Blackthorn [3] Blood Torn by Lindsay J Pryor Page A

That’s why those little droplets are even more valuable than her blood. If this was a set-up by the witches, they would have sent in their best. Those tears prove she’s most definitely not that.’
    ‘So you think we have got lucky?’
    ‘Or not.’
    ‘But if she can cry, she’s got a vulnerable side. That makes her more tameable, surely?’
    ‘Or she’s not tough enough to do this.’
    What he needed was a hardened serryn he could meld. A complication of vulnerability, however advantageous for that, he didn’t. Especially not from the way he’d felt something he had no right feeling when he’d seen those tears in her eyes.
    ‘So which is it?’ Corbin asked
    Jask looked back towards the doors. ‘I’ll have to push a little harder to find out, won’t I?’
    ‘I know that look,’ Corbin said. ‘Don’t make this personal. Serryn or not, physically she’s still just a girl. If you lose yourself again, this pack will be lost. For good this time. Don’t you forget that.’

Chapter Six
    Six days previous
    T he agent from the Lycan Control Unit sat on the opposite side of the table from Jask. The other two guarded the exit from the compound’s outer room, guns held diagonally across their chests. They stared ahead, keeping their eyes averted.
    ‘Where’s Kinley?’ Jask asked as the unfamiliar agent clicked open his collection of metal briefcases.
    ‘Agent Kinley is off sick.’ The agent declared it too curtly for Jask’s liking, let alone that he remained focused on taking out the various vials and foil sheets of medication instead of having made eye contact yet.
    ‘Kinley hasn’t taken a day off sick in twenty years.’
    ‘Then clearly he deserves one.’ The agent skimmed through the electronic pad he held in his hand. ‘But I can assure you I know what I’m doing.’
    Jask was seconds away from slamming the electronic pad from his hand, seconds away from grabbing the agent around the throat and dragging him across the table towards him. The whole system was insulting. Having to play ball with the authorities to secure what little freedom they had left was derogatory enough. But the agent’s attitude was adding to Jask’s building irritation, not least during what was already a bad night. ‘Which is why you haven’t looked me in the eye even once in the past ten minutes – a basic courtesy us lycans expect.’
    The agent looked up at him. His eyes flared slightly, confirming to Jask that his glare had been appropriately interpreted. ‘Agent Harper,’ he said. ‘With my apologies.’
    Not entirely convinced on the sincerity of the latter, Jask nonetheless followed the routine of laying the inside of his forearm out between them albeit whilst his glare remained on Harper’s.
    Every month it was the same. First came the blood test that would invariably show Jask had refused to take the issued meds, instead remaining with the pack’s own concoction to control their condition. Jask would then be asked how many of his pack had taken the meds. He would confirm the names of those who had opted in – those who, unbeknown to the TSCD, were the rare few allergic to their herbs but who didn’t want to go through morphing like others in the same situation.
    Tyler and Malachi had been two of those. They’d relied on the meds. Meds that, true to the Global Council’s claims, stopped them morphing. But both lycans, as well as the handful of others who opted in, still retained their hostile, argumentative and impulsive edge during the lunar phase – unlike with the lycans’ own concoction – which only added to Jask’s concern as to what the meds truly contained.
    The fact that Tyler and Malachi had subsequently been targeted by the TSCD despite their co-operation, that the TSCD had used the volatile edge their meds failed to suppress as evidence against them in the Arana Malloy trial, had seemed even more cruel.
    Because no lycan wanted to morph, any more than any allergy sufferer wanted to