Her climax hit her on a wave of pleasure so intense that every muscle in her body seemed to clench. She lost her breath, and when she opened her mouth to cry out because she couldn’t hold the sound in any longer, Gage kissed her. He drove his tongue past her lips even as his cock thrust into her core.

Then he seemed to erupt within her. She could feel the jet of his release inside of her. Her sex contracted around him, greedy for that pleasure to continue. Why did it have to end? She’d just found him.

Why did everything have to be so twisted for them?

Why couldn’t she just be a woman . . . and he just be a man?

Gage’s mouth slowly lifted from hers. He stared at her with the hungry, lustful eyes of a beast.

Never just a man.

He was so much more.

Her heart raced in her chest. Pounded so fast. Gage withdrew from her—dammit—and carefully lowered her to the stone floor. When her unsteady knees finally regained their strength, she remembered—his hand. In the heat of the moment, the guy had actually reached out for the silver bars.

She caught his hand and winced at the angry blisters lining his palm. “Gage . . .” His name whispered from her.

His fingers clenched into a fist. “I didn’t even feel the pain.”

Her gaze rose to find him watching her.

That half-smile flashed across his face. “Fucking you felt too good.”

She wanted to smile back at him because that grin had always gotten beneath her skin. That grin—from the first sight, it had told her he couldn’t be a monster, even when she knew otherwise. But Kayla couldn’t smile in return. She knew what future was coming for them.

And it wasn’t going to be easy or pretty or good. In order to escape, she’d have to turn on the men she’d worked side by side with for years.

She might even have to kill them.

Or else she and Gage would be the ones to wind up dead.

“I want to see my sister,” Jonah demanded as he marched into Lyle’s office. He didn’t know what the hell was going on at the compound, but he sure didn’t like it. He’d been forcibly held in that surveillance room by the other hunters—so much for friendship—and then, twenty minutes later, when they’d finally let him go, he’d discovered that more hunters were stationed in front of Kayla’s holding cell.

When he’d tried to go inside and talk to his sister, the hunters—jerks who he’d counted as friends before—had lifted their weapons toward him.

What the hell was happening? Things couldn’t have gotten this screwed, this fast. It was like a nightmare. One that he just couldn’t wake up from, no matter how hard he tried.

He’d been trying pretty damn hard.

“I want to see her,” Jonah said again. He had to make sure she was all right.It was his fault she was in containment. His fault.

Lyle leaned forward in his chair and gave a sad shake of his head. “I’m afraid that’s just not possible.”

“Make it possible.” Lyle could do anything he wanted. The man was the head honcho at the compound. He just answered to the government guys in their fancy suits—and those guys came around only when it was prison transfer time. “Give me clearance to see her. Now.” Anger had him seething. He still had his weapon. The others hadn’t taken that, and if he didn’t get to see his sister soon—

Lyle exhaled on a slow breath. “You know she betrayed us.”

The boss’s words scraped right over Jonah’s soul. His jaw clenched, and he straightened to his full height. “There’s been a mistake.” That was what he kept telling himself. A mistake could be fixed. “If you’d just let me talk to her . . .”

There was sympathy in Lyle’s gaze, but he said, “She’ll try to bring you over to her side, too.”

“I’m not goin’ on the side of a freaking wolf!” Not after what that shifter had done to him so long ago. Three months. He’d been trapped in a hospital for three months because of the beast that had come after his family. He’d nearly lost his arm. Had been clawed open.

And his sister was siding with those monsters now?

“No.” Lyle pushed to his feet and walked around his desk. “No, I never thought you’d join up with a wolf.”

Jonah’s breath heaved out. Right. Lyle trusted him. Lyle knew him.

“But then,” Lyle’s assessing gaze swept over him, “I never thought Kayla would either.”

Her betrayal didn’t make any sense. “Why?” Why would his sister turn on the hunters, on him, for a wolf?

“Because they’re fucking.”

Jonah’s teeth ground together so hard that it hurt. I’ll kill that wolf. “I can—I can get her to come back to us.” If he could just talk to her—

“The others know that she can’t be trusted now.” Lyle walked toward him with slow, measured steps. His green gaze was watchful. Always so watchful. “What we do in this world, it’s life or death, and if you can’t count on the hunter who’s supposed to be watching your back . . .” He shook his head sadly. “Then just what good is that backup?”

No good. Worthless. But Kayla wasn’t worthless. She was everything to him. Jonah fought to keep his voice calm. So much was happening. So much he still didn’t fully understand. “Why—why’d you turn off the surveillance camera?” That hadn’t been protocol. Not even close. And with Kayla there—