Chapter 2

Jolie scrambled backward until her spine hit the freezing wood of the door. Her hands flew over the surface, desperately searching for the interior release panel. Her fingers found the smooth glass of the scanner. She pressed it.

A small LED light flashed angry red. Catina had locked it from the outside using maximum security clearance. The door was a dead end.

Jolie didn't waste a single breath panicking. She reached down and unbuckled her high heels, tossing them silently aside. She pressed her bare feet into the thick wool carpet, eliminating any sound her footsteps might make.

Deep inside the suite, the heavy breathing grew louder. It was accompanied by the sound of fabric ripping and the heavy, wooden frame of a bed groaning under immense weight.

Jolie forced her eyes to adjust to the pitch-black room. A sliver of pale starlight bled through the gap in the heavy blackout curtains, casting a faint, silvery line across the floor.

It was a massive, opulent suite. In the dead center of the room sat a circular king-sized bed. A towering male figure was writhing on the mattress. The air in the room was thick, suffocatingly hot, and reeked of aggressive male pheromones mixed with the sharp, chemical tang of a military-grade aphrodisiac.

Jolie held her breath. She kept her back to the wall, sliding inch by inch toward the marble wet bar on the left side of the room. She needed a weapon.

Her hip brushed against the edge of the bar. A metal cocktail shaker wobbled and tipped over, striking the marble counter with a sharp clink.

The sound was microscopic, but in the silence of the room, it was a gunshot.

The man on the bed froze. The writhing stopped instantly.

General Aloys Patterson sat up. In the darkness, his eyes glowed with a terrifying, feral gold light. He locked onto Jolie's exact position with the precision of an apex predator.

Jolie's stomach dropped to the floor. Her hand scrambled blindly across the bar top until her fingers closed around the cold, sharp handle of a metal letter opener. She gripped it in a reverse hold, bending her knees into a defensive stance.

Aloys let out a roar that vibrated the glass in the windows. His feral index was completely redlined. The drugs pumping through his veins were destroying his sanity, demanding release.

He launched himself off the bed. He didn't run; he moved with a terrifying, supernatural speed that defied human physics. The sheer air pressure of his movement hit Jolie a second before he did.

Operating purely on adrenaline, Jolie threw her body to the right, diving into a harsh roll.

Aloys's massive hand swiped through the empty air where her throat had been a millisecond prior. His palm slammed into the solid marble of the wet bar. The stone exploded. Shards of marble shrapnel flew across the room, raining down on the carpet.

Jolie gasped, her lungs burning. The physical power of a high-level Primal was absolute. She couldn't fight this.

Aloys spun around. His chest heaved. The drugs were screaming at him to mate, but his severe mysophobia-a deep, psychological disgust of females-was violently rejecting the urge. He caught the scent of her female pheromones. A look of absolute revulsion twisted his handsome, sweat-slicked face.

He grabbed his own head, his fingers digging into his scalp as he let out an agonized groan. The contradiction between his biological drive and his psychological hatred was tearing his mind apart. He slammed his forehead into a concrete pillar, trying to use the physical pain to clear the chemical fog.

Jolie didn't wait. She bolted toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, praying she could use the letter opener to shatter the glass and climb out.

She only made it two steps.

Aloys stopped hitting the pillar. His golden eyes snapped back to her, completely devoid of human reason.

He lunged. His massive body tackled her to the floor. The impact knocked the wind out of Jolie's lungs in a violent rush. He pinned her to the carpet, his weight crushing her ribs.

Jolie screamed, thrashing wildly. She brought the letter opener down, driving the metal blade straight toward his broad shoulder.

The tip pierced his military-issued shirt, but the moment it hit his skin, it stopped. His muscles were as dense as titanium. The blade bent, completely useless.

Aloys felt the sting. His jaw ticked violently. He ripped the letter opener from her hand, crushing the solid metal into a crumpled ball of foil with his bare fist, and tossed it aside.

His burning hands clamped down on her wrists, pinning them to the floor above her head. His face lowered, his ragged, scorching breath ghosting over the sensitive skin of her neck.

Jolie couldn't breathe. The heat radiating from his body was unnatural. The drugs were taking over, and she was about to be torn apart.

Her survival instinct shattered her limits. Deep within her chest, a strange, dormant lock snapped open. A rush of pure, icy-green energy flooded her veins, racing toward her fingertips.