Lawe's Justice - Lora Leigh [3]
And they were forced to remain silent, outwardly unconcerned, as though her screams meant nothing. As though they weren’t ripping through their souls and tearing their guts to ribbons each time she begged, each time she screamed in agony.
Each time she begged God for mercy.
Breed number 107 kept his eyes closed, his breathing regulated, and called upon fourteen years of training to maintain the control needed to restrain his rage and pain. If just one of her young broke, if just one of them showed a reaction or showed an emotion, then three of them would die.
As so many had already died. So many had already known the inhuman agony that waited when they were strapped down on the autopsy table in the center of the room.
The day before, the scientists had tortured one of their favored pets as well. As though they couldn’t sate their hunger for the blood, screams and agony forced upon the Breeds. Their victim, the Coyote lieutenant Elder, had been a surprising addition to the scientists’ mercilessness. Because, strangely, in an act so out of character for a Coyote, Elder had attempted to slip the woman from the labs and to shut down the generators that kept the scientists’ creations caged and under control.
Elder had failed, though. He’d been betrayed by one of the twelve who now sat silently in the cells as their dam’s voice began to rise in horror.
Breed number 107 wondered if this would be the final horror that would break the only female in the group. The young Cheetah female also suspected to be the woman’s natural child. The one who lay, as though sleeping, on the small cot in a far cell.
Morningstar wasn’t just being punished, though, and they all knew it. They had all watched Elder’s vivisection the day before and heard the scientists’ muttered conversation about a mating. So it was no surprise to 107 when they dragged the gentle, weeping woman from the enclosed room where she’d been kept confined since Elder’s failed attempt at removing her from the labs.
Her long, heavy black hair had flowed around her naked body, tangled and mussed from her battle with the soldiers who’d had to drag her away from Elder’s unconscious body after they were captured.
Now she was insane with rage from Elder’s death, and the pain from the soldiers’ touch. She had fought them as he had never seen her fight.
She cursed, raged, screamed out obscenities and called down all manner of curses against them. Her normally dark brown eyes, strangely flecked with blue, were a pure ice blue now, like flames burning in her Native American features.
She kicked, fought to trip her guards’ and swore vengeance.
To no avail.
“Bastards!” she shrieked. “They’ll come for you. My father and his father and those who have gone before. They will visit you in the dead of night and your blood will flow.” Her voice ragged and savage, 107 had never heard such a sound from any creature’s throat, even those of the Breeds tortured on a regular basis.
His nostrils flared as her scent reach him.
From the corner of his eye he could glimpse her as they strapped her down to the autopsy table in the center of the operating room. Once they inserted the IV and the paralytic’s slow drip reached her system, then she would be unable to move, unable to fight anything they did.
It didn’t take long for the drug to take effect. Her body went slack, and as she wept in pain and horror, the lab techs slowly released the straps holding her to the table.
Breed number 107 couldn’t see their eyes, but he caught a hint of human fear and compassion, of silent horror and desperation that didn’t belong to Morningstar.
It was the first time she had been injected with the paralyzing drug that it wasn’t to take a child from her body. The first time she had been placed on a table in the center of that room that she