She’d expected the question, and for days, she’d been trying to come up with a number. “At least thirty that I remember, but I’m sure there were more.”
“Any women or children?”
“A few of the Hunters were female,” she confirmed. “I never saw any children.” If there had been little ones in the camp, they’d been kept far away from her and the other beasts. She didn’t think that was the case, though.
“I’ve never heard of Hunters kidnapping Gemini or holding them captive.”
There was confusion in Orin’s voice, but also a fair amount of anger. As a werewolf—evident by his scent and glowing eyes—he’d likely had his own run-in with the fanatical group of humans. Maybe, like others in the room, he’d lost someone he loved to the Hunters. The one thing she was quickly coming to learn was that everyone had a story, and few had happy endings.
“They wanted to learn about us.” She swallowed hard and pressed deeper into Cade’s embrace. “How to hunt us. How we healed. How much…how much pain we could tolerate.” Her pulse tripped into a gallop, but she pushed down her fear and kept going. “They wanted to know if they could use what makes us special to help humans. Their words, not mine.”
Lynk jerked his head up from where he’d moved to stand by one of the windows. “What does that mean?”
“They were trying to find a way to use Gemini to make humans faster and stronger, enhance their senses, and initiate a rapid healing response.”
“They experimented on you?” The big shifter looked like he might be sick.
Mackenna didn’t blame him. She hadn’t even gotten to the worst part, though. “Not just us. Humans as well. Hunters, I think.” Some she had recognized, but she couldn’t be sure about the others. “None of them survived.”
A chorus of growls and curses went around the table, and there were more glowing eyes in the room than ever.
“How many Gemini would you say are being held?” Luca asked.
He sounded detached, almost bored, but his lack of emotion actually made it easier for Mackenna to disassociate herself from the information.
“Usually around a dozen at any given time, but they were always bringing in new prisoners to replace the ones who didn’t survive their experiments.” Bile rose in her throat, and saliva filled her mouth. She swallowed a couple of times and breathed evenly through her nose until she felt calm enough to continue. “Or the ones who didn’t make it out of the Wild Hunt.”
That last part drew a few quizzical looks, but it didn’t have quite the same impact as when she’d spoken of the experiments. Then again, why would it? She was the only one in the room who had lived through it. She was the only one who knew how sadistic and depraved it really was.
“Every full moon,” she explained when everyone continued to stare at her, “they would drug the prisoners and release them into the forest. They would give them a head start. Ten minutes, maybe?” Considering how every second had felt like an eternity on those nights, her estimate was probably way off. “Then, they hunted them. Hunted…us.”
Some months, they only used the Hunt to train new recruits on how to properly track and identify them. They’d teach them how to stay downwind, how to surround and dominate a frightened, lone wolf. They instructed their new soldiers on how to capture a vampire without killing him or trap a shifter to ensure they sustained only minor injuries.
As she explained it to those gathered in the conference room, she could see the exact moment they realized what had taken her months to work out. The Hunters had been practicing methods of capturing more Gemini to add to their experiments.
That wasn’t to say that no one died on those nights. Bear traps, razor wire, and pike-filled trenches did just as much damage as a bullet. Although, they rarely used real bullets or actual firearms. Those kinds of weapons made a lot of noise, the kind that echoed for miles through the mountains.
Instead, they hunted with knives, throwing stars, and crossbows. They used tranquilizer darts filled with lethal doses of neurotoxins. They deployed grenade-like devices that exploded in a shower of electrical currents.
“And you survived all of this? For two years?”
She didn’t think she was imagining the skepticism in Seth’s voice.
Mackenna nodded.
At the time, she had recognized that she held some value to her captors, but she hadn’t understood why. Now, she knew it was because she’d escaped the devastating effects of the virus and maintained her ability to shift.
She hesitated to reveal her secret. The virus had ravaged the human population, but the paranormal races hadn’t escaped untouched, and the werewolves had suffered worse than others. If they knew that her blood might hold the key to a cure for them, there was a very real possibility that she would end up right back inside a lab.
Oh, they’d call it research, and someone in a white lab coat would tell her how it was all for the greater good. They’d poke and prod her, subject her to scans, exams, and any other battery of tests they deemed necessary.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to help. She wasn’t a monster. She didn’t want to see people suffer, especially if she had the ability to do something about it, but she wouldn’t end up back in some lab strapped to half a dozen machines. As her mate had said, trust was earned, and at least for the time being, it felt a lot safer to keep her head down and stay quiet.
Of course, Cade was also the one caveat to that.
