Dr. Daphne Panetta is desperate to find a cure for a virus that turns its victims into zombie werewolves. Infected Konstantin Gevaudan should be nothing more than a test subject, but the only thing Daphne fears more than the beast within him is her own intense attraction to the virile man himself....

When the research facility where he’s being held goes up in flames, Konstantin has no choice but to take Daphne on the run with him. For the desire burning between them can mean only one thing: she is his true mate. But how can he claim her without changing her—forever?

Claimed by the Beast

Saranna DeWylde

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dear Reader,

Thanks so much for taking the next step of the journey with the Claimed series. I fall in love with every story, but this series has a special place in my heart. It exemplifies everything I love about writing paranormal romance. The obstacles are bigger, the sacrifices greater, and it illustrates how the power of love can be the key to redemption for anyone. No matter how dark, or how beastly. If these people can love, if they can earn their happily ever after, so can any one of us. I hope you enjoy reading Konstantin and Daphne’s story as much as I enjoyed writing it.

XO

Saranna

Dedication

For Konstantin Georgiou, who I met because I thought he had the most awesome name for a romance hero. Thank you, my friend.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue

About the Author

Copyright

Chapter One

Acidic, silent tears scorched down Dr. Daphne Panetta’s cheeks even as her palm crashed down on the red emergency button that sealed the caged enclosure and, more important, the LZ virus, behind an impenetrable shield.

With trembling fingers, Daphne programmed the cameras to zero in on her assistant so she could document the stages of infection and transformation for study. Bethany’s once warm brown eyes had quickly threaded with icy blue strands—the wriggling tentacles of infection. The gaping slash through her reinforced biohazard suit hung like an accusation, and that horrible, newly hungry gaze dragged slowly from the healed wounds back up to Daphne’s face.

“I’m sorry,” Daphne mouthed at the glass with trembling lips.

Sorry didn’t even begin to cover the riot of emotions surging through her. So many memories welled up in her, from the first time she had met Bethany to arguing with her recently about the ghastly orange she’d chosen for her bridesmaid dresses. The wedding that wouldn’t happen now. The people she wouldn’t be able to save with her research. The life left unlived.

Pain, sorrow, guilt—these were all a physical weight that crashed against her and pulled her down into a suffocating undertow.

Bethany nodded slowly, tears of her own streaking down her face even as she reassured Daphne. “It’s okay.” She kept nodding and repeating it like a mantra, as if that would actually make it so.

The virus had to be contained at all costs. Another outbreak could be apocalyptic. The closest term she could use to describe the effects of the virus was that it turned people into a kind of lycanthropic zombie. Literally. The real world collided with the supernatural, and when that happened, everything changed. Governments were scrambling to create defensive strategies and new weapons, all while trying to keep their new knowledge secret. The U.S. Department of Defense had even brought in a private group called the Aeternali to consult after the first outbreak in Arizona. It had been the Aeternali who constructed the facility they used now, hidden in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.

The virus had to be stopped.

Daphne wanted to look away, but instead, she crossed her fingers and held them over her heart—the symbol they used when things seemed bleak to remind them of their vow to find a cure.

Bethany’s fingers crossed briefly before her spasming muscles made it impossible. Blood trickled from her ears, her nose and bubbled out of her mouth.

But rather than the long, drawn-out agony of the change seen in most of the others victims—each bone breaking and reforming, muscle and fascia burning away only to regenerate—the transformation occurred much faster in Bethany. More like the videos of real werewolves Research and Development had shown her when she’d been brought in on the project. It was almost as if the virus had already been inside her, but dormant.

She watched as an animal erupted out of Bethany’s skin now—bipedal, sleek and predatory. She watched her former assistant for what seemed like an eternity, then she saw Bethany move to all fours and bound away from the observatory bubble toward the small cluster of trees in the terrarium.

The other infected creatures shied away from Bethany, cowering as they fled. It was unusual behavior. They’d introduced human test subjects before, prisoners on death row who’d chosen to donate themselves to science. They were attacked, the infected attempting to devour them even as they metamorphosed.

Not so with Bethany.

The best thing Daphne could do for her now was find a cure, and to do that, she needed to find out why Bethany had been infected. The bio suit blocked her heat signature, her pheromones, everything that seemed to entice the infected to see her as a food source.

Her infection had been done with purpose and intent, by the one who was different than all the others. In every group of animals, there was always a leader, and it was especially marked with pack predators. If he’d been more like the others in the enclosure, she’d say he was the Alpha.

Daphne scanned the enclosure and, finding the creature she sought, focused the cameras on him.

Where the others were seemingly mindless killing machines, there was self-awareness in his eyes. He was a predator, to be sure, and as ravenous as the rest of them. What made him terrifying was his cunning, his obviously human logic.

And this one had a name—Konstantin Gevaudan.

Obviously aware of her scrutiny, he stepped forward, prowling toward the observatory as if she were the one on display.

The shadows fell away like a cloak, the bright sodium lights blaring down on his massive form. He stood, rising up bipedal and perfect, with none of the abnormalities of the others except for those eyes blazing that strange electric-blue, like an LED bulb. Form followed function, each part of his body designed with the same purpose in mind—to be the most efficient killing machine. Thickly muscled, but his tread was light, graceful. His movements were fluid synchronicity. In fact, he was horrifyingly beautiful.

He knew it, too. The beast stopped under a particularly focused shaft of light, displaying himself for her. The sleek pitch of his silky pelt, the sculpted planes of his musculature so much like a human’s but still so alien, and the sly, knowing look in his eyes.

Daphne found herself almost hypnotized by the creature, unable to look away. Maybe he was somehow part King Cobra and he’d caught her in a death sway. Her rational, educated brain told her this was more information than they’d ever been able to gather before. No matter how uncomfortable it was, how ugly, or even how she ached for Bethany, she had to keep him engaged. The cameras were still recording.

Although, the primal, basic, animal part of her brain screamed for her to break the spell, to flee. To hide away so his horrible eyes couldn’t dig down into the meat of her, into her fear. The faint beep from the lapel of her lab coat vaguely registered—she was excreting pheromones at dangerous levels. The infected could scent them even through all the barriers.

The throng of the deformed, snarling infected were suddenly in frenzy mode, throwing themselves against the electrified walls, their claws scraping down the enchanted glass as they struggled to get at her—prey.

A sound that Daphne first thought was an earthquake rumbled deep, until she realized it was coming from it—him—Konstantin.

His muzzle retracted in a snarl, revealing supernaturally straight white teeth that looked more at home on a barracuda than a wolf. She shuddered, and his lips twisted further. He turned his great head slowly toward the wolves, as if focusing the sites of a weapon.

The bass sound began to build, but it wasn’t until the space around him trembled with its might that the noise erupted from him in a deafening roar. He sounded like a vengeful god smiting the wretched masses.

Infected wolves yelped and whined as their ears bled, and it seemed their nervous systems had been paralyzed by the sound. They dropped to their bellies, their yips quickly fading.

Daphne prayed to any gods that were listening that they’d caught a digital imprint of the roar and could reproduce it. It could be the weapon they needed if they couldn’t synthesize a cure.

His attention snapped back to her, his appraisal blatant, intense and obviously human. She refused to look away or back down, even though her adrenaline spiked again.

The beast lifted his nose to the air with purpose, his too-sharp eyes still focused on her. As if that scent were some delectable sweet she’d prepared especially for him. He stalked forward, closing the space and coming as close to the observatory bubble as any of them had ever dared.

That primal part of her screamed at her to run, and the logical part agreed, but she stood her ground. She knew he could smell her fear like a perfume, but that was the difference between humans and beasts. Daphne was a rational being in charge of her own actions.

The only thing between them now was the glass. She swallowed hard, her saliva thick as a wad of cotton in her throat. Daphne’s fingers hovered over the button that would slam the panic protocol wall shut between the enclosure and the observatory.

His regard was as intense as it had been before, but instead of staring her down, he sized her up. His gaze lingered on her breasts.

Undeniably male, and human.

Suddenly where there’d been a beast, there was a man. She jerked back from the glass, unable to control the need to put more space between them. If she’d thought the beast was horrifically beautiful, the man was even more so.

Daphne could see the beast looking out at her from underneath his skin.

What beautiful skin it was—smooth and unblemished, like alabaster. He was as pale as the moon, the silvery sheen of his flesh utterly surreal. His powerful body seemed compacted now, coiled and waiting to strike. This creature was still every inch a predator.

Her gaze was drawn down from his broad shoulders to his pecs, his defined abs and lower still to that ridged triangulation of muscle that directed her study to the last place she wanted to look.

Yes, every long, thick, hard inch of predator.

Already high on adrenaline, her body responded in kind. Fear and lust induced many of the same bodily responses. Clinically, it was a simple matter of biology, as basic as breathing.

Only, her breathing wasn’t basic. It shuddered out of her in staccato bursts. Her lips plumped, nipples tightened, heartbeat thundered, and her thighs clenched hard against the electric jolt of desire that stabbed through her.

Daphne jerked her eyes back to his face—it looked like something that belonged in an art museum. Or maybe it was the face of the devil himself, with those damned infected blue eyes staring back at her.

His mouth curved in a scimitar of a smile, lifting his head as the animal had done. Scenting the air—her desire.

Even though he looked like a man, he wasn’t. She knew the bio suit worked. He’d infected Bethany, ripped her humanity away from her not out of instinct, not because no matter what he ate he was always starving, but simply because he wanted to.

Guilt flooded her again, disgust at her body’s reaction to the monster.

His head cocked to the side, as if he could hear her thoughts and found them strange. He splayed his hand on the glass, the electric current there having no effect on him. Or if he felt it at all he demonstrated no reaction.

Her hand rose of its own accord, slowly, as if it was moving through water, and settled, palm flat, against the spot where his rested. She wanted to jerk her hand away. He was a monster. He was a test subject. He was the enemy.

Daphne’s muscles rebelled and refused to obey her. The hot jolts of need bursting through her at the pseudo contact were even worse. Even though he was a beast, she waited for him to mock her. He had that same sly, knowing look as when he’d scented her, but he didn’t mock her. He seemed to be studying her, waiting for her to cycle through her thoughts.

His hands, even in this form, were like paws. Huge—the tips of her fingers reached to only his first knuckle. She knew he was big, but the reality of his size hadn’t been clear until just now.

He whispered something in a language she didn’t understand. At least her conscious mind didn’t, but her body, it understood more than she wanted it to.

Every nerve ending flickered, sparked and burned. It was as if his hands were everywhere, on her waist, sliding up her rib cage, down her spine, cupping her breasts. And his mouth, sweet lord, his mouth...

Daphne knew the horrors that lay in his mouth with all those sharp teeth, but the sensation of lips on her breasts, his tongue flicking and laving at her tight nipples, pushing her ever higher and closer to the edge... Each stroke on her swollen flesh heightened the sensation after it.

In her mind’s eye, she was on her back with her legs spread wide, the black cascade of his hair draped over her thighs, and that evil mouth working her slit—tongue and fingers plunging and caressing faster, harder and hotter.

She bucked and moaned, begged him for more—and he obliged her. Daphne’d never experienced anything like that, not in the real world and certainly not in her own head. As impervious to damage as he was, her nails raked little gashes up the smooth plane of his back—her mark on him.

Mine. No, no! Not hers. She shook her head.

Only, she’d said the word aloud.

Konstantin.

His voice touched her as intimately as these foreign thoughts, reverberating through her and burrowing under her skin, past fascia, deep into the marrow of her bones. Invading her on a cellular level.

There was a bomb inside her, and it started the countdown to detonation.

“Mine,” he said, his lips curled in an expression of purely male satisfaction as the aftershocks of the orgasm shook her.

He dropped his hand and backed away from the observatory slowly, as if she were the animal and he the scientist.

The ramifications of what had just transpired made Daphne grab the console for support, before she crumpled to her knees. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

Daphne slapped blindly at the console, sending the wall crashing down between the observatory and terrarium, but it was too late.

A demonic aria of howling echoed throughout the facility, but it was his howl that took the lead. His howl that scraped against her skin. And in every nuance of the song, all she heard was that one, single damning word.

Mine.

Chapter Two

“Can you speak?” Konstantin’s woman demanded, her arms crossed over her lush breasts, her mouth set in a stern line, and her appraisal of him guarded and hostile.

Her posture was defensive, a feeble attempt to hide her reaction to him: her tightened nipples, her dilated pupils and the warm caramel scent of her need. Konstantin knew her scent anywhere, could track her now over hundreds of miles. A little bit of glass and crossed arms hid nothing.

He’d displayed his human shape for her inspection each time she’d come to the enclosure. She liked looking at him—it made her hot and wrapped him in her delicious scent. But he never let her forget his wolf.

She refused to come close to the glass now that he’d brought her to orgasm without touching her with anything more than his mind—as if that could stop the avalanche of what bloomed between them. His Daphne had begun the claiming rite when she’d whispered, “Mine.”

Her words tattooed themselves on his bones and she’d marked him soul-deep. Yes, he belonged to her—and she to him.

“I asked if you could speak,” she reiterated, her neck flushed and nostrils flaring.

He placed both hands on the glass and waited.

She shook her head.

He nodded in answer, smiled and let himself enjoy the scenery. The things he would do to this woman—the fantasies he’d given her didn’t begin to quantify them all. Konstantin licked his lips just thinking about how she would taste as she thrashed beneath him, digging her nails into his back just as she’d imagined. He’d seen all of that, experienced it as she had.

Konstantin shrugged his massive shoulders and arched a brow.

The flush darkened as it crept up to her cheeks and her eyes narrowed. Her expression told him he was on dangerous ground and if he did anything she didn’t like, she was going to make him pay. It made his blood run hot and his cock hard.

She swore and gasped, making a point to focus on his face. “Stop that.”

He shrugged again, but flashed a smirk. Konstantin knew his body was without flaw, knew she enjoyed the sight of him. It was his duty to indulge her. He flexed his hands on the glass again and the angry line of her mouth crumpled tighter into a rosebud scowl.

Daphne slammed her hands against the barrier. “Fine. But none of that other stuff. Got me, dog?” She looked around the enclosure as she spoke, eying the other beasts and obviously searching for Bethany who’d hidden herself behind the trees.

Konstantin nodded. He hadn’t even spoken and she’d already devolved to name calling. He didn’t need to hear the thundering beat of her heart, or smell her lust and fear to know she felt vulnerable.

“Parlez-vous français?”

Daphne swore again and rested her forehead against the barrier, her shoulders slumped.

“Such a mouth you have, ma cherie.” Such a mouth indeed.

Her head snapped up and a fierce sound rumbled from her. “I see you like to play with your food, but I’m in no mood for games. Why did you infect her?”

Konstantin was proud of her ferocity. She was a worthy mate. “Would you believe me if I told you the truth?”

He watched as a change fell over her, almost as if a magic wand had wiped away her hostility, and her eyes were suddenly clear and open. Just like her mind. She would listen.

“I can’t know if it’s the truth or not. Only you can.”

“You can read the data in front of you and the data your machines collect about my heart rate, respiration, body language, micro-expressions.”

“I will.”

“She was already infected.”

“You’re a liar.”

“Beasts don’t lie.”

“Yes, they do. There was an article in the Journal of—” She cut herself off and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to argue biology or animal behavior.”

“Okay, I don’t lie. Not to you.”

Incredulity stained her features. “You think I haven’t heard these lines before? I work with death row inmates who all have a reason to sweet-talk me. Who all want me to think I’m special, that we have some kind of connection.” She rolled her eyes.

“We do. You’re mine. I’m yours. You said it. It is so.”

“People say things—”

“People,” he interrupted her. “Of which I am not, and neither are you. There is a wolf under your skin, lovely Daphne.”

She jerked away from the glass. “No.”

Konstantin didn’t like the taste of her fear. She wasn’t ready. “As you say.”

“If you ever say that to me again, I’ll close the wall and I will never open it again. Do you understand me?”

The part of him that wanted to court her gently was quickly silenced by his new role as species Adam—his title by genetic right as the first of his kind, he was the Alpha of all Alphas for this new race.

“You mistake me, my love. I’m here because I choose to be.”

“Prove it.”

He let his gaze linger until she fidgeted under the weight of it. “Do you really think you’re ready for me to be on that side of the glass with you, my Daphne?” He cocked his head to the side and studied her hard. “Say the word and I’ll tear this place down for you brick by brick.”

She feared it, but her pheromones spiked. She liked his ferocity.

Daphne swallowed and licked her lips. Her pulse fluttered against her throat like hummingbird wings. “If you can, why don’t you?”

“Because I want you to find a cure. For them.” He nodded to the significantly smaller group of infected. Those who had died a true death were devoured during the night. “The antibodies are in my DNA.”

“All this is well and good, but you still scratched Bethany with the intent to change her, and now she’s one of those things.”

“She’s not. That’s why I scratched her. She reeked of infection.” His lip curled with disgust.

“The bio suits—”

“Are worthless. They didn’t attack her because the origin of her infection was the same as mine.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Nor will you until you turn the cameras off.”

“I can’t do that.” Her shoulders slumped.

“Then I can’t tell you my story, Daphne. Your government would use this knowledge to weaponize the virus. I can’t let that happen.”

“No, we’re looking for a cure!”

So heated, so passionate. But somehow still so innocent. “Don’t be naive.”

Trust in me.

“You agreed!” She jerked away.

You told me I couldn’t pleasure you, not that I couldn’t speak with you. Are you afraid they’ll see our connection and dump you in here with us, the same as you did to Bethany when you saw she was infected?

“Playing with your food again?” she growled. “You don’t need me to turn the cameras off to communicate.”

He didn’t speak; all he did was watch her.

“You should know that if the cameras stop recording, there’ll be an F-16 here in five minutes to drop a payload that will destroy anything in a twenty-mile radius.”

“Good to know. I can run faster than that carrying both you and Bethany.”

“So much talk and no action. I believe nothing you say, dog.” Her face was like stone.

“Believe this.” Konstantin flooded her with his desire. It was a gift for mates to feel each other’s bliss, but he’d had enough of being called a dog.

Only, he gave her more than his pleasure. He gave her his pain, too.

Memories erupted that were poisonous and black, filling her mind’s eye with images he didn’t want in his own head, let alone in hers.

“Dog!” They snarled as they kicked him, stabbed him with silver pins. “Beast! Devil!” As they’d dragged him and his mother, his father and his brother out into the freezing darkness toward four pyres. But dog was what seemed to stick. They’d chanted it, some sick spell as his mother was violated, then burned as a witch for trafficking with the devil to change her skin.

“I didn’t know,” she whispered. Daphne put her shaking hand back to the glass. “I didn’t...” The flood continued to crash over her, and no matter what he did, he couldn’t pull it back.

Because that wasn’t the worst—that wasn’t the most horrible. What he didn’t want her to know was that when they had searched the cellar, the townspeople had found what they’d been looking for. Henri La Croix was the legendary Beast of Gevaudan—the horror from which most mortal werewolf lore sprang. The animal that slaughtered women and children walked among them as a man.

The Aeternali had taken him, exorcised the madness from his blood in ways more horrible than even the Inquisition could imagine.

They had called him “dog.”

And yet, he did not want her to feel this. He would suffer the Aeternali a million times over if it would keep her from experiencing it for even one second. He’d failed as a protector. This was his punishment for using their connection against her. Perhaps his father’s madness was still in his blood, after all.

Konstantin tried to close the connection, but she fought him, opening herself to all of his memories. “Let go, Daphne.”

“No.”

“Now,” he growled, his beast angry.

“I said no.” She stood her ground, devouring everything that poured out of him.

The memories combined with his failure and her pain were all too much, and the beast exploded from his skin—one minute he was a man, the next he was a predator that could crush her between his jaws. Her fear was fetid and tasted of death. She didn’t look at him, and she shook with terror, but she refused to back down.

With his animal brain in the forefront, he didn’t communicate the same way. Their link should have been broken, but it wasn’t. She was there, inside his head with the animal, and he couldn’t protect her.

The animal didn’t want the cure, didn’t care about the cure, only wanted to taste his mate—run with her beneath clear skies and mount her on soft summer grasses. Drill into her until her cries shattered the moon.

Tasting her—yes. That sweet salt of her on his long tongue, the give of tender flesh beneath his teeth as he released the wolf that lived under her delicate skin with his bite.

“Please don’t,” she whispered.

The beast was drunk on the scent of her, the intimacy of being inside her head. Konstantin fought for mastery and regained his human shape.

He didn’t want her to be afraid of him, but Konstantin was afraid of himself.

“Daphne,” he said softly.

The movement of her head as she turned to look up at him was like a glacier, slow and infinitesimal. He turned the topic of conversation back to what was safe, back to the pleasure he could bring her, rather than the things in the dark. “Before the Beast of Gevaudan, there was a Greek island where fathers would offer up their firstborn daughters to appease the appetites of the beasts.”

“You’re just trying to scare me now.” Her voice was hoarse, choked.

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