Untaming Delilah (Destined Mates 1)

Untaming Delilah (Destined Mates 1)
Ashlynn Monroe
All rights reserved.
Copyright ©2015 Ashlynn Monroe

"Hey there Delilah, what's it like in New York City..." Jonathan sang.

"I swear if you actually said 'hello' like a normal person I'd think you were body snatched by aliens," Delilah said, attempting to cut him off. The song was his usual greeting. His cliche musical rendition of her name had been sweet for about twenty seconds, and now she found it completely irritating.

He grinned. Jon was a nice, albeit obnoxious, senior biology major, and Peter's lab assistant.

Delilah stood outside the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research at the UW Madison campus. The breeze brushed her skin. A stronger gust penetrated her cotton T-shirt, raising goose bumps on her arms. She shivered. Cold was Wisconsin's favorite temperature, but this was early September and she was dressed for a warmer day.

Jon held the door for her as she hurried inside the facility. Heat flowed over her and the realization the furnace was already on was a relief and surprise. Delilah's tense muscles loosened up. Peter wouldn't be happy if he saw her.

"Your dad is going to be pissed off if you get sick, Delilah," Jon warned, almost as if he'd been reading her mind.

She shrugged. "Peter Amun may be the closest thing to family I have left -- he became my guardian after my parents died, and he's still my doctor -- but he's not my father."

Still, Peter would freak if she caught pneumonia again. When she was sick, he couldn't get accurate results from blood tests because her white blood cell count went up. Without the results, he couldn't give her the right dose of the #5-23 injection to stave off the seizures.

"Really?" Jon genuinely sounded surprised. He had only been Peter's assistant a couple of weeks, long enough for her to know way too much about him, but not long enough for her to be comfortable spilling the sad tale of how she came to live with the doctor her parents had trusted.

"Yep. He's a good man, but he's not my dad." That was as much as he was going to get from her. If he really wanted to know, there were others in the facility willing to gossip about poor, sickly Delilah and her rare brain tumor that made her see crazy shit.

"What's going on in your head? You went like a million miles away," Jon muttered with a hint of annoyance in his tone. He pushed his shaggy brown hair out of his face.

"Nothing that would interest you, I promise."

"I don't know, you seem like the kind of girl with deep thoughts and big plans," Jon said in a flirty way that made her inner voice groan.

"I think I was wondering which Kardashian I want to be when I grow up," she lied.

Jon grinned. "Aren't you cute." Jon put emphasis on the word cute.

As soon as someone discovered she had a terminal illness, interaction always got weird, so she didn't flirt back. He was incredibly handsome, and that made it harder for her to ignore him. Poor Jon didn't deserve to be the next person she needed to console over her imminent demise.

"Oh, that's right, I was wondering if they ever found the body of Peter's last assistant. He liked to bother me too... And then there was that experiment that went horrifically wrong..." She let her voice trail away absentmindedly and cringed for effect.

Jon's big hazel eyes widened, just a little, and his nostrils flared. He always asked her questions, but something made her hold back from giving him straight answers. There was something different about the lab assistant that she just couldn't put her finger on. Jon backed off, actually side stepping to give her more room.

Relief flooded her and she grinned as she walked a little faster toward the stairs.

* * *

Mick moaned. Her image lingered in his mind. Long, dark hair and bright green eyes made her uniquely beautiful. He could smell her, the perfume of her pheromones mingling with the floral products on her skin and hair. He inhaled deeply. As much as breathing her in hurt, it also exhilarated him. He bucked and writhed on the thin mattress in his cage. A snarl ripped out of his throat and his vision sharpened. He screamed as his bones started to break. Transformation. Agony. Death and rebirth... Whatever he'd heard this horrific process called, no name ever described the torture correctly.

"Fuck!" He screamed, spitting the foaming saliva out as his body broke in a thousand ways at the same moment.

Yellow, sharp clarity coated his vision and every sound in the building intensified. The soundproofing was only there for the humans. He heard it all when the change stole his body. Her shoes. They had a funny, light click. Even in his torment, he held on to that little piece of her, breathing through the ripping and tearing of his skin and muscles. Her smell was a small comfort. Her. Mick's snarling cry reverberated through the tiny room, his beastly wail caught between a roar and a bark.

I must control it. This is what that bastard wants. This is what...

Muddled and confused, he couldn't remember what he hated.

The smell. His cock went hard. Desire. Blood. Feast. Soft and delicate. Hot life filling his mouth and coursing down his throat to fill his stomach as he ripped open the weak packaging. Delicious. Delilah.

Her name put a screeching halt to the litany of tumbling consciousness and monstrous thoughts. No. I am not that. I am...

Kill. Eat. Destroy. Take. Rip. Tear. Devour. Mine.