Kissed by a Dark Prince (Volume 1) by Felicity Heaton

grey-haired men on her left, the senior members of Archangel based in this facility, looked as though they had already made up their mind about her request and she was going to be off the team. Two male doctors in white coats sat opposite them to her right, a smug look on their faces. They knew the deal. Let her speak, indulge her, and then watch as her superiors crushed her hope and gave the fae to them.
    They had probably all scanned her report in the last few minutes, taken a look at her findings, and then her request, and thought she had gone crazy to even think about asking to lead the study.
    Olivia’s hands shook as she shifted her papers around and then sharply raised her head and threw herself onto the tracks of the last train for La-La-Land.
    It took her less than fifteen minutes to outline her findings and field some very personal questions that she definitely hadn’t anticipated, and a few disdainful remarks, and then all Olivia could do was try to prove that she hadn’t gone insane and that she believed that the test subject wasn’t out to blow up the building.
    One of the doctor’s made a very snide comment about it being a male specimen and her report about his body. Olivia’s blood boiled and she pressed her hands against the desk, fighting to keep her anger below their radars. The chatter amongst the hunters, her superiors, and the doctors verged on an argument.
    “What she’s suggesting is crazy. A healthy fae male of unknown origin cannot have free run of the facility. At the very least, he should be contained during the study.” The oldest male hunter’s brown eyes had a twinkle in them that looked a touch sadistic to Olivia.
    “The male in question will not subject himself to containment. You’re talking about forcibly restraining him. Doing such a thing to a guest of Archangel is not going to help us improve our image.” Olivia’s words fell on deaf ears as the doctor who had remarked on her relationship with a demon spoke over her.
    “Of course we would contain the specimen. He should have been contained when he had first come into the lab. Then we could have carried out a full study on him, without this debacle.”
    Oh, he didn’t. Olivia almost growled. “He is willing to come in and let us study him. Surely you can’t expect him to agree to being strapped down while that happens? I want him here as a guest, not a prisoner. He must be free to come and go.”
    “As he pleases? That sounds dangerous to me.” The grey-haired man in the middle of the three superiors raised an eyebrow at her and the other two nodded in agreement.
    Olivia drew in a breath to stop herself from saying something that would probably get her the same treatment as they were offering to Loren. She had spent a few days in the cells at the containment centre before. She didn’t want to go there again.
    “Perhaps we should have a break?” Mark smiled at everyone, defusing the bomb that had come close to exploding.
    Olivia nodded and exhaled slowly. Everyone rose from their seats and the doctors immediately made straight for the senior staff members, schmoozing them with false smiles and talk of how they would handle this study. Sable caught Olivia’s arm and pulled her away, towards a table lining the cream wall.
    “Don’t kill the other doctors,” Sable said, her voice light and airy. Her friend was deadly serious seventy-five percent of the time. The rare times Sable let her sense of humour out, things were normally dire and about to get worse.
    “They’re going to take this away from me.” Olivia knew it. They were going to pull rank on her and take her off the study completely, and then they were going to strap Loren down and do God only knew what to him. “I can’t let that happen.”
    “So don’t let it.” Sable’s logic was sound but also full of holes.
    “And how do you propose I don’t let it happen? I have zero standing with the five most powerful people in this room. Even Mark doesn’t