Coyote Marked (Wounded Warriors Book 3)

  Amourisa Press and Kit Tunstall, writing as Kit Fawkes, reserve all rights to COYOTE MARKED. This work may not be shared or reproduced in any fashion without permission of the publisher and/or author. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  © Kit Tunstall, 2016

  Cover Image: Period Images and Depositphotos.com/adb57; arievedwolde

  Cover design by Amourisa Designs

  Edited by N.G. and CM Editing Services

  Coyote Marked (Wounded Warriors #3)

  Blurb

  When Lex is taken from her teammates, she expects to be eliminated or harvested for Project Enhanced. Instead, Lt. Col. Jasper Caswell, leader of the black ops group pursuing them, has marked her as his mate. It’s a fate worse than death, and she is desperate to escape. The mysterious and handsome Aidan, who works in support services, seems like her best chance of doing so. With his help, she discovers what the group really wants from the shifters who have eluded them. She thinks she has also found her mate, but Caswell is determined to claim her. To have any kind of future together, they’ll have to find a way out of the secret base—and counter the mating bite on her neck that allows Caswell to track her…

  “Coyote Marked” picks up just shortly after events in “Relentless Tiger,” and it’s highly recommended you read that before reading this book. I attempted to make this book function as a standalone, but reading all parts in order will enhance your reading enjoyment.

  Chapter One

  They had arrived at the safe house less than an hour ago, and now gathered in the living room around Loris. Lex hovered nearby as Malcolm gently questioned Loris about her experience at the base. She could see her former commanding officer’s tension increasing with each question she asked, because Loris had no answers.

  “Do you know what they did to you?” That was the third time Malcolm had asked the question, interspersed between others.

  Loris shook her head, her confusion obvious. “I don’t know. I don’t remember anything.”

  “What’s the last thing you remember?” asked Malcolm.

  Loris appeared to be thinking on it deeply before she let out a small sigh. “I remember snow.”

  “That was probably the Bullhead Reserve,” said Devon. “Do you remember them taking you?”

  For just a moment, there was a note of recognition in her face, but it quickly faded back to a confused expression. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember. I don’t really remember much of anything.” As she spoke the words, Loris rubbed her head.

  A pang of sympathy shot through Lex as the bite on her neck throbbed forcefully where Lt. Col. Caswell had gotten hold of her earlier. She’d shifted three times already, which should have healed the wound, but she could still feel it there below the surface, burning slightly and occasionally twitching as though it had developed its own pulse. It had to have something to do with his hybrid DNA, some foreign component that her shifter system couldn’t recognize as an invader to heal.

  Tianna stifled a yawn, and it seemed to spread like a contagion around the room. Lex bit back her own yawn as fatigue surged through her. The long day was catching up with her.

  It was obvious questioning Loris wasn’t getting them anywhere, and she was relieved when Malcolm said a few minutes later, “Let’s all get some rest. Maybe Loris will remember more in the morning.”

  ***

  After a quick shower, she had settled in her room and quickly discovered she had the misfortune of sharing a wall with Devon and Tianna. Listening to them make love sent a surge of envy through her. She wasn’t jealous of Devon having a mate, because he was like a brother to her. She was simply envious that he had found his mate.

  She wanted to be lucky and do the same, though the timing certainly wasn’t ideal, with the super soldiers from Project Enhanced chasing them down to kill them and remove all evidence of Project Shift in the process. Judging from their cries of passion and occasional giggles, neither one of them were considering the implications of introducing another target into this mess, and she envied them that too. They had the ability to lose themselves in each other and escape the reality of their situation, at least for a little while.

  By curling the pillow around her ears, Lex was finally able to fall asleep, but her nightmares were no place of refuge from either reality or her desire for her own mate. Twisting, disjointed images danced behind her eyes, and she woke with a scream trapped in her throat as panic surged through her.

  At first, she thought it was the nightmares that had woken her, but a furtive scraping sound caught her attention, and her coyote growled in her head. She inhaled deeply, immediately recognizing Loris’s pheromone signature. She rolled over and clicked on the light as she turned to face her former teammate. “What’s the matter? Can’t you sleep?”

  When Loris didn’t answer, Lex drew in a deep breath and held it for a moment, analyzing the various scents pouring from her friend. Her hackles rose, and the coyote surged to the surface as she recognized the stench of artificial intelligence underlying her friend’s previous pheromone signature. She leapt from the bed with grace, placing it between herself and Loris as she studied her friend.

  The blonde hair and blue eyes were the same, but what was in the eyes indicated the problem. Or rather, the lack of anything in her gaze. Her eyes were unfocused and blurry, and her expression was slack. She seemed to be totally without emotion, and she was moving as though on autopilot.

  “Loris, can you hear me?”

  Loris suddenly lunged at her, jumping on the bed and over it nimbly. Lex moved away as Loris joined her on that side of the bed, opening her mouth to shout for help. As she waited for the others to arrive, she eyed Loris warily. Her former teammate held a syringe in one hand, and Lex wasn’t certain what was in the clear fluid inside, but she had a feeling Loris wanted to inject her with it.

  Loris matched her step as Lex backed away from her. Not knowing what was wrong with Loris, she didn’t want to engage unless she had to. A moment later, Loris took the decision from her by rushing forward and knocking Lex to the ground. Loris was taller and more muscular than she was, but Lex was lithe and flexible, like her coyote. She contorted herself enough to scoot away from her friend, not wanting to hurt Loris, but certainly not willing to accept the injection of whatever was in the vial.

  Loris came at her again, but Lex had gotten to her feet and headed to the door. It opened before she reached it, and Wyatt spilled into the room, followed quickly by Malcolm and Devon. Tianna hovered in the doorway, clearly uncertain how to help, or what to do with herself.

  “She attacked me, and she was trying to inject me with something. I don’t know what’s wrong with her, but if you look into her eyes, it’s like she’s not even there.”

  No one answered her, other than a nod from Devon, because they were all focused on taking down Loris as easily as possible without hurting her. The three of them moved closer, tightening their position until Loris had nowhere to go. She still tried to push past them, but she didn’t even glance at any of the three men. Her unfocused gaze seemed to be pointed solely on Lex, though it was questionable how much she was actually seeing or processing.

  “She smells wrong,” said Devon with a growl.

  “Like those super soldiers,” agreed Wyatt.

  “I think it’s artificial intelligence,” said Lex. She winced a moment later when her friends moved as one to tackle Loris, bringing her to the floor and positioning her so they could zip tie her hands behind her.

  As Loris continued struggling, Malcolm pried the syringe from her hand and studied it for a moment. After that, he turned and slipped the
syringe into her neck, filling Loris’s veins with whatever was in the syringe.

  Lex gasped. “You shouldn’t have done that. What if it’s something lethal?”

  He shook his head. “It isn’t. It’s marked with the contents, and I ordered it myself. She must’ve gotten it from the medicine cabinet in the main bathroom.” He capped the used syringe before getting to his feet. “The question is, why did she go looking for it, and what did she plan to do with it?”

  “She was trying to give it to me,” said Lex. “I’m certain of that by her whole demeanor. She was stalking me, like a predator with prey, but I don’t think Loris had any clue who I was, or who she is. I think she was implanted with the artificial intelligence chip before we rescued her.”

  Wyatt looked regretful as he got to his feet, having maintained his watchful posture until Loris had stopped twitching and now lay silently due to the effects of the sedative.

  Chapter Two

  Malcolm crouched beside Loris, a hand on her shoulder in a tender fashion. “What did they do to her?”

  It was more a rhetorical question than one that required an answer. None of them knew for certain what Loris had gone through, but it was easy enough to infer from her behavior that she’d been subjected to artificial intelligence reprogramming and was now under the black ops group’s control.

  “Do you think we can reverse it somehow?” asked Lex. She wasn’t optimistic about their chances even as she voiced the question.

  George stepped closer, his eyes filled with regret. “From my knowledge of the program, I don’t think there’s anything we can do to reverse what they’ve done to Loris. She’s just gone. They’ve destroyed her mind so they could use her body.”

  “There must be something—” The sound of shattering glass cut off Wyatt’s words, and they were all instantly on alert.

  Leaving Loris sedated on the floor, the group moved out of Lex’s bedroom and down the hallway. When they entered the living room, she gasped at the sight of super soldiers flooding into the house. There had to be at least twenty of them. Trying not to focus on their dismal odds, she turned her attention to the fighting around her, which had begun as soon as they entered the living room.

  The closest super soldier to her appeared to be a hybrid of human and hyena, and she crouched in a fighter’s stance, wishing she’d had time to grab her gun. It had been a careless mistake to leave it behind, but she had been distracted by Loris and their speculation of what their teammate had been through. At least the others were armed, clearly having grabbed their sidearms when they’d heard her shouting as Loris had come after her.

  She was prepared to shift if needed, which would give her the advantage of speed and maneuverability, but her coyote form was likely to be more vulnerable to injury from super soldiers—if they could catch her, that was.

  She was startled when the human-hyena hybrid turned away from her, seeking out a different target instead. With a frown, she moved to engage a wolf-hybrid, but he turned away from her as well. She was truly confused now, taking a moment to look around her. At first, she wondered if there’d been orders not to harm shifters, but if so, the super soldiers were ignoring the order with everyone except her. Her friends around her were engaged in gruesome and fierce battles, with the odds against them.

  As she looked around, she saw Wyatt was outnumbered, even in his bear form, while he faced off against four of the soldiers. She moved to help him, startled when the super soldier nearest her that she pried away from Wyatt simply stood there passively facing her, making no move to defend itself even when she gave it a solid kick to its temple and knocked it out, incapacitating the cheetah-hybrid.

  She had the same result when she pulled another off Wyatt, and she realized for whatever reason, the super soldiers wouldn’t engage her. She moved through the crowd, helping reduce the numbers her friends faced, all while trying to figure out why they wouldn’t attack her.

  It was still a madhouse, filled with chaos and shouts, interspersed with grunts of pain from her teammates, but the super soldiers remained silent no matter how badly they were injured. She was so focused on the battle around her that she didn’t realize someone was behind her until strong arms wrapped around her, pinning her against a hard body.

  She struggled, doing her best to free herself, as the scent of her captor filled her nose. She identified the human pheromones, which seemed to be mingled in exact proportion to those of a bear. Scent alone allowed her to identify the person who’d captured her, and she renewed her struggles to free herself from Jasper Caswell’s arms. The lieutenant colonel might as well have been made from granite. She couldn’t move him or shrug him off.

  In desperation, she started to shift to the coyote, knowing she could wriggle free from his hold that way. Before she could do so, there was a sharp sting in her neck, and she realized he had injected her with something.

  “Sorry, but I can’t have you shifting. Go to sleep, Alexandria. Everything will be better in the morning. Or things can’t get any worse, from your perspective.” He said the words sarcastically, with a deep chuckle.

  Her eyes were starting to blur, and she tried to focus her gaze on the fight around her. She was startled to realize the super soldiers were withdrawing abruptly, regardless of if they were winning or losing. She tried to force her mouth to form words, wanting to know what was going on, but all she managed was a weak-sounding slurred syllable even she couldn’t identify. Whatever he’d injected her with was acting quickly and was too potent for her to fight off easily.

  “Move out,” said Jasper once he dragged her from the house. He must have sent the signal to the super soldiers inside, because by the time he had loaded her on a helicopter, she was just aware enough to see the super soldiers double-timing it from the house as they ran for the helicopter.

  None of her teammates had been taken hostage, but she had no idea if they were alive or dead. She also had no idea why Caswell had targeted her for acquisition, but seemed to have little interest in the rest of her group. Whatever his motives, she was certain they boded ill for her.

  Chapter Three

  Lex woke with a fierce headache, half-convinced little people inside her skull were currently chopping her brain in half with sharp, tiny axes. With a moan, she brought a hand to her face, finally convincing her eyelids to peel upward. She winced at the intrusion of light, but her eyes quickly adapted, allowing her to see her surroundings.

  It was some kind of cell, but not as primitive as she’d expected. Getting to her feet, she moved around slowly as she waited for the room to stop spinning while taking inventory. The bed was larger than she’d ever seen in a cell, though still only a full-size. There was a dresser, and when she opened it, she grimaced at the skimpy items she found inside.

  There was also a small fridge with nothing but bottled water, a sink, and a small bathroom tucked into the corner behind the siding partition. It was more like guest quarters than a prison cell, but it was still designed to lock her in, as she confirmed for herself by trying to open the door. Nothing happened when she put her palm on the biometric panel, and though she was disappointed, she wasn’t surprised. This was clearly a holding cell of some sort, and she wasn’t allowed to leave.

  Not that she planned to wait for someone’s permission before she made her escape. She didn’t know how she was going to accomplish that yet, but it would be her number-one priority.

  With little else to do, she returned to the bed and sat down. There was literally nothing to do, since there wasn’t even a television or a bookshelf in the room. All she could do was sit and wait, her gaze locked on the door as she dreaded Caswell’s arrival.

  When the door finally opened almost an hour later—by her estimate, and based on her internal clock since there wasn’t one in the room—she braced herself, splitting her attention between assessing the threat at the door and looking for a way to move past it.

  A man about her age stepped inside, pushing a wheeled cart with him. He
r stomach immediately dropped as she recalled George telling them about the torture he’d endured when he’d refused to help try to lure in the rest of the team. It seemed like the obvious conclusion to draw, to assume the handsome man who had stepped into her room was there to torture her to gain information.

  Handsome? She shouldn’t even notice such a thing about anyone around here. At least he had a spark of intelligence in his gaze, and he didn’t appear to be any sort of hybrid—a fact she confirmed by inhaling his scent as he approached. His human pheromones were distinct, with nothing shifter or A.I. underlying them. He smelled nervous, and he was visibly tense as he approached her, stopping a few feet away. She glared at him, crossing her arms across her chest. Neither one of them spoke for a long moment as their gazes locked, clashing.

  He was the first to look away, moving his gaze to the tray he pushed in. She held her breath as he reached inside, wondering what device she would face first. It was almost anti-climactic when he pulled out a tray of food and set it atop the cart.

  He offered her a tentative smile as he cautiously extended the tray, as if he wasn’t certain if she would take it or jump on him. “Sorry about this, but it’s tuna noodle casserole. It’s about the worst dish they serve around here.”

  She allowed no hint of expression on her face or in her tone. “Who are you, and what do you want with me?”

  “My name is Aidan, and my job is to take care of you. You and the other prisoners.” There was a haunted look in his eyes, but his voice was steady and strong. “I brought you some food, and I should warn you Caswell will be in to interrogate you shortly. He’s finishing up other projects, but I heard him say he was looking forward to spending time with you.” His handsome features revealed his dismay. “He likes to get hands-on with torture.”

  She didn’t trust him, but she appreciated the warning. It could have been a manipulation to make her think she could trust him though, trying to lull her into a false sense of security with him so she would betray something important about her team—like the location of Sanctuary. If that was the game they were playing, it wouldn’t work.