Free Wild, Tethered, Bound by Stephanie Draven

Chapter One

    Evergreen Resort and Casino, Queensland, Australia

    Nick Leandros slid his chips forward with a satisfied smile. The table was ready for his plunder and the green felt beneath his fingers was smooth as the skin of an eager mistress. The game was blackjack, and some said it all came down to luck. But Nick knew it was a numbers game.
    The casino played with a six-deck shoe, which meant that, by counting cards, Nick had a slight advantage over the house. He was the big player. His job was to join the game when the count was high and rake in the cash.
    He didn’t even glance at his partner. Nick just tucked his expensive sunglasses into his shirt, winked at the pretty redhead at the end of the table and doubled down. You see, it was signaling that gave card counters away, and Nick didn’t have that problem because the two other members of his team were each a part of him.
    Literally , a part of him.
    His goateed teammate, who was stubbornly betting the minimum, was another incarnation of Nick—an incarnation that sometimes called himself Vic, could count for himself and refused to shave for days at a time. But he was the same man, or at least a third of him, so they worked perfectly in tandem and didn’t need a signal to tell each other when the table was hot. The third teammate—the one with the leonine mane of dark hair who occasionally called himself Rick —sat across the smoke-filled casino wary as a hunter on the prowl. He had preternatural instincts about when security was getting twitchy. And Nick didn’t even need to glance in his direction to know that two big, beefy guys with radios were making their way toward Nick’s table; he could see it through Rick’s eyes.
    Card counting wasn’t illegal but if security caught him there’d be trouble. So Nick gathered his winnings and swiped a pen with the Evergreen logo. Not exactly an effective defensive weapon, but it’d have to do. It wasn’t that Nick was particularly afraid of casino security; sure, they might break his legs, but Nick had been wounded before. His real worry was that they might put his face into a database and alert the authorities. And if they figured out who he really was— what he really was—they’d lock Nick up for good.
    Rick and Vic fled toward the botanical gardens where guests went to escape the jingling of chips and ringing slot machines.
    Security was already about halfway across the floor, so Nick stood up and followed his partners in crime.
    As the doors of the glorified greenhouse closed behind him, Nick found himself awash in green foliage and serene music.
    It was a geodesic dome—a nature enclosure and a wonder to tourists. But Nick knew what it was like to be in a real forest. He had met her in the wilderness whereas this was just a man-made mimic.
    He rounded a cluster of bushes and found Vic right away. Urgently grasping his arm, Nick pulled the recalcitrant body into his own. They’d merged a thousand times before, but it seemed to get more painful every time. His sinews threaded together and muscles strained as if under a thousand-pound weight. By the time both bodies had become one, sweat pooled between his shoulder blades and glued his expensive dress shirt to his back, whereas Vic’s clothes lay in shreds by his feet.
    There was no time to catch his breath. Nick’s more savage third was crouched low behind the fanned trunk of a buttress tree. He pounced, grabbing Nick’s ankle and they both nearly went down with the force of it. It felt like bones crushing as they melded together as a complete whole.
    Gasping in pain, Nick tried to regain control. It was easier now that he was one man, not three. But security was still after him and the crackle of their radios cut through the garden’s tranquility.
    Looking for the nearest exit, Nick stumbled into an open expanse of cultivated flowers. There was nowhere to hide.
    Bad fucking luck.
    In moments, security would find him, and then it’d be all over.