Read Dawn Endeavor 4: Gunnar's Game Online

Authors: Marie Harte

Tags: #Multiple Partners

Dawn Endeavor 4: Gunnar's Game (2 page)

BOOK: Dawn Endeavor 4: Gunnar's Game
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He'd be damned if he'd let them get away with it. Accepting the rage, he used it to fan his aggression as well as his abilities. He followed the trail of his enemies with ease and loped through the forest on silent feet.

He found the rogues waiting for him, having caught his scent on the shifting wind. Four large Circs led by Raul LaGarda, their target. Perfect.

When they spotted him, they froze, and he scented fear. Tersch chuckled with glee, pleased at the rush that overtook him.

“Which one of you wants to die first?” he growled in a voice less than human.

Need to keep Raul alive for questioning. Don’t forget
. Tersch fought to get through to his berserker, the monster, but he feared it was too late.

As the rogues leaped to attack, he met them fist for fist. He countered with deliberate slowness, absorbing the blows and press of claws against his rough hide but not feeling much more than featherlight taps. He clawed through one rogue's chest and another's back. Both dropped to the ground, unmoving.

Though
changed
, his enemy couldn't withstand the power behind his punches, his sheer animalistic rage. The remaining two flailed as they tried to run away, but Hayashi had caught up and stopped one of them with a kick to his face.

“Not so fast.” Hayashi stood ready to attack Raul, the last one standing.

Hayashi glanced at Tersch and quickly looked away, careful not to make eye contact. “Oh shit. This cannot be good.”

Raul struck out, but Hayashi retaliated with a kick to his ribs and a following roundhouse that took Raul off his feet. The rogue fell and hurried to right himself.

Too late.

Tersch lifted him off his feet by his neck. Though Raul must have weighed a good three hundred pounds of solid muscle, he didn't come close to straining Tersch's muscles. Tersch smiled through his fangs, his berserker pleased at finally being allowed to play. Though he often exercised his beast by letting it come to the surface to frolic and fight, his berserker had to be kept on lockdown for fear it would kill everything in sight. The raging creature hated being cooped up, on a leash, and scolded into behaving by everyone on the goddamn team. Including Tersch.

While Hayashi took care of the Circ he'd kicked trying to regain his feet, Tersch shook Raul like a rag doll.

“Fuck! Let me down, you freak!” Raul choked, barely able to breathe.

“What? I couldn't understand that.” He felt his back teeth form. When Tersch transformed, his canines grew into fangs. But when he allowed his berserker to emerge, his entire physiology changed. All his teeth grew sharp, and a second row grew to reinforce the front, increasing his ability to inflict greater damage.

His berserker loved the thought of biting into prey, and Tersch forced himself to keep Raul at arm's length. He shook Raul again, taking care not to accidentally break the fucker's neck. Playing with this new toy amused him, and he didn't want it to end too soon.

“Hell.” Hayashi swore next to him. “Gunnar, buddy, you can hang on to him all night if you want, but don't kill him. Jules wants him alive for questioning.” Tersch frowned, his inner berserker not pleased.
More orders. More rules. No
fun. The Circ challenges
me
for dominance
? He grumbled at Hayashi and took a threatening step nearer, even though Tersch knew he stood next to his friend.
I’m a
fucking monster.

“Come on, Tersch. It's me.”

Tersch leaned down to sniff and nodded, pleased when Hayashi bared his throat and turned his head away. The berserker knew and trusted that scent.

Friend. Family. Hayashi had been his before and would be again. No matter that the others had all taken mates. At heart they belonged to each other. When the mating heat struck—as it did just about every month and sometimes more often—

gender and marital ties meant less than satisfying their inner beasts.

At the thought, he grew hard. Both his berserker and his beast wanted sexual play.
So long since I had that ass
. Tersch glanced down at Hayashi and grinned.

Hayashi swore again before lifting a radio out of the small pack he carried.

“Jules, it's me. We have them. You'd better hurry before the Viking kills Raul. He's ultrahuge again, and his eyes are that funky striated black and blue. Freaky, yeah.” He rattled off a set of coordinates he read from the GPS on his radio and signed off.

“Okay, Tersch. You'd better put him back on his feet again. He's turning purple.” Tersch lowered the rogue to the ground but kept his hand around Raul's neck.

Every now and then he squeezed to remind Raul he lived because
Tersch
allowed him to live. His berserker thrived on dominance as much as Tersch did. He had to be in charge, because to lose command of a situation would be deadly. As he well knew.

“Why did you take Melissa Keiser?” Hayashi asked Raul while they waited for the others to join them.

“Who?” Raul answered in a hoarse growl.

Tersch shook him. “Melissa Keiser.”

Raul swallowed hard beneath Tersch's palm. “Fuck. You want to know? Fine.

Like I give a shit about her. Melissa
Ramirez
is working for some bigwig in Washington. Keiser was the name she used to sucker you assholes into believing her.”

Hayashi snorted. “We figured that much out ourselves. How long has she been working for this bigwig?”

“As long as I've known her. Nine months or more, I'd guess.” Tersch had a bad feeling Melissa had been working for the enemy for as long as she'd been working at the mansion, what the team had dubbed Circ central.

Their home. And it had never been as safe as any of them had thought.

His anger grew. Someone had dared put those he loved in danger.

“Easy, Gunnar.” Hayashi spoke softly, and Tersch realized his claws had grown another inch and darkened in color.

His vision blurred as he strove to remain in control. He nodded, pushing past the layers of sheer feeling into thought. Hayashi gently stroked his forearm, helping to soothe him. The familiar touch and scent eased his berserker, as well as his beast.

Hayashi continued his interrogation of Raul. “But you don't know who she's working for, right? I know the name Colonel Ricardo Montaña rings a bell. You worked for him, remember?”

They'd killed the asshole drug runner just two weeks ago. Jules had pulled Montaña's heart from his fucking chest. A thing of beauty, but Tersch had been too busy trying to save Ava's sexy, sorry, lying ass at the time to witness it.

As if thinking about him had conjured him, Jules appeared, followed closely by Fallon and Morgan.

“About time,” Tersch said with a grunt.

Fallon swore and gave Tersch a wide berth.

Morgan groaned and did the same. “Shit. I hate when he turns all freakish.”

“Pussy.” Tersch chuckled and showed Morgan his teeth, delighted when Morgan's green eyes widened.

Morgan shook his head. “You are one spooky Circ, you know that?” Tersch took it as a compliment.

Jules sighed. “Tersch, level down to your beast.
Now
.”
Not yet, still hungry. Want to play
. Tersch's berserker whined, even gave him a small fight about going back under, but Tersch persisted. He tucked the monster back down and allowed his beast to resurface. After letting go of Raul, he shrank a few inches to seven feet. His sharp teeth returned to normal, except for the fangs, and his muscle mass decreased considerably. Still, he was larger than the others around him, and his beast took comfort in the fact.

“That is some fucking weird-ass shit.” Raul gasped and clutched at his throat, where Tersch's fingerprints were slowly fading.

Jules crossed his arms over his broad chest. His bright gray eyes shone with hard purpose. “Raul, let's not play games. You helped Sheridan escape from Montaña's compound two months ago. You pretended to work for him then. But who have you really been working for?”

“Myself.” Raul sneered at them.

Jesse Fallon shook his head. A telepath, he could be relied upon to dig information from sources who didn't want to share. His talents came in handy, especially on cases like these. “He's telling the truth, but not all of it. Raul's in it for himself. He worked for Montaña because it was the easiest way to gain information on the asshole. He spied for someone else. And he doesn't know who he's really working for, except that he goes through Melissa. But Melissa knows the boss. Some guy she calls Lonnie.”

Jules blinked but said nothing. Yet a stillness overcame him, and Tersch didn't like his leader's sudden worry.

He took an automatic step closer to Jules, the ingrained need to protect overwhelming.

When Jules noticed, he bared his teeth in a growl. “Stand your fucking ground, Tersch. We've been over this.”

Unhappy but not willing to annoy Jules more than he already had, Tersch obeyed and stepped back. The last time he'd tried to smother Jules with protection, he'd paid for it with his ass.

“So Melissa knows who she's working for.” Jules paused in thought. He stared hard at Raul. “What about Jack?”

“Who?”

“Jack Keiser, her husband,” Hayashi clarified.

Raul shrugged. “Never heard of him or saw him till we set fire to their house.

Melissa's the only one I had contact with. She's psychic, but you already knew that.

One powerful, money-hungry bitch. You can smell it on her.”

“He's telling the truth,” Fallon agreed. He frowned, but by then it was too late.

Tersch had already moved. He'd seen the way Raul's body tensed in the moment before the rogue sprang at Jules.

Already in front of his team leader, Tersch intercepted the claws meant for Jules and took the stabbing blow into his own chest. As he did, he caught Raul's head in his hands and twisted.

The rogue dropped like a stone, and his claws left Tersch's chest in a sucking sound.

The pain was intense, but the gaping wound healed quickly. He glanced at Raul staring sightlessly from the ground, his head twisted at an odd angle, his neck broken.

“Nice move.” Morgan nodded to Tersch. “I guess I'll put out some feelers on Melissa Ramirez. I wouldn't have minded some time to dig for more answers from this one, but they never learn.” The ex-mercenary might be a pain the ass, but he was a helluva guy when it came to learning information. Between Morgan's contacts and interrogation techniques, he'd become handy to have around.

Tersch agreed, considering the dead rogue.

“I thought I told you to stand your ground,” Jules said in a soft voice, one that sent chills down Tersch's spine.

Shit
. Tersch slowly turned around. “Sorry, Jules. It was instinctive.” Jules glared. “Bullshit. I told you I don't need you fighting my battles anymore.”

“Oh, this is gonna be good,” Morgan muttered to Hayashi as he crossed to stand next to his mate.

“Jules, he was just trying to help,” Fallon offered but quickly shut up when Jules shot him a hard look. To Tersch, Fallon mentally sent,
“I tried, buddy. I have
a feeling you’re in for it.”

“I know,”
Tersch sent back. Though not telepathic, he replied on the wavelength Fallon had used.

“Come here.” Jules tugged Tersch by a belt loop on his trousers, closing the distance between them. “Need some discipline, Gunnar?”
Fuck, he would have to do this now
. Thoughts of Ava continued to crowd his mind, the need for sex and blood and violence an ever-present source of desire, especially after he'd walked in the footsteps of his berserker. It didn't feel as if a mating heat pressed, just the good clean scent of lust and Circ pheromones invading the space around them.

“Shit. I'm going to tie up our surviving rogue,” Morgan mumbled and quickly moved to the one on the ground still breathing. “I'll keep watch while you four…

Hell.” He rubbed his own erection through his trousers. “Too bad we can't film this so I could watch it later.”

Hayashi grinned at him. “Don't worry. I'll give you a blow-by-blow tonight.”

“You'd better.” Morgan gave him a stern look, then turned and dragged the sole unconscious Circ away.

Hayashi said to Jules, “Morgan knows what we need, and he's good with it. We haven't done this in a while. It's time, I think.” Jules flashed his fangs. “Glad you approve.” He turned back to Tersch. “But my intent isn't only to strengthen our team. Seems Tersch here still wants to play by his own rules. He doesn't seem to remember that he's part of the pack and that he's not the alpha.
I
am.”

Chapter Two

“Jules,” Tersch growled, but he couldn't ignore his own excitement. Now mated to Sheridan, a beautiful redheaded healer with a temper to match her fiery hair, Jules had been distracted of late. Though he'd used sex to bond Tersch to his female, Jules hadn't bonded with the whole team for a while now. Added to that, he was going to become a father, and Tersch understood why his team leader had been preoccupied.

Yet Tersch needed the belonging. Hell, they all did. Sex not only served to procreate their new species; it tied them all together, closer than family. Circs had a pack mentality, and belonging was a necessary part of it.

Sheridan, Morgan, and Fallon's mate, Olivia, knew and understood what their Circ mates needed from one another—a desire to keep each other close, sane, and safe.

Tersch knew he was the biggest threat to the others, and it shamed him. But he could only do so much to contain his berserker. As it was, the monster wanted to come back out and take part in their play. But Tersch couldn't afford to let him.

Sometimes he wanted too much pain, and the creature scared him with its appetite.

His beast, on the other hand, he could fully control. Mostly.

“Come here, Gunnar.” Jules slowly stripped out of his clothes, as did the others.
Changed
, their muscles bulged and expanded. Their cocks were long, thick, and slick with the natural oils their Circ bodies secreted, natural lubrication to ease the mating act and increase the probability of conception. When Tersch made a move to release his own trousers, Jules shook his head.

“What?”

“Pull them down but don't take them off. Stop when they're at midthigh, then get down on your hands and knees.”

BOOK: Dawn Endeavor 4: Gunnar's Game
12.19Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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