Breaking out of the prison was something of a blur.Disabling the blow your fucking head off collar had been Hades's first order of business. With the power he had siphoned off King, he was able to dispatch that particularly nasty safeguard quickly. But that was hardly scratching the surface of what that rush of fresh power could do.Disable a lock, dodge a guard, scramble through a vent. It all melted together into one continuous motion, feeling like it was over in seconds and not the long, excruciating hour that it actually took.But however long it had been, however many tricks and hexes he had to use, Hades was free. He was on his way to find his Doll. Once he found his no-fur, they were going to get the hell out of this gods-forsaken place and never look back. There were other places they could run to if they had to, places that maybe weren't the paradise that Persiana had been promised to be, but they would be good enough for them. Hades

The first thing Hades saw was the ceiling, which was disconcerting because it looked like the top of the wooden coffin he'd been put in just a few days ago. The smell of the pine box filled his senses.However, the room was much wider, so definitely not another coffin. But what had that little bastard no-fur set-up? He sat up slowly, holding his head and trying to get a grip on his surroundings. He was sitting in the middle of a very intricately carved sigil. He quickly learned he was trapped by trying to push his paw past the boundary and getting an auric shock to his system that was almost as awful as the one Agent had used to bring him down. Hades was certain he could smell singed fur.After losing a few moments of getting his senses back from the shock, the Black-fur started to recognize parts of the room.The hooded toms stood at the ready, but other details made little sense. Like the booth from Jinx's bar where he had met with Gran the firs

Now I can focus... Get what I need...The voice coming out of his mouth was foreign to Spitfire. It was screechy and annoying. The kind of voice that he would have forced to be quiet if he could find the source. Only, he was starting to realize that he was the source. That was his voice coming out of his own mouth. It was his hand holding the cane that was beating his good boy. Not like Guru deserved, not in play. This was a real beating.Spitfire couldn't stop himself though. He was going and going, not stopping though he could see his tom's shoulders shaking. Guru was crying. Hurting. Bleeding.Oh, gods. The blood.It was just a trickle, a few drops from a split in the abused skin. But Spitfire could see it sticking to the light fur of his tom. He could feel the burn inside of him screaming out for more.More pain.More blood.More.The drops of blood made the burning in his body just a fraction less painful

"Well, tell him, is it? Can he? He's so amazing. I bet you are going to tell him he can." Lexi was hovering over Wound, watching Jinx heal the injuries he had created.The demon still didn't understand everything but he knew enough to know he had been wrong about the healer. Lexi had been rash and not thought things through. He knew how toms and no-furs shared their auric power. But all he could see was someone hurting his Jinx and he had to stop him in any way possible.Now he could see things differently. He'd almost murdered Wound. If Jinx hadn't been so full of untapped power, Wound would have been lost. Lexi, being a stronger ranked demon, had created fatal holes in the healer. He should have died. That would have been horrible for many reasons but the number one was the tom Lexi could hear humming to himself down the hall.Lexi had almost destroyed a soul-bond, the kind he had with Jinx. He was so ashamed and furious with himself. Worse, he had n

"Skin-sheath." Agent muttered the word as if tasting it on his tongue. He'd been called every variant of that particular slur in his life. None of them were sexy, kind, or even remotely flattering. Even the ones that toms seemed to think were affectionate. The no-fur flexed his toes again as he thought. They were new. Less than twenty-four hours ago, his feet were that of a no-fur. His feet still hurt from the procedure that removed his bones from his knees down and replaced them with the bones of a tom. Once the bones were grafted in, Agent's skin had been wrapped around them. He had wanted the proper tom knees to be put on at the same time as the lower legs and paws, but the tom who he had harvested the lower legs and feet from did not have viable knees. "Yes, old tom, I find that term offensive." Agent finally nodded. "At a genetic level, there is less than one-tenth of one percent of a difference between a no-fur and a tom. A few different protein pairings and a quarter of the s