He took her to one of the bedrooms in the hall, next to the one Jace had been using. This was a luxurious contrast to the rooms upstairs—a four-poster bed draped with airy hangings, a cavernous bathroom with a marble sunken bathtub, and a rug whose softness she felt under her sandals.
Eric lifted Iona to the edge of the bed and started unbuttoning her blouse. “Dr. Murdock was the one researcher twenty years ago who actually felt sorry for me as he stuck needles into me and shocked me almost to death. Which made him, in that place, a nice guy. I did see him today, and he confirmed what was wrong with me. I told him he needed to cure me, and in return, I’d let him live. He agreed.”
Iona’s Shifter felt a twinge of satisfaction at Eric’s casual threat of violence. She’d grown enraged when Cassidy had told her that Dr. Murdock had been one of the researchers who’d experimented on Eric. Iona had been ready to run after Eric and claw the man herself. These people who treated Shifters like lab animals—as they’d done to Tiger and had started to do to Amanda—deserved to be a little scared.
“And what did he say was wrong with you?” she asked.
Eric finished unbuttoning Iona’s blouse and pulled it open. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and the cool air of the underground room touched her bare skin as Eric’s gaze slid to it. He didn’t ogle, he admired, warmed.
He slid the blouse off her and started on her skirt. “You were right, and Kellerman was right, that what was done to me was part of humans trying to make a super Shifter, like the tiger. Only, they started with a full-grown Shifter in my case. They planned to take off the Collar but keep me programmed with the pain if I turned violent, but only if I turned violent on them. They were thinking that with a series of remotes and implants they would control me with pain when they wanted to, or let me kill for them when they pointed me at their enemies.”
Iona listened in anger and revulsion. “How could they do that?”
Eric shrugged. “They were humans who didn’t know what to think when they discovered that shapeshifters were real. What do humans always do when they find a new species of animal? Capture it, study it, tag it. Or kill it and hang its head on a wall.”
“But what they did to you didn’t work, did it? They stopped the experiments, obviously.”
Eric pushed the loosened skirt down, and Iona wriggled her way out of it. She sat bare, in panties only, and reached for the buttons on Eric’s shirt. “They stopped the experiments because Shifters’ rights activists started to raise hell. I told Murdock that what they were trying to do wouldn’t ever work. The Collars are partly magic, not just technology—a half Fae shithead designed them. Murdock and his colleagues were trying to recreate the effect with biotechnology—just like the humans in Area Fifty-one were trying to recreate Shifters themselves with biotech. They put an implant in me all right, one so tiny I never knew I had it. The implant was supposed to trigger a chemical reaction whenever I turned violent, but they never got the reaction right, and my Collar always went off before it did. Then they were forced to stop the experiments and let me go, so they never could fine-tune the implant.”
Iona opened all Eric’s buttons and skimmed her hands inside his shirt. “But why did the pain go away for twenty years and then come back now?”
“Because I started learning how to control my Collar,” Eric said. “When Jace began teaching me the meditation techniques to keep my Collar from reacting to my adrenaline, the little implant woke up. They’d never taken it out—either they forgot or hoped they could get around the new rules sooner or later and begin work on it again. Then the implant started malfunctioning—or maybe making up for lost time—who the hell knows? Any adrenaline spike set it off, even small ones that wouldn’t necessarily have triggered my Collar.”
“I’m so sorry.” Iona rubbed his warm, bare chest, hating how the pain had torn at him. “But Dr. Murdock is going to help you?”
“He started today.” Eric shrugged the shirt off and turned to show her the deep gouge in his right shoulder blade, the wound already closed and scarring. “I told him to get his scalpel and dig the damned implant out of me. It was so tiny, like a dot. I couldn’t believe something that small caused me that much pain.”
“What did you do with it? You didn’t let him keep it, did you?”
Eric’s smile was feral. “I crushed it while he watched, appalled that I’d destroy something that unique and expensive. Then I told him to dredge through his memory for any other Shifter he’d done this to, and find them, tell them, and fix them.”
“Good,” Iona said, her anger rising. “Good.”
“He needs to give me a few injections, he said, to put my adrenaline balance back the way it should be,” Eric said. “But it’s a start. I already feel better.”
Iona slid her fingers along the puckered skin of the gouge. “Are you sure there was only one implant?”
“He says so. I told him that if I discovered I had more, I’d come back and break his neck, so I’m pretty sure he told me the truth.”
“Good,” Iona said again.
Eric turned to face her again, stepping between her parted thighs, hands sliding up her arms. “But I would have died without your touch.”
Iona caressed his chest, not liking that he’d gone through so much. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Like I said, as long as I’m with you, I’ll be fine. The touch of the mate, your touch, is what kept me from going insane, no matter how close I came.” His breath warmed her cheek. “The Goddess sent you right when I needed you. I can talk all I want about the science, but you’re what keeps me alive. You always will be.”
She leaned forward and kissed his chest, feeling the heat of his body, the pound of his heart under her lips. “Then I’ll be here. I’ll be here always.”
“That was the plan.” Eric’s voice rumbled pleasantly around her. “Love you, Iona.”
“Love you too.” She slanted him a smile. “If you’re feeling better, then I can do this…” She let her fingers become claws and lightly scratched him down his chest. “And this.” She rocked up, scraping his throat with her teeth, giving him another love bite.
“Mmm. You can do anything you want, love. It’s not mating that hurt me, it was anger, and the need to protect you.” He licked her cheek. “Mating just makes me a little wild.”