James (Lycan Mating Games Book 2) Read online

  James

  Lycan Mating Games, Book Two

  S. Cinders

  Published by Blushing Books

  An Imprint of

  ABCD Graphics and Design, Inc.

  A Virginia Corporation

  977 Seminole Trail #233

  Charlottesville, VA 22901

  ©2019 by ABCD Graphics and Design, Inc. and author

  All rights reserved.

  No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The trademark Blushing Books is pending in the US Patent and Trademark Office.

  S. Cinders

  James

  EBook ISBN: 978-1-948140-43-0

  Print ISBN: 978-1-948140-44-7

  v1

  Cover Art by ABCD Graphics & Design

  This book contains fantasy themes appropriate for mature readers only. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as Blushing Books' or the author's advocating any non-consensual sexual activity.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Ella

  Ella

  S. Cinders

  Chapter 1

  James

  “Fifteen seconds!” Ella’s voice was tense as she called out to me.

  I frantically tried combination after combination of numbers trying to break the password of the final security gate. I didn’t think about the trail of mangled bodies we had left behind, now lying lifelessly on the unit floor. I was trained to focus on the end goal. To complete my mission or die trying, and I wasn’t in the mood to die today.

  Another warning from Ella. “Ten seconds, James!”

  “I can see the damn time, Ella!” I shouted back and immediately felt remorse. I shouldn’t have snapped at her and even taking those few seconds to speak was a waste of precious time. That was one of the many things we didn’t have—time. I took a deep breath, clearing my brilliant mind to focus on the task in front of me.

  Maybe it was the Goddess smiling down on us or maybe we were damn lucky. But as I punched in the last set of digits, four lights turned green on the keypad. That was followed by the best sound I had ever heard in my life—the sound of a bolt sliding free from the lock.

  “Run!” I shouted to Ella.

  She didn’t need to be told twice. Ella raced through the security door and immediately began fighting the shifter wolves who were working security. There were eleven of them to only one of her.

  It wasn’t a fair fight, and I knew it as well as she did. I almost took pity on the poor bastards, but Ella would kick my ass if I interfered where it wasn’t needed, so I let her be.

  She dispatched the last one with a sharp jab to the neck.

  Turning to face me, she frowned and said, “Are you going to stand there all day? We need to get out of here!”

  I almost cracked a smirk. That was Ella all over. It would be a grave mistake to underestimate the tiny woman. She couldn’t have been more than five seven or eight to my six five. But she was honed to be a deadly weapon; we both were.

  “What now?” I asked, knowing that she would want to take the lead.

  Her intelligent green eyes scanned the outside perimeter before she spoke. “This is too easy. There has to be something or someone else.”

  I was inclined to agree, but as the words came out of her mouth, we heard movement behind us.

  “Run!” Ella screamed.

  We phased into our wolves and raced into the night, the desert sand whipping up at the beating of our paws. I could hear the packs behind us, pounding with all their might.

  There had to be at least a hundred or more. Bullets rained down upon us indicating that not all the wolves were in their Lycan form. The only saving grace was that they were regular wolves, nothing like Ella and me. We outdistanced them within a mile and within two one could barely see them in the distance.

  Not stopping, we raced across the land, miles of barren sand stretched out before us. Neither one of us had been on the outside before, so the air felt strange as it wrapped around us.

  The heat even in the nighttime was something I could never have imagined.

  We ran all that night and the next day covering several hundred miles. We stayed away from the noises of humans and their cars and roads. All of this was confusing to us, and I felt a moment of fear because the goal was to escape. But now that we had made it—what next?

  It wasn’t until Ella dropped into the dirt with a resounding thud that I realized she had blood matted into her fur. I nudged her with my muzzle, but there was no response.

  Shit! They had been firing at us, but I hadn’t even considered the idea of her being hit. Sickened, I shifted and rolled her wolf over to get a clear view. I couldn’t tell if it was her shoulder or lung that she had been hit.

  Without thought, I quickly calculated the odds of her surviving if her lung had been hit and deduced that she would never have been able to run that far.

  Ella’s breathing was shallow, and she still hadn’t regained consciousness.

  I started to panic. What if she died out here in the middle of nowhere? We were supposed to escape the United States Lycan United Force, or USLUF, together.

  “Hey! You there!”

  I jerked around to see a large black man approaching. I went into a fighting stance, snarling as I exposed my teeth, not even realizing I was still in human form and buck ass naked besides.

  “Whoa, wait a minute there,” he said taking a step back with his hands raised. The man was big like me. It didn’t do much to convince me that I needed to stand down. But I listened to what he had to say. “I am not going to hurt you. I was worried about the she-wolf. I caught the scent of blood a mile or so back, followed the tracks here.”

  “She is fine!” I snarled at him.

  He raised a brow and commented, “She is bleeding and the wound doesn’t look fresh. Do you want me to help or are you going to let her die?”

  I couldn’t lose Ella, not after everything we had been through. But how could I trust this man? Everything we had ever been told in this life was a lie. My ears strained to hear her labored breathing as I growled menacingly at the man. “You promise not to harm her?”

  My eyes were narrowed as I did a reading on his body language. He seemed open and from what I could tell, not a threat. We had extensive training on such things at the USLUF.

  “I won’t harm either of you,” he said. “My name is Clarence White, and this land is owned by me and my partner Mike. We have a, erm, club a few miles south of here. There are a few rooms that are open. Let’s get her there and see what she needs to heal.”

  I hesitated once again, and Clarence let out a long sigh.

  “Look, I can see that you both are young and most likely running from something.”

  I frowned at him. “Why do you say that?”

  A ghost of a smile passed over his face. “When I was your age I too had demons that I had to fight. Both literally and figuratively. I won’t tell anyone that you are here if that makes a difference.”

  “Okay,” I said at last, agreeing to go with him. Regret filled me. What if this man was a monster? Shit, I was all over the place. I wasn’t putting my training to good use.

  “Do you want to carry her?” he asked kindly. “We need to get back to my truck, and I will drive you over to Club Lycan.”

  I glanced at him sharply needing to set boundaries. “You won’t touch her?”

  His brows shot up in a mock surrender. “I swear, on my honor.”

  I nodded once and crouched down to gather Ella into my arms.

  “Shift,” I whispered the command and watched as her fawn colored wolf faded into my lifelong friend. Wincing as I saw the bloody wound, I was careful when lifting her from the ground into a standing position.

  I turned to see Clarence staring at us—no, at Ella.

  “What?” I growled the word as my incisors made an appearance. I didn’t like his gaze being on Ella.

  He shook his head as if to clear it and glanced away. When he spoke, his voice was stilted. “Nothing, nothing at all. It’s only that your friend there looked a little familiar to me. Where are you from?”

  “No questions!” I tugged Ella closer to me and glared at him.

  Clarence blew out a frustrated breath but heeded my wishes. “All right, let’s get her home.”

  It was a full-sized truck but with three of us in the front it made things rather tight. After laying Ella down on the bench seat. I glanced up in tim
e to see Clarence throwing me a pair of grey sweatpants. “Put this on, not that you would look out of place in the club, but I don’t want your naked ass in my truck.”

  I noted that Clarence hadn’t complained about Ella’s naked ass sprawled on all his front seat. Instead of arguing I grabbed the sweats and tugged them on. Even with our enhanced DNA, I was feeling the effects of our adventure. I needed to rest.

  Climbing in behind Ella, I gathered her once again into my arms. I wanted her to wake up, needed her to wake up and tell me that everything was going to be okay.

  We drove for a few miles, which was a strange experience to be moving at such a rapid pace inside of a vehicle. I had a million questions, and Clarence was kind enough to answer all that he knew. I could tell he was curious as to why I was asking them.

  I wasn’t about to tell him that this was my first time in a truck or that this was our first time out on our own. We had never so much as even spoken to a stranger before this night. I wanted to ask him lots of things, but I kept all of this to myself as he pulled up to a giant brick structure with a large sign lit from the back saying Club Lycan.

  “Clarence, where in the hell have you been?”

  I heard the man’s voice the minute that Clarence opened his door. The other man seemed on edge and that only brought out the defensive side of me that I had barely under control.

  “Calm down,” Clarence said to his friend, but he kept his eyes on mine. “I am going to let my partner know what’s going on. He is safe. He will not bring either of you harm.”

  The other man snorted. “What’s going on?”

  Clarence continued to keep my gaze. “Mike is a good wolf despite being a gigantic pain in the ass. I would trust him with my life.”

  I gave a curt nod before turning back to Ella. Her face was so terribly pale, and her lips seemed to be losing color by the second.

  “Hang in there, Ella,” I whispered in her ear. “You will be okay, I promise.” I only hoped that I was telling the truth. Ella was my everything, I needed her to be okay.

  Chapter 2

  Ella

  It took me a moment to get my bearings when I first awoke. I was no longer in the hidden USLUF. Our top-secret location in the desert hid the largest scientific lab in the country. Our building was officially known as the GMU or Genetics Modification Unit. You didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what they did there.

  I didn’t want to dwell on that place or the horrible things that we found out they were doing. I wanted to know how James was. The last thing I remembered was being chased by those idiots in the desert—and getting shot. I looked around to find James.

  James and I have known each other all our lives. He too was raised in the GMU. He was a huge reason that we escaped it. James was wicked smart. His brain functioned like a computer. Whereas I had excelled in fighting, James excelled in anything intellectual.

  We both were modified to be weapons in warfare. There were around thirty of us when we were younger. But as the years passed many disappeared, leaving only a few of us remaining to be what they thought of as the future of our race.

  We didn’t know where the other genetically modified Lycans went, only that they never returned. Test subjects, like James and me, often weren’t allowed together and were never given top secret information.

  It was by chance that James discovered what had been happening. The wolves like us were often sent on suicide missions to try and assassinate the crowned Lycan Queen, Veronica Andres.

  Our purpose was to be living, breathing, death machines. We were more powerful than mere mercenaries, having the wits and strength to wage wars and take over nations. However, as James hacked into the files, we read about some of the missions the others had been sent on. There was no glory or pride to be working for murderers. The USLUF seemed to be the worst of the bunch.

  James and I were one of the few teams that were left. Having reached twenty-one years of service we knew that anything could be asked of us. Through James’s hacking, we learned that the officers at GMU shot us daily with a variety of drugs. It was always told to us that they were beneficial to our survival. When James came to me with the plan to escape this was the first thing I thought of. How could be live on the outside without our medication?

  But the alternative was too terrible to contemplate, and so we planned our escape. I remember most of it going according to plan, except for one minor detail of myself getting shot with a silver bullet.

  I hadn’t allowed it to stop me. We were built to withstand extreme circumstances. But as I lay here in a dark, unfamiliar room, I worried that perhaps I had been taken back to the GMU or worse—could I be dead?

  A hand reached out to touch me, and I screamed for all I was worth.

  “Shit, Ella, it’s me!”

  James.

  I knew that voice anywhere. He clicked on the bedside lamp, and I saw that we were in an enormous bed. The biggest I had ever seen. The sheets were silky against my skin, and I was wearing an oversized t-shirt that smelled of Lycan, but not James.

  “Where are we?” I asked, my senses immediately going on the defensive.

  “We are safe,” he said calmly as his violet eyes assessed mine. James had done this so many times in my life that I felt my heartbeat returning to normal. “We have found shelter at a place called Club Lycan.”

  “What kind of place is this?” I asked.

  James shrugged distractedly. “I don’t know. The man, Clarence, didn’t take us through the main entrance. He went straight to the living quarters. He has a partner named Mike that also was there.”

  “Why do you trust them?” I didn’t want to find us jumping out of a terrible condition only to find ourselves in another of a similar nature. I didn’t want to rely on anyone besides James.

  He held my gaze, allowing me to read the truthfulness of his statement. “You were dying, I needed help, and they seemed honest. I had to take a calculated risk.”

  I snorted in disgust. Shaking my head, I said, “You should have left me behind. This could be a trap to send us back to GMU.”

  James frowned. “I wouldn’t leave you then and I won’t leave you now. Stop talking nonsense. We are in this together. If it is a trap, we will break out again.”

  I sighed. When James was like this, there was no reasoning with him. “My shoulder feels better,” I rotated it, and there was only a slight twinge.

  “They had their medical team dig the bullet out of your shoulder. It wouldn’t heal because the silver was coated with wolfsbane.”

  I raised a brow. The old GMU had pulled out all the stops trying to kill me. “Very loving of the people who raised us.”

  James scoffed. “As if they ever gave a rat’s ass about any of us.”

  I agreed. We had never been shown love or affection by any of the officers that trained us over the years.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said. Moving to sit up, I pushed the covers back. It was than I noticed the silence. Glancing over to James I saw him staring, not at my face, but at my bare legs. The t-shirt gathered at the tops of my thighs barely covering my pussy.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I asked testily.

  James seemed to come to his senses, a light flush staining his cheeks.

  “Nothing,” he denied turning his head away.

  I wasn’t sure what his issue was, but I got up and stretched causing the t-shirt to rise above my ass as my arms reached for the ceiling.

  “Goddess! Ella!” James’s voice sounded huskier.

  “Are you getting sick?” I asked incredulously. We were never sick.