of there. And for the first time since she’d met Kragen, the idea of being apart from him didn’t make her feel weirdly nauseous. She didn’t know why, and she didn’t care. She was going for it.

It was easier than she thought it would be. She still felt like a million bucks, for some reason, and she climbed a shelving unit without much trouble and without making much noise. Standing on top of it, she could reach the window easily, just so long as she remembered not to look down.

It wasn’t even locked.

Andie had almost finished pulling herself up and over the sill of the window, her arms trembling with the effort, when she realized this was the first pull-up she’d ever been able to do in her life. It wasn’t easy, but she freaking did it.

Adrenaline, right? It had to be the adrenaline. It was a wonder drug.

Unfortunately, adrenaline couldn’t do a damn thing about the weather. It was raining outside, and Andie pulled herself through on a muddy stomach, her fingers digging into the sparse grass growing amidst the trash that had blown against the warehouse over the years. She clambered up and out onto the wet ground, and quickly pushed herself up. Andie was free.

Why didn’t she feel free?

It didn’t matter. In the distance, through the rain, and across the abandoned, weed-covered parking lot, she could see the dull light of Silver Creek.

This was it. It shouldn’t be this hard to leave an alien who had kidnapped her. It really shouldn’t.

Andie shook her head and started running.

* * *

Kragen had worked quickly as soon as he’d left Andromeda. He knew she would need time, and space. She might still hate him after all that, but she would be safe.

And part of keeping her safe meant dealing with his responsibilities.

She had been in some shock after he’d tested their bond, let the kuma flow between them. It had been a risk to heal her like that. To let himself taste what it would be like to claim her. But he’d passed the test, and now his female would need a moment to “collect herself.”

Perfect.

Kragen had moved swiftly, removing the debris covering the door and dealt with the locks in mere moments. The door itself had stung to the touch, as it always did.

It had all been as it always was.

When he was finished, he’d taken some of the triclosan with him. It stood to reason that the only drug known to temporarily tame kravok—the blood hunger, sated only by a mating bond—might help to dull the mating bond, too. It was entirely experimental, but as soon as Kragen caught Andromeda’s scent again, and felt the need for her stir again, he did not hesitate.

He injected himself.

And then he’d put himself through the hardest training simulations his stolen training rig had to offer. Three times. He wanted—needed—to tire himself out, to work off his frustration. Kragen would rather work to exhaustion and inject himself with poison than risk hurting Andromeda Knowles. The most difficult female on this planet.

The triclosan injection worked. It burned, and it felt like poison coursing through his veins, but it worked. The siren call of her body that he could always, always hear, became, instead, a light song. He could listen, and not spend every moment fighting not to claim what was his.

Until, just as suddenly, he couldn’t feel her at all.

That was not right.

That should not have been possible.

Kragen searched the entire warehouse, but he knew what he would find. Andromeda was gone.

And she had no idea what was coming for her.