Claiming His Prize (Bad Boy Alphas) (Feral Breed Followings Book 2) (2 page)

“Dragons aren’t just competitive.” I sat up, no longer dizzy. Jane placed one hand against my bare chest, her flesh so fucking warm compared to mine. The heat and the touch dragged a low purr from deep within. A sound of lust and desire for my kind. A sound that made her eyes go wide and her pupils darken.

“No?” She took a step back, but this time, I let her go. I could see the flush of her cheeks, the way the blood ruddied the skin along her chest. She was warm. Excited. The beast within sat up and took notice, too. He was too close to the surface after the match and the injury, too hard to wrangle back into his cage within my mind. Too interested in this human woman to be quiet.

I shook my head to her question, practically salivating over the fact that Jane was obviously affected by me. “We’re territorial and demanding. We like getting our way because we’re too damned independent to do what others tell us to.”

Jane bumped into the cabinet, grabbing the top with both hands and leaning back as if to escape me. “You choose your own fates.”

I slid off the table and stalked closer. There was something almost needful about the way she spoke those words, something wanting. I ran a finger down the side of her face as I whispered, “Always. One should never be subject to another’s wants and desires. You’re so warm, Doc.”

Taking a chance, I leaned in, staring at her lips. That distraction was my downfall, because I missed the look of rage that passed over her face until it was too late. She hauled back and swung her arm, hitting me square in the ear. The same one that bastard had gotten in the ring.

“Fuck.” I fell back with a squeal, curling into a ball on the floor. My stomach rolled as the room wobbled, and I dry heaved a couple of times. Fucking balance issues.

Jane just huffed and stepped over me, totally ignoring the pain she’d caused. “Next time you touch me without my consent, it won’t be your ear you have to worry about.”

Oh, I’d made her so mad. That hadn’t been my plan, not at all, but it was too late. I’d made a bad decision and lost this match. But I’d be back, which meant I needed to make sure she knew I accepted this defeat.

“Understood,” I said as I rolled to a sitting position. The room spun again, though not as badly as before. My dragon pushed forward, his heat-sensing eyes taking in the landscape. Jane was hot. Physically, way hotter than she should have been, though whether that was from exertion, fear, or something else, I had no way of knowing. As much as I wanted to chase her a bit more, my ear was throbbing, and my stomach ached with the need to be sick. It was time to retreat. Graciously.

Or perhaps almost childishly, if I had to be honest about it.

“Damn, woman. You really pack a punch.”

Jane didn’t even flinch. “My dad was a boxer. He taught me well.”

“Way to go, Dad.” I pushed myself to my feet, still a little wary of moving too fast. “I swear, I won’t touch you again until I get your consent.”

Jane grabbed that same torch she’d been playing with when I walked in from the back counter. “You won’t get my consent.”

“Oh, Doc. Didn’t you hear me when I said I was competitive? You just gave me one hell of a challenge.” I shot her a sly grin and stumbled for the door, ready to head back to my room and lick my wounds. Or jack off. Whichever.

Jane laughed again as I hurried out the door. That sound made me grin. My dick was half-hard, my ear throbbing, and my vision totally stuck between human and dragon, but Jane laughed. Sort of a win. Still, the world was a Technicolor rainbow of heat and shadow brought on by my dragon forcing me to look through his eyes. A fact that really wasn’t helping my balance issues.

“Hey, Tidal?”

I spun at Jane’s voice, hurriedly leaning into the wall to keep from wobbling. “What’s up, beautiful?”

“Want to pay me back for that move?”

I shrugged. “What did you have in mind?”

“I heard a rumor about dragons, and I want to know if it’s true.”

My throat tightened, the natural fear of others finding out too much about us long ingrained in my body. But this was Doc Jane. For some reason, I trusted her. Perhaps more than I should have.

“Ask, and if I can, I’ll answer.”

She paused, staring at me, weighing my truthfulness. “Can dragons really
see
heat?”

I cocked my head, letting my dragon come forth. Really letting him out as much as I could without shifting. I knew she’d see the red of my eyes from where she stood, knew she’d spot the scales as they appeared along my hairline, but that was okay. She was the team doctor, practically a shifter herself, and I wasn’t about to go full dragon in front of her. This would be okay.

“I can tell you’re slightly aroused—which I like, by the way—because you’re quite warm between your legs. And the top of your head and tips of your ears are downright hot at the moment. Good to know your anger signs, Doc, and that I turn you on.”

She blinked, silent in her surprise. So I shrugged.

“Dragons see heat and taste scent.” I flicked my tongue out, nearly collapsing as the heady scent of her overtook me. “And my God, Doc, you smell delicious.”

I
waited
until I could no longer hear the dragon’s footsteps in the hall before I allowed myself to relax.

“Stupid, handsome reptile.” I tossed the spent syringe in the hazmat box and slammed the lid. So he was hot. Big deal. Dark hair and light eyes were sort of a weakness of mine—and Tidal’s black curls and soft green eyes definitely fit that bill—but that didn’t mean I had to fall for them. And yes, he was built. But every guy here had muscles upon muscles. Beginners walked in with six-packs and trained fighters often sported eights. Tidal’s lithe, lean body went against the bulkier wolf shifters in the rings, but he was still just one of the fighters. I’d been dealing with that damn dragon and his cocky flirtiness for months without falling prey to his tactics. I still hadn’t, technically, but that was a close call. He’d almost gotten me to break, to let go of my control and allow him to… I don’t even know.

One should never be subject to another’s wants and desires.

“Stupid, handsome, independent reptile.”

I sighed and headed for the back exam room. My workspace, one aspect of my life I actually had control over. Well, sort of. Because in those dark hours when I was completely alone, I had to admit, my control was just an illusion. A forced vision I clung to with everything I had because, deep down, I knew—it could all be taken away in a heartbeat.

“Stupid wolf shifters,” I mumbled, reaching into the cabinets in exam room four to inventory the torches. One never knew when we’d need to use the things to hold skin together. Claw marks didn’t heal as fast as most damage that could be done to wolf-shifter skin, but cauterizing the skin helped. Of course, to cauterize such fast-healing skin, you needed serious firepower. Hence the acetylene torches in every exam room and doctor bag. We liked to be prepared for cataclysmic damage.

I counted and straightened as I let my thoughts wander, let the visions of dragons flying through the air dance in my mind. Piers—or Tidal, as I forced myself to call him—was so different from the wolf shifters who tended to dominate The Pack House. More inquisitive, smarter in some ways. Whether that was him or his dragon, I’d probably never know. No one did. Unlike wolves, dragons were extremely secretive, even among other shifters.

Still, I liked his style, the calculating way he sized up his opponents before taking them on. I always had found men who fought with their brains attractive, especially when all that cunning was in the muscled body of a street fighter. But Tidal was also one of the fighters in The Pack House, a position that was most certainly off-limits, considering my employer. That just made him all the more intriguing to me, if I was being honest. Forbidden fruit and all that. But I could never let him know about my attraction. He’d use it to his advantage, find ways to garner my attention and risk…everything.

“Something wrong, Jane?”

I turned as Mick walked into the room, schooling my features on autopilot. Mick demanded smiles from his employees, along with respect. Neither of which he deserved, in my opinion. The old wolf shifter wasn’t my favorite person, but I owed him a lot. More than my own life, really. And he never let me forget it.

“Evening, sir.” I kept my voice even as he walked closer, refusing to allow him to intimidate me.

His eyebrow winged up, a sure sign that I’d done something wrong. I quickly scanned my words and actions since he’d walked in, cursing internally. Without another second’s pause, I dropped my gaze to the floor, hoping to appease the man who pretty much owned me. The things you forgot when you had dragons on the brain.

Mick wasn’t a dragon—he was a man with a wolf inside. Things like body position and direct eye contact indicated dominance and pack order. I knew better than to look him in the eye, but my thoughts about Tidal had distracted me. Something I couldn’t risk happening again.

I coughed and lowered my voice, doing my best to sound meek and frightened by the old bastard. “How can I help you this evening, sir?”

“I think I’d like to turn up the heat.”

My stomach dropped at his casual comment. The heat in The Pack House was the system Mick and his partners used to send pheromones through the air. The whole thing had been Mick’s idea back in the early days of the business. I’d warned him then that keeping male shifters in pheromone-laced air would be trouble, but he’d disregarded my advice. Just as he’d disregarded it every time he’d told me to increase the amount of hormones released.

Not that I stopped trying to get him to see reason.

“Sir, we’ve already seen rage problems with some of the fighters. And the new recruits aren’t—”

“How’s your father?” Mick turned his sharklike smile at me, cutting me off.

I swallowed the fear his question incited and kept my eyes locked on that evil smile. “Good, sir. Finally getting over that bug he caught last month.”

“Ah, excellent news. And at such an opportune time. Wouldn’t want any sort of stress to make him fall ill again, now would we?”

I squeezed my eyes closed, breathing deeply to try to get my heart rate back under control. “No, we wouldn’t. I barely get to see him as it is. Another sickness would cut into that time.”

“It would, wouldn’t it? Be a good girl, Jane, and you’ll be rewarded.” He turned, heading for the door. “Three degrees higher should do the trick. And thank you for being so accommodating.”

The click of the door closing behind him was like a cut to the thread holding me up. I slowly sank to the floor and pulled my knees into my chest, doing my best to hold back my tears. I’d spent too many years with Mick not to see this side of him grow. He’d been a nice enough man when we started The Pack House, when he agreed to pay off my medical school loans if I came to work for him. When my father was still healthy and oblivious to Mick’s dual nature, when he and Mick would go fishing together on the weekends.

But that was a long time ago.

Resigned to do as I was told so as not to cause trouble with my dad, I struggled to my feet and trudged to the locked box on the far wall. There—behind a metal door even wolf shifters couldn’t break through—lay the key to Mick’s bastardized air system. The key to his ability to keep the men he conned into working for him rough, mean, and ready to fight.

It also kept the very pack-oriented shifters from forming bonds with the other males, something no one outside of Mick or I knew.

In the early days of The Pack House, fighters sometimes had a hard time going all out on the men they’d bonded with. Mick couldn’t have that, so he figured a way to cut pack ties would be to introduce women into the mix. Males fought for female attention in packs every day, so adding that mating factor to The Pack House should have worked to snap those connections. But some of the men found their mates, which led to shifting at the wrong times and couples running to escape possible separation. So Mick went back to the drawing board. Eventually, he figured out that introducing the scent of a shewolf in heat, but without the actual woman in the building, would keep those pack bonds from forming minus the drawback of actually introducing mated couples together. And it’d worked.

But over the last few years, as he’d upped the amount of pheromones and played with the chemistry even more, I’d noticed problems. Lung issues, uncontrollable rage, excessive dominance of even the most docile shifters, hormonal shifts—symptoms more in line with steroid use in humans. Problems Mick refused to acknowledge or deal with.

And it was time to turn up the heat and wait for the fallout again.

My hands shook as I turned the wheel, adding more of Mick’s hormone cocktail to the forced-air mix. Thinking about Tidal, about all the men out in The Pack House who would have no idea why they’d wake up with an erection later this evening, who’d struggle to control themselves over breakfast, and mop the floor with their opponent if they were the lucky ones. And I thought about the ones who would end up on my table if they weren’t all that lucky. The ones I would help bury in the caves below us while Mick lied about fighters with contracts completed or missing home too much to stay.

The ones Mick would drive insane…just like my father.

T
he next morning
, I walked the training floor to observe the few fighters who were up as early as I was. The effects of the pheromones were already apparent. Men who would have normally given me a smile or a head nod in greeting scowled instead; others who would have ignored me leered and made inappropriate hand gestures as I passed. All signs I’d grown accustomed to over the years. They’d settle eventually, growing used to the hormones and reining in their hypermasculine side once more. If they lived. Violence was a definite threat between the fighters during this unstable time. Case in point, I spotted two fighters embroiled in a heated argument along the back wall. While I watched, the bigger of the two swung, knocking the smaller to the floor. The trainers jumped into the scrum to pull the two apart, but I knew it was too late. The smaller shifter was bleeding all over the floor—he’d probably end up in the medical ward within a few minutes. I wasn’t on for the day yet, so I ignored the mess and turned down another aisle between rings. The trainers would call for help if it was needed, and there were two other doctors who could handle such things. It would take a few days for the fighters’ systems to even out in the new environment, which meant I’d be busy enough without jumping into every scuffle on the training floor. Besides, unstable wolf shifters were dangerous.

“Morning, Doc.”

Dragon shifters, on the other hand…

“Tidal.” I nodded as I passed him, my hands clenched into fists in my pockets. Even though I so desperately wanted to stop and look him over, see how he was faring, I kept my head up and my feet moving. I would not let him bait me into anything like last night. I would not let him know how much his presence affected me. I would not fall for his charm and risk what little of my former life I had left.

But damn, did he smell good.

“So,” he said as he walked along beside me, ever the demanding dragon. “Did you have a nice evening?”

I shot him a look out of the corner of my eye. He was close, but not too close. Leaving enough room between us so we didn’t even brush shoulders. I appreciated that, though I doubted it would last long. Tidal was nothing if not persistent.

“It was fine. And how was yours?”

I knew I’d made a mistake when he chuckled. The sound was lower than human, darker. Filled with a sensuality I’d never heard from another man or creature before.

“Oh, Doc. I had a wonderful night. Would you like to ask me why?”

Would I? Hell yes, but I knew better than to fall for that one. “No. I don’t think I would.”

He hopped in front of me, blocking the path but still not touching any part of my body. “Ask me anyway.”

“Tidal—”

“Piers.” He grinned as I glared. He wore such a childish expression, one filled with glee. A handsome, charming, gleeful dragon. What world was I living in?

With a roll of my eyes, I sighed and asked him the question he was waiting for. “Why was your night so wonderful,
Tidal
?”

His smile faltered a tiny bit when I stressed his fighting name, but it returned with a vengeance just as he leaned in to whisper to me. “It was wonderful because I could smell you on me. Between that and the pheromone increase, I was practically chafed this morning.”

I jerked back, more concerned that he noticed the hormones than that he used my scent to feed his spank bank. “You can smell the pheromones?”

He cocked his head and licked his bottom lip. “Not smell so much. Dragons don’t have the sense of smell that wolves do, remember? They’re more a taste on the air than a scent.”

He licked his lip again, slower this time. I nearly gasped when I saw the fork at the end, a tiny separation most people never would see.

“Your—”

He shook his head, his face growing darker and more serious. His eyes scanning the room around us as if for threats. “My dragon wants to come out and play in the tasty air, is all. It’ll be fine in a few hours.”

“Hours?” I grabbed his arm and yanked him closer, practically hissing to him to keep my voice low. “The wolves take days to get used to the hormone increase.”

A sly smile crept across his face as he looked down to where my hand rested on his skin. “Dragons are better than wolves, Doc. You should know that by now.”

I yanked my hand away, his calm confidence throwing me off-balance. It would be so easy to lose control with this man. To let go and be a woman with him, to give in to my urges and see where things went. But I couldn’t. Mick had made sure I’d never be free from this place, and Tidal wouldn’t be around forever. Our hooking up would be a temporary distraction that could lead to permanent problems.

“Tidal,” Laudon yelled from one ring over. “Get your ass in the ring now.”

“On it.” Tidal gave an irritated grunt, then grinned and jogged to a ring, leaving me without a backward glance. Not quite what I’d have expected, though neither was his forked tongue. That was new.

“Yo, Doc.” A shifter named Docket was leaning over the ropes of the far ring, practically hidden from the rest of the room behind huge storage lockers. “Doc, c’mere. I’ve got a problem.”

I sighed, pushing all the inappropriate thoughts of Tidal out of my head. Another lifetime, perhaps.

“Coming.” I weaved in and out of piles of training equipment as I headed down the deserted walkway. The farther toward the back I went, the more my heart pounded. It was darker here, completely out of the main area. No one would be able to see me back here, and there was a small group of half-naked men watching me. Half-naked men breathing air that made them dangerous and sex-fueled. A bad combination for the only female in the building.

“Doc,” Docket said as he hopped down from the ring.

I stopped a good ten feet back, not willing to get too close until I knew what I was walking into. Yelling at myself for being led to this deserted area in the first place. “What’s the problem?”