Angel/Hiss (Bayou Heat Box Set Book 7) by Alexandra Ivy, Laura Wright

docile, you know? I don’t fight like I have for the past eight months. I’m hoping it changes how they treat me. I lie down, offer them my arms, wait for the bands—wait for the needles to be shoved into my veins. But they don’t do it. They don’t want my blood.”
    His chest tight, Hiss waited for her to continue. He knew where this went. Knew her greatest fear.
    “It’s not going to happen, Gia.”
    “You don’t know that.”
    “I’m not going to allow it.”
    She turned to face him. There were no windows in the Sub. It’s what they called the lowest level of wherever they, and at least ten other Pantera, were being held. The Subterranean Level of Hell. Where they were being used. Drained. Infected. Poisoned. Experimented on. Injected. Impregnated. It was pitch black. He couldn’t see the outline of her body. But he felt her warm breath on his cheek. He turned to face her too.
    “How many times were you bled today?” she asked.
    “Only three.”
    She laughed softly, bitterly. Careful to not let the sound carry. They didn’t want to wake up the others. Although it was common for the rest of the Pantera to lie awake.
    “We can’t even summon our cats,” she said. “There’s no strength for either one of us to drawn on. We’re at their mercy.”
    “You can draw strength from me, Gia,” he said. “Always.”
    “Oh, Hiss…” She played with his fingers. Reveling in his touch, his comfort. His valiant words. Not knowing who he was—what he was. The traitor to his kind. A base-level beast. She didn’t know because she was from a different sect of Pantera, a secret community set somewhere in Florida, from what he’d been able to gather. She didn’t speak of it much. It seemed to pain her to remember. And there was nothing Hiss wanted less than to give her any more pain.
    “Tell me something good,” she whispered. “Tell me a story. About your Wildlands.”
    My Wildlands . Had they ever been his? He’d wanted them to be. Back when he’d been a cub, when he had a family, they were. And later when his family had disappeared, when the elders told him—lied to him—about their passing, he’d made some good memories. With friends. All while he plotted against them.
    A buzzing started in his head. It came every time he thought about what he’d done. To himself. His family’s name. To all the innocent Pantera.
    “Hiss?” Gia whispered, her tone desperate.
    Yes. I’m here. “You speak of your water often,” he began. “But let me tell you of ours. There is a place in the bayou where the water is so warm and so fragrant it lulls you to sleep. It changes you from cat to male at whim. And you let it because you trust it. I would swim for hours in it, floating among the Dyesse lilies, so calm, so peaceful.”
    “What are those? The Dyesse lilies?”
    “They’re these large, white water lilies. They turn purple when they bloom. And they make our moon purple, too.”
    “Really?” she exclaimed softly, and he could almost hear her smile. “Oh, how beautiful. I’d love to see that.”
    His gut ached. Not from the hunger that constantly plagued him. But from the knowledge that he would never be able to take her there. He wasn’t welcome. And odds were that he wouldn’t be leaving the Sub alive anyway.
    “The lilies have this incredible scent,” he continued. “We believe…” We . His nostrils flared. “They have magical properties that create absolute happiness within us, and a kind of sensual euphoria.”
    “Oh.”
    The word came out breathy, warm, and his lips twitched ever so slightly.
    “Did you meet your females there?” she asked tentatively. “In the pool? Among the lilies? Under that purple moon?”
    “I have no female, Gia.” I deserve no female . “Where you’re from, did you leave a male behind?” It was something he’d wanted to ask the first night they’d ‘met.’ The night she’d been drained of blood so badly, she was having trouble breathing and couldn’t