This is a Carpathian/Were-Hunter crossover story. Christine Feehan and Sherrilyn Kenyon (respectively) own the rights for the worlds and the characters. I don’t make money off of this, nor would I ever want to. The characters that are orginal are mine, please do not steal them in any shape or form without permission from me. This is rated M for sex, violence, swears, and other adult situations. If you are not comfortable with any of this please do not read any further. Comments are always welcome.

Chapter One

Kiska leaned her back against a tree, stopping only cause her body was demanding that she stop and take a rest. Running like this was taking it’s toll, but if she stopped for much longer they’d catch up with her again. Why didn’t they just give up on her already? Or at least let her have her fun and be free for a couple of days? They’d find her no matter where she went. They’d proven that over the years. They were better than wolves, better than sharks at finding their prey. Even if she ran through rivers, swam an ocean, they’d find her.

Hearing a couple of twigs snap, something they did to taunt her. They were capable of sneaking up on her and grabbing her. Pushing off from the tree, she managed to flash herself into a snow leopard, hoping to gain better footing in the mountains, and began to run as fast as her four feet could take her. Getting into a town, no a city, a nice big city, that would be ideal to hide in. There were a lot of scents in a city and that would confuse her captors, at least for a little while. She needed away from them. Her spirit couldn’t take much more.

Even in her snow leopard form, Kiska could feel tears forming. She had been at their mercy for over a century. She had been so young when they had taken her. She had no idea if her family considered her dead or if they were still looking for her. The first was more likely, well at least for the majority of her family. Her brothers and sisters would never consider her dead until they had her body in front of them.

Tripping over a rock, she tumbled down a small bank right into a small pond. Doing her best, her legs just couldn’t support the weight and she was forced to stay down in the murky water. Moving her paws, she tried dragging herself out of the pond. It was over. Who knew how many times she had tried this and failed? Letting her body dissolve back into her human form, she could hear them coming.

“Naughty little girl.” Jakob taunted, grinning as he watched her try and drag herself from the pond.

“What do you think she broke this time?” Mahon asked, forcibly grabbing Kiska’s mud soaked hair. “Judging by how she has to crawl, perhaps the femur with a couple of cracks in the pelvis. What say you?”

“I think it might be the pelvis cause she fell from up there.” he replied with a grin. Clicking his tongue, he looked down at her, “How many more times are you going to do this? Hundred? Thousand more before you realize you’re never going to get away from us.”

She spit in Jakob’s face, “Go rot in hell where you belong!”

“Such language from a lady.” Mahon stated, forcing her to stand on her feet. Watching her shake, but act as if it didn’t bother her was quite humorous to watch in his opinion. Especially when he knew how much pain she was in. “If you apologize I’ll help you back to the house.”

Pulling away from the grasp, she limped heavily wanting to just scream. They would only laugh and watch her struggle. They were heartless beings like the others before them. These men were not the ones that had taken her nearly century before, those men had disappeared it seemed. Sadly there were always others to take their place. Not seeing a root sticking up from the ground, she tripped over it and fell hard onto the ground and just screamed. There had been no stopping that cry.

“You still that proud after all this time?” Jakob taunted walking up behind her. “Would have thought that fight be gone from you. Guess we need to do another round of medical experiments, get you weak again.”

She looked up at them, tears in her eyes, “Why not just kill me already? Go get yourself a fresh piece of meat to play with it.”

Mahon grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her up to her feet, “And let a fine woman out of our grasp? Why on earth would we let you go? Until your last breath is breathed you are ours. And you will give us a child, even if we have to go to extreme measures.”

Trying to walk back wasn’t going to happen, she was forced back into the snow leopard form to walk over some of the rocks and it seemed easier to limp using three legs over one. What was humiliating was every time she was in animal form, there was a leash around her neck to make sure she couldn’t get away. The pain from her leg was getting worse the longer she had to walk. Her body just wouldn’t stop protesting. Broken leg would make her bed ridden for probably a week at the most, the bastards never did help her wounds heal even though they were more than capable healing such injuries.

Almost an hour later, she inwardly cringed at the site of the large house. It looked nice on the outside, nice little mountain cabin. It had been what she wanted when she had first been brought all the way out to the Canadian Rockies. What a foolish child she had been back then. Under the house was an extensive medical facility, but nothing studied was good for anyone. It was a prison, a torture pen.

Harlan was standing in the doorway and he was pissed. He was the oldest out of the captors. Also the most ruthless and cruel. Kiska put her ears back and kept her tail low to the ground, trying to show submission but in Harlan’s eyes it was never submissive enough to escape a beating.

“She broke her leg running this time.” Jakob stated kicking the broke leg as hard as he could.

She let out a whimper, laying down on the ground and did her best to lick the wound. Feeling a smack on her muzzle she pulled back as she flashed herself back to her human form.

“I’ll remove the bones from your legs if you do not stop this.” Harlan threatened with a heavy growl. “What did I tell you last time? What did I tell you Kiska!?!”

She flinched at that voice, the only one that still got that reaction, “Th…if I run away again I’ll be locked in the cage for a month. Fed once a week because I am obviously not grateful for what you give me.”

“Did you think I was lying? That I would not tell you the truth?” he asked grabbing her chin and forcing her to look up into red eyes.

Kiska shook her head, “No.”

He slapped her face, “Then why did you run? I wish for you to enlighten me.”

Covering her cheek with a hand, she didn’t want to cry in front of him, he’d keep beating her if she did, “I was a foolish child that wanted a chance to run in the mountains. I have not been outside in nearly eight months I wanted to be out in the snow. My cat was itching for it and she’s so hard to control once her mind is made up. I begged for months to go out, but they would not let me out. Said you would not allow it.”

Harlan’s gaze shifted to the men standing behind her. She needed something to get them in trouble and that was one of them. Truth was she didn’t need to go outside, wanted to go out was better, but every so often an itch had to be scratched and this was a good excuse they had yet to catch onto. They knew so little about what she was and how her kind did things.

Knowing he would be busy with them for awhile, Kiska began to drag herself into the house. Taking a rest in the front hall of the house, she debated about where to go. The bone would heal itself so being down in the basement wasn’t needed, but being in the house was something the men didn’t like. She could move about in daylight unlike them. Part of the reason why she had been placed in a steel cage soon after her arrival. It was the only way she could be held captive during the day when she was well. Crawling over to the elevator, she used the walls to pull herself up and hit the button for the second floor. She wanted a regular bed, not just a foam pad to lay on.

Hopping off the elevator, she went into the room that she was allowed to use and crawled into the bed. There was no use in locking doors, somehow their kind could get around just about everything. Rolling over onto her back, she had to bite down on her lower lip to avoid screaming as she adjusted her leg into a position where her body could start to heal it. Why was she even still alive? Why couldn’t running through the forest allow her to run off a cliff or fall into ravine of some kind? Just end it all so she could move onto a more favorable place of existence.

Moving her hands away from her eyes, she looked around a room she had stayed in until they had figured out she could move about during the daylight and get a good distance away from them in just a few hours. They had seemed nice when she had first been brought to the house. In a world where she had been around too few of her kind and around far too many humans, the way they had acted it seemed like they were Katagari. Not exactly what she’d go for, but it was acceptable in her eyes. Nearly a year staying with them…that is when things went down hill faster than she had ever expected.

She knew all too well that her body went into utter chaos for a few days, but she had been told to accept it as it was that way with all females of their kind. Never had she been taken such advantage of in a short span of time by a bunch of men. While it could never be considered more than having sex with multiple partners at one time, they had never been nice about it like the couple others she had been with. After that, she had tried to leave, wanted to move on to see if she could find her mate somewhere else. That didn’t go over well. Harlan had been the one that had gotten violent with her then. He had found her in the city in a nice hotel and dragged her back to the house and beat her for days. Basic torture for weeks down in the cage they often stuck her in now.

Then one day he showed what seemed like compassion, told her she could never leave or he’d be forced to do that again in order to protect her. Kiska had gone along with it, agreeing to those horrible terms just so the beatings would stop. She had tried countless times to escape and sometimes succeeded for a few days. That was when Harlan and the other men had each bitten her and drank some of her blood. Confused over why they would do such a thing, she soon found out what that meant. They could track her down within hours, where it had taken days, could use her own mind and eyes to know where she was heading. Each time she was brought back, she was beaten as punishment for running. If not for the broken leg, there would have been a beating.

Thinking about how she had been back then was enough to make her want to cry. If she did find her mate or her mate found her, she’d never be able to have a normal relationship. She was nearly beaten down, her cat wanting to survive the only reason why she was still around. Although Arcadian, Kiska had began to trust her animal side more and heed the warning it often gave. Her human side had wanted to give up a long time ago, but that snow leopard just wouldn’t allow itself to be killed.

Her own siblings would never recognize her. She was as close to an animal as an Arcadian could get. Touch was no longer a source of comfort, but a source of pain and suffering. The fates obviously saw her life as one giant joke. Kiska had prayed for over two decades, night and day, to be delivered from her torture only to have it continue. Why couldn’t a wound get infected or her body just give out? Move onto the afterlife and one day apologize to her chosen mate for being weak and wanting out of the physical world. The idea of writing letter to her family was crossing her mind again. There was no way to send it and if the men found it, it’d be burned and there would be a beating. How could they have ever been different? They were pure evil. So few people knew how bad the world could truly get. Being starved to death or drowning or slowly bleeding out, at least life ended and others would allow a soul to pass on and find peace.

Was this hell? Was this some punishment for something she had done as a child? Had she died and this was where she was forced to live out eternity? She didn’t feel dead. Surely wounds didn’t heal if this was meant as a place of punishment. Or maybe that was part of it. A wound or bone breaks, heals, only to have it happen all over again.

“Why do you make me punish you?”

Kiska sat up in a hurry and had her back flat against the headboard of the bed, staring at Harlan with wide eyes. She was always cornered in her room. She was far too slow, human or animal form, for him. He’d have her pinned against the wall and at his mercy before she’d get off of the bed.

“I don’t make you do anything.” she replied in a whisper. “The others…”

“I’m in your mind. I know when you lie to me.” he growled coming around to the side of the bed, watching her move to the other side. “I let the others squirm so they do not disobey me. I have held you here for over a century, I can make it for eternity. I can tie your soul to mine. It’ll be a short time before I figure out how your kind bounds one another together.”

She didn’t want to look at him, but her eyes met his with anger seething, “Mating ritual does not work if you are not my mate. How many more times are you going to rape me to get the same result over and over again? I cannot have a child unless it is with my fate chosen mate. It’s not you or your lackeys! I have a far shorter life span than your kind. I can die of old age.”

Harlan shook his head and laughed, “Your kind lives for one thousand years. You are not even two hundred years. There is much more time I get to spend with you. I can live until the end of time in this world or the next. You will never escape me. You are mine Kiska. You going to be a good girl or do I have to lock you up like the animal you are?”

Holding her chin high, she was stubborn with him. Feared him, but there would never be total obedience of this bastard so long as she could fight him. Making herself stand on her own two feet, she kept her chin high, “Depends if you want another chase. I can get quite far in daylight. All I have to do is find a safe house. I found one before.”

“Want to challenge me again? My dear I know you have no choice but to remain in human form during the daylight hours. We are in the mountains. Running to the human police really wouldn’t be a smart idea. I’ll just spill their blood in front of you. I’ll force your body to march downstairs and get in that cage if you will act as a spoiled child.” he spoke with his eyes focused on hers, pushing such a hard command her feet moved towards him. “Now go downstairs and get in that cage. You will get your punishment at nightfall tomorrow.”