She snorted, shrugging off his hand. “Tough, because I don’t need—“
Her words cut off in a scream as the last elevator cable snapped. On pure instinct, Hugh lunged, losing his own foothold in his haste to catch her.
He slammed back against the wall, dangling from the access ladder with one hand, the other clamped around the woman’s bare wrist. His arms screamed in protest, nearly wrenched out of their sockets.
“Let go! Let go!” the woman shrieked, which was not the usual response of someone dangling over a ten-floor drop.
“Damn it, woman, are you out of your bloody mind?” She was actually clawing at him. “Do you want me to drop you?”
“I don’t want you to die!”
“Neither do I, thank you very much! So stop thrashing about!”
*HUGH!* Dai and John’s mental shouts blasted his mind, nearly making him lose his grip on the slippery ladder.
“Damn your eyes, are you all trying to kill me?” Hugh snarled. His boots scrabbled at the side of the elevator shaft, hunting vainly for a foothold.
*We’re coming,* Dai sent, his telepathic tone frantic. *The ladder’s destroyed down here, we have to go up to the next floor. Just hold on!*
“Oh, well, and here I was considering letting go,” Hugh said under his breath. “Take your time. I’ll just be hanging around.”
The woman had finally stilled, much to his relief. “You…you’re still alive?”
“You sound,” Hugh grunted, finally getting a toe-hold on the ladder with one foot, “surprised.”
“You’re touching me! You should be dead! I can’t control my venom, not in a situation like this!”
The penny dropped. There was only one shifter in all of Brighton—probably in all of Britain—who was that deadly.
Hugh had never met her, but he’d certainly heard enough about her. He’d had more than one occasion to curse her name as he frantically battled to save someone from her venom.
“You’re that bloody wyvern shifter, aren’t you?” he demanded.
A moment of silence.
Then, “Yes,” she said, in a very small voice.
Well, that explained the fizzing tingle where his hand gripped her bare skin. As a unicorn, Hugh was able to neutralize any poison on contact.
“My venom really isn’t affecting you,” the woman said in disbelief. “How is that possible?”
Shit.
Unicorns weren’t the only type of shifter who could heal, but they were the only type powerful enough to counteract even a wyvern’s deadly abilities. He could only hope that the fact that unicorns were meant to be extinct would stop her from guessing what he truly was.
“I’m just very stoic.” Hugh gritted his teeth as he hauled her up one-handed. “Actually, I’m in terrible agony. Oh, the pain. Argh.”
She clung to the rungs next to him, her curvy body pressed tight against his. He still had hold of her wrist. He could feel the wild beat of her pulse.
She brought her hand up, blindly tracing the line of his jaw in the dark. Hugh’s own blood leaped at the tentative brush of her fingertips against his skin.
“No one’s ever been able to touch me,” she whispered. “Who are you?”
Flashlight beams stabbed through the darkness from above, illuminating her face at last. Hugh looked into her wide, emerald eyes…and knew.
“Oh shit,” he said. “I’m your mate.”
Chapter 3