Loving The Beast Within (Sequel to Shifting Love)

Chapter 20: Experimentations

A cold sweat swept down my back and another chill coursed through my body. I shivered from the powerful serum injections I had been subjected to just hours before. My body lay curled in a ball at the bottom of my cage, unmoving. I couldn’t even hold myself up anymore.

It had been days since Walter started experimenting on us. Every few hours he would send his men in to retrieve one of us or to bring someone back. They took Dante and me at least once every twelve hours. No one else was subjected to that much testing.

But Walter was most interested in our bond more than anything else. He kept injecting us with his serum and it magnified every time. I now felt like I was Dante and he was me. The lines were starting to blur; I could barely discern myself from him.

My head felt like a fifty pound weight when I attempted to lift it up to look at my mate. He too was at the bottom of his cage. He was already staring at me with his beautiful blue eyes. His once perfect, wild black hair lay limp on his shoulders. Faint purple bruises were scattered over his face and body.

I sighed in contempt when I noticed the sadness and pain in my mate’s eyes. He wasn’t at all concerned about himself. It was all for me. The serum was taking a higher toll on my body than his. He was twice my size yet they were giving us the same dosage. It was too much for my body to handle at times.

‘You’re looking weaker today,’ he spoke through our mind link, although it didn’t feel like a mind link anymore. The serum made it feel like we could read each other’s thoughts.

‘Is that a nice way of telling me I look like crap?’ I responded jokingly, even though the last thing I wanted to do was laugh.

His lips twitched as he struggled to hold back a smile. He shifted his body closer to the cage bars and held out an open palm. My thin hand quickly slipped through the bars and grasped his. He loosely gripped around it like he was afraid I would break at any moment.

‘We need to get you out of here before something bad happens.’

 I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. It was a grand thought, escaping from this prison but it was going to take nothing short of a miracle to get us all out safely.

The door to the lab swung open and two of Walter’s men dragged Cooper through the doorway. They tossed him into his cage and slammed it shut behind him. He slumped to the bottom of the cage without even trying to hold himself up.

Fear gripped me as I thought the worst. But a low groan from his throat calmed my nerves. His body slightly shifted in the cage and I breathed easier knowing he was still alive.

The men didn’t leave the room this time; instead they threw open Dante’s cage door. His hand was ripped from my grasp when they dragged him out of the cage and into the lab. It wasn’t right. We had just come out from the lab a couple hours ago. It wasn’t our turn yet. They were taking us too early.

They soon returned to retrieve me from my cage as well. It only took one of them to carry me into the lab. The bright lights blinded me every time we entered the room. Dante was already splayed out on one of the lab tables. His arms and legs were bound, in silver chains, to the side of the table.

The man carrying me dropped me down onto the table next to Dante. Another man quickly locked my arms and feet in the chains attached to the table. I turned my head to the left so I could see Dante. We always watched each other throughout the torment. It was the only thing that kept us going.

Walter entered the room with a man in a white lab coat. He carried a clear plastic case in his hands that held the syringes they would use to inject us with the serum. The case made a loud clanking sound when he placed it on the lab table in front of us.