Blood Instinct Read Online Free Page A

somehow. They held you captive, Alisha. They’ve brainwashed you and they’ve brainwashed Leila.’
    ‘Like Jask brainwashed you when he held you captive?’
    Sophia folded her arms as she looked ahead again. ‘That was completely different and you know it.’
    ‘Because Jask is automatically the good guy in all of this?’
    Sophia turned to face her, lowering her voice but doing nothing to contain her irritation. ‘At least Jask hasn’t tried to kill me like Caleb tried to kill Leila. I kind of draw the line in relationships as far as that goes.’
    ‘And like I said, you weren’t there.’
    ‘I didn’t have to be. Caleb tried to kill Leila, probably would have killed you, and now he certainly intends to kill me.’
    ‘And what does Jask intend?’
    ‘We capture Caleb, Leila kills him, and most of our problems are solved.’
    ‘And are you going to kill my Jake too, and then start a vampire–lycan war to give Sirius exactly what he wants? Caleb could have killed her, Soph. He could have easily killed her, but he chose not to.’
    ‘But if Leila insists on this stupid plan of going back in there to tell him she doesn’t have the alternative he sent her away for, will he be so reticent then? All he’ll see is that he has no choice but to rise as the Tryan – and that means killing me and probably half of this pack in the process.’
    ‘If Caleb wanted you dead, why didn’t he descend on the compound when he suspected you were there originally? Has he even threatened to kill you?’
    Sophia opened her mouth but explanation failed her. ‘You even sound like her,’ she said, staring ahead again.
    ‘The only one who knows what’s going on in Caleb’s head is Leila,’ Alisha insisted. ‘She’s alive – the only serryn to survive him. Doesn’t that tell you something? She can do this, Soph. You have to trust that she can do this. You keeping her here won’t help. Nor me. You need to talk to Jask, you need to—’
    The lycan bursting into the room snatched both her and Alisha’s attention.
    He hurried straight over to Corbin, and whatever the message was, it evidently wasn’t going down well with the pack’s beta.
    Sophia took a few steady steps forward. A cool shiver swept over her. Her first thought was that the bunker had been located, that they were surrounded and already under threat. But her second brought an even greater chill: that something had happened to Jask in the time that he’d been gone.
    As Corbin swept out of the door, Sophia hurried after him.
    She marched along the maze of corridors, barely able to keep him in sight, her heart pounding, her legs weak, her voice failing as she desperately wanted to call out and ask what was wrong, until the scuffle in the distance gradually became audible even to her.
    She took a sharp left into the blocked-off abandoned car park, a space they had adopted for training. She nudged her way through the wall of lycans to see blood on the floor, two scrums either side of it.
    Two scrums that were each holding a pack member back – an effort by all appearances.
    Her breath caught in the back of her throat as the two lycans being kept apart growled and snarled at each other, their teeth bared, their incisors glinting in the dim light. They looked fit to tear each other apart, the uncharacteristic hostility bewildering, especially as Nathaniel, one of the milder members of the pack, appeared to be the main aggressor.
    The energy in the room was charged – so charged that the scrums attempting to hold Nathaniel and Lucus back from each other finally failed, both lycans breaking free just as Corbin stepped between them.
    Despite its inevitable futility, her instinct was to try and help in some way. But as she stepped forward, she felt familiar hands on her hips, hands that moved her aside, hands that she knew – a firm but tender touch that she loved.
    She glanced over her shoulder in time to catch Jask kissing her lightly on the temple by way of