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led her from the room, downstairs to the lobby that was packed with even more people than earlier.
    "This is some party, huh?" she asked as she saw a group of four women dressed only in warning tape wrapped around their bodies surrounded by a group of Storm Troopers, cross the lobby.
    "It's definitely something," he said, holding her hand as they passed a woman who was leading a man around on a leash.
    "Do you come here often?"
    He shook his head. "First time."
    Before she could speak again, Pandora felt a vicious pain sear across her palm. Hissing, she jerked her hand back at the same time Dante started shaking his own hand as if he'd burned it.
    Pandora frowned as a bad sense of foreboding went through her.
    She looked at her hand and watched as an attractive geometrical design formed over her palm, confirming her worst fear.
    She was mated.
    And there was only one male it could be…
     
    CHAPTER 3
    « ^ »
    Dante stared in horror at the sight of his mating mark. No. This couldn't be real and it damn sure couldn't be happening. Not to him.
    He took Pandora's hand and held it up against his so that he could compare their palms.
    There was no denying it. The marks were identical.
    She was his.
    Damn.
    "You bastard!" she snarled angrily. "How could you be the one meant for me?"
    "Excuse me?" Dante asked, baffled by her rage. If anyone had a right to be angry it was him. After all, he'd been minding his own business when she traipsed into his sensory circle. Had she just stayed put, neither one of them would be in this situation.
    "In case you didn't notice, sweetheart, I'm not exactly thrilled by this either."
    She glared at him for two seconds before she whirled on her heel and headed off into the crowd.
    Part of him was tempted to let her go, but that wouldn't accomplish anything. Neither Katagaria nor Arcadian had any say in who the Fates chose as their mates. Any more than they knew when or where they'd find the one person who was designated for them.
    The only way to find a mate was to sleep with him or her and to wait for the mark to appear.
    Whenever it did, they only had three weeks to perform their mating ritual or they would spend the rest of their lives sterile. For a female, it wasn't such a bad thing since she could continue to have sex with any man who caught her attention; she just couldn't have children with any male other than her designated mate. But for a male…
    It was worse than death. The male was left completely impotent until the day his mate died.
    Dante shivered at the thought. Him, impotent? Those were two words that would never be said together.
    He would die first.
    He headed through the lobby in hot pursuit of his "mate."
    Pandora was seething as she headed blindly through the crowd. All she wanted was to put some significant distance between her and Dante.
    This was awful.
    Terrible!
    Wasn't it?
    Most Arcadians dreamed of finding their mate as their first lover. That way, they wouldn't have to fear their prowling instinct, which would debase them as they hopped from male to male, trying to find the one who could breed with them.
    It was a dream come true to find a mate so early and so easily. Most of her kind spent centuries looking. And many died without ever being mated at all.
    Technically, she'd been lucky, and yet she was angry because she was bound to a Katagari male. Talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire! This morning her worst fear was being enslaved to a Katagaria pack.
    Now she was captured even more fully than before. If she left Dante, she would never be able to have children. He was the only one who could give her that.
    "Damn these hormones," she snarled as more tears gathered in her eyes. It was hard to think straight.
    Someone grabbed her from behind.
    "Gotcha," a deep, masculine voice said in her ear.
    It wasn't Dante.
    The panther inside her roared to life, rejecting any male not her mate. She whirled about and struck without thought, making contact with the