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he felt that unrelenting hunger stir. He’d sent Katya away once, and it had hollowed him. There was not much sacrifice left in him. He had little of his humanity left to temper his instincts, and right now they screamed for him to take her, make her his. Fate had brought Katya back, and he didn’t know if he could let her go again.
    Hell, he was pretty damn sure he couldn’t.
    “I didn’t do this, Katya. I think we’ve been paired.” Her scent was ripening, filling his nose and coating his lips. His body responded to it, his skin tightened, the pinch of pain from his mating marks making the surge of desire that much stronger, sharpening his senses.
    “Paired?” Her nostrils flared, no doubt scenting his growing arousal. She backed away from him. “No.”
    “Katya…”
    “That’s why you did this?” Her voice rose steadily until she was shouting. “So you could mate me?”
    “Katya, listen to me.”
    She frantically shook her head, her breasts rising temptingly beneath the lab coat as her anger swelled, seeming to fill the small space, quickly disintegrating into panic. She pressed her hands to her middle. “Oh God, and they gave me your blood.”
    Her fear mingled with the pungent scent of her body’s response to his blood, the heady ripening of her womb. It wrapped around him, blanketing his rational mind, making it harder to focus. Harder to remember why he had turned her away in the first place.
    “If I intended to fucking mate you, I would have done it when I had you all soft and warm on my kitchen counter.” Raife clenched his fists against the hunger screwing with his control. He tried to swallow down the fury of it, but it clung to his throat, roughening his voice. “I tried to save you from it. I sent you away.” And it had nearly killed him.
    “Save me?” Her voice bordered on hysterical. “By sending me here? Thanks a lot.” She laughed, a hard and cold sound he’d never heard pass her lips before.
    “I didn’t send you here. I took you to your uncle.” A rumble expanded in his chest. “After that I don’t know what happened. He was supposed to marry you into some snooty House in Wales.” Far from him.
    “You think my uncle sent me here? He loves me.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. Her fiery gaze darted around the room before landing on him. “No, I don’t believe you.”
    “I didn’t say he sent you here.” Although he was beginning to suspect that. It would be something high on his priority list to find out once he got out of this place. That bloodsucking asshole would die if he had endangered his mate. His mate? He scented the thick air. No, not yet but soon. “I would never subject you to this shit. I swear it.”
    “Like you swore you would never hurt me? Always protect me?”
    Raife gritted his teeth against the accusation, one that hovered too damn close to his own fears. Had he failed her somehow? By trusting her uncle? By not following up to be sure she was safe and happy? He’d carried her unconscious body into her uncle’s house and left, never looking back because he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to stay away. Maybe he had failed her.
    “I’ll get you out of here.”
    “Do you swear it?” Katya laughed, clenching and unclenching her hands at her sides. She was pacing like an addict jonesing for her next fix. Or a female coming into heat. “No. I don’t need your promises. I take care of myself now.”
    Why that felt so much like a blow to the chest, he didn’t know, but it left him with a deep ache. And a mounting fury. “Well that’s too fucking bad, kitten.”
    She faced him, rubbing desperately at her arms as her eyes glittered with a beguiling mix of desire and anger. “Don’t call me that.”
    He smiled in feral satisfaction. The heat had to be leaving her cold now even as her insides began to burn. Soon she would ache. An ache that only he could relieve. The thought of covering her body with his gave him a little surge of pleasure,