Chapter 2

The metallic tang of blood on her tongue was the only thing keeping Genevieve from sinking into the welcoming darkness. It was a stark reminder that she was alive, and that the men standing over her wanted that to change.

"We should just leave her," Kameron's voice was as cold and smooth as polished stone. "The scavengers will clean up the mess. No need to dirty the cave."

His words were a key, unlocking the most vicious of the original Genevieve's memories. They flooded her, not as a story, but as a series of brutal, sensory shocks.

Flashback-A cliff's edge. The original Genevieve, her face twisted in a mask of rage, corners a terrified rabbit-man, his long ears flat against his head. Case. He was beautiful, and he was hers for the taking. Yet, even beneath the veneer of trembling fear, there was a fleeting, calculating gleam in his red-rimmed eyes-a subtle manipulation that the original Genevieve had been too blinded by lust to notice. "Link with me, or you'll have nowhere else to go," she'd sneered. Case's eyes, quickly masking that sharp cunning with a look of pure, tragic defiance, stared back at her before he chose the abyss, leaping from the cliff rather than submitting to her bond. The humiliation had been a physical blow, and she had stormed back to the cave, overturning a table laden with precious roasted meats and fruits.

Flashback-The cave. Her fury, denied its original target, had turned on the easiest one. Angelo. The slender snake-man, whose only crime was his silent, trembling obedience. She'd grabbed a thorny whip. The crack of it slicing through the air was followed by the sickening sound of it connecting with his silver-scaled tail. Scales, like chips of pearl, flew into the air. Blood welled up, dark against the shimmering silver. Angelo had curled into a ball on the floor, biting his lip so hard it bled, his body convulsing with each lash, but never making a sound.

Flashback-A roar of fury. Gilberto, the tiger-man, unable to watch any longer. He had charged forward, a protective wall of muscle and rage, and shoved her. "Enough!" he'd bellowed. She had stumbled backward, her footing lost on the loose scree of the cave entrance. A sharp, tearing pain as she rolled, a jagged rock ripping through her dress and deep into her belly.

The memory and the reality collided. A fresh spike of agony lanced through Genevieve's abdomen, forcing a pained grunt from her lips.

Gilberto heard it. He let out a cold snort, crossing his massive arms over his chest. "Serves you right," he muttered, his voice thick with contempt.

High above, perched on a branch like a silent angel of death, the hawk-man Jameel watched her life drain away with unnerving stillness.

The wolf-man, Dalvin, had a flicker of something-pity? -in his eyes, but then he glanced at Angelo, who was still shaking, and his expression hardened. He turned his head away.

Genevieve took a ragged breath, forcing down the disgust she felt for the woman whose body she now inhabited. This wasn't the time for a moral reckoning. It was time for survival.

She tried to push herself up onto her elbows, but the slick mud offered no purchase. Her arm slipped, and her chin cracked hard against a half-buried stone. The new pain was a dull throb she barely registered.

Her eyes, however, never left their target.

She locked onto the one she had identified from the memories. The weakest link. The most broken one.

Angelo.

Her gaze fixed on his ankle, just visible behind Gilberto's leg.

Kameron, ever observant, noticed the shift in her focus. His brow furrowed, and he took a half-step, subtly blocking her line of sight to Angelo.

But it was too late. Genevieve knew she was out of time.

She marshaled every last shred of her fading consciousness, her will forged in the fires of the apocalypse, and focused it inward. She searched for the Biological Link, the chaotic, violent threads of energy the original had woven. It was a mess, a tangle of rage and pain.

Ignoring the splitting headache it caused, she found the one connected to the trembling snake-man. She grabbed hold of it in her mind.

Kameron flinched, a sharp pain stabbing at his temple. He took a wary step back, his eyes narrowing with suspicion.

Genevieve bit down on her lip, hard. The pain was a firework, a brief, brilliant explosion of energy. She used it.

Her arm shot out, a desperate, mud-caked lunge.

Gilberto flinched, thinking she was about to attack, his hand instinctively going to the bone knife at his hip.

But she wasn't attacking.

Her fingers, stained with dirt and her own drying blood, closed around Angelo's ankle.

The contact was like a lightning strike. Angelo let out a choked, terrified cry, his entire body going rigid. The scales on his skin seemed to stand on end. He tried to yank his foot back, a purely instinctual reaction, but her grip was like a manacle of bone and desperation.

Her nails dug into his cold skin.

Slowly, with an effort that seemed to tear her apart, Genevieve lifted her head. Her matted hair clung to her pale face. Her eyes, burning with a terrifying, unyielding light, locked with his.

She pulled herself forward another inch, her voice a raw, broken rasp that was barely a sound.

"Save... me."

The whisper, carried on the faintest tremor of the Biological Link, echoed not in the air, but directly inside their minds.

The forest fell utterly silent.