Angel/Hiss (Bayou Heat Box Set Book 7) by Alexandra Ivy, Laura Wright Read Free Book Online Page A

a civilized male.
    He might be Pantera, but he refused to be ruled by his primitive instincts. Instead he used cold logic to rule his life. Even his skill as a Healer was used in combination with hard science and human technology.
    But pacing the cage he felt anything but civilized.
    Maybe he should have listened to Raphael. When Angel had made a hurried call to the Wildlands, the older male had insisted he make his escape and wait for Parish and his Hunters to arrive so they could round up the strange collection of humans.
    Angel, however, found himself unable to leave.
    He was waiting for…what?
    The question was churning through his mind when there was the sound of footsteps and a human male with tousled black hair and eyes that were puma gold stepped into the room. Angel instantly moved toward the door of the cage, his senses absorbing the male’s peculiar scent. He was human. But there was a distinct musk that was pure cat.
    “Who are you?” Angel demanded.
    “Tarin.” Warily crossing the room, the male bent down to shove a tray of food beneath the bars. “I brought you breakfast.”
    Angel’s stomach rumbled. How long had it been since he’d eaten? Seven or eight hours?
    His true hunger, however, wasn’t for food.
    “Where’s Indy?” he sharply demanded.
    In an effort to hide his nerves, Tarin wiped his hands down the front of his jeans that were nearly as threadbare as his New York Giants sweatshirt.
    “She’s eating with Willa.”
    His lips twisted. “Coward.”
    Tarin frowned, misreading Angel’s annoyance that the female was trying to avoid him.
    “I hope you won’t judge her too harshly.”
    Angel narrowed his gaze. “I admire your loyalty, but what happens between Indy and myself is no one’s business.”
    The male scowled, easily picking up on Angel’s possessive tone.
    “Indy will go to any lengths to save one of her kids.”
    Angel sucked in a sharp breath. “Willa’s…?”
    “Not her biological child,” Tarin swiftly denied. “But Indy has some sort of savior complex that drives her to risk her idiotic neck over and over when she knows someone is in danger.”
    An odd combination of pride and gut-clenching fear raced through Angel at the thought of the female’s daring rescue missions.
    “She helped you escape?” he demanded.
    “Yes.” Tarin nodded. “I was a cavy in the Benson horror show.”
    With an effort Angel squashed the thought of Indy deliberately putting herself in danger. It was too…disturbing. Instead he concentrated on the young male who had firsthand knowledge of Locke’s lab.
    “What did they do to you?”
    Tarin stiffened, his face tight with remembered pain. “I was given transfusions.”
    “With Pantera blood?”
    “Yeah.”
    Angel frowned. Because of Lydia they knew that the Haymore Center had been used to impregnate human women with Pantera sperm. But they hadn’t realized there’d been secret experimentations with injecting humans with blood, bone marrow, and the Goddess knew what else.
    “Did your captors say why?”
    For a long, tense moment Angel thought the younger male might refuse to answer. Then, with a restless shrug, he paced across the floor.
    “They would injure me and then give me the blood to see if it would help me heal.”
    “Shit,” Angel breathed, comprehension slamming into him with the force of a freight train.
    Their enemies had been experimenting with Pantera blood to determine if they could use it for their own gain. Why hadn’t the Pantera suspected that from the start?
    “Did it accelerate your healing?”
    Tarin continued to pace, his face averted as if he was ashamed of what the humans had done to him.
    “It cured the diseases they infected me with and most of the physical wounds they inflicted.”
    A fiery hatred scorched through Angel. What sort of twisted sicko would kidnap vulnerable children and abuse them as if they were no more than caged rodents?
    “Those bastards,” he snarled, the human part of him as