Hunger Untamed by Pamela Palmer Read Free Book Online

continued to hate her.
    Letting his friends die ought to seal that hatred for eternity. Maybe someday she'd be able to make it up to him, when this nightmare was finally over. When they were both free of the threat of the poison.
    It would happen. Melisande would find the bastard. Though she'd been saying that for nearly a millennium, she couldn't give up hope that someday this would all be a bitter memory. For a long time, she'd thought Kougar would be part of that future. Now she wasn't so sure.
    If she didn't keep him hating her, he wouldn't be alive to see any future at all.
    As the elderly patient's voice slowed, his eyes beginning to droop, Ariana patted his hand. "Get some rest, Mr. McCloud. You have a busy day tomorrow."
    His eyes softened. "I won't see you again, pretty girl. Thank you for brightening an old man's last days."
    Ariana bent down and brushed his cheek with her lips. "You'll have the best seats to all the games, soon."
    His eyes crinkled. "From on high. I'll save you a seat, though you won't be needing it for a good many years."
    He had no idea. She'd already lived nearly thirteen hundred and might live thousands more, despite her current inability to turn to mist. Killing an Ilina queen required cutting out her heart, which took a speed and slyness few possessed.
    Ariana smiled softly, sadly. "Save me that seat." With a squeeze of his hand, she grabbed the purse she'd left on the chair by the door and headed home, her heart heavy, but the poison back under control. For a while.
    The night was cool, a light fog blurring the edges of the streetlamps that lit the parking lot. As she made her way to her car, she shrugged, trying to ease the tension twisting her neck muscles, a tension she laid firmly in the lap of the mate she'd hidden from for a thousand years.
    She strode through the parking lot, her gaze skimming for movement, noting only a pair of young parents hurrying toward the Emergency Room with a feverish-looking toddler in arms. Ariana's inner radar had long ago become finely tuned to threats of any kind, but she sensed none. Not even the Feral who'd become the biggest threat of all. He wasn't anywhere near. Yet.
    As she'd dressed for work two days ago, she'd discovered her name badge missing, and she was all too afraid she'd lost it in the Crystal Realm when Kougar attacked her. If she had, he'd found it. All she could do was hope that he wouldn't be able to use it to track her down since the hospital's name wasn't on it. But she felt far from safe.
    Kougar was nothing if not determined.
    For the past two days, she'd monitored the mating bond, seeking any sense of his drawing closer than normal, but she'd felt nothing. That didn't mean he wouldn't find her, only that he hadn't yet.
    If she could just avoid him for the next week or two, until his friends caught in the spirit trap had died, she felt almost certain he'd go away and leave her alone again. Something inside her twisted at the callousness of that thought. The loss of so many Feral Warriors since she and Kougar had last been together was a tragedy. She'd known none of the shifters well, but Horse and the Wind had always treated her with kindness and even gratitude for the happiness she'd brought their friend. She was sorry she hadn't been there to save Horse when he'd been caught in that spirit trap with the others. Sadly, it was the very fact that she'd come into Kougar's life that had ensured she couldn't save his friends. The Mage would never have attacked the Ilinas if they hadn't feared that the Ilinas might join forces with the Ferals against them.
    She unlocked the door of her ten-year-old beige sedan, climbed in, and tipped her head back against the seat. Slowly, she unwrapped the bandage that covered her right wrist and the silver cuff set with six blood red moonstones, a cuff that she'd worn since that day she'd tried too hard to save her maidens and taken too much poison, then lost it all. The moonstones shored up her