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she regained equilibrium, but wasn’t sure if she was going to
be able to act on the threat. As much as she hated to admit it, he was growing
on her. Those large arms, the heat in his eyes every time he looked at her, and
those shoulders that she longed to cling to as she writhed under his heavy
body.
    “I have to look out for the pack,” he said, though his voice
wasn’t angry. “Now sit still like a good puppy and I might let you go before
dinner.”
    She struggled with the cuffs, but they were an inch thick,
and she realized that in addition to that, the chair was bolted to the floor.
How on earth had she missed that little detail? And who bolts their furniture down
anyway? For a more important point, who had shackles attached to their kitchen
chairs!
    She struggled a bit more, but gave up and kicked herself for
not retrieving the long knife from the chopping board next to her before
telling them what she was. Kicking sounded like a good idea though. Gabriel had forgotten that she had legs too, and they were swinging free.
    “I won’t hurt you,” she said, trying for the bluff first. He
was too far away to get a good kick in anyway.
    “No. The whole room still smells of sulphur.”
    “What?”
    Gabriel leaned down to talk to her, his face level with
hers. “You will learn that later, or sooner at the rate you’re going.”
    “What the hell are you talking about?” she demanded, her
patience with the situation growing thin.
    He sat and watched her, and she realized he was waiting for
her to calm down again. Slumping back, she applied her patient face.
    “Good puppy, you’re learning.”
    His leering tone made her squirm with frustration. If she
hadn’t been secured to a chair she would have thrown something at him for that,
but as she was, she just rolled her eyes, aware that this little game didn’t
help the growing arousal and heat that burnt in her body.
    “You have an increase in body hair,” he continued.
    She flipped her hair over her shoulder and noticed that it
was at least a few inches longer. The weight of his words struck her. She
looked down at her legs and saw, to her horror, that she really needed a razor.
    He crossed his legs at the ankle as he pulled his chair up
before her, propping his chin on his fingers. “You will also become faster as
the day goes on.”
    “And body heat?” She saw where he was headed with this. She
had heard the stories of people who had been attacked by werewolves. Not many
lived of course. Those who did were thought to have been better off dead. Her
breathing became deep and ragged as her fear and anger welled within her. She
was turning into her prey; she was a werewolf.
    The thought rocked her to the core. A building panic
threatened to claim her sanity. She quenched that emotion, grasping it with a
tight fist and shoving it deep into her body. Losing her head now could be
dangerous; she knew she needed him. A lone wolf was easy picking, especially if
that wolf had a lot of enemies. But could she trust Gabriel to see her through
this?
    A lump rose in her throat. She tried to swallow it, and with
it, her fear. Gabriel watched her as she worked through the realization that
she may as well be dead. In her mind, she knew that had she not been secured to
the chair at that point she very well may have ended it then and there. Bile
rose in her stomach as she thought on the life now set out before her. More animal
than human. Killing for fun rather than need.
    “It’s not all bad. A lot of the stories you have been fed
are made to breed hate around us.”
    She looked at him. This man had protected her on more than
one occasion in the past few days, and he barely knew her. The panic was fading
as her training overtook her fear. She was a hunter, not a child. She had
trained to accept any situation with a cool head. Could she do that now? It was
her life, not his. Werewolves were a gray area for her kind. Neither evil nor
friend.
    “Marian?” Gabriel’s gaze had