Demon Huntress

"I'll give you twenty-four hours. After that, all bets are off. Shu lan will be mine. And my way of dealing with her won't be nearly as pleasant as yours."

************

The seductive pull of the full moon had nothing on the lure of a she-warg in her season, and with both mistresses tugging at Hao, the next three nights promised to be both heaven and hell.

He closed the door to the reinforced steel cargo container in his bas.e.m.e.nt and set the timer that would prevent the door from being opened from the inside. quang, the female he'd won in a bloody battle with five other males, pressed her n.a.k.e.d body to his b.a.r.e back as the clank of the outer metal bar falling into place echoed through the room.

"I still don't see why we must lock ourselves away," she murmured against the skin of his neck. "We could have gone to the country. We could run free. We could hunt."

Hunt. The very word made his blood fire. Hao would love to run wild like quang, who was a pureblood, whelped by warg parents and more animal than human. As a born warg, she lived by different rules than Hao, belonged to a different social order.

Hao had become a warg—a werewolf, to the ignorant—at the age of twenty-four, the victim of a warg attack in 1918, while fighting as a Chinese soldier. Every passing year chipped away at his humanity, but he retained enough to want to live among humans even if he didn't associate with them. Living with the humans came at a price, however, and to keep from tearing them apart during the most powerful three nights of the moon phase, he imprisoned himself, something he swore to do until the last of his humanity had withered away.

At that point, yuan had a promise to keep.

"We don't need to hunt," he said, turning into her so all six feet of her curvy body molded to his. "We'll keep busy in other ways."

Besides, two halves of a cow carcass hung from the ceiling, double his usual monthly order and delivered fresh from the closest slaughterhouse. They wouldn't starve.

Her hand, already elongating, tipped with claws, closed around his c.o.c.k, and a low growl escaped him.

"This union will produce young. I can feel it."

He drew a sharp breath. Wargs didn't take mates unless a female became pregnant, and then the bond would become permanent. He sifted his fingers through quang's waist-length, silver-blonde hair. Should his seed take root, she would be his.

One hundred years of loneliness would vanish.

"The Warg Council won't be happy." Not that he gave a shit, not when she rolled her h.i.p.s against him like that.

"Only if the cubs are not born wargs."

He tangled his fist in her hair and wrenched her head back. "We will not put down any that are born human," he growled.

The silver flecks in her eyes sparked, but with annoyance or the impending transformation, he wasn't sure. "But the law—"

"Is meant to be broken." He released his grip and dropped his hand to her perfect, round a.s.s. "We'll nip the human cubs, turn them into wargs. No one will ever know they weren't born that way."

"And if someone suspects?"

"I'll take out that someone before he can voice his suspicions."

She grinned, her canines glistening. "Ruthless. Strong. Protective. That is why I wanted you to win." She dragged her tongue over the claw marks on his clavicle, where one of his opponents had slashed him. "I haven't forgotten what you did for my pack."

Nor had he. They'd met in Korea three years ago, when he'd gone with Yuan to literally sniff out a relic made from warg hide. yuan had returned to the hospital, but Hao had remained with quang and her pack. He'd intended to make the move a permanent one, his longing for relationsh.i.p.s with his own kind a factor. But a rival clan had attacked them, and when quang had gone down beneath three enemy warriors, her family abandoned her in favor of saving their own cowardly skins. Hao alone remained, standing over her and defending her until the battle ended, her pack proving victorious.

But her family's abandonment of her when she needed them had made him realize he wasn't ready for pack life, and he'd returned to linzhou, disillusioned and more alone than ever.