Carter Mina : другие произведения.

Blood Mate

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Школа кожевенного мастерства: сумки, ремни своими руками
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  Dedication
  
  To the friends who listen to my constant yatter about characters and plots even though it must drive them mad, to Milly for always being there, and to Holly for all your help. Thank you.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter One
  
  Darce’s head hurt as he swam up through the foggy, drugging layers of unconsciousness. Hurt? Understatement of the fucking year. There were some pains that were instantly recognizable by the sufferer. The unmistakable burning slash of a cat’s claw or the insidious slice of a papercut. The brain automatically picked up on lack of pain that followed a more serious injury, adding the thought “oh shit, that’s going to hurt” before the pain kicked in. The body and mind knew the throbbing, nauseating ache that accompanied a bad hangover. And Darce, someone used to a life of violence, recognized this one.
  
  His eyes closed, he lay still and waited for the pain to ebb. The sharp pain radiating out from the side of his head was consistent with a hard blow from the butt of a rifle. It was a pain he knew but very much wished he didn’t. In fact, he’d have been happy to have gone through life without finding out how it felt to be hit in the side of the head with a blunt object, but the fates had other plans for him. Bitches hadn’t even sent him a memo so he could call in sick on the FUBAR crapshoot his life had become.
  
  The fog in his head receded. Enough for him to make out two people carried him, one shorter than the other. His inner wolf growled but Darce silenced it with ruthless control. Until he knew what was going on, faking unconsciousness was his best option. Unconscious men were less of a threat. Out cold, he couldn’t shift, couldn’t let the beast within out to wreak havoc. Conscious and faking it? Even if it was going to be a holding his head, half-hearted sort of havoc, he could still go Freddy Krueger on the humans around him with fatal consequences.
  
  For them at least.
  
  “…cks sake, what do they feed these guys?” A voice, male and pissed off, broke through the fuzz and got Darce’s attention.
  
  He frowned to himself, probing the black spots in his memory. Fading in and out that way wasn’t good. If he’d been human, he’d have been in serious shit. Head injuries could screw someone up big time. It had been his main worry when he’d joined the army—that he’d get shot in the head and end up a vegetable.
  
  That was before.
  
  Before, winding up comatose or—God forbid—dead were the worst things he could imagine. Now he knew better. A word loomed in his mind, larger than life and twice as terrible, nightmares clustering around the letters like dancers around a premier league footballer in a strip joint.
  
  Project.
  
  In the world of the Project, even death wasn’t permanent. But you sure as fuck didn’t want to come back the Project’s way.
  
  He lurched to the side as one of the carriers lost its grip, dropping his legs and slamming his heels into the ground. A warm body crashed into him, the sharp stink of sweat and aftershave crowding into his sensitive nostrils.
  
  “Crap.”
  
  Clothing rustled and tension ramped in the air. Darce sprawled unceremoniously on the ground, and his new companion was shoved off him in a rough movement.
  
  “For fucks sake, Wilson. Don’t get so close. Do you want your damn throat torn out?”
  
  The voice was female, angry and very familiar. Still feigning unconsciousness, Darce frowned and probed the black spots in his memory. Why was it familiar? It couldn’t be Nic—it was too rich and lyrical for the rough-edged female wolf. In fact, it didn’t sound like a Lycan voice. The particular note all wolves acquired after their change was missing.
  
  She moved, stepping over him. Her pant leg brushed his arm and her scent exploded around him. Blood, dirt and lust. He took a sharp breath. Memories of the last twelve hours ripped through his mind like a film on fast-forward, burning the fogginess out of his brain.
  
  The hospital. Barred windows and restraints on the bed. Silver burning through his veins, eating away under his skin like acid. The moon above calling out to him, playing peek-a-boo from behind the clouds. Jack’s face hovering over him, distorted and strange, as though he looked out through a fish eye lens. Shouted commands he couldn’t hear over the roar of his wolf.
  
  More…more…more.
  
  Pain and fire. He pushed the sedative out through his pores, each beaded silver droplet sweating agony until he lay exhausted on the floor. A seductive-sweet scent. That of a woman, Jack’s woman…Jack’s mate. The first mate any of them had found. Lycans around him as they planned to escape before the Project teams arrived in gunships and transport carriers.
  
  Then it was too late to leave. To run…escape into the wilderness. But this time the Project brought more than pain and terror with their soldiers and the walking corpses they used to clean up their messes.
  
  They’d brought her with them. Her. His mate. A creature of the Project like him, but not the same. Pain and elation wrapped around his heart. He had a mate, her scent cleaving to his heart in an instant. But she was a Blood. The enemy. Bloods hated Lycans as much as Lycans hated Bloods. Hatred and fear of each other was instinctive, cell deep.
  
  They’d killed the RAs she’d sent in and Jack’s mate had led the pack to safety through the earth. They’d run through the forests, staying in the shadows, holing up because Lilly was human and needed rest. Deep in the embrace of the trees and nature they’d hidden well, but the Project had found them… She’d found them. His mate had found him.
  
  He’d brought the enemy down on them, but he wasn’t sorry. How could he be sorry when she’d followed him?
  
  His mind filled with images of her. Tall and lean, her slender figure packed with curves that made his mouth water. His interest in her primal and male as she flashed her fangs and claws at him. God, imagining those cute little fangs buried in the thick muscles of his neck had gotten him hard.
  
  The scene changed. Him over her. Victory and lust surging through him, he leaned in to claim his prize—a taste of her soft lips. Her black eyes flashed with amusement before pain shot through his skull and dropped him into darkness.
  
  Fuck. Of all the stupid, fucking rookie mistakes to make. He’d been so focused on her he’d forgotten she had troops with her. The humans no match for him…unless he took his eye off the ball. He was a fucking idiot. Distracted by a woman. He lay still when she’d stood over him, her voice raised at the soldier who had dropped him.
  
  “He’s out of it, Major…” A new voice, male and young. “Damn mutt’s not doing anything for the foreseeable future. I cracked him a good ’un on the skull. Be surprised if he ever wakes up, to be honest. I ’eard bone crunch. He’s harmless.”
  
  Oh great, just freaking great. No wonder he had a pounding fucking headache. Sounded like the dumb-fuck human had tried to perform brain-surgery via rifle butt. Luckily, Lycans were more resilient. A skull fracture was well within his wolf’s ability to heal.
  
  The memory of Jack’s voice filled his mind and his lips quirked.
  
  If we’re lucky, maybe it will knock some fucking sense into him.
  
  “Let’s get one thing straight, Wilson. He’s a Lycan. He’s not harmless. Even tied up, naked, he could find at least seventeen ways to kill you,” his ladylove replied, anger in her tone. Even without opening his eyes, Darce could imagine her straddling his body, her hands clenching and un-clenching at her sides while her eyes flashed with fire.
  
  “Forget any nonsense you’ve seen in films. He’s a killing machine. You cracked his skull? Great. When he wakes up, he’s going to be a pissed off killing machine. One I have to deal with. So congratulations, you pissed us both off. Now fuck off before I rip your head off instead of his.”
  
  Darce cracked an eyelid open in time to see Wilson stumbling backward, shock on his baby face as he put a sensible distance between himself and the vampire. Christ, the guy looked all of twelve. Where was the Project getting them these days? Kindergarten?
  
  “Fucking idiot,” the female Blood groused to herself, her voice too low for the hovering human to hear. She bent over and hooked her hands under Darce’s arms again. He kept silent, his body lax while she dragged him across the dirt and grumbled about incompetent humans all the way.
  
  She paused for a second, and then hauled him upward. Strong hands found purchase on his clothing so she could manhandle him up and over onto a hard surface. He wasn’t a small man, so even though he knew she was a Blood, he’d have been impressed at her strength. Would have been if he weren’t face-down on the metal bed of what appeared to be a troop transport. Fan-fucking-fastic. He was all for getting new designs on his body to complement his current ink, but floor markings on his face weren’t ideal.
  
  “Damn great lump. What the freaking hell do they feed you?” she muttered again, grabbing his shoulders and flipping him over. He landed back on the floor with an “ooomph” as the air whooshed violently from his lungs.
  
  He opened his eyes at the same moment she grabbed his wrists and slapped cold metal bands around them. The next second, she yanked his arms up over his head and locked them into place on the side of the cabin.
  
  “Oh, handcuffs. Kinky,” he drawled, making her jump. “If you wanted to get down and dirty sweetheart, all you had to do was ask.”
  
  Wilson, hovering by the tailgate, snickered. “Yeah, like a dog would be any good in the sack.”
  
  Darce cut him a swift look. “That’s not what your mom said—”
  
  The Blood moved, lashing out and cuffing him above his ear. Darce yelped, swore and ducked his head to avoid a repeat performance. “What the fuck… This is prisoner abuse. I demand a retrial!”
  
  Her black on black eyes sparkled with anger and fire. “I don’t give a fuck who or what you are. I’m freaking sick of ‘your mom’ jokes. So can it already. Both of you.”
  
  The barked order was authoritative and issued with an obvious expectation of compliance. Both Wilson and Darce dropped their gazes and muttered “Yes, ma’ams” before Wilson disappeared from the tailgate, leaving Darce and the Blood alone.
  
  He struggled to a sitting position against the side of the truck, let his body relax and watched her. He’d thought she was beautiful on first glance—from a distance—but now, up close, she was breathtaking. Tall for a woman, but she’d still have been petite compared to him with her head reaching his jaw. She was the perfect size for him to wrap in his arms. Small women were great, but he hated getting a crick in his neck when he had to bend down to kiss them. With her, there would be none of that. She was just the right height.
  
  Her lips pursed as she sat back on her heels and reached for a case on the other side of the vehicle. She dragged it to rest near her thigh and flipped it open. She cut a glance at him while she rifled through it. He grinned, not bothered that she’d caught him watching her.
  
  “So…you going to tell me your name? Or should I keep calling you pretty lady?” he asked, sucking in a breath as she reached out to touch his face and the vicious wound there. Caused by her claws before he’d been clocked by the guy with the rifle butt, it burned when she pulled the edges of the torn flesh.
  
  “You’re healing fast.”
  
  She ignored his question, reaching back into the medical kit to pull out antiseptic swabs. Not bothering with gloves, she tore the packets open with her teeth. Those tiny little fangs flashed at him for a second before she leaned forward to clean the wound.
  
  Darce swore, pain arcing through him as the wet wipe hit the cut flesh. “I was! What the hell are you using? Hydro-fucking-chloric acid?”
  
  “Oh, grow up. It’s a little cut. You’re lucky I didn’t gut you.”
  
  “Lucky? You call this lucky?” Darce squirmed like a kid whose mother scrubbed at stubborn spots of dirt on his face with a handkerchief. In his head, his mind turned over ten to the dozen. She’d dropped him, yes…but what had happened to Lillian? She’d gone running off into the forest alone. Unprotected. With him down and out, had the Blood gone after her in a crazed fury?
  
  He pulled in another deep breath and rolled it over his tongue. Tasting and scenting the air at the same time in a way he hadn’t been able to do when he’d been human. His wolf rumbled within the confines of his body, pushing up enough to search through the myriad of scents for Lillian’s. There was blood, both human and Lycan. His, mixed with the deep, rich scent of the earth and the tang of tree sap. But not Lillian’s blood. He breathed a sigh of relief. She’d gotten away. And he knew Jack. Now that he’d found his mate, the Captain would tear the forest apart looking for her.
  
  Captain…
  
  The word brought him back to the present. He looked back at the woman sitting next to him while she rifled through the medical kit. Studied her while her attention was on something else. She frowned as she concentrated, the small expression fascinating him and sparking a whole host of erotic fantasies centered on her lips.
  
  Wilson had called her Major, so she’d been a career soldier before she’d been turned. Nothing sexier than chicks and guns. Add in the aura of command a senior officer had…heat rolled through him, sending delicious shivers along his spine. God, she could order him around as much as she liked. Tie him up, tie him down. He’d let her do whatever she wanted.
  
  She sat back on her heels, and her movements caught his attention. Graceful but too smooth for a human, she’d clearly given up any pretence of being Homo sapien. It suited her. He liked it, way more than was healthy. She lifted her hands and all his instincts went on red-alert.
  
  “Hey, hey, doll. You only have to ask. No need for the big stuff,” he commented, his voice light and joking to cover the wariness in his every cell. She ignored him, shaking the small vial in one hand before she fitted the point of the syringe against it.
  
  The sharp, wrong stink of the sedative the Project used on his kind filled the transporter as she pierced the rubber seal. The trace amount released when the needle slid through the protective layer was minute but it didn’t matter. Not to Lycan senses.
  
  His wolf stilled, all its concentration on the silver hanging in the air. She withdrew the syringe, tapping the side to release any trapped bubbles. A press on the plunger sent a dribble of the stuff sliding down the needle like a melting gobbet of ice-cream on the side of a sundae glass.
  
  She leaned over him, her expression one of distaste, and she reached out to manipulate his raised arm. The instant she touched him, her colder-than-human hands gentle but determined on his skin, his wolf lost it. It snapped and snarled within, taking everything Darce had to keep control. Sweat beaded on his skin as he forced the creature back, gritting his teeth against the pain until it felt they would shatter under the pressure.
  
  “You don’t need that, doll. I’ll be a good boy,” he promised. He’d promise her whatever she wanted to keep that needle away from his skin. To keep the silver out of his veins. “I’ll even roll over and let you rub my tummy if you like.”
  
  He pleaded with his eyes, looking up through the long strands of dark hair that covered his face. His best “puppy dog” look. He’d been good at it before literally becoming part-dog. Wolf. Whatever.
  
  She paused and he caught his breath, holding on to his human form like grim death. He couldn’t change in here, not with the wolf so panicked and her in here with him. Blood she might be, but he wouldn’t risk hurting her. A two hundred plus pound wolf freaking out in a small container was a recipe for a world of hurt.
  
  “Please, don’t do this.”
  
  Shaking her head, she grasped his arm in a vice-like grip. He clamped his teeth rigid again. His control slipped and his wolf charged the small gap, desperate for release. Desperate to escape.
  
  His teeth lengthened, slicing through his gums and filling his mouth with blood. Breathing through his nose, he pulled her scent deep into his lungs and held rigid under her hands. A part of his mind found comfort in the contact, soothed by the touch of the woman who was his mate. It didn’t last long.
  
  The needle punctured his skin, sending fire streaking through his veins as she depressed the plunger.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Two
  
  It was like kicking a puppy.
  
  Lips still tingling from the kiss he’d given her before Wilson had clocked him with the rifle butt, Antonia pressed the plunger and started to shove the sedative into the Lycan’s vein. She felt the slight resistance when she pushed but schooled her movements to avoid shattering the delicate syringe. She’d broken a lot of things when she’d first been turned—glasses, mugs, even a shower handle once—so she knew to be careful.
  
  Her nose wrinkled at the slight hint of silver hanging in the air, the trace elements of the small stream of fluid she’d let escape with the air bubbles. Bloods weren’t as susceptible to silver, but it didn’t mean she wanted any on her skin—or getting into her bloodstream if she crushed the glass syringe in her hand.
  
  Her patient gasped, closing his eyes as the stuff hit. His head jerked back and slammed into the side of the truck so hard she winced. His back arched, the arc one of pain while every muscle and chord stood out in high relief on his bare chest and neck.
  
  Toni moved with him, hand hard on his arm to keep the needle in place. He wasn’t trying to buck her off. The movement was instinctive—a reaction to the sedative. His feet scrambled on the metal floor, trying to find purchase while she pushed the plunger home with a click.
  
  At the sound, she pressed her lips together, unwanted memories assaulting her of the days after her own infection. Memories of lying on a trolley, scared out of her mind while the scientists ran endless tests and gave her antidote shots. The soft click of the plunger as she held onto the hope that for once, fate would be kind. That the collision in the corridor which had left her with more holes in her arm than a sieve had been harmless. That somehow the sharps scattered about her feet and those of the medical technician didn’t contain what was stamped in big, black letters on the side.
  
  BD-15.
  
  The guy had freaked out, brushing the needles embedded in his arm with something akin to a moan of terror. The blood had drained from his face as he looked from her to the door behind them. It was yanked open, armed guards piling through the gap. Their weapons weren’t held at their sides anymore, but trained on the two of them.
  
  She’d known.
  
  Instantly.
  
  Even though they’d run all the tests and reassured her the virus didn’t take every time—and back in the first days of the camp it hadn’t—she’d still known. As she lay studying the ceiling, she felt the virus moving around her body, like ice circling her blood. Then it had started to burrow into her tissues.
  
  The foot traffic had slowed, the faces around her changing, becoming grim. She’d ignored them, preferring to look at the back of her eyelids rather than see the mixture of pity and scientific interest. So she pretended to doze when guards had entered the room to stand silently by the door.
  
  It had been all downhill from then. Medical personnel had given way to lead scientists. By the time the virus had begun to chew at her insides, turning her guts into a seething mass of fiery snakes, she’d gone from a patient to a subject.
  
  And she’d been a subject ever since.
  
  The slump of her prisoner’s body brought her back to the present. Trying to be gentle, she kept an eye out for movement as she withdrew the needle. He might be sedated but her words to Wilson held true. Out of it or not, he was still a Lycan. While he drew breath, he’d be dangerous. It was dark in the back of the transporter but that made no difference. She could see just as well in pitch black as in daylight.
  
  He didn’t move. His tall, leanly-muscled body was lax and at her mercy as she pulled the sharp point from his flesh. Only the smallest curl of his lip indicated he’d felt her movement. She wasn’t naive enough to believe he was unconscious. Instead, she knew the battle was focused inward, on the drugs racing through his system.
  
  She sat back on her heels and resisted the urge to make comforting noises. What was the point? She was transporting him to base, and the Project knew he’d been holding out on them. The best he could expect was intense interrogation, Project style. Which meant they’d beat the shit out of him while his animal was locked down with silver. The worst was a silver bullet to the back of the head, and then an unmarked grave out in the desert somewhere.
  
  No noble end for a Project soldier.
  
  Her own grave would be out there.
  
  She bagged the used needle with quick movements. No sense in taking chances. Grimly, she ignored the bead of blood which detached itself from the injection site and rolled down his arm. A big, fat ball, bright and luscious. Like a cherry just waiting for her to take a bite. No matter how much she needed to feed, no matter how good that drop of blood smelled, she couldn’t. Had he been human—one of her men—then yes. She’d have been all over him like a bad rash. Wrapped herself around him and rubbed her body against his before sinking her fangs into the thick vein at his throat.
  
  He’d taste good. She knew he would. Despite the fact he was Lycan, his scent continued to taunt and tease. Her lips compressed and she shifted on the hard floor to stop the checker plate from biting into her knees. She should have worn knee pads. But no one had told her she’d be in the back of one of the transporters, shooting up a captured Lycan.
  
  The movement had her brushing against his leg, and his scent billowed up like a sheet to wrap her in its embrace. Reaching deep inside her to reawaken the interest she’d thought dead, like her humanity. An interest she didn’t want to have to deal with at the moment. Not with the possibility of a cure almost within reach.
  
  Shaking her head to banish the maddening scent, she tucked the yellow sharps disposal bag into a side pocket on the med-kit. Leaving the main compartment open, she shifted the kit to the other side of the truck bed. Always aware, even a slight flinch from the guy spread out over the cold metal floor got her instant attention.
  
  As she watched, his muscles bunched and twitched, and his eyes rolled into the back of his head, like a dog in the middle of a running dream. But she knew better. This was no dream. Snarls slipped from his mouth as he fought the drugs, the corners of his lips curled back to reveal canines sharp enough to rival hers.
  
  Her heart skipped a beat and sped up. Energy punched through her system. Should she load up a second shot? He looked asleep now but Lycans could be unpredictable. One moment they’d be so far under that the sandman would have trouble finding them, and the next wide awake and ready to go toe–to-toe with anything standing in their way.
  
  Blood and energy surged around her body. If that happened, she would have a fight on her hands to contain him. There was no way she could let him out of there, not with Wilson and the other members of her team about. She’d seen how he moved when they’d fought—how fast and lethal. They wouldn’t stand a chance. She had to keep him in here. But an enraged Lycan, pissed off with the silver in his veins, in such close confines? Yeah, she’d be in for a world of hurt. Blood she might be, but a bruise was still a fucking bruise and would be just as painful as it had been when she was human. Especially one inflicted with the bone-crushing intensity a Lycan could muster.
  
  Despite all that, despite the fact she knew how dangerous he was, Toni didn’t care. Her heart thundered at near human levels. Excitement, adrenaline and something else—something she didn’t want to name—filled her veins. She wanted this, wanted it all to kick off to ease the restlessness within her.
  
  It wasn’t to be. With a rattling sigh he slumped to the side, like someone had pulled the plug and drained all the life from his limbs. Ever wary and suspecting a trick, she waited, every line of her body tensed and ready for an attack. Ready to defend herself. But the attack didn’t come. Instead he turned his head, as though the slow movement was difficult, and then dropped it back. His long, dark hair spilled over the cold metal beneath his shoulders.
  
  Slowly she leaned forward, extended a finger and prodded his shoulder. He didn’t move. She breathed a sigh of relief. He was unconscious.
  
  Almost.
  
  As she moved back, the energy in her body ebbing away, he opened his eyes to look at her. They were dark, but with a warning ring of amber. Suppressing a shiver, she matched him look for look, not prepared to back down. It didn’t matter how much silver she pumped into him—even if she used all seven shots left in the bag, the creature inside him would still be there. It would always be there. Watching. Waiting.
  
  You’re mine.
  
  Unbidden, his words to Kelwood chased each other around her mind like an over-active puppy chasing its own tail. She tried to ignore them. How did she know this was the Lycan who had pinned Kelwood and issued a warning for her?
  
  He smiled, the smallest quirk of his lips which rocked her to the core, and she knew.
  
  This was the same Lycan, and she’d become the prey.
  
  
  
  
  
  The journey passed swiftly but time had become relative for Toni. She could zone out for what seemed like five minutes only to come to and find hours had gone by. It had freaked out the medical technicians the first time they’d ventured into her room to see why she’d missed her check-up. They’d found her staring at the wall, hairbrush in hand, frozen in mid-stroke while she pondered the meaning of life, her continued existence and why the hell she could hear a fly on the wall three rooms down.
  
  The rhythmic sway of the vehicle and the darkness helped her semi-trance as she watched the Lycan opposite. Half slumped against the side of the truck, his occasional twitch between periods of blessed unconsciousness told her he still fought the drugs. Admiration filled her. He was a stubborn one for sure. But at least when he was unconscious, he wasn’t in pain. Everyone knew Lycans were monsters, but now she found the idea of him in pain distasteful.
  
  Heat crawled over her cheeks, shame rolling through her with the unstoppable force of a tidal wave. She didn’t like the idea of him in pain, yet she was taking him back to the Project. She planned to trade him for a cure, knowing what would happen to him. Knowing they would beat him to within an inch of his life to get the answers they wanted, then execute him in the cold light of dawn.
  
  She was taking a man to his death to get what she wanted.
  
  Who was the real monster?
  
  The scent of the forest filtering through the vents on the sides of the cabin gave way to farmland. The wilder smell would disappear when they crossed into the drier, arid wastelands around the camp. Which suited the Project fine. Miles after miles of dry, empty scrubland meant no one could watch the base. Nothing lived out there. Nothing wanted to live out there.
  
  Her prisoner gasped again, twitching in the silver-reinforced manacles before slumping again, and lay still.
  
  Without moving, without blinking, she watched him. He was tall, with masses of dark hair falling to his shoulders. A lock lay across his face. Had she been human, she would have been tempted to brush it away. To feel the texture of the silken strands as it slipped between her fingers. Smooth the hair back to reveal features so hard and masculine even a near-dead Blood like her felt the pull of attraction. But she wasn’t human, wasn’t anything even close, so she stayed where she was. Watching him.
  
  The hair brushed broad shoulders which flowed down into a well-muscled chest and flat stomach. There wasn’t an ounce of body fat on him—his physique ripped enough to give even the most dedicated gym-bunny a serious case of the green-eyed monster. If he had to work out to maintain it, though, she was a monkey’s uncle.
  
  Like Bloods, when the virus entered their system, Lycans were done with needing to exercise. Their metabolisms sped up, they lost weight, got faster and stronger—their bodies running at optimum. Perfect biological function. The fact they turned furry had been unexpected. Her lips quirked. Forget life imitating art, this was science imitating myth and legend.
  
  Civilization was screwed.
  
  Her gaze wandered down across his chest and paused for a moment on the flat discs of his nipples. One was scarred, the small circular indentation familiar. He’d had a piercing at some point. Had to have been before he’d been turned because it took a lot to scar a Lycan. A mere nipple piercing just wouldn’t.
  
  Her attention moved on. It was obvious he liked tattoos—his skin was decorated with them. Tribal designs warred for space with winged daggers on his arms, and the trailing edges of the mystical symbols over his stomach disappeared under the low slung waistband of his combat pants.
  
  Heat threatened her bloodstream again so she yanked her gaze up and fixed on another of his tattoos. Small and discrete, tucked away on the side of his ribcage but visible with his hands above his head—she recognized it instantly.
  
  A meat tag.
  
  His name, serial number and—she tilted her head a little to read—what looked like his blood-type inked into his skin. All the information required to identify him in case his torso parted company with the rest of his body, although the jury was out as to whether or not this was effective with current explosives. Such markings were used by Special Forces, soldiers who went into the worst sort of combat. The kind that meant body bags rarely contained a whole body and two left feet didn’t always refer to dancing ability.
  
  She knew because she had a similar marking on the side of her left breast. For all the fucking good it had done. No meat tag was proof against a virus—she’d learned that the hard way.
  
  The truck rattled across a couple of potholes, the Lycan rolling against the wheel arch with a grunt. The movement stretched the skin over his side so she leaned in to get a closer look at the tag.
  
  D. Foster.
  
  Darcy Foster, Lieutenant.
  
  She rifled through her memories of the pre-op reports she’d read on the Lycan section, the pages laid out in her mind as though she held them. Headed up by Captain Jack Harper, Alpha-Three were a Project success story when it came to the Lycans. They were one of the only groups with a defined alpha, and perhaps because of that had regained control of their new natures within a couple of weeks of infection. A fully operational combat unit, the Project had fielded them again and again, sending them into situations deemed far too hazardous for human troops.
  
  Then something had happened. One of the eggheads had gotten nervous about the ease with which the pack alpha, Harper, could shift and the whole squad had been deemed dangerous and locked down. Given a one way trip to the land of the hug-yourself jackets while the scientists worked out what the hell was going on.
  
  Foster was Harper’s second in command, and classified a potential alpha himself. A Special Forces soldier with a kill rate that would have made the average serial killer glow with pride, and his disciplinary record was just as impressive. He’d had numerous run-ins with authority until he’d been put with Harper. Then nothing. Like the rebel had found God and turned over a new leaf. The last year or two he’d been as quiet as a mouse, even after the squad had been turned, and now deemed “stable”.
  
  As stable as a furry killing machine could be, anyway.
  
  She didn’t believe a word of it. Oh, Foster and his group might be good at playing cute for the eggheads, but she’d seen the files. Alpha-Three hadn’t been volunteers, or even an accident like her. Instead, they’d been so good at what they did—killing—that the Project had decided they were the perfect specimens. And what the Project wanted, the Project got. Alpha-Three had been brought in for “medical assessment”, knocked out, strapped down and infected with LY16.
  
  Toni shivered at the thought. Her own turning hadn’t been traumatic, but she’d seen enough that had been. Not long after she’d been infected, a group of volunteers had been processed. Garry had allowed her to watch to prove how lightly she’d gotten off, to prove that being a Blood beat being a Lycan hands down. But the situation had gone tits up quicker than two shakes of a lamb’s tail.
  
  The cute young soldier in the nearest restraint cage, the one who had been winking and trying to flirt with her, howled in agony and rage when the needle had pierced his skin. Skin which flowed and bubbled, sprouting fur and fangs in all the wrong places while his body contorted. It twisted and writhed, changing shapes as though unable to choose between a humanoid or a lupine form, before settling on something sickeningly between the two. A form too big for the silver-wrapped steel—the bars cut into his fur-covered flesh as his change crushed him to death within the too-small space.
  
  
  
  
  
  Toni jerked out of her light doze when the vehicle rattled to a stop. Sitting up straight, she blinked sleep out of her eyes and then scowled. The Lycan had sat up and was watching her, his amber-brown eyes steady. Irritation surged through her. She straightened her shirt sharply, as though she’d been rolling around the truck-bed while she slept instead of being propped up against the wheel arch.
  
  What the hell was with that? She never dropped off easily, not even when comfortable and safe in her own bed on camp. So why the hell had she done it in the back of a truck within feet of a dangerous Lycan who could wake at any moment?
  
  “What you looking at?” she snarled, discomforted by his unwavering attention.
  
  While she’d dozed, he’d obviously worked the drugs through his system. Dark marks around his wrist and the scent of blood in the air told her he’d tried to escape his bonds. He hadn’t managed it. Relief rolled through her. At least she’d been woken by the truck jolting, not by the hard body of a Lycan pinning her to the deck as he prepared to rip her throat out.
  
  Or kissed her within an inch of her life again.
  
  “You.”
  
  He took his time replying, his dark-light gaze sweeping over her with a very male expression of appreciation.
  
  “Go on, snarl again. You’re cute when you’re mad. And those little fangs?” He shivered, pulling his lower lip between his teeth for a second and closing his eyes in apparent pleasure. “You can bite me any day of the week.”
  
  “Yeah, right.” She pushed off the side of the vehicle and moved over to drop the tailgate. “Like I’d want to bite a mangy mutt like you.”
  
  “Mange? Lady, you wound me.”
  
  He shifted position as if to clasp his chest but was halted by the metal around his wrists. It caught one of the raw wounds and a small trickle of blood rolled down his arm as the scent blossomed on the air.
  
  She ignored the pull, the interest in the slender trail of scarlet and yanked the locking pins loose to kick the tailgate down. Metal crunched underfoot, a boot-shaped impression visible for a fraction of a second before it slammed into the back of the chassis below.
  
  “Temper, temper.”
  
  She gritted her teeth as the Lycan snickered. She was letting him get to her. Worse, she’d let him see that he was getting to her. She fixed him with a black stare. One she’d been told was as hard as nails and twice as deadly.
  
  “Shut your mouth. Or I’ll shut it for you. Permanently.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Three
  
  Oh, she really was gorgeous.
  
  Darce didn’t bother to reply. Just watched her turn again, her slender figure silhouetted against the open back of the truck before she stepped off with all the unnatural grace he’d come to associate with Bloods. She hit the ground without breaking stride, then stalked toward the small group of men and vehicles behind the truck.
  
  They were a bedraggled group, one who bore the hallmarks of being put through the wringer combat-wise and coming out on the losing side. Battered and bruised, most of them wore field dressings like a new fashion, lines of pain written into their features as they crowded around the woman in their midst. They were all armed, but he’d be surprised if any of them had enough ammunition left to defend the ragtag group of vehicles.
  
  A grin spread over his face. It was obvious what had happened. The Project had gone up against his pack and come off the losers. Hoo-fucking-rah. As it should be. Teach the bastards to mess with Lycans.
  
  He tested the cuffs, yanking on them to see if they would give. What he planned to do if they did, he had no clue since the woman barking orders not twenty feet away held far more interest for him than escaping to rejoin the rest of the pack.
  
  He ignored the pain in his wrists in favor of watching her again. Silver burned like a bitch but he didn’t care. Sometimes a little bit of pain was cool, liking riding the edge of a wave, which was why he’d kept the silver bar for his nipple, putting it back in after each operation. Sure, he had to re-punch the hole each time but…pleasure and pain. Nothing like it.
  
  She walked along a row of green body bags, her body language neutral. That was one thing he’d noticed about the Bloods he’d seen on camp. They were like automatons. No reactions, no facial expressions, nothing. They could stand motionless for hours, like a robot with the power switched off. Blank expression, empty eyes. Lifelike statues left there in the middle of the street. Then something would wake them and they’d move. He’d seen one do it once in the middle of lunch hour at the base. A male.
  
  A smoker until he’d been infected, Darce was always the first out of the barracks in the morning. He liked to lounge against the wall and watch the sunrise through the wire link fence which kept them prisoners. Like his body remembered the routine, but didn’t need the drug.
  
  The Blood had been there when he’d walked out that morning and he’d watched it until the pack had gotten moving. It had still been there when they’d gotten back hours later for lunch.
  
  Swarms of humans passed by, all en-route to and from the mess hall, when the Blood blinked, and then grabbed hold of a woman who had passed by too close. Screams and pandemonium ensued, amusing Darce greatly as the human forces tried to get the woman from the creature without her being harmed or infected. His amusement had fled when their attempts had failed. The creature had lost control, snarling at the soldiers. The sharp crack of the woman’s neck snapping rang out in the midday air, followed by automatic fire when the creature was put down.
  
  Darce’s pretty Blood wouldn’t lose control, though. He knew that without asking. She was too contained, too together, even if he had seen her slip and fall asleep in the truck. If he’d meant her harm…
  
  His gaze caressed her form again as she studied the bags. Green for human, and there were a shit-load of them. He tried hard to feel sorry for the occupants, but gave up quickly. Any soldier who had spent more than an hour on the Project base knew what they were getting into, and those who stayed were as bad as the powers pulling the strings.
  
  Any sensible person who saw what was going on there would run and not stop running until they’d left the place far behind. If he’d had the chance—if they hadn’t locked him into a cage and filled his veins with the crap that called the beast forth from the darkest corners of his psyche—he’d have run. He wouldn’t have stopped running until he’d found someplace so far from modern civilization he could call himself a caveman.
  
  He shifted position with a grunt, propping his shoulder against the cold metal behind him to try and relieve the tension in his arms. His hands tingled as the blood flow was restored, the wounds on his wrists re-opening every time the silver-strengthened cuffs cut deep. The Project forces had come well prepared.
  
  She walked along the line of body bags, inclining her head to listen to the guy, a human, walking next to her. Darce fought back a snarl when the smaller man reached out at the end of the turn, as if to put a guiding hand on the small of her back. Jealousy pounded through Darce. His. His to touch, to protect. Not this human’s.
  
  The hand didn’t make contact. Instead, the Blood female turned and fixed the human soldier with a look which would have frozen lava. The human stiffened, his shoulders tight and he withdrew the hand slowly. Darce grinned, not bothering to hide his amusement. His Blood didn’t like casual touching. Good. He didn’t want anyone touching her but him.
  
  She carried on glaring and the human scuttled away. The rest kept their distance, watching the small group of vehicles. She stood by the last bag in line. Set a little apart from the others, the violent orange was a raw, open wound in the pre-dawn light. A visual warning that what was contained within was dangerous. Even when dead.
  
  Darce forgot all about the discomfort in his wrists when she knelt down and reached out to pull the zipper. The hackles rose on the back of his neck, every protective instinct within him coming to the fore. His lip curled back, a snarl rumbling in the back of his throat.
  
  Jealousy joined the party. Who was he? Who was in the bag? Then he caught the slump of her shoulders, the despair written in the lines of her body. It was a slight movement, almost imperceptible, and one the humans around her would have missed. But Darce wasn’t human. He noticed. The set of her frame screamed misery and the puzzle deepened, gnawing at him.
  
  Darce was no idiot, despite the joking attitude he showed the rest of the world. He’d seen the interplay between his female and the RA before the attack on the hospital. Had seen the conversation—a conversation a mindless zombie shouldn’t be capable of—and the look on his woman’s face when she’d shot the creature dead.
  
  Double tap between the eyes. Cool, calm, professional. He narrowed his eyes, the frown pulling at his brow. She was a career soldier, all right. From what he’d seen of her in action—and ignoring the abilities granted by her Blood infection—she had to have been commando, if not special forces originally. No way had she been a ground-pounder. She was too slick in action.
  
  Who had the guy in the bag been?
  
  Whoever he was, he’d been important to her. A lover perhaps? The wolf within snapped and snarled, torn between the need to protect her and rage at the possibility she belonged to another. Even if that other was dead now, it made no difference. His wolf wanted her, wanted to howl its claim to the moonlit sky above and warn all others off. He yanked on his bonds again, blood running down his arms. Possessiveness, the need to mark her and have her carry his scent, surged hotly through his veins.
  
  Thanks to the silver, the cuffs held him securely. Each struggle caused them to bite deeper, bathing his arms in his own blood. He ignored the pain, watching as his woman set about gathering wood from the side of the road. Armful after armful, branches torn from the lower reaches of trees and bundles of twigs and undergrowth scooped up with sharp movements filled with anger.
  
  Intrigued, he stopped struggling when she started to pile the wood up. What the hell was she doing? Making some sort of weird-ass nest? He’d never heard of Bloods building nests. Did bats build nests? No, that was ridiculous. Trying to ascribe the traits from creatures of myth and legend to the creatures of the Project was like trying to plait jam. In other words, fucking pointless. They only likened the BDs to vampires and the LYs to Lycans because they shared some similarities, not all. If they did, then a good lasagna would have dealt with the Bloods long before, because the base mess put enough garlic into the stuff even a human could smell it three days later.
  
  His brow unfurrowed as she formed the pile into a man-shaped mound next to the orange body bag. A funeral pyre—had to be. She planned to burn the body. But why? Why not take it back to the Project…where they would poke and prod at it. No, he knew why. She’d shed a tear when she’d shot him so this guy obviously meant a lot to her. A person who meant enough that she’d rather burn his body out here and give him a proper send off instead of letting the Project desecrate his corpse with their damn tests.
  
  He didn’t blame her. Now he knew what really went on behind the closed doors, he wouldn’t trust the Project with even a lawyer’s corpse. God alone knew what they would manage to achieve with a base subject like that…
  
  The pyre prepared, she bent down and grabbed the handles of the orange bag to manhandle the body on top. The humans carried on watching her from the safety of their group. It was obvious no one planned to stop her, or even question. Darce had no doubt when asked later none of them would remember seeing a thing, or even admit the team had stopped for so long. Fitzgerald and his core group of sycophants might form the powers that be on base, but no one wanted a Blood pissed off at them. Given that they could move faster than any guard could see, were physically strong enough to break through most doors, and could smooth-talk any lock, having one pissed off at you tended to have one outcome: a short life expectancy.
  
  So brews and smokes got broken out. The human soldiers studiously ignored the Blood as she arranged the body bag across the top of the hastily erected pyre. Darce sat motionless, enraptured by the grace of her movements. When finally she had the body arranged to her satisfaction, she put her hand in her pocket. The fabric pulled tight across her curvy ass and interest—purely male and carnal—flared brightly. She pulled a lighter from her pocket, then flicked the lid open and closed between long fingers. He recognized the rapid fire movement. It was exactly the same one he used when deep in thought, his own lighter normally in his left pant pocket. Probably in some guard’s pocket now. Bastards had taken it when they’d put him and the rest of the pack in the nuthouse.
  
  She’d been a smoker before her infection of course—things like that didn’t survive the transition. But he’d lay good odds she had been.
  
  With a flick of her fingers, she snapped the lighter open again, then struck it. A small flame erupted before she threw the lighter onto the body. It landed on the orange bag and held for a second, then started to slide. The seconds stretched out as the small metal case slipped down the curve of the plastic-wrapped body and into the wood below. Nothing happened for long moments—the tiny flame lost in the tangled knot of wood until it re-emerged to creep up onto one branch, and then another and another. Soon it raced outward, reaching eager fingers over the plastic, seeking the flammable treat contained within. Like someone had turned up the gas, the fire roared to life, the flames going from small, tentative licks to an inferno which engulfed the body.
  
  The blaze cracked and popped. The plastic melted away, the core of the fire white hot as it greedily consumed the corrupt corpse. The wind changed and the flames leaped, carrying the fetid, hot smell to the back of the truck. With no way to escape its rancid reach, Darce slammed his shoulders against the metal behind him, every instinct he had recoiling from the sheer wrongness.
  
  He shoved his nose hard against his own arm to block out the smell and tried to breathe through his ears while he watched over his arm. Even though her sense of smell had to be equal to his, she stood motionless. Watched the fire burn brightly. A lone sentinel paying last respects for the dead.
  
  Melancholy washed over him. Would anyone care enough to stand over his body? Would she?
  
  
  
  Fire. The great cleanser. Like water, it was unmatched in its ability to destroy and wipe the slate clean. Heat beat at Toni’s face. She watched the flames devour Garry’s body until it was reduced to nothing but glowing embers. It didn’t take long. RA bodies burned quickly, like lighting a fuse, until there was nothing left—not even bone. The whole body was consumed by the flame like nature herself sought to correct the mistake wrought by man.
  
  The fire had all but died, but she still saw it in her mind’s eye, where the flames blazed brightly. Stripped the plastic from the body within to eat at the altered flesh. The inferno still burned brightly in her thoughts, as though it had transferred from the embers in front of her to blaze within her soul, fuelled by her rage.
  
  Burning white hot and without mercy.
  
  The Project had killed Garry. They’d lied to him. Killed him as surely as if they’d pulled the trigger instead of her. But, ultimately, she’d killed him. She’d actually fired the bullets that ended his life and killed an RA who was supposed to be dead already. Killed him because they’d turned him into his worst nightmare. Her jaw worked, her teeth grinding so hard they ached.
  
  Oh, she knew Garry hadn’t been a saint. He worked for the Project after all, so there had to be some skeletons in his closet, but the punishment should fit the crime. He’d been a med-tech, not one of the scientists. To her knowledge, he’d never personally infected anyone, just been part of the team that dealt with the aftereffects. He hadn’t deserved to be killed and turned into his worst nightmare.
  
  No one deserved that.
  
  But there was no way to complain. No superior officer or chain of command to report the bastards who’d strapped him to that trolley to. A complaint to Fitzgerald would be counterproductive. More than. Any hint of dissent on base was dealt with swiftly, usually by the application of a bullet to the back of the head. She wasn’t going to complain though, just make the Project pay. Make that asshole Fitzgerald pay. After she’d gotten the cure from him, of course. When she had it, she’d tear him apart with her bare hands.
  
  Vengeance.
  
  An ember spat and rolled from the remains of the impromptu pyre and came to rest at the side of her boot. She watched it for a long moment, unblinking, then took a deep breath and turned. Left the glowing embers behind without a backward glance, and strode toward the transporter with the Lycan inside.
  
  “We’re done here. Pack it up and let’s move out,” she ordered, her voice pitched to carry to her men. As one, they scuttled to do her bidding. Mugs were emptied onto the ground. Cigarettes dropped and stamped out. She shook her head and stalked toward the truck. Thankfully, they weren’t trying to conceal their tracks—wouldn’t take much intelligence for anyone to work out they’d been here. Just the remains of a fire, which—thanks to the fact that RA bodies burnt cleanly—no one could identify as a pyre.
  
  Wilson appeared as she clambered into the back of the truck. He moved before she could ask, helping her to close the tailgate and barking orders to the milling soldiers. She nodded to herself in approval. Despite the idiot moment around the Lycan earlier that could have ended up with him having his throat torn out, he wasn’t a bad soldier. He had the kind of smarts she’d normally look for in someone to recommend for promotion. Pity he wouldn’t survive long with the Project.
  
  “Straight through to the base.” She latched the last loop into place. “No more stops. Fitz’ll be fit to bursting anyway, no reason to give him more of an excuse to have a damn hissy fit. When we get in, offload the Lycan and I’ll deal with the debrief. You get the lads clear of the square and in their racks, okay?”
  
  Wilson grinned, the prospect of not having to go through a debrief with the General an obvious relief. “Yes, ma’am. With some luck we might just get in before the breakfast rush.”
  
  A small smile curved her lips as he tapped the top of the tailgate and disappeared to the front of the truck. Soldiers, always thinking of their stomachs. Typical.
  
  The front door slammed shut and she bit back a moan. The scent of blood, rich and decadent wrapped around her, chasing the stench of burning RA flesh from her nostrils in an instant. Relief surged through her. She’d smelled RAs burning before but knowing the flesh burning had once belonged to a friend, a person she knew, was somehow worse. It was easy to forget the RAs had all been someone—albeit a someone who had been condemned to death usually—but a person all the same.
  
  Taking a deep breath, she focused on the blood. Rolled the delicious scent along her tongue to taste it, holding the breath deep in her lungs until she’d chased away unsavory thoughts of barbecue and regained her control. Only just.
  
  The sickening hunger dissipated, leaving an altogether different type of hunger racing through her veins. She ignored it, opening her eyes to look at the prisoner. He sat still, arms above his head and skin bathed in blood—the source of the smell. Her stomach rolled again as her gaze latched onto the scarlet stains, the need for blood and more assaulting her.
  
  Grimly she fought the need back and looked at him levelly. She was just low on blood—that was all. Once she got back to base and had her fill from the chemically-controlled, chilled baggies of o-positive they kept especially for her, this strange need to wrap herself around him and sink her fangs into his throat would disappear. It had to—there was no way she was getting fang-happy with a mutt.
  
  Still, she shot a concerned glance at his wrists. The last thing she needed was a bleed out. Full-bird Fitz would use any excuse not to give her the cure, if he had it at all. She needed the Lycan alive, if not exactly fighting fit. Leaning forward, she lifted his arm. The cuts were deep but already healing.
  
  “You’re an idiot,” she told him, raising her voice to be heard over the sound of the engine. “Those cuffs have held bigger and meaner than you with no problems.”
  
  He shrugged, watching her through human-dark eyes. At least he was calm now, his movements sluggish as he lifted his arms and rattled the chains against the side of the cabin. Sweat beaded over his skin, and every movement seemed an effort. Good. He was still under the control of the drugs. She wouldn’t have to shoot him up again.
  
  “Who was he? Your lover?” he demanded, amber leeching into his eyes again and betraying the wolf hidden beneath the surface.
  
  The growl was unexpected, the possessive gleam when his gaze swept over her even more so. Reaching out, she braced herself against the side of the truck as it lurched over a series of potholes, and thought before answering. Despite herself, she liked it. The flash of anger in his eyes and the growl. She’d never considered possessiveness an attractive feature before, or even considered herself the sort of woman to elicit a response like that. But she liked it. She shouldn’t, but she did.
  
  “Maybe.”
  
  “What do you mean, maybe?” He growled, straining at his bonds, all the tightly corded muscles in his frame standing out in high relief. She had to give it to him. He was determined. “Maybe he was your lover? How does ‘maybe’ even work in that sentence? You either know if a guy’s got his cock in you or not. Because, believe me baby, when I’m balls deep in you, you’ll know about it.”
  
  She laughed. He was loud and obnoxious, so why did she find him so amusing?
  
  “Oh, really?” She let her gaze linger over his broad chest, trying to make the look derisive. “And just how are you going to manage that handcuffed and locked down with silver like that?”
  
  He smiled, the expression far different from the cocky grin she was used to. This was more of a Mona Lisa type smile, as though Da Vinci had managed to reach through the fabric of space and time itself to recreate his masterpiece on a living and utterly masculine face. Enigmatic, it hinted at dark secrets within and sent heat and wariness slithering along her spine.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Four
  
  “Oh, that’s simple.”
  
  She froze in the utter stillness which gave a Blood away each and every time. But this time he didn’t focus on her inhumanity, the fact she was a Blood and he was a Lycan. Instead, all he saw were the large dark eyes, the sensuous curve of her lips and the soft sheen of her alabaster skin. Compared to him, she was small and delicate. So beautiful he hardly dared glance her way, but his gaze was drawn to her anyway. Like a compass needle to true north. Everything male within him demanded it. Need and desire raced through his body, aided by his wolf. The creature inside yipped and yammered, testing the edges of his control like a caged dog worrying at a fence, desperate to be freed.
  
  He held the smile. For once, he and the animal were in perfect accord. She’d locked him down with silver, but it didn’t mean he was going to stay that way. Not with the moon still in the sky and his mate within reach. While they’d talked, he’d worked the silver from his system. The metal beneath him was wet with tainted sweat. A little puddle under his ass like he’d pissed the stuff. Opening the connection to his wolf piece by piece, he let the creature free, using the strength and rage to galvanize his human frame.
  
  “What do you mean, ‘that’s simple’?”
  
  He finished the grin. The movement bared his teeth, revealing the lengthened canines behind his human lips. “Easy. I’m not locked down.”
  
  His words fell into stunned silence. Her eyes widened, her slight intake of breath a soft rasp in the air. Their gazes locked and tension spiraled as each waited for the other to move.
  
  He saw it the moment she made her decision. A red sheen tainted the darkness of her eyes, flowing over the surface like oil over water. Man, that was some freaky shit.
  
  A bellow escaped his lips. He yanked on the cuffs. The silver-laced steel bit deep, slicing through his skin like an acid-dipped razor but he ignored the pain. Couldn’t afford to let it slow him down.
  
  Using momentum to snap the chain, he threw himself across the space between them and reached for her. His arms opened wide to wrap her up in a solid tackle but, like him, she was already moving. With a grunt of surprise and anger, she twisted to the side, then rebounded off the metal interior to come right at him.
  
  They met in the middle in a clash of bodies and tumbled, rolling across the truck-bed in a tangle of limbs. She fought like a wildcat. His vision filled with flying strands of dark hair and the flash of her teeth as she snarled. He winced, blocking like a demon while heavy blows rained down on his head and shoulders. Pain flared all over his body but he ignored it and fought through. Forced to protect his sides, his abdomen and his face, he ducked and turned, weaving before he went on the offensive, trying to trap her arms and pin her down.
  
  The fight was close and fast as fuck. Despite her aggression and the sheer power behind her blows, he was tougher and bigger. A long, painful minute later he had her stretched out under him with her hands above her head. Still she fought, snapping at his face and neck with fangs that didn’t look nearly so cute when they were threatening to take chunks out of him.
  
  “Shhh…calm down.”
  
  He held on for grim death, throwing a heavy thigh over both of hers when she contorted and tried to knee him in the balls. Sometimes being the opposite sex in a down and dirty fight had its disadvantages, especially when you were the gender with the dangly bits. He was lucky she didn’t have those sharp little fangs anywhere near his crotch. That was one blow-job he could well do without.
  
  “Fuck you.”
  
  She struggled against his hold again. She didn’t…couldn’t break free, not with the firm grip he had on her, but each heave she gave pressed them closer together. The truck aided him, rattling over potholes and jerking them about until she was jammed in the right angle between the floor and the wall. Every inch of her slender but curvy frame pressed tight against him and his cock roared to life, pushing against the front of his pants, desperate for release.
  
  “Believe me, doll. I’d love you to.”
  
  She froze again, her eyes widening as her struggles rubbed their lower bodies together and she clocked the raging erection hard against her stomach. His gaze caught hers, heat flowing between them. She dragged a shaky breath in over parted lips. His attention riveted on the pink temptation scant inches from him and he lowered his head, watching her every step of the way. Waiting for her to turn into a spitting cat again.
  
  She didn’t.
  
  Instead, she watched him as if transfixed, her taut body strangely pliant under his, the soft curves and hollows fitting naturally against the hard musculature of his larger frame. A perfect fit. Like she’d been made to be held in his arms. A sense of familiarity, of coming home, assaulted him and he knew he’d give up everything for a few moments in her embrace.
  
  Her pink tongue darted out, wet her lips in unconscious invitation. He groaned. There was only so much temptation a man could take. He’d wanted to be soft, gentle…prove to her he wasn’t an animal, but need rode him hard. Like a devil on his back, it scoured all softness from him until only lust was left. The driving need to taste her, devour her, consumed him and he swooped down, claiming her lips in a hard kiss almost bruising in its intensity.
  
  Unlike earlier, he didn’t—couldn’t—wait for her to soften.
  
  Instead, he demanded and took, parting her lips with a hard sweep to sample the treasures within. Her taste exploded on his tongue, a heavenly combination of tart and sweet, fascinating his senses and totally indescribable. She tasted sublime. Ambrosia. If he died right now, he’d go having tasted a little piece of heaven itself.
  
  The truck rattled again, rolling him so he completed the movement. Pulling her into his side, he held both her wrists with one hand and used the other to sweep down the length of her body. She started, a jump of surprise when he cupped her ass and palmed the luscious curve before pulling her leg up over his thigh. He settled against her. His hips cradled in hers, he moved in to deepen the kiss.
  
  She didn’t fight him, just held her body still under his as he stroked his tongue along hers. Enticing her. Teasing her. She moaned, the sexy little sound lost under his lips. He ravaged her mouth, taking and demanding, then giving back in equal measure when she responded. Slowly at first, just the tentative sweep of her tongue, her body rigid as though she fought temptation…then the dam broke. She whimpered against his lips, the sound of her surrender sweet music to his ears, and kissed him back.
  
  Triumph roared through him. All the while his mind screamed at him about operational awareness. That now he had her subdued, he should be doing something about escaping. Wrap the chains around her wrists and imprison her against the cold, hard steel of the truck-side instead. Not kiss her like his life depended on it. Certainly not groan as her tongue slid against his, and roll so she rested on his chest.
  
  Her hands drove into his hair, tugging and pulling at the long locks as she plastered herself over him. Her breasts mashed against him, the soft mounds delicious pressure against the hard muscles of his broad chest. Her nipples were hard bullets under the damp fabric of her T-shirt and his groan joined hers as she rubbed herself, cat-like, over his chest.
  
  Heat arched, little lightning strikes every time her skin slid over his, a storm playing out over and between them. A storm of passion he wanted to wallow in, dancing and fucking in the rain to make the woman under him his at last.
  
  Knees on either side of his hips, she ground down, rocking against the rigid length of his erection and nipping his lower lip. Arousal shot through him at the pleasure-pain, washing over his scalp in a thousand tiny pinpricks before rolling through his body to lodge behind his balls and cock. A hot, rolling ball of lust, the thick rod ached to be free, to sink into the sweet cunt just a few layers of clothes away.
  
  “Tease.”
  
  He broke from the kiss to accuse, then dragged his lips along the sensitive curve of her neck, pausing halfway to breathe in her scent. Arms wrapped around her slender waist, he closed his eyes and held her to him.
  
  Perfection. Utter perfection.
  
  “I’m the tease?” She challenged, hands in his hair to drag his head back so she could look in his eyes. The red in hers was gone, replaced by a new darkness that set his blood and body aflame. He surged into movement, sitting up with her in his lap and reached for her lips again. She was his. He had to have her—
  
  The truck braked and turned, the mechanical sounds of a gate and conversation reaching them. Darce stiffened, fingers biting into her hips but once again she was too quick for him. The needle pierced his shoulder before he could push her away. Silver flooded his veins, the fresh hit stealing his ability to move. With a grunt he slid back, his eyes still on her.
  
  “I’m sorry. I have to take you in.”
  
  
  
  
  
  “You know, when Capt’n Jack said ‘supplies’ he wasn’t talking about donuts, right? He meant real food,” Nic demanded, her voice sharp and biting as she crouched beside him behind the mountain town’s single store.
  
  Joe Sanders, formerly Private First Class and now a fully paid up member of Alpha Three Lycan unit, shrugged, zipped his duffle and slung it crosswise over his body. They were both dressed sparsely in sleeveless vests and combat pants with bare feet, but neither of them noticed the chill of the receding night. Their altered bodies ran too hot for such things to be important.
  
  “He said essential supplies. Donuts and coffee are essential supplies. Let’s see what you got,” he replied quietly, nodding his head toward the matching duffle she carried and crowded a little closer to peer into the bag in the pre-dawn light.
  
  They’d been tasked to scout the local area and secure some supplies while the rest of the pack was either on patrol or out on reconnaissance. He and Nic, the smallest and fastest of the pack when on all fours, had been sent to the farthest location—a little town nestled high in the pass between the mountains. An hour’s hard run had gotten them there, the exercise welcome after their recent incarceration. Now they were crouched behind the only store in town, checking over their haul.
  
  Sanders rolled his shoulders. Nothing like a little exercise after getting out of lockdown. He hated being in a cage. Either a real cage, bars around him or the cage of his own body when his abilities were shackled with silver—the Project MO when dealing with Lycans. Unlike the Captain, or even the pack second in command, Lieutenant Foster, Sanders couldn’t force the drugs out of his system on his own. He needed the help of an alpha’s touch. Something which bothered him less than it did the female wolf at his side.
  
  Accepting help from another—anyone at all—pissed Nic off no end. Which was no different from normal. Some days Nic could fall out with her own fingertips. After what they’d been through, Sanders didn’t blame her. They were all dealing with what had been done to them in their own way.
  
  He nodded in approval at the contents of her bag. She’d snagged a shed-load of meal replacement bars and protein shakes. All lightweight, the small packets provided the best bang for the buck, or in this case, the most nutritional value per packet for their weight. And they needed it—all the wolves burned through calories like wildfire, their metabolisms wicked fast since they’d all been turned.
  
  “Cool beans. Did’ya get strawberry…I call dibs,” he declared, rooting around in the bag. Unlike some of the others, he didn’t mind the protein shakes, but he couldn’t stand the banana ones. They made him want to hurl. Strawberry though…that was an entirely different matter. He rifled through the packets, looking for any with a pink stripe.
  
  Nic chuckled. “Of course I got you strawberry. You think I’d forget something like that?”
  
  He flicked her a grin before pulling his hand out of the bag. The packets slithered over each other and something else caught the corner of his eye. Frowning, he looked back. It looked almost like…lace?
  
  “What’s this?”
  
  “Nothing. Leave it.”
  
  Nic squeaked, trying to pull the holdall away and clamp her hand over the opening but he was too quick for her. He drove through the shake packets, searching for the scrap of pink fabric he’d caught a glimpse of. His fingertips grazed something soft. With a crow of triumph he grabbed and pulled. Nic swore, shake packets spilling from the bag as Sanders held up his prize.
  
  And realized he was holding a bra. In hot pink.
  
  “Fuck.”
  
  Heat hit his cheeks and Nic snickered. He avoided her gaze and stuffed the bra back in the bag like it had burned him. He wasn’t interested in women…mostly. He’d seen Nic naked more times than he could recall and nothing, despite the fact she was a damn sexy woman. So why did the sight of female underwear have him coloring up like a kid on his first date?
  
  “Honey, if you were interested, I’d already be doing you.”
  
  He dropped his head to try and hide his blush and looked up at her through his bangs. He needed them cut, but they grew so quickly there wasn’t much point—not when there were more important things to do. “Thanks, I appreciate the vote of confidence. If only others…”
  
  He trailed off, zipping the bag up to avoid the subject, but she knew what he meant. He’d had the hots for their unit sergeant since he and Nic had been transferred in, way back when they were all human. But Leon was as straight as they came—a real ladies man who wouldn’t look twice at Sanders. No matter how much his heart and body ached to tell the bigger man how he felt.
  
  Understanding and sympathy flowed over Nic’s features in place of her usual pissed off expression and she reached out to pat his shoulder. Anger and frustration rolled through him. Why couldn’t he find Nic attractive instead of Leon? She had more screws loose in the head than he did, wouldn’t let a guy near her other than him. They could have been each other’s salvation.
  
  “I know, sweets. I know.”
  
  Letting go of him, she resettled the bag and looked around them. Dawn had started to break with a vengeance now so they couldn’t stick around. Not without getting spotted by the locals and having to answer some interesting questions about why they were wandering around in the ass-end of beyond without any shoes on.
  
  “Let’s split, shall we? Long run ahead.”
  
  He didn’t need telling twice. He motioned for her to precede him, then they slipped out of cover behind the store. They ran low and fast along what passed for the main street before they turned and ducked into cover behind a fence which ran parallel to the local diner. The trees of the surrounding forest loomed large behind the small building.
  
  Letting Nic take point, he turned and cast a glance over his shoulder. An automatic reaction from his soldiering days, to ensure that no one had followed them. The little alley was empty. At this time of day he hadn’t expected anything different. Turning again, he followed his patrol partner into the forest.
  
  Even barefoot and laden with heavy holdalls, the run back to the pack’s base camp deep in the forest covered mountains was nothing arduous for the two wolves. As soldiers, they’d been used to carrying more weight over rougher terrain and their conversion to something more than human—to Lycan—had only made them stronger and faster. Between them they could have carried a small car back to camp if it would have fit between the trees as they dodged and wove through the closely packed trunks.
  
  The sky lightened while they ran, the sun making its way higher above the horizon. It was fully raised by the time they neared the camp. Sanders once again brought up the rear. The breeze ruffled his hair, blowing it back from his face as he scanned back the way they’d come. It was a habit—a holdover from the days when he’d been human. These days sight wasn’t his strongest sense, but with the wind behind them, he knew they hadn’t been followed.
  
  A dark shadow moved in the undergrowth. Leaves parted on a whisper of sound to reveal the glint of an amber eye deep within the shadows, focused on them with an intelligence and perception not found in the animal kingdom. Movement rustled in the undergrowth, releasing a wave of damp earthiness. A set of hulking furry shoulders became visible through the leaves before the huge wolf settled again.
  
  Sanders squinted, trying to make out more detail. But while the LY infection had cured him of the need to wear glasses, it hadn’t given him the vision of a hawk. The early morning sun didn’t penetrate all the way through the thick leaf canopy overhead and the male had hidden himself well, like he’d been trained to do.
  
  Another shift. Sanders’s eyes narrowed, piecing the slight variations in shadows together. The male was tucked under a fallen log next to a large outcrop of rock, just his eyes visible…if you knew what to look for. Members of the pack were masters of camouflage. A human could walk right on by and never know that a creature from a nightmare lurked in the shadows. Watching. Waiting.
  
  From the size and coloring, it had to be Thom or maybe Blake. Only the Lieutenant and Captain were bigger, but the fur color was wrong for it to be either of them. One way to be sure. Sanders took a deep breath to catch the scent. Thom. The other male’s familiar scent filled Sanders’s sensitive nostrils. He nodded at the wolf while Nic stomped past without acknowledging the well-hidden guard. They stepped from the trees into the small clearing currently serving as the pack’s impromptu base of operations.
  
  “Please tell me you got something decent to eat,” a voice begged.
  
  Sanders swept a glance around the clearing, empty apart from the two of them and the tall man rising to his feet to greet them. They hadn’t started a campfire, but he wouldn’t expect them to. With the Project out looking for them, they couldn’t risk the smoke giving away their position. They didn’t need another couple of gunships on their case, especially without the backup of the heavy weaponry on the hummers they’d had to ditch in the foothills. Which was a bitch because Sanders had sure enjoyed that show. Even if he’d had to be careful Richards didn’t catch him looking. Acres of naked male skin and muscles and…
  
  Sanders suppressed the shiver trying to roll down his spine at the thought.
  
  Blake—Thom’s patrol partner—was across the clearing and rooting through Nic’s bag as soon as it hit the dirt.
  
  “Meal bars and protein packs. Tastes like shit but they’ll keep us going for now,” Nic commented, watching Thom with amusement.
  
  Sanders kept his own bag firmly looped across his body and looked around. “Where is everyone?”
  
  “Richards and Palmer are out on Recon, following the Blood bitch who took Foster. Apparently they split off, didn’t meet up with the rest of the Project forces.”
  
  Blake sat back on his heels, disgust in his eyes at Nic’s meager haul, and eyed Sanders holdall with a speculative look. Sanders caught the glance, and backed up a step. Then another. They all knew he had a sweet tooth and a partiality for donuts.
  
  “Oh no, these are mine. All mine.”
  
  Blake grinned, showing sharper-than-human canines. “Hand them over. Or else.”
  
  “Or else what?”
  
  Sanders cocked his eyebrow and swung the bag on its strap to rest against his back. He might have been one of the smaller wolves in the pack but that didn’t mean he was a pushover, not where the donuts were concerned. They were one of the two things he would fight to the death over. Them and his pack…his family. It muddied the waters when his family wanted to fight him for the donuts.
  
  “Oh, break it up you two.” Nic reached out to cuff Blake behind the ear. The big man sidestepped, grinning at her as he advanced on Sanders, making a “bring it on” gesture behind Nic’s back.
  
  “Where’s the captain?” she asked. “How’s Lillian doing?”
  
  At the female’s rapid-fire questions, both men paused. The last twenty-four hours had been a whirlwind of action. From their barracks-stroke-cells being stormed by armed commandos, their drugged-up incarceration in the nuthouse right through to their escape from said nuthouse, none of the pack could forget the slender, delicate human who’d helped them. Despite the fact the Project had sent a vampire and a horde of zombies. A human who’d turned out to be the most precious of gifts. A wolf-mate. The Captain’s mate, to be precise. The first one they’d found and a discovery which gave them all hope there could be someone out there for them all.
  
  Even for Sanders…
  
  Before Thom could answer, a howl ripped through the quiet air of the morning forest. The three went on alert, dropping into a crouch to listen. Eyes wide, Sanders opened the connection to his wolf, feeling the prickle under his skin as he held the change just beneath, ready to burst through it within a second.
  
  The three wolves bunched together, backs to each other in case the Project had sent another team after them and they needed to fight. Determination welled up, joining the energy rolling through Sanders’s system. It would be bloody and brutal but they could do it. The three of them could beat whatever rag-tag team of newbie wolves the Project sent after them. Since the pack had gone native, and the previous two teams had been terminated, the Project was running out of options. All they had left were the teams below Alpha three, wolves not long out of their conversion and too weak to pose a serious threat to the pack.
  
  Hopefully.
  
  The howl rang out again, closer this time. The voice was unfamiliar but it wasn’t the sound of fury and battle he’d have expected for a wolf tracking them. Instead the sound welled up with wonder and joy, as though being alive and able to make such a sound was the best thing in the world. Then the howl altered, the sound dropping from the wolf into a very human, and female, “Woohoo.” Sanders turned, a grin on this face. Nic and Thom beamed from ear to ear.
  
  “I guess that means Lillian made it through conversion.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Five
  
  What the fuck was wrong with her?
  
  As the unconscious wolf slumped on the truck floor pan in front of her, Toni drew a shaky breath. The movement reminded her of the syringe in her hand, and her fingers clamped around it as a drop of pinkish fluid fell from the sharp point. It splashed on the metal beneath her knees in what seemed like slow motion to her altered senses. With a curse she threw the syringe, and the small tube shattered, then released an acrid stench of silver that made Toni’s lip curl into a snarl. Fuck. She’d never get used to using that stuff.
  
  Jerkily, her gaze returned to the man sprawled out on the cold metal. At least this time he hadn’t had convulsions. Movements stiff, she climbed out of his lap and backed up. But she didn’t take her eyes off him, alertness humming through every cell in her body like a chain reaction. As if, despite the silver-laced sedative she’d just pumped into him, he might jump up at any moment and bite her.
  
  Or kiss her.
  
  Her hand shook when she lifted it to her lips. Lips which tingled from his kisses and her cheeks prickled from the rough caress of his whiskers. Fuck. He hadn’t just kissed her. She’d kissed him back, all but crawling into his pants to assuage the heat that rolled through her veins. A heat that only now had banked to a dull roar, her skin feeling too tight and itchy to contain the need within.
  
  Her breathing shaky, she tore her gaze from him. Just the sight of his lean, hard body was enough to send all sorts of unnatural thoughts cascading through her head. Like what would have happened if they hadn’t arrived at the base, if they’d had a little bit longer. What that thick, long cock she’d felt pressed against her belly would have felt like as it slid to fill her completely.
  
  A tiny whimper of denial escaped her lips and she pressed cool hands to her burning cheeks. Fucking hell. Was that a blush? An actual blush to go along with the first reaction she’d had to a man, any man, since her accident. Despite her mortification she couldn’t help the snort of amusement. Reaction? That was such a bland word for what had happened. Reaction didn’t cover the fact that she’d almost gone up in flames and begged him to fuck her. There and then, on the floor of the truck.
  
  “Yeah, we got separated from the rest tracking down one of the Lycans.”
  
  Wilson’s voice filtered through from outside the truck, a little muffled as he spoke to whoever it was on the gate. Toni tilted her head to try and make out the response but it was too faint behind the bulletproof glass installed in the gatehouse. Unbidden, the corner of her lip curled in derision.
  
  Fitzgerald had beefed up security on base, which was just plain dumb. The Project was so secret that only those in the higher echelons were aware of its true purpose and she had no doubt that any recording or data was set to self-destruct in true Hollywood style once viewed by the recipient. As far as anyone else was concerned, the base was just a supply depot in the middle of nowhere, guarding nothing more exciting than a bunch of toilet rolls and some canned beef. Either those toilet rolls were freaking gold-plated or the machine gun towers and patrols gave the game away.
  
  “Yeah, tell me about it…” Wilson sighed. “I’m starving. We’d have been in hours ago but we got stuck on a dirt road and ended up digging one of these fuckers out. Keep telling ’em heavy wheels like this are no good for the area but will they fucking listen?”
  
  She cocked her head to listen. A lie about the reason for their delay. Interesting. Why would he lie and cover her ass? Comradeship…with a Blood? She shook her head. Wilson was a good soldier but there she knew better than to get attached. The last human she’d gotten attached to, or even had more than a passing conversation with, she’d just burned in an orange bag on the side of the road.
  
  “Whoa, seriously? What…all of them? You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
  
  Surprise rang in Wilson’s voice. What were they talking about? Keeping an eye on the unconscious Lycan, Toni edged forward to try and catch more of the conversation. Her boot scuffed against metal as she moved. She leaned one shoulder against the bulkhead just behind the driver’s door. The body and the cab were riveted, but like most military kit, the truck had been made by the lowest bidder for the contract so there was a slight gap. She pressed her ear to it.
  
  “Yeah, the bastards stole a couple of humvees and took out most of the teams that went after them. We lost most of them and the two gunships.”
  
  She stilled, a frown creasing up her brow. No, that wasn’t possible. The Project had fielded a massive amount of firepower to deal with the Lycan threat. Way too much in her opinion but Fitz was the overkill king. There was no way eight men…
  
  No, she corrected herself as her gaze cut to the man lying in front of her. There was no way seven men could decimate the forces sent after them. Not unless they were adding some Chuck Norris and Rambo DNA into the Lycan mix these days.
  
  Wilson whistled. “Fuuuuuck me. How many made it back?”
  
  “Not many…and most of the survivors are in the infirmary. The place is rammed. So if you got any walking wounded, I’d get your section medics to deal with them until things calm down.”
  
  “Yeah, sure thing. We just got some cuts and scrapes. Nothing serious though. So…you going to let us through or you want to flirt with me some more? We’re carrying a live Lycan and I know the boss lady’ll want him in a cage before the bastard can wake up.”
  
  “What the…” The guard’s tone sharpened at the mention of a Lycan. A second later the gate buzzed, and Toni’s enhanced hearing picked up the whir of the motors as it started to lift. “Why didn’t you say something, man? I’d have let you straight through.”
  
  Wilson chuckled. “What, and deprive you of the pleasure of my charming company?”
  
  “Dickwad.”
  
  “Asswipe.”
  
  “Fucktard…now get through. Beer after shift?”
  
  “You bet your ass. It’s your round.”
  
  A clunk rolled through the metal frame as Wilson put the truck into gear and it lurched into motion. Toni leaned her head back for a second, watching out the open back of the truck as the guard waved the others through after them. But when Wilson turned left just after the gatehouse, the rest of the convoy turned right, peeling off toward the motor pool.
  
  She took a deep breath, and then another. At least she had a couple of minutes before they rolled up to the labs to get herself together. The truck leaned and wove over the damaged road surfaces around the outside edges of the camp before reaching the loading area behind the labs. Fitz’s camp upgrade had ended with the defenses and the main areas. The roads were still shit, puckered with holes, and half the barracks were falling down. The barracks didn’t bother her—they were used to house the Lycans anyway—but it would have been nice to be able to drive around the base without feeling like her spine was being jack-hammered into her skull.
  
  Not long now though.
  
  She swept a glance over her prisoner again. Darcy. What an odd name for a guy these days. She could only assume that his parents didn’t like him, had a sense of humor, or wanted to toughen him up in the schoolyard by giving him a feminine-sounding name. Possibly all three.
  
  The truck slowed and pulled to a stop. Hearing the handbrake come on, Toni moved to the back to start undoing the tailgate. Idly, she listened to the sound of Wilson’s footsteps as he headed into the lab to grab some medics and a trolley. Preferably one with bad-ass straps on it, because when Foster woke up, he was not going to be a happy bunny.
  
  The last latch gave and the tailgate swung down to smack into the bumper mounts. A metallic clang rang through the air, the blow reverberating through the vehicle. She shot a glance at Foster, just in case he’d regained consciousness. He’d seemed out of it, but she’d made that mistake too many times already today. He lay still, sprawled across cold metal like a rag-doll. Only the rise and fall of his chest and the warm, vital, wild scent filling the small cabin assured her he was still alive.
  
  Corpses smelled different to her, even ones where the heart had just stopped beating. It wasn’t just a smell, it was a feeling—as though the dead part within her could recognize its own kind. Guilt clawed at her chest, trying to get a purchase. It would be easier for him if he was dead. At least he’d be beyond whatever Fitzgerald and the Project could do to him. Beyond forcing him to betray the men in his squad, because she had no doubt that he would talk. They would make him talk, make him spill every last secret he had just so the pain would stop.
  
  Bile rose but she fought it down and ignored the guilt. Guilt was for humans and she wasn’t human. It was survival of the fittest, dog eat dog. That’s what evolution was all about, wasn’t it? Only the strongest survived to pass on their genes, until the whole race was propagated by those individuals fittest or ruthless enough to make it. The fact that she couldn’t have children didn’t enter into it. Another pang twisted her heart, but again she ignored it. She wasn’t human, so why should she subscribe to the human model of reproduction? Perhaps her children wouldn’t be cute and wear diapers.
  
  Gritting her teeth, Toni clamped down on that train of thought, crawling over to the Lycan to start bundling him toward the back of the truck. A door slammed nearby and the sound of wheels rattling over asphalt reached her ears.
  
  “I’m telling you, man. Janie from the office swears that’s what it was.”
  
  “Yeah, yeah. And last week she swore she saw Elvis in Wal-Mart.”
  
  “She did. It was a freaking impersonator, a good one. I told you that, remember? For fuck’s sake Charlie, it would help if you’d actually listen when I’m talking to you.”
  
  Toni tilted her head as the voices, and the trolley, approached. It had a damaged wheel, a click-click-click that would drive her mad until it was either fixed or she ripped it off. Scent reached her next. Both were male, easy enough to work out from the voices, but confirmed by the smells that reached her delicate nostrils.
  
  The first had showered recently and wore a clean shirt. The dual scents of a woodsy, citrus shower gel and laundry powder assaulted her senses, almost hiding the sharper scent of an anti-dandruff shampoo. He’d showered and changed his clothes recently—perhaps just on duty and getting into his day. Tough shit. His first job of the day was to lump around a sweaty, blood-covered Lycan. She doubted the laundry-shower freshness was going to win out against that.
  
  She turned her attention to the second speaker, dragging in a deep breath and rolling it over her tongue. The second guy had been on duty for a while, no doubt on an overlapping or double shift to the first. The aroma of lunch and numerous cigarette breaks clung to him like a shroud and under it, not one but two perfumes. One was expensive and luxurious, but already fading. From kissing his wife this morning perhaps? The second was newer, and a cheaper brand. The sort of perfume a younger woman would pick up at a superstore. His mistress? Perhaps the Janie they’d mentioned earlier?
  
  Her lip curled back in disgust. She’d never understood why people felt the need to cheat on their partners. If they didn’t want to be in the relationship in the first place, why be there? Why not leave and be with someone who made them happy? Someone they didn’t feel the need to cheat on? Perhaps it was the excitement, the danger element? Anger rolled lazily through her. Any guy who cheated on her had better like the danger element, because she’d rip his freaking heart out and make him eat it.
  
  “Yeah, well.” The second speaker huffed. “I would if you didn’t talk utter shit most of the time. She says this friend of hers saw a Hybrid? Ha! Read my lips. There’s no such thing. They don’t fucking exist. You’ve seen the data, James. We’ve never seen even a hint of a viable cross infection, you know that.”
  
  They’d reached the back of the truck now, shoving the trolley into place with another clang of metal. She cast it a cursory look. Plastic sheet over the hard mattress, heavy duty steel with reinforced restraints. Once they got the Lycan onto it, he wasn’t getting loose any time soon. Neither had noticed her where she was half crouched in the darkness at the back of the truck, so she cleared her throat. Both men jumped, their faces draining of color when they recognized her, fear in their eyes before they tried to hide it. She knew the words from the manual, had read them herself way back when. Never show fear. Animals who sense fear attack.
  
  She didn’t attack. Instead she smiled. It didn’t appear to ease their discomfort. Pity.
  
  “I’d listen to…” She tilted her head to read the second man’s name-badge. “Doctor Blevins, if I were you, James. Hybrids don’t exist. I should know. I’ve been here long enough…”
  
  She slid her hands under Foster’s side and started to half-roll, half-slide him toward the back of the truck. Sure, she could have lifted him bodily and dumped him on the trolley without much trouble, but it was never good to give away too much of what she could do to the scientists. Better that they thought she was weaker than she was, just in case. Never knew when she might need that element of surprise.
  
  “They’re just an urban myth…” She grunted with effort as she pushed Foster to the edge. Lanky-ass piece of shit. He might have looked lean but he was packed with muscle and damned heavy. “A cautionary tale.”
  
  James laughed, the sound nervous, and looked from her to Blevins and back again.
  
  “Cautionary tale about what?”
  
  She moved without warning, leaping over the prone form of the werewolf and the trolley to land the other side. The swift move took both men by surprise, Blevins a shade quicker to react than his colleague. He backed up as she got right into James’s face, her extended claws tickling over the young man’s Adam’s apple. For a moment dark temptation filled her. Just one little scratch, a tiny nick, and the virus would enter his system. Turn him.
  
  No, not turn him. Any cut would kill him, thanks to the shit they made the techs and admin staff take on a daily basis.
  
  “That.” She smiled again, keeping the expression small and tight. Then she retracted her claws and stepped back. Her manner was not pleasant. Not happy. Just…there.
  
  “Don’t turn your back, James. Never get complacent,” she warned in a low voice. “Don’t ever forget that we’re not human. Not anymore.”
  
  He blanched, mouth opening and closing like a goldfish. He backpedalled frantically, almost falling over his own feet. Both men eyed her like she was the second coming of Genghis Khan and scuttled around her to secure the Lycan. Toni stepped to the side, watching them load him onto the trolley and tighten the straps.
  
  “That was cruel,” Wilson said beside her. “Funny as fuck, but cruel.”
  
  She shrugged. “They’ve got to learn. Better they learn from me than a rabid wolf who really will rip their heads off and shit down their necks.”
  
  She turned her head, and shot a glance at the shorter soldier as Blevins and his pale colleague pushed the unconscious Foster toward the labs. She steeled herself not to look, even though she wanted to. She’d done her part. What happened to him now was none of her business.
  
  “You get that back to the motor pool,” she ordered, straightening her uniform and grimacing. Grubby and bloodstained. Perfect. She’d piss the boss off just by being there. He hated anyone not in perfect uniform. “Then hit the racks, and I’ll go and deal with Fitzgerald.”
  
  
  
  
  
  A de-brief was in full swing by the time Toni slipped through the door and took a seat at the back. The room was the same as many the world over—drab walls and ceiling, populated by rows of plastic chairs and battered tables. Floor and baseboards were wipeable, but bore the scars and scuff marks of many sets of boots. If rooms could talk, she had no doubt that this one would tell many tales.
  
  Today, though, it was just half full. Men sat scattered among the tables, new faces mixed in with the ones she was expecting. She knew most of the squad commanders on base but some were missing, replaced by corporals who looked ill at ease to be shoved into the limelight of Fitzgerald’s ire. She didn’t blame them. If she had a choice she wouldn’t be here either.
  
  She slid a glance around the room. They were all injured—either that or field dressings over combats had just become the new fashion and no one had seen fit to tell her. The scent of blood and death hung in the room so thick she wanted to roll in it like a cat in catnip.
  
  “You mean to tell me that one squad did all this? Took you all out?”
  
  The demand came from the front of the room. The Colonel sat slouched in his chair like some kind of sulky teenager as he click-click-clicked his pen against the table. The flush on his skin a good indicator of his mood. From the color, red deepening into purple, an explosion of epic proportions wasn’t far off. God, she hoped so—one less asshole in the world to deal with—but not until he’d given her the cure he’d promised.
  
  “W-well, not all of us,” a soldier near the front of the room stammered, holding a field book and trying to flip the pages with his left hand in an awkward motion.
  
  His right arm was bandaged up close to his body, the white dressing already starting to darken with blood. Toni’s mood took a nose dive. Half these men should be in the infirmary, not forced in here to perform like monkeys for a jumped-up fucktard like Fitzgerald.
  
  “We’ve recovered all personal weaponry, and the two stolen vehicles. Both are in the motor pool for repair now. The g…” The man paused for a second, his dry swallow like the rasp of sandpaper in the silent room, before he forged on at breakneck speed. It was as if he were trying to get the words out before he was interrupted or his nerve failed him. “The gunships are a total loss and we lost seventy percent of the personnel we sent out. Of the remainder, we have twenty men in critical condition. Infirmary isn’t sure that they’ll survive the night and most of the rest are walking wounded.”
  
  All eyes turned to Fitzgerald. He nodded, his expression thoughtful as the speed of the pen slowed. Toni held her breath. Those were some huge losses and casualties. Perhaps this would be the catalyst to kick Fitz’s humanity into gear. Surely no man could be that hardhearted? Could be unmoved when told so many of his men had lost their lives?
  
  “So, I send the cream of our forces out…for what? So you can get your asses kicked by a bunch of fucking animals?
  
  Hope died a swift death.
  
  The Colonel surged to his feet, thickset body straining the buttons on his pressed and clean uniform. No blood and sweat for him. She doubted he’d even had so much as a fucking paper cut, sitting in his pretty office or armored car while good men and women went to their deaths.
  
  “Got your fucking asses kicked good and proper. Loss of equipment… Do you idiots have any idea how much it costs to train you? Feed you? And for fucking what? So you can make a goddamn fool of me when you get out in the field?” he ranted, his voice rising and skin flushing deeper with each sentence. “I sent you out to put eight dogs down, now you tell me that fucking Fido and his pals handed it to you?”
  
  He shook his head, pausing his tirade to run his hands through his short hair. The room still, the soldiers caught like rabbits in a headlight. No one dared move, or breathe, in case they brought down the Colonel’s ire on themselves. Toni didn’t blame them. Half looked dead on their feet, the other half bled into heavy dressings. This wasn’t fair on them in any way, shape or form.
  
  Fitzgerald dropped his hands. “At least tell me some of the bodies can be used for the RA program.”
  
  The sergeant who’d given the loss report flinched, looking away and refusing to meet the Colonel’s eyes. “No sir. The techs say they’re all too damaged.”
  
  “Oh for fuck’s sake!” Fitzgerald lost it, slamming his hand into the nearest table, his yell reverberating off the walls. “That at least would have recovered some of the losses of this clusterfuck. Who do you think is going to pay for those fucking gunships? Yeah, that’s right…my fucking budget. Next year you’ll be guards the mutts with pointy sticks. How’d you like that, huh?”
  
  He stalked between the tables, bellowing into the faces of the soldiers still sitting down and she realized that she’d never hated anyone so much. Finally he reached her. Perhaps some instinct of self preservation warned him that the likely reaction to yelling in her face was decapitation, because he stopped, straightened and looked at her with a sneer.
  
  “I suppose you’re just as useless as the rest of this lot. Should have known never to send a woman to do a man’s job. I knew should have sent McCoy…this never would have happened then.”
  
  She lifted an eyebrow, no longer caring it counted as minor insubordination. At least his attention was on her now, giving the rest of the room a reprieve.
  
  “No sir, perhaps not. But I also doubt that you’d have one of Alpha Three locked down nice and tight in the LY labs.”
  
  “What?” Surprise flashed across his features, and then he smiled. Just for a second. Pity he was such a dickhead. Without the stick up his ass and the “the world owes me” attitude, he might not be that bad looking. After a couple of drinks of course. Then he ruined the moment, casting a glance to the room over his shoulder. “The rest of you, dismissed. That means fuck off. Now.”
  
  He turned back to her and leaned forward, resting his steepled fingertips on the table. “You brought one in? Who? Harper?”
  
  She shook her head. “Nope, couldn’t get him. He was too deep in with the rest.”
  
  There it was—the warning pout as Fitzgerald’s expression darkened. Crap, the room wasn’t clear yet. She had to get his attention back before he started to beat on a man who should be lying in bed recovering, not walking around playing soldier to appease this jerk-off. Opening her mouth, she forced the words out past her guilt, as though naming the man she’d brought in was somehow worse than locking him down with silver and delivering him here.
  
  “We got his second instead. Foster.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Six
  
  Armed with the news Foster was in custody, Colonel Fitzgerald hustled off toward the Lycan labs in a happy mood. With a sense of unease, Toni watched him go. Even if she’d wanted to follow him, she couldn’t. Not into the Lycan labs. They wouldn’t let her because of the risk of cross-infection. A minute danger, but possible all the same. Perhaps more. Although she’d told the two med-techs earlier Hybrids were an urban myth, she wasn’t entirely convinced herself.
  
  There had been a rumor, way back when, about a Hybrid. An accident in the labs with the serums or something, a drop of the wrong virus in a vial, or someone making a mistake and reusing a needle. The stories were all different. The end result was the same. One of the subjects had gotten a mixed dose of the Blood and Lycan viruses and it had created a Hybrid—a creature so powerful the Project had freaked out.
  
  According to some stories, the Hybrid had killed the entire medical staff on duty before tearing through the camp, only to be put down by the machine gun towers. And in others it had been cornered by four humvees and taken out with heavy weaponry. In all of the stories, the body count was high and the Hybrid had taken massive damage before being killed.
  
  Shaking her head at her own foolishness for considering the story, she put the thought to the back of her mind and walked down the corridor in the opposite direction of the Lycan labs. She grimaced, rubbing a hand over her stomach and trying to smooth away the uneasiness. There was nothing she could do to help Foster, and with the amount of sedative she’d shoved into his system, he’d be out for at least another couple of hours. That’s if he were sensible and didn’t try and sweat the stuff out. If he were sensible, he’d play dead. There was no point torturing a man who couldn’t answer questions. Even Fitz wasn’t that sadistic.
  
  Her long strides ate up the distance through the maze of corridors in the base’s main building as she made her way to the RA labs. Like with the Lycan labs, strictly speaking she shouldn’t have been anywhere near them. Useless rules and regulations regarding cross-infection. She shuddered at the thought, glad there was no chance of RA cross-infection on any Blood or Lycan. The virus already in their bodies shielded them from its effects.
  
  She turned the last corner and the main double doors to the lab came into view. A swing shutter affair, the opaque plastic material obscured what was going on within, but she could just make out technicians moving around inside. For a top secret lab, the security was a joke. No guard on the door, no keypad or card swipe locking system, but the virus itself was the security system. One splash transferring it and it was all she wrote. No second chances. No one with an ounce of sense in their heads would break in and try to steal the damn stuff.
  
  Her steps faltered as she shot a glance up to the corners of the ceiling. Cameras covered the door from both directions, the monitors in the main security office. If she was unlucky, someone would be watching them but she doubted it. There were more important things to watch than a lab no one would dare steal anything from.
  
  Judging the distance and overlapping arcs of view of the two cameras, she took a few more steps then ducked out of sight. The slight recess in the wall housing a fire extinguisher and a fire axe provided enough of a gap for her to tuck herself into. Then she froze—stilled all movement until anyone looking at her would think she was nothing more than a lifelike mannequin.
  
  Not a moment too soon. The double doors swung open to disgorge three med-techs into the corridor. She didn’t move a muscle—didn’t even blink, just in case. They walked down the corridor, chattering away about some reality show. One looked her way and time slowed, adrenaline and something else—a strange high pitched buzzing—poured through her veins, energizing every part of her body. Tension coiled in her legs, her body preparing to leap. Her fingertips throbbed, the retractable claws hidden beneath her fingernails aching to punch free. She could have them in his throat in half a second…
  
  He didn’t bat an eyelid, his gaze sliding over her. Like she wasn’t there. Turning back to his companions, he chuckled at a joke and they carried on down the corridor before turning the corner. Then they were out of sight and Toni slumped against the wall, leaning her forehead against the ancient plasterboard to drag a deep breath into her lungs. She had been sure the last guy had seen her. He’d looked directly at her, for fuck’s sake. Most times she could fool a passing glance, but direct attention or electronics like the cameras were beyond her. Or so she’d thought, but the tech had looked right through her and carried on. Then there was the weird buzzy feeling, like she’d injected boiling champagne right into her veins. Even now she felt antsy, as though she couldn’t keep still. Apart from the fact she hadn’t moved a muscle since she’d slid into the gap between the wall and the extinguisher.
  
  What the fuck was going on?
  
  She didn’t get time to think on it. Seconds after the techs rounded the corner, the doors were pushed open again from inside the lab. Without moving, she opened her eyes, using her peripheral vision to watch the figure that emerged.
  
  There was nothing remarkable about the lead scientist on base, Doctor Bruce Jacobs. Of average height and build, he wore a white doctor’s coat over a white shirt, cream sweater and pale slacks. With gray hair and beard, pale skin and washed out blue eyes, the only other splashes of color about his person were the red of his tie and the polished chestnut of his shoes. He had a distracted air about him, like his mind was always somewhere else, mulling on a problem outside the comprehension of normal mortals. A weight, a gravity that made his staff treat him with respect and deference.
  
  But Toni didn’t give a shit about deference. And respect? It was this man and those like him who had developed the three viruses. If it were up to her, they’d have been locked up months ago for crimes against humanity.
  
  Sliding out of her hiding place, she blocked his path. Her sudden movement from unnoticeable statue to living, breathing being didn’t get a reaction because he didn’t look up, his attention focused on the notes in his hand as he muttered to himself.
  
  “Uptake is slow… It has to be linked to the cellular regen—”
  
  “Doctor Jacobs, do you have a moment?”
  
  “Huh?” The doctor’s head snapped up and he blinked at her. The round glasses he wore gave him the look of a confused owl. “Oh, yes…Subj…err, Major Fielding, isn’t it? What can I do for you?”
  
  Anger welled at the fact he had to stop himself calling her a subject, or using her case number, but she ignored it. She needed information from the guy, so pissing him off or threatening to rip his throat out wasn’t going to help her cause.
  
  “It is.” Plastering a smile she didn’t feel on her face, she nodded. “I wanted to talk to you about the RAs we’ve been using on the cleanup operations.”
  
  The doctor’s attention, which had been wandering back to his notes, transferred completely, the pale eyes behind the glasses fixed on her. She suppressed a shudder. Now she knew what a bug under a microscope felt like. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation at all.
  
  “What about them?”
  
  “Well…” She paused for a moment and considered how to phrase her request. “Have you ever noticed anything strange about the latest batches? Say…intelligence?”
  
  “Hmm…” Jacobs pressed his lips together, his long white beard wiggling as he did. She wondered if he had to wear a hair and beard net in the sterile areas. “You mean traces of, or full-on intelligence? Sometimes we have one or two with vestigial traces of intelligence but it seems to be more of a knee-jerk reaction. Once advanced decay sets in, those traces disappear. We think it might have something to do with medication the subjects took in the months beforehand. We’ve never noticed any traces in known drug-users for example, yet those on certain brands of SSRIs…” He paused at her blank look and elaborated. “They’re a type of anti-depressant.”
  
  “Ah, okay. Thank you,” she said but he had started talking again, enthusiasm written into every line of his expression.
  
  “So those on SSRIs seem to display the most vestigial intelligence, which is perhaps something to do with the action of the medication within the brain. We definitely need further study on the subject…” He stopped and blinked. “I’m sorry. Did that answer your question, Major?”
  
  She frowned and shook her head. “Yes and no. Have you ever had a subject display real intelligence and show evidence of retention of memory?”
  
  Another blink, but she didn’t miss the sudden flash of interest. The notes hung ignored in his hand.
  
  “Memory? Why?” His voice was sharp. “Have you seen any with intelligence? Out in the field? Oh my lord, naturally occurring self-awareness. We’d theorized it was possible…we need tox tests, dissection of the brain to isolate any structural abnormalities. For this to happen with the standard—” He stopped, visibly reining in his excitement. “Did you bring the body back?”
  
  “The standard what?” Toni’s eyes narrowed. “No, we didn’t bring it back. You know the operating procedures, Doctor. All RAs are terminated on site.”
  
  Jacobs tutted, annoyance and frustration washing over his face. “Yes, yes…I know. But when one of them exhibits unusual behavior, you should bring them back to me for further study. You shouldn’t destroy important scientific evidence. I can’t stress the importance of that enough.”
  
  She shrugged. “Tell it to the Colonel, Doctor. You want ’em back, I’ll bring ’em back.”
  
  “Hmmm, okay. That’ll have to do, I suppose. Do you know which subject it was? Perhaps I can pull the medical records from the pris—”
  
  “It was Garry Stephens.”
  
  The name dropped into the sudden silence between them like a brick down a well.
  
  “Oh…” Jacobs blinked again, his dry eyelids sweeping over his eyes with an audible “snick” and looked away. A slight flush hit his cheeks—a pale pink which seemed, like the rest of him, to be a washed out version compared to his bright red tie. “Yes, I heard about that. A most…regrettable incident.”
  
  Toni’s temper snapped.
  
  “Regrettable. Is that it? That’s all you have to say after one of your staff was deliberately infected? You’re a freaking scientist, Doctor. You know what the virus does. And it was no secret Garry was terrified of RA infection.” She took a step forward, managing to loom over the older man despite the differences in their height. “Can you imagine what he went through, waking up to find he’d become his worst nightmare?”
  
  “I—I…” He refused to meet her gaze, the flush on his cheeks deepening. “I should be getting back. Test results, you understand.”
  
  “Of course, Doctor.” Toni stepped back. She wasn’t going to get anymore out of him. “Thank you for your time. I’ll let you get back to your work.”
  
  “Thank you. Good day, Major.”
  
  The doctor bobbed his head, still not looking at her, and made good his escape. Toni watched him go, concentrating on keeping her face impassive to conceal the emotions and thoughts rolling through her mind. She was in full view of the cameras. Sure, it was visual only but she didn’t want to give any impression other than the cool, professional soldier. Anything else and Fritz would find a way to use the smallest hint of unprofessionalism against her.
  
  The doctor’s well-worn but expensive shoes were almost soundless on the freshly mopped floor. She didn’t think he was a bad guy. He’d been embarrassed when she’d called him out over Garry, but what counted as evil? Was she evil? She fit the description of Vampire—traditionally evil creatures—but she was just a product of the experiments Jacobs and people like him had conducted. So had they allowed evil to occur by dint of their science, then turned a blind eye to how the end result was used?
  
  All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
  
  Someone had said that, hadn’t they? Probably some stuffed shirt, sitting in a book-lined study filled with tomes on highbrow things a grunt like her had no business even trying to comprehend. But that singular point she got. If no one stood up against evil, it would flourish.
  
  Flourish and grow until there was no stopping it. Like a cancer.
  
  Her eyes narrowed when the Doctor shot a glance over his shoulder, caught her looking at him and sped up to round the corner, deeper in the bowels of the labs. She replayed the conversation in her mind, analyzing it. He’d seemed way too interested in intelligence occurring with the RA serum—no, wait. He’d started to say something…
  
  For this to happen on the standard—
  
  Standard what? Standard serum? If there was a standard serum, did it mean there were others? The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Fuck. What other horrors had the Project hidden?
  
  Her instincts screamed at her. She had to get out of the labs. Forget what she’d heard and what she’d thought she’d heard, and not ask any more questions in case someone cottoned onto her. If anyone figured out what she was thinking, she’d end up with a one-way trip out into the desert and some extra ventilation in the back of her skull.
  
  She turned and walked away, breathing a sigh of relief when she reached the door. The air was dry and arid but still better than the antiseptic stench of the labs. Anything was better than the air in the labs, loaded with the scents of experimentation and, buried beneath it, terror and despair.
  
  She shuddered as her long strides took her down the paths between the labs more by memory than conscious direction. The path led to the Blood barracks and she trudged her weary way, feeling the call of her bed. She didn’t sleep often, no, but every creature—even one near dead like her—needed to rest sometimes.
  
  Emerging from the back of the labs, she crossed the clear area between the main buildings and the residential ones. Everyone called it the “green” but out there it was anything but—the grass having long ago given up the ghost under the glare of the sun. Sticking her hands in her pockets, she flicked a glance at the series of broken down barracks on the left, each surrounded by miles of razor wire and steel fencing.
  
  The Lycan barracks. Little more than shells of buildings for the creatures they contained. Which one had her wolf been kept in? She shuddered to think of Foster living in squalor. The other Lycans she’d had dealings with seemed more animal than man, so the conditions they endured had never bothered her. But Foster was different. More like a man.
  
  Yeah, he was all man, a small voice sniggered at the back of her mind.
  
  Vicious snarls erupted from the two end barracks. Furred bodies slammed against the barriers, rattling the wire and metal as the packs tried to get at each other. The shouts of the human guards filled the air. Soldiers ran, firing tasers and rubber bullets into the pens. Yelps and cries of pain, both animal and human, filled the air as the spat was suppressed with more violence.
  
  Disgust rose sharp in Toni’s throat but she kept walking. Once she’d been one of those soldiers and would have thought nothing of doing whatever she needed to keep the animals under control. Would have, even a couple of days ago…
  
  The pitiful sounds receded behind her as she approached the Blood barracks. These were in better condition. In fact, apart from the locks on the doors and the barred windows, they were identical to the barracks the human staff was housed in.
  
  Letting out a sigh of relief, she stepped through the door and out of the glare of the sun. Although weak, the light was still over-bright for her sensitive eyes. The blessed darkness and coolness from the corridor’s air-con washed over her, making her aware of just how hot and grubby she felt. Perhaps she could collapse in a puddle on the floor and absorb the cold of the tile like some sort of reverse lizard, shedding heat instead of basking on a rock.
  
  “Well, well, well…if it isn’t the Ice Queen herself.”
  
  Her head snapped up at the mocking voice, every fiber of her being on alert as her vision altered in the dim light. A familiar male figure detached itself from the shadows up ahead. Toni fought back the urge to curl her lip and snarl.
  
  Captain Brent McCoy. Tall, blond and all American—he was too pale for the jock he obviously had been. Now he was a Blood, like her but from a newer batch. A different version of the serum. There was a darkness in McCoy which attracted and repulsed her at the same time. The repulsion was aided by the fact the guy was an absolute grade-A dick.
  
  He sauntered forward, careful to stay out of range. His eyes glittered in the darkness and swept over her figure with far more interest than was healthy for his continued well-being.
  
  “Heard you brought in a mutt. Mind you, you are a bitch so it probably thought you were its mother.”
  
  “Right into the name calling today, McCoy? Normally you can manage at least one civil exchange. Now, if you’ll excuse me, we’ll have to finish this conversation when I have far less time.”
  
  Brent’s lip curled back, a snarl rattling in the back of his throat. Forget the Lycans outside—this idiot was far more of an animal. She’d seen the state of those he’d been sent to deal with. Even for a Blood, it didn’t make for easy sleeping.
  
  “You think you’re so smart, don’t you? Fucking bitch rug-muncher.”
  
  Hate ringing in his voice, he took a step closer. Squared up to her with murder and bloodlust in his eyes. Toni sighed. And there was the root of Brent’s problem with her. He was cut from the same cloth as Fitzgerald. She was a woman and a superior officer, which was enough to generate deep contempt, but his hatred ran deeper.
  
  She knew why. They’d been assigned to the base within weeks of each other, way back when. From the moment they’d met, he’d made no secret of his interest. She’d turned him down, politely, but he couldn’t leave it. Unable to accept a woman was immune to his charm, he’d started a campaign against her. Her kit damaged, things stolen, then the rumors. Anything from gang-bangs in her room to the latest…that she was a lesbian.
  
  “Rug muncher?” She chuckled, using words to cover the slight movement when she shifted her weight. The threat of violence hung in the air between them, the tension so thick a mere spark would be enough to set it off. Darkness uncurled from the black space that was her soul.
  
  “No, I like cock too much. Wait…” She blinked. “That could have been why I turned you down. Gee, fancy that.”
  
  She’d pushed too far. Brent’s expression twisted, the hate no longer confined to his eyes. His roar of rage bounced back from the whitewashed walls and he charged. She was ready for him, the blackness within her flowing free with joy as she met him halfway.
  
  The fight was fast and brutal. Blow after blow traded and blocked quicker than the human eye could see. Even for a Blood, Brent was damn quick. Toni grinned as she foiled an uppercut and let fly with a right hook. Her fist slammed into his jaw, blood splattering over the wall, but she didn’t give him any respite. She twisted to slam her elbow into his abused jaw, a grunt escaping her lips.
  
  Her stomach muscles tightened as she reversed the movement, driving the back of the elbow into the other side of his jaw and hammering her fist home in the same spot. Brent’s head snapped one way, then the other under the force of her blows, impacts that would have driven a human to his knees and ended the fight.
  
  But Brent wasn’t human.
  
  He shook his head, recovering faster than Toni anticipated. A curse escaped her lips and was cut off halfway when he lashed out, booted foot slamming into her solar plexus to drive her back. She crashed into the hard surface behind her, all the breath forced from her lungs. The steel-reinforced wall groaned at the blow, plaster dusting her head and shoulders. Pain flared through her body. Fuck, the bastard had a kick on him.
  
  She had less than a second to recover. Brent charged her and she read her death in his black eyes. Behind him the flicker of movement, doors opening, told her they were watched. She had to win this. No two ways about it. This wasn’t about Brent being pissed she’d turned him down. It wasn’t about jealousy or anger, or anything remotely human anymore.
  
  No, this was about the side of them that came from a test-tube. It was all about the inhumanity that infected their cells along with the virus…the sick lust that reacted to violence, pain and death. It was about proving once and for all which one of them was better, faster, stronger.
  
  She sidestepped and Brent’s fist slammed into the wall where her head had been a moment before. Plaster broke, falling away to reveal raw brickwork. He started to pull back, already tracking her movements but she was too fast. Her fingers stole around his wrist, thick and corded with muscle. Her talons punched through the skin, seeking the gaps between the wrist bones, and he screamed. The heady scent of blood bloomed on the air. Tantalizing. Distracting. She ignored it in favor of spinning him around, then slammed his face into the opposite wall.
  
  He kicked back. Pain flared in her knee, sending red-hot pokers up her leg. Losing her grip, she stumbled back. Protected her face and soft abdomen from his claws as he backed her up along the corridor. Fuck. How had he come back so fast?
  
  She couldn’t afford to be weak. Weakness meant death. She had to win this. No hope of any help. The doors were open but none of the other Bloods would step up to her aid. If they did, they risked Brent and his bully boys coming after them in the night. Nor would the guards outside bother. Even if they did hear the commotion, they wouldn’t come in here. It was all very well breaking up a Lycan fight when the combatants were safely behind razor wire made of steel and silver, and quite another to walk into a nest of vipers.
  
  Her wolf would. The thought snuck in as Brent grabbed her wrist in a copycat of her move. His claws scored her skin and fire wrapped around her arm. He roared, other hand hard on the back of her neck as he propelled her into the wall.
  
  She got her feet under her, ran up the wall and over his arm to drop behind him. Her hands moved in a blur of speed. She punched his back, open fisted and with claws extended. With each blow the sharp talons sliced deeply into the flesh either side of his spine. He howled and jerked as she sliced and diced his internal organs, black blood flowing down his back and legs.
  
  Finally he fell forward, slumping against the wall to slide down it into a small heap. Toni looked at his body. He wasn’t dead. Not yet. She could still feel the darkness coiled within him as his body sought to repair the damage she’d done.
  
  A snarl curled her lips. Pinning him with a knee in the middle of his back, she grabbed his hair and yanked his head up. His face was splattered with blood, his eyes wide and panicked as he looked up at her.
  
  “Remember this.” Her claws tickled his throat, her voice little more than a low hiss. “Whenever you think you’ve got the balls to take me on again, remember this. Next time I won’t let you off so easy. I’ll tear your fucking throat out and feed your body to the goddamn crows.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Seven
  
  The base lay below them, a festering ulcer on the grubby sands of the desert. Sanders narrowed his eyes, squinting to get a better view across the distance. They couldn’t get any closer. Miles of sandy scrubland separated the base from the nearest foothills where he and Nic lurked. The two wolves watching. Waiting. The advance guard for the rest of the pack.
  
  “Where do you think they’ve got him?”
  
  There was no need to whisper but Nic kept her voice low all the same. Both wolves had reverted to human form so they could talk, squatting naked in the dirt for the moment. It was coming up to full moon, so control of the change was easier for them both. Near enough that they could shift and talk rather than play a game of charades to work out more complex ideas than “run this way” or “danger”. Their wolf instincts were good—better than good—and allowed them to operate seamlessly as a pack, but sometimes you needed human vocal chords to get over the finer points in conversation.
  
  “Not a clue.”
  
  Sanders shrugged and leaned on the rock in front of him. It was still warm from the sun, the heat leeching through his skin. It would drop cold soon, and the more heat he could get, the better.
  
  “Not in the barracks, that’s for sure. They pretty much trashed them when they took us in.”
  
  Nic nodded, a rumble in the back of her throat. Armed commandos and explosives—never a good combination in an enclosed space, then a trip to the land of the hug-me jackets with daily silver nitrate injections, just for kicks and giggles.
  
  “I’d say one of the labs.” Sanders shuddered. “Dissection maybe. No way that Blood didn’t figure out he could part shift. They’ll want to know how he’s managing it.”
  
  “Fuck…”
  
  Nic moved closer and Sanders lifted his arm, offering her the comfort of an embrace. The pack was very tactile, but he was the only one Nic trusted implicitly. He didn’t question. Like him, Nic had her secrets.
  
  She burrowed closer against his side, tucking herself in between him and the rock, trying to grab some of the fleeing warmth. They’d have to revert to fur soon. Chills crept over Sanders’s skin as the last rays of sunlight on the horizon disappeared. Twilight crept over the landscape to steal all the color and cast a blanket of cold.
  
  “Do you think he was right? That the Blood is his mate?” Nic’s voice was soft, the anger she usually carried around with her gone, and the question little more than a wistful note on the air. A wistful note he could identify with, the same hopes resonating in his soul. That somewhere out there was his own soul mate. A male made just for him, who would accept him for who he was without prejudice. He snorted to himself. He hadn’t found that when he was human, so why did he think he was going to find it now fate had screwed him over?
  
  “We have to hope so. At least then he has someone on his side in there. Kinda…at least until we get there.” Surely the mate-bond would be enough to override the hate between Bloods and Lycans? Love conquered all, right? They had to hope so, or the LT was in there on his own. Otherwise known as up shit creek without a paddle. Sanders had been there. It wasn’t fun.
  
  “I… I’d like a mate.”
  
  He blinked and turned his head to look at Nic. She was rested with her back against the rock, head next to his shoulder and her eyes closed.
  
  “You would? I thought you were Miss I don’t need a man?”
  
  She wrinkled her nose, her eyes still shut so he couldn’t see their expression. But her voice rang with emotion. “Don’t you know anything about women? When we say I’m fine, it doesn’t mean that at all.”
  
  Sanders lifted his eyebrow. “And you wonder why I prefer men?”
  
  She chuckled. “Fuck no. What’s not to like about men?”
  
  He hugged her closer, resting his head against hers for a second. Her easy acceptance of him was a balm to his soul, a plaster over the wound that the man he wanted would never return his affections. She leaned into him, and the pair drew strength from each other for a moment.
  
  “I don’t need one, but I’d like one,” Nic admitted. “A mate that is. Someone to share things with. Someone to be there, no matter what. Did you see the way Jack and Lilly looked at each other? Like there was nothing else in the world but each other.” She sighed wistfully. “I want that. Thought I’d found it as well. But…”
  
  Sanders lifted his head. This was news.
  
  “Thought you’d found what? Your mate? Who?”
  
  She opened her eyes, looked at him directly and let him see the pain and loneliness in her soul under all the anger.
  
  “Jack.”
  
  The single word was a whisper in the air and Sanders’s heart shattered for her. To be in love with someone and not have them notice you even existed was bad enough. To watch them find their mate would be soul destroying.
  
  “Oh sweetheart, I’m sorry.” He turned and dragged her closer, holding her in his arms as her tears started to fall. “It’ll be okay, I promise.”
  
  Trouble was he had no clue how to fulfill that promise.
  
  
  
  
  
  An hour after the fight with Brent, Toni lay on her bed with her forearm over her eyes to block out any residual light, and tried to sleep. After the change, sunlight was too bright and even a little scrap of light, like the power light from an electrical device, was enough to light the room up like midday.
  
  Ugh. Blood claw marks hurt like a bitch. Thin lines of fire where Brent had sliced her—even though the wounds were already closed and healing—carved patterns of pain over her skin. Another score for being a vamp chick. Quick and complete healing, and no matter what kind of crap she got in the wounds, her body would just expel it. She’d cleaned the deep slices in the shower just in case, sloughing the blood off with the sand and sweat. Call it force of habit. Besides, she didn’t know where Brent had been. She might catch something worse than assholishness.
  
  She turned over. Stifled the groan. Every part of her body felt like she’d been worked over with a baseball bat. It wasn’t just the fight with Brent—she should have been able to suck that up and come back kicking—but a bone deep tiredness that dragged at every cell in her body. A new tiredness. Great, the wolves got snazzy new abilities—she got fucking exhaustion and medical technicians ignoring her. Sighing, she turned to face the wall again but sleep danced just out of reach. Evading her. Taunting her.
  
  Fucker.
  
  Sounds in the corridor got her attention. Soft shuffles and the slide of a body being moved. She’d wondered how long it would take Brent’s team to come and fetch him. About damn time—she was fed up hearing him sniffle and whine out in the corridor. Really, she should go out there and beat the shit out of them. Prove the point. But, despite the fact that she couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t be bothered to move. Not for them. She’d have to hand their asses to them on a plate another time.
  
  Closing her eyes, she commanded every muscle in her body to relax. The sheets around her rustled as she went limp. She slowed her breathing, brought her heart rate down and waited for sleep to claim her.
  
  The moment her thoughts started to slip into the familiar grey cotton-wool of the land of nod though, she jerked awake, her instincts on high alert. Someone was in the room with her. She sprang into motion, crouched on the bed with her claws extended, prepared to defend herself from Brent’s bully boys. Expecting them to stream into the room, the darkness filled with the flash of claws and fangs.
  
  She was alone. Totally alone.
  
  Great, now she was going fucking nuts.
  
  Grumbling, she lay back down, pulled the blankets over herself in defiance and closed her eyes. She’d been on her feet for god knows how long. She needed sleep. Even in her altered state she couldn’t operate without any sleep at all. That way lay madness, and hallucinations that the Project had developed a new serum that turned subjects into purple dinosaurs.
  
  This time she almost made it, her breathing deepening and her brain almost shut down, before something brushed over her arm.
  
  “Gnnnfff…kk?”
  
  She shot upright, rubbing her forearm. Her heart pounded, almost up to human levels but not through fear. Instead heat and awareness filled her in equal amounts. She could have sworn she felt fur brushing over her skin. Foster’s fur, even though she hadn’t seen him changed. But he lingered in her mind and her body responded as though she was in the back of the truck with him between her thighs again.
  
  What the fuck… Lycans didn’t have any mental powers she was aware of, so how was he still affecting her hours later? Then it happened again. Her skin prickled, the tiny hairs on the back of her arms rising as something that wasn’t there, something unseen, brushed all over her from top to toe. Something that felt an awful lot like fur and with it came the deep, male scent that had captivated her in the truck.
  
  Annoyance surging through her, she flung the covers off and rolled to her feet. She yanked a long sleeve shirt and combats on over the tank and shorts she slept in, then walked into her boots en-route to the door. Damn mutt wouldn’t get out of her head, would he? She’d teach him to fuck about with her mind.
  
  The barracks were silent but she could feel the occupants within as she passed the closed doors in the corridor. Some rooms were empty, their owners out on duty, but the rest knew she was there and not one of them would face her.
  
  She pushed the door open and stepped out into the darkness. The chill of night had descended, the almost-full moon presiding over all of creation and lighting up the base like a spotlight for her. But she didn’t need the light to show her the way though, and headed down the path toward the labs.
  
  It didn’t take her long to reach the lab where they’d dropped Foster. They weren’t dark and deserted, despite the hour. Science, like the army, never slept. There were experiments to run, data to collect and subjects to look after, no matter the hour. Skulking in the shadows of the building opposite, Toni watched the lab and analyzed the scents around it.
  
  There was the oil and gas from the truck where it had parked, Wilson’s scent, the blood and cordite wrapped around it proof that he’d just come from the battlefield. The two doctors… She wrinkled her nose at those smells, ignoring them in favor of Foster’s.
  
  It hit her like a punch to the gut. A deep, wildness that hijacked her senses and took them on a joyride. Heat rolled over her skin again, a shiver running through her as she recalled his lips on hers, the way his body felt under her—
  
  With a snarl, she snapped herself out of the memory. Fuck it, this had to stop. She couldn’t go around mooning over a damn mutt and losing focus all the time. Not with Brent out for blood. Even though she’d beaten him this time, at some point all that rage would build up and he’d try again. If she was half-spaced daydreaming about a sexy as hell Lycan, Brent would tear her heart right out of her chest.
  
  Shoving thoughts of desire to the back of her mind, she focused on the scents.
  
  Most were hours old and fading. Apart from Foster’s. His was sharp and fresh. New. She narrowed her eyes and used the cover of a cloud passing over the moon to flit between the buildings at speed. Plastering herself flat to the wall, she scanned up and down the road. No guards had seen her. They shouldn’t be paying too much attention to what was going on in camp but one never knew. All it would take was for one to look the wrong way at the wrong time and wonder what the hell a Blood was doing around the Lycan labs.
  
  She crept along the wall, all senses on alert as she checked out the double doors and a loading door farther down. This one had been used a lot, myriad scents assaulting her. She stopped and took a deep breath. Dragged the air over her tongue and started to sort them. No, she’d been wrong. Foster’s scent from when they’d dropped him off earlier had faded. The reason it was so strong was because there was a second scent trail.
  
  They’d moved him.
  
  Why?
  
  Dread curled insidious fingers deep into her gut. God, please…they hadn’t? Her heart thudding against her ribcage, she set off on the scent trail. The wolf was smart. He wouldn’t have caved and given Fritz what he wanted so quickly.
  
  Surely?
  
  Fear for him lent wings to her heels. What if he hadn’t? What if Fritz’s guards had gotten too heavy-handed when questioning him? She knew Lycans were hardy, but just how hardy? As hardy as she was? Less? Fuck. Stupid mutt should’ve just pretended to be unconscious.
  
  She followed the trail through the camp, through the barracks and past the motor pool to the hangars at the far reaches. Gravel crunched underfoot, a fleeting auditory footnote to mark her journey through the night. No need to worry about the guards—not back there—and she was moving too fast for them to see her in the dark anyway.
  
  The scent led to the biggest hangar at the back. Toni skirted the building, her eyes wide and senses on alert. Automatically she kicked into professional mode, assessing the threat level as she worked her way nearer.
  
  They’d brought Foster in the side, not through the main hangar doors, but a set of doubles in the side of the building. She studied the entrance from the shadows afforded by a dumpster point. The receptacle itself was long gone, but the brick and wooden structure was still there. Easy cover in the middle of the concrete.
  
  The door was locked with a keypad. Sparkly new in the middle of the weather-beaten and sun bleached wall. She sighed. Fritz wasn’t too good at concealing his tracks. Which was great—made things easier for her. Even though she could have cracked the keypad within seconds, a slight motion in the darkness got her attention. A camera was mounted above the door, panning back and forth in a slow arc. She watched it for a moment. Damn, no way to get close to the door without being caught on camera and no way to fool it like she could human eyesight. She needed another way in. Crawling backward, she skirted around the back of the meager cover and slid away into the darkness.
  
  Minutes later she approached the hangar from the opposite direction, running across the rooftops of the adjacent buildings. The hum of an engine warned her of possible discovery and she dropped flat to hide in the shadows while a patrol drove by.
  
  In an instant she was on her feet again, racing toward the edge of the roof. Building speed and momentum. Without slowing down, she launched herself off the end and up. The air whipped her hair around her face as she sailed over the gap between the building and the hangar.
  
  Her boots hit the roof and she rolled, coming up into a crouch to extend her senses. Any moment now, the air around her would fill with the sound of alarms, spotlights slicing through the darkness to look for her.
  
  The seconds ticked by.
  
  Nothing.
  
  She paused for a moment and allowed herself to breathe again before creeping over the ceiling to reach one of the hangar windows. They weren’t proper windows, just opaque sections of sheeting to allow a little light in. Muttering softly, she worked a section loose with her claws, just enough so she could see inside.
  
  Her eyes widened at the scene lay out before her. “Fuck me…”
  
  
  
  Icy water poured over Darce’s head. He gasped, yanked into full consciousness in one breath-stealingly frigid moment. His chest expanded to drag in more air and goose bumps flowed over his skin in the wake of the water that sluiced down his torso to soak his pants.
  
  “Fuck!”
  
  A light snapped on, shining right into his face. He twisted to the side, squinting against the brightness and tried to raise a hand to shield his eyes. His arm wouldn’t cooperate, caught by something around his wrist. Awareness kicked in and he sat up, adrenaline burning the fog from his brain as he assessed the situation.
  
  Tied to a chair, he sat in the middle of a concrete floor. There was nothing around him—just lots of air, and he couldn’t see into the darkness beyond the lamp, the light making spots dance over his eyes. It felt like a lot of empty space, rather than enclosed. The noises he made as he wrestled with his bonds echoed right back at him.
  
  Nothing solid though, no information he could use. Fuck it, why couldn’t he have developed echolocation? The scientists had fucked with his genetic code so much that a pair of bat ears wouldn’t have been out of place and might have frigging helped.
  
  His sense of smell kicked in a second before someone stepped out of the shadows. Darce couldn’t move, and with nowhere to go, he couldn’t avoid the fist crashing down into his jaw. His head whipped around as pain exploded in his face. The inside of his cheek split, flooding his mouth with the metallic taste of blood.
  
  Latching onto the pain, he used it. Forced power through his body to drive out the silver they’d filled him with again. Felt like a double dose this time. The stuff burned through his veins like acid while his wolf twisted and turned, howling in anger.
  
  He lifted his head and winked in the general direction of the shadowy figure who had hit him. Male. Tall. Broad. Good right hook. The faint smell of camouflage cream and boot polish wafted toward him. Soldier. Had to be.
  
  Good, Darce knew how to deal with soldiers.
  
  “Oh, baby, yeah. Give me more.”
  
  Two more blows landed in quick secession, rocking his head back and forth. God, the man could hit hard. For a human. Darce leaned back, let the pain fade and sighing in exaggerated relief.
  
  “Aw man, that hit the spot.” He lifted his head and looked at his tormentor. A shuffle of feet in the darkness told him the guy wasn’t alone. “Itches are a bitch, aren’t they?”
  
  The soldier stayed silent, a voice coming from the left.
  
  “Very funny, Lieutenant Foster. They should put you on the stage.”
  
  Darce nodded. “My mom always did say I had the face of a star.”
  
  “Tell me what you know of Alpha Three.”
  
  “First word of the phonetic alphabet, and a number.” Darce rolled his eyes. “Didn’t they teach you that in basic?”
  
  “Ha. Ha. Ha. Very funny. Corporal Adkins, show the Lieutenant how funny you find him.”
  
  Darce tensed his stomach muscles a second before the corporal stepped forward and a rain of blows started. He rolled with them where his bonds would allow, but he had to admit, the guy knew how to deliver a beating. The corporal’s fist smacked into Darce’s flesh with the precision of a surgeon. Each punch placed for maximum pain and effectiveness.
  
  Fur brushed against the inside of his skin and Darce’s wolf howled in rage at being triggered, but he couldn’t change. The silver in his blood and around his wrists and ankles had him locked down tight.
  
  The corporal stepped back. Darce dragged a shaky breath in and flicked the hair out of his eyes. Blood seeped from the wounds about his head and chest, oozing down his skin.
  
  “What do you know about Jack Harper?” the interrogator demanded.
  
  Darce gave the darkness a blank look.
  
  “Who?”
  
  Adkins started again, and so the routine went. The interrogator would ask a question, Darce would play dumb and the pain would begin anew. If they thought they were going to break him though, they had another thing coming. Determination galvanized every cell in his body, man and wolf in total accord. They’d have to kill him before he’d give up his pack.
  
  “Is that all you got?” He sneered after the latest beating and spat blood across Adkins’s boot. “Fucking pussy. My nana can hit harder ’n you.”
  
  Adkins didn’t move, but Darce felt malevolence pouring off the man. Good, he could use a pissed off, off-balance soldier.
  
  “You don’t like me, do you Foster?” The interrogator asked.
  
  “Nothin’ personal, bud. I hate everyone. I’m in an emo phase.”
  
  “With an attitude like that… I can see why Harper put down that the rest of your squad hates you. How’s that feel, Foster? To know everyone hates you?”
  
  “Nah, you’re mistaken. Everyone loves me. Just ask your wife.” Darce lifted his head and sniffed at the air theatrically. “Or that bitch you’re banging. Cute perfume. Cheap but there’s nothing wrong with a bit of cheap every now ’n then.”
  
  He felt more than saw the signal pass between the men and Adkins lifted his fist again. Darce gritted his teeth and rode it out. For each blow that landed, he replaced it with one of his mate’s kisses. Took himself back to the truck when he’d had her in his arms. Adkins broke off, wheeling away as his gasps filled the air. Beating a chained man was obviously a bit of a workout for him.
  
  “Fuck it, the dog’s got a boner,” he growled, his rough voice almost Lycan deep. “We ain’t gonna get anything out of him if he’s jonesing for this. Throw him in a cage and let Steele have ’im tomorrow.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Eight
  
  “Steele? Who the fuck is Steele?” Darce demanded as Adkins unlocked his wrists and ankles.
  
  Blood rushed back into his limbs and dragged a groan from his lips. He tried to kick out, to get at least one blow in on the human soldier, but his body refused to cooperate, the pins and needles hampering his reactions.
  
  “Bet you feel like the fucking man, don’tcha Adkins? Beating up on drugged up captives?”
  
  Adkins answered by cuffing him hard across the face, a backhanded blow that brought a snarl to Darce’s lips but he couldn’t do anything about it. He needed moonlight or his mate near to force the silver out of his skin.
  
  He tried to bite as the corporal dragged him to his feet and shoved him toward the cage behind the chair, but his teeth snapped empty air. Stumbling, he threw his weight to the side to try and shake Adkins off, but the human had a grip like iron and Darce had the legs of a drunk disco-dancer at the moment.
  
  “Animals like you need showing who’s the boss,” Adkins spat, pressing something to the back of Darce’s skull. The taser fired and at least fifty thousand volts careened through his system. His back arched, all his muscles locking out while each and every wound on his body decided to make itself known. Life seemed to like reminding him that he had a high pain threshold, but this was a whole new level.
  
  He concentrated on breathing and staying conscious as Adkins manhandled him through the door of the cage. A hard shove sent him to his knees before he crashed into the back wall and slid down to land in a heap. He lay there, panting while he waited for the agony in his system to subside, glaring as Adkins locked the cage. Fucker was so dead when Darce got out of there.
  
  “Behave and you might get a bone in the morning. Sorry but I forgot the paper in the corner for you to shit on. You’ll have to hold it. There’s a good boy.” The corporal chuckled and walked off, swinging the cage keys around his finger.
  
  Darce watched until he was out of sight, and then slumped against the floor.
  
  As cages went, it was a nice one. Someone had gone to the trouble of mopping it out for him so the pine freshness of cleaning fluid juxtaposed with the smell of old blood and stale piss. He rested his forehead on the floor and traced a dark stain with the tip of his finger. Someone—another wolf, female—had suffered in this cage. Died where he lay now.
  
  His chest filled with a shuddering breath. He rolled his body until his broad shoulders rested against the wall at the back of the cage. He could almost feel her pain and terror hanging in the air like an expensive perfume. His hand flattened to cover the stain and he reached out, opened himself up in a vow to the dead woman in case she could hear him from where she was now. The Project would pay. For her and all those like her. All those who had ended their lives like animals in a cage.
  
  A slight breeze brought other smells to vie for his attention. Other Lycans, lots of them, some Bloods and something else… Something he couldn’t put his finger on but familiar all the same. All different scents, different people, yet one thing linked them. The same pain, fear and hopelessness. Old or new? He couldn’t tell. Not at the moment. Too many scents to contend with, especially when he was full of the crap they’d pumped into his veins.
  
  With a grunt, he rolled to his feet and padded to the front of the cage. The walls, back and floor of the enclosure were solid with bars to the top and front, limiting his field of vision to the area right in front and above. He could see the chair and lamp where he’d been questioned. The chair was on its side, the lamp dark now, Adkins and his boss long gone.
  
  Beyond the little interrogation set up, he could see a section of wall, a window high up and a portion of a high roof. A hangar. Relief surged through him. He was still on the base. For a moment there, he’d been worried that they’d moved him while he was out. Taken him from the base and his mate. But they hadn’t. He was still here which meant she couldn’t be far away.
  
  Darce turned his attention to the floor. Marks on the painted concrete showed where his cage had been moved into place. He shunted from side to side, angling his line of sight. Yeah, there were more marks to the left and right. Which meant more cages.
  
  A slight noise to his right drew his attention like that of a hawk spotting a mouse in the undergrowth miles below.
  
  “Hello? Who’s there?”
  
  His voice sliced through the darkness, the tone sharper than he’d have liked. He winced. What if the guards were listening? Oh, fuck ’em. He needed to know what was going on. In all his time on the base, they’d never used the hangars. In fact, the hangars were supposed to be empty. Yet all evidence pointed to the contrary. Which meant whatever was going on was being concealed from the rest of the base.
  
  But why?
  
  There was no answer to his question, but he knew there were others out there, listening. The air was alive with awareness. As though they were waiting for what he’d do next. He tried again.
  
  “Hello? Who are you? Where are we? Talk to me, dammit!”
  
  “Shut the fuck up!” A deep snarl answered him, the voice one he didn’t know. Deeper and very Lycan, but not Lycan at the same time. Something else. Darce’s brow furrowed. What though?
  
  “No, talk to me.”
  
  “Drop your voice or you’ll bring them back.” This time the growl was deeper, the sound just below human hearing.
  
  Darce shrugged, but did as he was told. “I can handle whatever Beevis and Butthead can hand out.”
  
  The answer was a frustrated intake of breath, then a snarl. “You might, hot shot. But some in here aren’t in any fit state to. So pipe down.”
  
  Darce shut his mouth with a click. The thought that others might be punished for his actions stole the words better than a strip of duct tape. Who was he kidding? He should have expected that. This was the Project after all.
  
  He slumped to the side of the cage, and let his bodyweight take him down until his ass hit the deck. He propped his elbows on his knees. Head down, he closed his eyes. The cuts and bruises from the beating stung like a bitch but they were superficial. Already healing.
  
  “Hey. Loverboy.”
  
  Darce’s head snapped up as the same voice as before spoke.
  
  “What?”
  
  “Your twelve o’clock. High.”
  
  Darce’s gaze zeroing in on a section of the roof. He was about to open his mouth, ask what the fucking hell his “cell” mate was on when movement caught his eye. There, almost hidden by one of the support struts. His heart stuttered, almost stopped and then swelled when it started up again.
  
  His mate was here. Her lithe form graceful as she climbed along the support strut until she was directly over him. He leaned back and watched her, fascinated by the way she moved and the elegant lethality in every line of her body. She was amazing. Just amazing.
  
  And—fuck it—he didn’t even know her name.
  
  He’d asked but she hadn’t responded, nor had she been wearing name-flashes on her uniform like the human soldiers. Another attempt by the powers-that-be to strip the subjects of any pretence of their former humanity.
  
  She looked down and their gazes caught. A thrill shot through him, a shiver on his skin at her intent look. All of a sudden his injuries didn’t seem so severe. The myriad cuts inflicted by Adkins’s fists forgotten, Darce stood straighter, altered his posture to show off his body to best advantage.
  
  As he did, self-doubt—something he’d never suffered from in the past—assaulted him. He wasn’t heavily-muscled like Jack, Leon or even Blake. What if she preferred bigger men? No, she was well into him. He flexed his arms. She wouldn’t be here otherwise.
  
  Sure, she’d delivered him to the Project but they’d kissed in the truck. She’d been putty in his hands. If they hadn’t arrived at the base, he’d have had them both naked and taken them to Heaven and back.
  
  And she was here, skulking in the shadows. If she had clearance to be in here, she’d have come in through the door rather than hiding. Relief rolled through him. She wasn’t a part of whatever the fuck was going on in here. He hadn’t wanted to think she was capable of the atrocities his sense of smell had picked up, but to have that confirmed eased something deep inside him.
  
  “Hey, sweet thing. Couldn’t resist me, huh?” He smiled up at her, keeping his voice below human hearing, and sucked in his gut to tense his abs. Yeah, he was showing off and he knew it. So sue him. What guy didn’t want to look good for his girl?
  
  She rolled her eyes in response but he caught the gleam of feminine interest and grinned. She liked him. Oh yeah, baby, she liked him all right. Couldn’t take her eyes off him, her expression tight as she took in the cuts and bruises. He ignored them and threw his shoulders back, puffing out his chest, his posture strong and tall. It would take more than Adkins to beat him down.
  
  Her gaze moved on, looking over the rest of the hangar. From that position, she would be able to see everything. A frown marred her features, indicating she didn’t like what she saw. He surged to the front of the cage, interest sharpening his voice.
  
  “What is it? What do you see?”
  
  She shook her head, opening her mouth to reply. A door clanged somewhere on the other side of the hangar and she looked up. She retreated into the darkness and became so still Darce had to squint to reassure himself that she was still there.
  
  A growl cut through the darkness, the deep sound a warning and all around him. Darce felt the absence of movement. As though the entire hangar was waiting on something. Lycan spoke again, his strange voice rubbing all Darce’s senses the wrong way.
  
  “I suggest you play dead, Loverboy. They’re bringing them back and believe me, you don’t want to attract attention.”
  
  
  
  
  
  What the hell did she think she was doing? Twenty-four hours since she’d located Darce in the cage, the same question rolled around and around in Toni’s mind as she lifted the loose flap at the bottom of the hangar window again. With a sigh, she started wriggling through. She shouldn’t be here but she didn’t have a choice. All day, she’d only been able to think about Foster. The wounds over his body. The look on his face when he’d seen her and tried to show off. The hint of a smile curved her lips for a second. Wasn’t that just like a man? It looked like he’d been half beaten to death and what did he do? Puff his chest out and try to look invincible. Idiot. Then she’d had to disappear fast before they caught her, and all she’d been able to think about in the twenty-four hours since was getting back to him.
  
  Grunting with exertion, she grabbed an overhead strut, taking all her weight on her arms and shoulders to bring the loose panel back into place with her feet. It rattled a little, then settled against the metal cladding. Staying in place, she looked around to make sure no one had heard it. At the first sound of running feet, she was so out of there. She wasn’t stupid—getting caught in a hangar that was supposed to be abandoned would be a bad move. The base was already top-secret, so if there was a secret part of a secret base…yeah, the shit would hit the fan in a bad way if they found her here.
  
  The danger didn’t put her off. All that mattered was getting into the hangar and finding her wolf. Worry threaded through her. Last night he’d been in a bit of a state, obviously healing but she hadn’t been able to get closer to check before being chased off by a couple of guards entering the hangar.
  
  She swung her legs down, waited until she was stretched almost to her full height, then twisted in midair and hauled herself up onto the support strut. Grim pleasure filled her at the strength in her muscles. She’d never have been able to do this when she was human. These days, she thrashed the monkey bars. And chin-ups? She made grown men cry when she out-chinned them without breaking a sweat. Pussies.
  
  She crawled out along the strut, high up over the suspended lights, using the darkness above to hide her movements. Below her, row after row of cages stretched out. Some were occupied, shapes huddled under blankets. The aura of pain, and the scent of blood rose up to her like heat from Hades. Squinting, she searched among them for Foster. He was a big bastard. Lean but tall, so he should stick out like a sore thumb.
  
  Worry threaded through her when she couldn’t find him. The cage he’d been in yesterday was gone, the space empty. Her boring routine of training and reports had passed by in a daze as the image of his face haunted her thoughts. The way he flicked his hair back—the darkness of his eyes ringed by amber when he looked at her, man and wolf watching her. The broad width of his shoulders and muscled chest…satin skin pressing against her, lips hot on hers as they’d kissed…
  
  A shiver rolled through her, heat blossoming in her cold body at the memory. She’d been tormented by images of the man and memories of that kiss in the truck. There was something wrong with her. Had to be. She didn’t lust after men like this, not even before. Certainly not now. So why Foster? What was so special about him?
  
  And where the fuck was he?
  
  She swung onto a different strut to search another row of cages, and then another. Then she reached the final row and her breath stuttered to a stop in her chest. Foster was in the last cage, slumped like a broken rag doll in the corner. His head was down, hair covering his face, and blood over his chest, pooled on the floor under him. Anger and panic rolled through her. What the fuck had they done to him?
  
  She dropped down to the spars holding the lighting grid, and caught her breath as the metal creaked under her weight. Please hold, she thought to herself, not wanting to crash to the floor below. A drop to concrete wouldn’t hurt her, but it would blow her cover six ways to Sunday.
  
  “Hey…” She hissed, trying to get the wolf’s attention. “Hey, Foster. You dead?”
  
  He grunted, one shoulder shrugging, the arm flailed about on the floor next to him. Shit, how badly had they beaten him? She was going to fucking kill them. Drawing a deep breath, Toni fought the anger back and concentrated on the man in the cage below her.
  
  “Talk to me, Foster. Damn stupid mutt. Let me know you’re okay.”
  
  He grunted again, head moving from side to side. He could hear her. Encouraged, she inched along the support spar to try and see more, careful not to drop below the lights just in case. As though he could follow her movements, his head turned. Then he slid to the left, slumping full length on his side. With a groan, he rolled over, his hair falling back.
  
  She winced at the bruises over his handsome face. One eye was black, almost swelled shut, and there a vicious cut curled over the other cheek, splitting his lip. Clenching her fists, she fought the need to drop down onto the top of the cage, rip it open and look after him. To soothe his wounds. Reassure herself that he was okay, that they hadn’t done any permanent damage.
  
  “Foster! Wake the fuck up!”
  
  The words had just left her lips when the sound of the door opening rang through the hangar. Toni swore, skinning back up the lighting drop-poles like a monkey up a tree. What the hell was it about these guys? Did they have ESP or something?
  
  “Yeah…he’s down here. Last cage on row nine. Boss wants him down in the ring pronto,” a voice announced as a trio rounded the corner and walked along the row below her, heading for Foster’s cage. “He’s a bit messed up, not that it matters. He won’t last that long against Steele.”
  
  Ring? Steel? What the fuck was going on? She edged along the steel, trying to get a better vantage point. The two goons with the white-jacketed doctor opened the cage and picked Foster up to half-carry, half-drag him out. He groaned, flailing his arms around but not in a concerted effort to get free.
  
  Her concern mounted. Shit, they must really have fucked him up for a Lycan not to fight back. The trolley rattled on its wheels as they dumped him on the top. He tried to lurch to the side, showing at least some awareness of the situation, but they dealt with him easily. Within seconds he was strapped down tight.
  
  “Right, let's get this show on the road,” the doctor said brightly. Too brightly. His tone rang with false positivity with an undertone of “thank fuck shift is almost over” and the scent that wafted up at her reeked of coffee and too long in the same clothes. Dude needed a shower.
  
  The trolley started its procession along the row of cages, and above, she kept pace, shimmying down the support strut. Where the hell were they taking him? Oh shit, what if they took him off base? Her talons lengthened and a low growl tried to rumble from her throat. They couldn’t take him off base. She wouldn’t allow it. She’d kill them all first and hide him—
  
  In her panic and concentration on the scene below, she forgot to watch where she was putting her hands and feet. Her fingers closed around what she expected to be smooth steel, only to find the brittle sharp, cookie-like crumble of rusted metal.
  
  Fuck! She grabbed again as she started to fall, driving her hand through the rust to get a firm grip. The broken metal flaked away, dropping like a faint snowfall of brown. The edge lacerated her palm, pain slicing through her hand, but she held on. It was that or find out that unlike Dumbo, she couldn’t fly for shit.
  
  Blood welled, the scent thick in the air and she watched three black drops fall. Thicker and heavier than dust, they didn’t hang like a cloud below the lamps. Harmless. Unnoticed. Toni bit her lip, holding her breath. The drops raced toward the small group below. If they hit the Lycan, she didn’t know what would happen.
  
  They couldn’t cross-infect each other—not as far as she knew—but if the blood hit the Lycan or the trolley, even the most intellectually-challenged guard was going to wonder where it had come from. Time crawled by, the black drops falling in slow motion. Each step the trio took seemed to stretch out longer and longer, seconds becoming minutes until…
  
  The three men passed underneath, the drops splashing down the last guard’s uniform and soaking into the black-on-black fabric.
  
  Toni sagged against her perch in relief when the trio and their captive stepped into the lift. Of all the stupid things to do…she should have been more careful. She couldn’t get caught in here. Not without knowing what the fuck was going on.
  
  The elevator door closed with a ping and the light above it started to move. Going down. A frown on her brow, Toni surveyed the hangar. No cameras on this side and no other guards. If any of the occupants in the cages had seen her, they didn’t give a shit, be that because of drugs or other reasons. Unfurling herself from the strut, she dropped past the lights to land in a crouch in front of the lift, her injured hand cradled to her chest. Already she could feel the flesh deep inside the wound knitting together, so it would stop bleeding soon. Not freaking fast enough. Being stealthy did not include leaving bloody fingerprints everywhere.
  
  She rose to her feet and considered the doors in front of her. The elevator door and the one next to it. Stairs. She shouldn’t go in there, but curiosity rode her harder than an admin officer with an axe to grind over paperwork. She had to know what the fuck was going on here.
  
  Without hesitation, she pushed open the door and descended into hell.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Nine
  
  “Right. There they go. Two vehicles from the main gate. One taking the north road and one the south. Usual patrol route by the looks of it.” Jack lowered the binoculars and turned to the small group behind him.
  
  Only five of the pack, six with their newest member, Lilly, were present. Sanders, crouched next to Nic, flicked a glance around. Most eyes were on Jack, each face grim and determined. He crouched down and used a small stick to point at areas on the mud and stone map he’d built of the surrounding area.
  
  “We’ll take the one on the south patrol. They always head out over this section first, to the furthest point here.” Another jab of the stick into the dirt. “They’ll head on up along here.” Sanders watched the end of the stick trail along a finger-drawn line in the dirt that indicated a road. “This is our point here. Just after the turn.”
  
  Jack looked up. “Nic, you’ll be the bait. Usual drill. Richards, you and Sanders take the far side of the road. Palmer, you’re with me on the near side.”
  
  “And what about me? Where am I?” Lilly butted in, eagerness shining in her eyes as she leaned against her mate.
  
  Jack turned his head to smile at her. “Back here, baby. This is a full on ambush. If we’re unlucky, they’ll manage to get off a shot or two. Live rounds. I won’t risk you getting hurt.”
  
  Oh boy, this is going to be interesting.
  
  The rest of the pack found something else to pay attention to. Nic studied her fingernails while Sanders snapped a small twig into even smaller pieces. He had no clue what Palmer and Richards decided on and didn’t want to risk looking up in case he got dragged into the argument.
  
  “You have got to be kidding me?” Lilly’s voice was calm. Dangerously calm. “You won’t risk me being hurt? After the night of the living dead back at the hospital? I can take care of myself.”
  
  Palmer sniggered. “Yeah, boss. Just give Killer an axe—she’ll deal with this ambush no problem.”
  
  Sanders had to work hard to wipe the smile off his own lips, a task made easier when Jack glared around the group. Although Lilly had handled herself well in her first encounter with a Reanimate, Jack wouldn’t risk his precious mate. Not now he’d found her.
  
  “In fact, I think we shou—”
  
  “Stow it, Palmer.” The warning rumble didn’t come from Jack, but from the big man hunkered down next to Palmer. Ignoring the twinge in the middle of his chest, Sanders forced himself to look at the guy.
  
  Tall, broad and with the ripped build of a Greek god, Sergeant Leon Richards was Sanders’s idea of perfection. Blond hair fell in a cascade, but rather than looking messy, the locks seemed to have arranged themselves in artful disarray to highlight the width of his shoulders. He looked so good that the pack had taken to calling him Hollywood. Even in a pair of ripped board-shorts and with a fading bruise across his ribcage, he looked like he’d stepped from the centerfold of a magazine. Sanders knew what kind of centerfold he’d like to see Richards star in.
  
  Palmer threw a glance sideways and curled his lip, opening his mouth to add another wise-crack. The big sergeant didn’t give him chance. Instead, he wrapped an arm around the smaller wolf’s throat and stopped his talking with a headlock.
  
  The grace and speed Richards moved with, combined with that body, was like eye-crack. Sanders couldn’t look away. One little clue—that’s all he wanted. Fuck no, not all he wanted. He wanted Richards to see him the same way he saw Richards. To have that big, heavily-muscled body at his mercy as he explored it with lips and tongue…
  
  As though sensing Sanders’s gaze on him, Richards looked up and Sanders was caught. There was a flicker of something in the intense blue, something that sent heat through Sanders’s body like a lightning bolt. Before he could work it out, Richards looked away, grinning and scrubbing Palmer’s short-cropped hair until the smaller man yelped and tried to wriggle free.
  
  “If you two are done with your male bonding,” Jack snapped. “Perhaps we can get back to this—”
  
  The sound of running footsteps brought the alpha up short, and all wolves went on alert. A low growl trickled from Nic’s throat. A second later, the last two members of the pack, Blake and Thom, crashed through the undergrowth, almost trampled over Nic and Sanders, then stood with their hands on their knees, panting. It was obvious they’d run long and hard to get back.
  
  Jack looked from Thom to Blake, and then back at Thom. Bent over with his hands on his thighs, he waved at the rest of them that he was fine but that didn’t stop the rest of the pack from staring at him. Firstly, it was strange to see the uber-fit wolf out of breath and secondly, he didn’t usually make squeaking sounds when he breathed.
  
  “Do I even want to know?” Jack asked Blake, Thom’s battle buddy.
  
  Blake grinned, unholy amusement showing on his face. “Long story short. Kid. Ball. Fido here couldn’t resist the chase. Got a little carried away. Hit a fence and swallowed the fucker. Now he squeaks. You’ll piss yourself when you hear him laugh.”
  
  Jack shook his head, a long suffering expression flitting across his features for a moment. Sanders didn’t blame him. If there was shit to get into, it was a safe bet Thom would find it and not just fall, but take a running jump into it and roll around like a horse in a mud-bath.
  
  “Right.” Jack said. “You and Squeaker get your asses over here. This is what we’re going to do…”
  
  
  
  
  
  What the hell had that look meant?
  
  An hour later, Sanders hunkered down in the sparse undergrowth next to Richards and tried to keep his mind on the job. A feat which was proving to be damn near impossible. He slid a sideways glance at the bigger man. With his hair tucked behind his ears, Richards looked intent and professional as he watched the road. Golden stubble covered his jaw. Sanders itched to touch, to crowd in and graze his teeth along the roughened skin, then kiss away the slight sting. This close, Leon’s scent wrapped around him, as wild as the forest but with deep smoky notes Sanders had noticed were unique to the bigger wolf.
  
  He had to look away, swallowing hard and trying to tamp down his body’s reaction, willing the semi-erection away by sheer force of will. It was no secret that Sanders liked men and although he’d never admitted his feelings for Leon in so many words, the pack had to have figured it out by now. But the last thing he needed was for Leon to scent his arousal. That could cause issues he didn’t want to deal with, the least of which the possibility that Leon might decide to beat the ever-loving crap out of him.
  
  Or would he? Sanders couldn’t resist another glance to the side and caught Leon looking at him again. His heart leaped. Had Nic being right? Should he say something before it was too late? You don’t ask, you don’t get, right?
  
  “T minus thirty seconds,” Leon murmured. Opposite them, Nic slid out of cover. “Ready to fur up?”
  
  Was he fucking ever! Sanders closed his eyes, using the heat racing through his veins to power the change. Instead of throwing the door inside himself wide to let his wolf free, though, he opened it a crack and channeled the power into his hands. They’d been practicing this, trying to master the part-change with varying degrees of success.
  
  Bones popped and cracked as flesh slid and reformed. Soft fleshy sounds filled the air around them, almost lost under the engine of the approaching jeep. Concentrating, Sanders latched onto the differences in his hands, struggling for a second to hold the form. Fur wanted to spread, race over his skin and consume his body. Shit, he was losing it. Gritting his teeth, he tried to keep the changed form in place but like catching the edge of the soap in the bath—the form kept slipping away from him.
  
  Help, when it came, was from an unexpected quarter. A hard hand landed on his shoulder, complete with long talons and a punishing grip. He jumped and looked up into deep blue eyes filled with encouragement.
  
  “C’mon, Joe. You can do it.”
  
  A shiver slid through Sanders at his name on Leon’s lips in the rough, gravelly voice which haunted his dreams. With a nod, he tried again, using the burst of heat from Leon’s touch to focus the feral energy trying to take over. With an ease he’d never experienced before, he gained control and limited the change to his hands. His eyes widening, he looked down, then up at Leon, who grinned. Sexual energy, not anger. Who knew?
  
  “There you go, kid. Knew you could do it. Now, game face on. We’re up.”
  
  Leon let go of his shoulder and moved forward to the edge of cover as the truck rumbled around the corner. Awareness hung in the air. The pack waited for the human crew in the vehicle to see the woman lying across the road. At least, Sanders hoped like hell they noticed her. She could survive a hit from a truck—hell, the shit the virus had done to them, a Lycan could probably take a direct hit from a plane—but it would hurt like fuck.
  
  The truck slid to a stop, voices inside raised in query. The passenger door opened and two armed soldiers jumped out. Sanders shook his head when they made a beeline for Nic. Trust a semi-naked hot chick to railroad a guy’s attention and make him forget every scrap of operational awareness.
  
  “Hey…lady? You okay?” The first reached Nic and leaned over to shake her shoulder.
  
  “She’s out of it, man. Check her pulse.”
  
  The second guy stood back and looked around with wariness written in every line of his body. No way could he see the hidden wolves, but the awareness could be a problem. Nothing they couldn’t handle though. Moving as one, the wolves exploded from the undergrowth at the same moment Nic surged to her feet. She yanked the rifle out of the first soldier’s hands and slammed the butt up and into his jaw. He dropped like he’d been KO'd, and Nic spun to face the second soldier. Who had her in his sights.
  
  “Hasta la vista, bitc—”
  
  Sanders hit him from the side, wrapping him up in a lethal embrace as his claws punctured the guy’s ribcage. He felt the snick when the skin gave, the rush of hot blood flowing over his hands, and a muscular pulse as his claws tickled the bottom of the guy’s heart. Sanders ached with power. The wolf called to him, tempting him to shift fully but he held it and used the power to fill his muscles instead. With a bellow he twisted and wrenched. His claws came away tangled in half the human’s ribcage.
  
  “Oh for fuck’s sake,” he snarled and shoved the dying man away. The body hit the ground, convulsing in its death throes. Sanders looked at the mess on his fingers and grimaced. He flicked his hand and the ribs hit the dirt with a bloody splat.
  
  “Oh God. Barbeque ribs. I haven’t had them in forever,” Palmer said with longing, his voice rough with the wolf. He looked down the road, checking to make sure there wasn’t anything they hadn’t accounted for, like a second vehicle.
  
  A crackle of static brought their heads up. Sanders squinted and looked through the windshield of the truck. A young human looked back at him in shock, eyes wide with fear and panic.
  
  “Shit, there’s a third one.”
  
  Six wolves launched into motion, all heading for the same target but none of them made it. Another, smaller figure hit the side of the truck. Metal screamed, the door wrenched clean from the side before being thrown backward to tumble end over end. Lilly snarled, her hands in a perfect part-shift as she yanked the young soldier from his seat by the radio and dragged him out of the vehicle.
  
  Sanders made it first and slid into the gap. Wet heat penetrated his pants. Great, the kid had pissed himself. The radio sparked to life.
  
  “Oscar four, didn’t catch your previous. Say again. Over.”
  
  Shit, what had the human managed to get through? Sanders grabbed the radio and clicked the mic on. “Base, this is Oscar four. Sorry, we’re having a few problems with the radio here. Nothing doing here. Whole load of fuck-all and tumbleweeds. Over.”
  
  He slid a sideways glance. The rest of the pack had taken the soldier from Lilly, more than one of them eying the new Lycan with respect and maybe a little fear. He’d never seen a new wolf control their change so soon after conversion. Damn scary stuff. Sanders was glad she was on their side.
  
  “No problem, Oscar four. Carry on your patrol. Base out.”
  
  “Roger that, base. See you on the flip side. Oscar four. Out.”
  
  
  
  
  
  The stairs went down and around, until Toni wondered if she would emerge on the other side of the world. Her boots were near silent as she ran lightly down the stairs. Whatever this place was, the owners’ sure had a hard-on for being below ground.
  
  She hooked her uninjured hand into the balustrade to swing herself around the next turn. No cameras. Surprising. The Project was anal about surveillance. Perhaps she just couldn’t see them?
  
  She shook her head and put the thought aside. No sense in worrying about it now. If the guards were there, she’d be walking into an armed reception committee whether she went up or down.
  
  Lined with concrete, the stairs looked newer than the sections of the base above ground but it had to have been done before she arrived a couple of years ago. She’d have noticed construction on the scale required for the stairs alone, never mind whatever else was down here.
  
  Her steps slowed when she turned the last corner and approached the double doors at the end. Plain double doors, nothing fancy. Plastering herself to the wall, she listened for company. The rasp of her breathing filled her ears, loud enough for anyone the other side of the door—perhaps even the base above—to hear. She paused before she reached the door, her back flat against the wall, and extended her senses, human and non-human. Tried to feel what was on the other side, to pick up the slightest scuff of a boot, the jiggle of equipment…even the faint smell of gun oil.
  
  Nothing.
  
  Body coiled for action, she spread her hand flat against the surface of the door and pushed. No shouts, no gunshots. In a rush, she shoved the door the rest of the way open and slipped through. The doors to the elevator were next to her and a corridor stretched out in front. It was concrete like the stairs, lined either side with doors. Offices? Storage? She trotted along, trying to keep her steps light and skirted to one side in case someone came around the corner ahead. Quite what she planned to do if that happened, she didn’t know, but it felt better to hug the wall as she scooted along, trying the handles on the doors.
  
  The first door was locked, but the second opened to reveal an empty office, the desk and shelves covered in a thick layer of dust. Same with the third and fourth. The fifth looked to be some kind of staff room. Her frown deepened. Neglect lay thick the dust. What had this place been used for? The depth and construction would indicate a bomb fallout shelter. Perhaps an operational center back from the Cold War, to be used in case of a world nuclear war?
  
  Heavy footsteps and a deep male chuckle warned her a couple of seconds before a group of soldiers turned the corner up ahead. Heart speeding up, she slid into one of the empty offices.
  
  Flat against the wall behind the door, she listened while the group headed toward the stairs and lift. Another deep chuckle reached her ears as ribald comments were thrown back and forth. Nothing interesting, just the usual male crap.
  
  She held position for a few seconds after she heard the doors slide shut. When the mechanism whirred, she opened the door a crack. Once that elevator was in motion, it was a one way trip to the hangar. She hadn’t seen any other levels on the way down and in her experience, elevators and stairs operated in tandem. With this being the Project though, a level accessible by elevator alone wouldn’t surprise her.
  
  No, she reassured herself and slipped out into the main corridor. Foster’s scent was strong here. They’d wheeled him this way. She followed her nose, noting the Lycan’s scent got stronger and more feral the farther she went.
  
  A mark on the floor caught her attention so she knelt, rubbed her fingertip over it and lifted her hand to sniff. She recoiled with a grimace. Sweat with a hint of silver nitrate. The sweat wasn’t so bad, but the silver made everything in her want to turn inside out. Project doctors used the stuff, knowing it burned but not caring. She’d never seen anyone push the stuff out through their skin like Foster though. Is this what they’d done in the hospital?
  
  Turning yet another corner, she found a second set of double doors in front of her. Shit, this place was a damn rabbit hole, and her name sure as hell wasn’t Alice. She approached the doors with the same caution she’d approach a downed soldier in the field. One never knew if those on the ground had a grenade or mine hidden underneath. There were two small windows around head height. She slid along the wall, eyes level with the nearest before twisting to take a look.
  
  “Shit…”
  
  Like the hangar above, the room contained row upon row of cages. But this time the occupants weren’t sleeping. Most dripped with blood, and the guy in the cage opposite stared right at her, the white column of his spine visible through the ruined mass of his throat. She shivered at the expression on the corpse’s face. Easy to see he’d died in agony.
  
  No guards in sight.
  
  Toni pushed the door open and slipped into the room. The smell of blood, terror and fouler things washed over her. Low level moaning covered her movements as she shut the door and sidled behind the nearest cage. The occupant, a Lycan, was curled into a small ball in the corner. He was shivering and naked, blood ran from vicious claw marks across his back and shoulders to pool under his body. Even her presence didn’t rouse him.
  
  She scooted behind the rows, making sure to stay out of the main walkways, her disgust and sympathy mounting with each step. Working her way along, she checked the cages for Foster, but each revealed a fresh horror.
  
  More Lycans with horrific wounds, but these weren’t like the ones above ground—the ones who watched her with suspicion and threw themselves against the bars to get at her. Instead, sensing someone outside the cage, some tried to scoot away and hide under whatever they could. Others were too far gone to care, staring at things she couldn’t see.
  
  She scooted around the edge of the last cage, noting another corpse. Sprawled on his back, his ice blond hair stained scarlet, his black eyes staring up at the ceiling. The air left her lungs in a rush, recognition rushing through her.
  
  “No…” She dropped to her knees next to the cage.
  
  Gavin Hurst. Lieutenant. Damn good soldier. But he hadn’t been Lycan, he’d been a Blood. One of hers.
  
  “Fuckers!” she snarled and slammed her hands into the bars, denting them. She’d been told Hurst had bought the farm on mission. They’d lied to her. Taken one of her men and…what? What had they done to him? She looked down, concentrating on the state of the body rather than its identity.
  
  Vicious slashes had opened him from sternum to pelvis, his guts exposed to the air like pale, pink sausages. The blood on the floor was still warm. His heart could only have stopped beating a few seconds before she found him. The residual energy—the fanciful might call it his life force—wrapped around her before it faded from his body. She watched the black of his eyes fade.
  
  “Holy shit.”
  
  She sat back on her heels, dumbfounded. He’d been a Blood the first time she’d met him so she’d never known what color Hurst’s eyes were. Blue. A beautiful clear, light blue. They turned back to human after death. She’d never seen another Blood die. Oh, she knew that they could die, had even seen them fall, but she’d never seen the bodies. They were always reclaimed by the labs for tests. That is unless they’d taken the one way trip into the desert, then no one saw them again.
  
  A door opened on the other side of the room, blasting a brief burst of male laughter and a howl from beyond it. Toni’s head snapped up and she moved in that direction, ignoring the caged prisoners for now. She couldn’t help them until she knew what was going on. And whatever it was, answers, and Foster, were through those doors.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Ten
  
  Darce hit sand and knew he was in trouble. Trying to force the fog of sedatives from his brain, he rolled to his feet with a roar. Talons exploded through the skin of his fingertips as he dropped into a defensive crouch, swiping at the air around him with part-shifted hands. Anything to keep the bastards away from him.
  
  The sand was a bad thing. Sand meant he was on a one-way trip into the desert and a slug in the back of the skull. If he could keep them away, make them take anything but a headshot, then he had a fighting chance.
  
  Lights shone in his face, blinding him whatever direction he turned. Not the sun, something else. Spotlights. Fuck, they had trucks around him. His heart pounded, pouring more adrenaline through his system while his wolf raged and snarled. Ready to fight. Ready to kill.
  
  Survive. He had to survive. Had to find her—his mate.
  
  He backed up and collided with something hard. A metal post. He made a grab for it, hoping for something he could break off and use as a weapon and found his fingers caught in mesh instead. He recoiled with a hiss, pain lancing through his palm, like acid eating his skin. Lips curled back, he looked down. Criss-cross burns covered his hand. A snarl escaped as he squinted to try and see around the lights blazing in his face. The fuzz receded from his brain. Tall fences of chain-link surrounded him. The Project special stuff—links bonded with silver alloy or sprayed with something similar to keep in him and his kind.
  
  Pain raced through his system, sharpening his awareness and more clues crowded in. Lifting his head, he dragged air in over his tongue. He was inside, somewhere big. Echoing. A faint fusty smell indicated disuse but was almost hidden by newer smells. Equipment, metal, the hot, electrical scent of electronic kit. The smell of people. Humans. Sweat, deodorant…someone had had onion for lunch.
  
  Darce moved on, filtering information from the air. Worse scents. Blood. Terror. Pain. The smell of piss and opened bowels warned him that the sand at his feet wasn’t someone’s attempt to bring the beach into their workplace. Since gladiators had battled in Roman arenas, possibly even before, sand had been used to soak up blood and worse. Much, much worse. A fetid gust of air warned him a second before a Reanimate barreled out of the darkness. Corrupt flesh almost black and its eyes were white all over. It chattered, moving sideways in a crab-like motion, and drool flowed from the corner of decayed lips.
  
  “Fuck!”
  
  Darce dropped and swept a leg around in an arc to take the creature’s feet from under it. It hit the sand hard but Darce didn’t give it a chance to get back up. Couldn’t afford to. He slammed a large, twisted paw into its throat and bounced its head off the sand a couple of times. It screamed in fury, dead eyes rolling as it tried to look at him.
  
  Finger bones broke through rotting flesh to scrape at Darce’s arms. He ignored them and drove his claws through the throat. The skin gave easily, too easily. His stomach churning, Darce threw the gobbet of ruined flesh aside. It hit the chain-link with a wet splat then slid to the sand. Cheers and catcalls, evidence of an audience he couldn’t afford to pay attention to, erupted around him when he rolled away.
  
  But the dead didn’t need to breathe. Sickening, wuffling sounds wheezed from its lungs as the thing crawled sideways across the sands to get at him.
  
  Shitshitshit.
  
  Darce went aerial, flipped to his feet and jumped out of the way just in time. Sharpened finger bones sliced through the air where he had been. He swore, twisted and slammed his leg down with an axe kick. Bone cracked. A new bend appeared in the creature’s thigh. It howled—in either pain or frustration, Darce couldn’t tell and lashed out again. He danced away, around it. The fucker was quick. Quicker than he’d ever seen a Reanimate, especially one in such an advanced state of decay.
  
  “Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill!”
  
  Darce ignored the chanting and tested the borders of the enclosure, digging his bare feet in the sand when he reached the end of one panel and moved along the next. Three sides. The Reanimate tracked him all the way around, tilting its head at an odd angle to look out of the corner of its eye. It must have some residual vision on that side.
  
  Darce swept his hair back out of his face. Five…six panels…
  
  The Reanimate chattered, and twisted to lunge at him again, pure hunger on its face. He was ready for it though, body coiled with lethal energy he unleashed in a vicious kick. His foot slammed into the side of the Reanimate’s face, snapping its head around. The jaw gave with a sickening crunch, black blood and spittle spraying over the sand.
  
  Pulling his leg back in a practiced move, Darce landed lightly on his feet. Guard up, he bounced and carried on circling. Seven… Eight panels. Fuck. He was in a damn cage fight with the undead. Talk about shitty luck.
  
  “Stay. The. Fuck. Dead,” he snarled when the creature picked itself up, jaw shunted so far to the left that the skin the other side had begun to split. He knew it wouldn’t stay down. It wouldn’t stop until he’d removed its head from its neck.
  
  “Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill!”
  
  Darce roared and launched himself to the side. His toes dug into the sand, and he ran at the side of the cage to bound up it. Metal rattled and his feet burnt on contact as he twisted and fell to land on the creature. He wrapped it up before it could react, clamped his hands around the skull and wrenched. His wolf roared within him, his connection to the creature complete as he tore the Reanimate’s skull clean off its body.
  
  The crowd exploded with cheers, covering the dull thud as he dropped the decapitated head next to the now permanently dead body. Darce swallowed back his nausea and lifted his arm to shield his eyes, trying to see beyond the spotlights. What the fuck was this? Amusement? Sport? What kind of sport was it to put a Reanimate in with him? This one had been fast, but most were easy to deal with if you knew how. It was just killing though. Not sport.
  
  Metal squealed. Darce whipped around, fists up to face a new threat. Tasers sparked and another wolf was shoved through the door into the cage. The Lycan rolled to his feet, his eyes wild, gaze frenzied as he looked from Darce to the Reanimate’s corpse and back to the closing door. He snarled, dropped into a defensive crouch and to circle Darce.
  
  Darce’s instincts kicked. He studied the other man, who padded lightly around him. He was taller and heavier than the newcomer, and uninjured. Vicious claw marks ran down the other man’s side, oozing blood. With injuries like that, he was surprised the guy still stood, let alone moved.
  
  “Look man.” Darce dropped his guard a little, his voice low and calm as he tried to reason with him. A brother in arms. “We don’t have to do this.”
  
  “We have to.”
  
  “Or what? They kill us?”
  
  “They’re not that kind.” Sadness and resignation filled the other wolf’s eyes. “Just promise me one thing?”
  
  “Anything, man.” Darce nodded, already trying to figure out how they could get out of the cage, take on the guards with the tasers and whatever armed guards he knew lurked in the audience. He didn’t get the chance to develop those plans. The other Lycan’s eyes wolfed out to the max—bright amber—and when he spoke, his voice was deep with his beast.
  
  “Just don’t let them eat me alive.”
  
  Fuck! Darce leaped back as the injured wolf part-shifted faster than he’d expected and charged. The bestial roar rattled the chain-link enclosure and then the fight was on in earnest. He was forced backward, blocking hard and fast to avoid being gutted on the other wolf’s razor-sharp claws. Despite the promise he’d extracted from Darce, there was no leeway in the Lycan’s face—just murderous intent. In those amber eyes, Darce read his own death.
  
  Snarling, he forced more and more of his own wolf through his veins until his hands and feet were huge, twisted, paw-like monstrosities. Claws on his toes dug through the sand, driving him forward. He met his opponent head-on in the middle of the cage. Claws flashed. Skin tore. Blood flew. Darce kept moving, staying one step ahead and chipping at his opponent’s guard.
  
  The other guy was shit-fast, but he was wounded and favoring his side. So Darce hammered it, slamming his fist into the guy’s side whenever he could get between the solid blocks and around the lightning-fast blows.
  
  Sadness wrapping around his heart, Darce gave in to the inevitable. He hated it, hated the extremes the Project had forced them to—fighting for dominance in a pit like animals—but some things were a matter of survival. It was kill or be killed and he wasn’t ready to meet his maker yet. He had a life to live and a mate to find.
  
  Determination lent wings to his feet and steel to his tired body. Turning, he faced the next attack and this time he didn’t block, simply roared and charged, the change ripping through him as he met the other wolf in the middle of the cage. A clash of the titans that only one of them would survive.
  
  
  
  The crowd roared. Cheers and whoops from the mostly male audience loud in her ears, Toni slipped through the door. The room was dark, which helped conceal her when she slipped into the shadows just as the guard— obviously stationed to watch the door but who had drifted forward to see what was going on in the center of the room—glanced over his shoulder.
  
  Too late, dipshit.
  
  She hooked a hand around a steel bar and swung herself up, scaling the wall and moving out of sight. The room had a high ceiling. Looked like some kind of storage facility originally. Now the space was dominated by a large MMA style cage surrounded by seating and…were those cameras?
  
  Her eyes widened. What appeared to be a professional level recording outfit rolled and slid around the steel cage, intent on the action inside while the crowd hollered.
  
  A roar split the air when one of the combatants stood up, his bleeding and battered opponent held high above his head. Then he slammed the moaning form over his knee. Toni winced as the sound of breaking bones snapped through the air like a gunshot.
  
  “Shit.”
  
  Foster rolled the body off his knee and stood, amber eyes bright with defiance and roared at the crowd. A sound of challenge and anger that deepened when the guards yanked open the cage door and poured through the gap. Toni schooled herself to remain where she was. The guards forced him to the ground with tasers and shocked him into unconsciousness.
  
  Body shaking and sweat pouring down her spin, she fought the urge to go to him, to rip the guards away and stand over him to protect him. To wrap him in her arms and make sure he was unhurt. Cold rage joined the party, surging through her veins to meet the anger at her core in a melting pot of emotions. Steel twisted under her hand, mangled by her grip as she watched them carry him from the cage, other guards dragging the broken body of his opponent from the sands.
  
  She shifted through the darkness, skirting the edge of the crowd high above their heads to keep Foster in view. Her lip curled at the callous laughter of the guards as they dumped him in a cage in the darkness beyond the lights. He groaned when he rolled over.
  
  She needed to get to him, to check that he was okay. Fear for his wellbeing sliced through her. He’d been drugged, interrogated, beaten, drugged again, forced to fight and kill, and now shocked…how much could one man take? She’d never seen anyone take so many belts from a taser before and survive. She shimmied down from her perch, eyes on him.
  
  Clumsy in her haste, she dropped to the floor and froze, expecting the lights to snap on at any second and catch her. But another roar from the crowd announced a new competitor. Releasing a sigh of relief, she scooted forward, running low and fast to the back of the cages.
  
  “Foster…Darcy,” she whispered, her hands wrapped around the bars. “Wake up Foster.”
  
  He grunted but didn’t move. Alarm rolled through her. This corner of the room was in darkness but that didn’t matter to her. She could see well in low light, a factor which had helped her bring him in. Guilt slammed into her again. She’d done this, brought him back to this nightmare. If she’d known what they planned to do—if she’d known this hellhole was even here—then she would have just let him go, Fitzgerald’s cure be damned.
  
  “Darcy, please…wake up.” She was begging but she didn’t care. She just needed to know he was okay. “Come on, you’re a damn wolf…you’re tougher than this.”
  
  He grunted and rolled to his back, hair falling away from his face. She winced. His skin was bruised and bloody, a vicious gash along his jaw that bisected the scar she’d given him what seemed like a lifetime ago. Biting back a whimper, she held onto the bars, despite the sting of the silver coating. Silver was bothering her less and less these days—another change she should be worried about but that disappeared under her concern for him.
  
  “Come on, handsome. Talk to me…”
  
  That got a reply. Of sorts. He groaned again and shifted, flopping on his side like a fish out of water and breathing hard. Toni bit her lip. His torso was decorated with cuts and bruises. No claw marks though—not like the vicious injuries she’d seen in the room outside, like the ones that had killed Hurst.
  
  “Come on, Foster. What are you, a fucking pussy cat or a wolf?”
  
  His eyes snapped open, making her jump. But they were human brown, not the amber she expected.
  
  “I’m a man, but I’d be happy with a little pussy…if it was the right pussy.” He chuckled, a sound that turned into a cough that racked his body. “And only my ma calls me Darcy. It’s Darce.”
  
  “Is that supposed to be seductive? ’Cause I gotta tell you…don’t give up the day job.” She winced with him as he held a hand to his ribs and started to drag himself to the back of the cage. “Careful…crap, they really worked you over out there.”
  
  He reached the back of the cage and slumped against it, next to her. His body might have been abused and covered in dark purple-blue bruises but his eyes were clear of pain when he looked at her.
  
  “For you, I’d do it all again. Even listen to Bieber on repeat,” he joked, an easy grin on his handsome face.
  
  She grimaced. “Don’t even go there. Even for this lot, that’s cruel and unusual punishment.”
  
  Shifting to lean straighter against the bars, he threaded a hand through them, then froze when she reared back. It was an instinctive move. He was a wolf, she was a Blood. By rights they should be at each other’s throats. Despite that, she knew she could trust him. That the hand he held out wouldn’t sprout claws and slice through her jugular.
  
  She relaxed and his fingertips whispered over her cheek in as gentle a touch as she’d ever received. It was all she could do not to turn and nuzzle into his palm. Some bad-ass vampire bitch she’d turned out to be.
  
  “You’re beautiful.”
  
  His voice was deep and low, the pitch and tone raising the hairs on the back of her neck. In a good way though. She’d always liked men’s voices, but his hit her on levels she wasn’t ready for, dragging a shiver of feminine appreciation from the depths of her soul.
  
  “Do I get to know your name…finally?” His lips quirked and he distracted her by sliding a hand into her hair. She tensed automatically, but the touch was gentle. Seductive.
  
  Dangerous.
  
  “Fielding. Antonia Fielding.”
  
  Her voice was a bare whisper as his grip tightened, pulling her toward the bars in a slow movement. He moved at the same time, twisting in a lithe motion that made a mockery of the injuries decorating his body.
  
  “My friends call me Toni…”
  
  His eyes dark and fathomless, he threaded the other arm through the bars and wrapped a big hand around her wrist. Capturing her gently…can you capture the willing? Her heart pounded. Power coiled around him, the energy of his beast. It should have repulsed her, but instead the darkness within her reached for it, wrapping and winding around it like a cat looking for attention.
  
  “Toni,” he repeated, all his focus on her. As though she were the only thing in the world. “Pretty name for a pretty lady.”
  
  He leaned closer, tilting her head up to look deep into her eyes. The bars were wide, but even so, he bore the sting of silver without a flinch as he leaned down until their lips were millimeters apart.
  
  “I’m going to kiss you…”
  
  God, yes.
  
  He needed to get on with the kissing part already.
  
  A frustrated growl broke from her throat and she wrapped a hand around the back of his neck and dragged his lips down to hers. It wasn’t just a kiss—it was an explosion of heat and desire. He groaned and parted his mouth, his tongue sweeping over the full curve of her lower lip, demanding access. Pressing against the bars to try and touch as much of his body as possible, Toni opened up to accept the thrust of his tongue with eagerness.
  
  He kissed like he fought, with aggression and dominance, both sparking a reaction within her. She kissed him back. Slid her tongue against his in an embrace hotter than the fires of hell. Heat blazed between them, rolling through her body and racking the tension in her core ever tighter. She needed to get closer, to touch more of him, have him touch her…
  
  He broke away, panting, and leaned his forehead against hers.
  
  “Fuck… Lady, you’re killing me.”
  
  The ghost of a smile whispered over her lips and she played her fingers through his long hair. She rested against the bars, her free hand on the broad plains of his chest. His strong fingers wrapped around her nape while the other hand massaged the small of her back. Somehow he’d gotten his fingers under her top and found skin.
  
  The maddening touch over the small of her back, the hard bar of his cock pressed against her softer stomach, tightened her body almost to the point of pain. Her nipples beaded, the plain fabric of her bra like steel wool against her sensitized flesh as she pressed against him, her pussy clenching hard. She wanted to tear through the bars separating them and ride his lean, hard body down to the ground.
  
  “Toni…” He groaned. The scent of her arousal wound around them, matched by the deeper musk of his. Longing and raw desire sharpened his features. Lust sparkled in his dark eyes and he bent his head again to claim her lips.
  
  A feral howl echoed through the air before he kissed her, followed by screams of pain and terror. Darce closed his eyes, resignation on his face.
  
  “Doll, you have to get out of here. If they catch you…” He shuddered, pain flitting across his face. “Believe me, death would be a blessing.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Eleven
  
  “I won’t leave you.”
  
  Darce smiled fondly, cupping Toni’s face as she glared at him with a stubborn expression. Toni. His mate. Even now, he couldn’t quite believe she was real. Any moment now he expected to wake up to find it had all been a dream, and that she was a figment of his fevered imagination, loneliness and desire for a mate of his own.
  
  Sure, the fates had thrown him a curve-ball with the fact she was a Blood, but no odds were insurmountable. Not where love was concerned. After all, she’d found him, hadn’t she? Even though she’d brought him in, handed him over to the Project, she hadn’t been able to stay away. She’d seen him in the hangar and had tracked him into Hell.
  
  Pleasure and worry warred within him. She couldn’t be discovered. Her rank and position wouldn’t help her down here if she got caught. His gut clenched at the thought. She’d end up as more grist for the mill. Just another body for the bloodbath on the sands of the cage.
  
  Shame hit him hard and fast, punching him in the gut and stealing his breath. Had she seen him in there? Seen him lose it and kill? He’d slaughtered all those put in front of him—Reanimate, Blood and Lycan alike. All of them. Kill or be killed, law of the jungle. Survival of the fittest, because at the end of the day he was what he was—an animal.
  
  Did she see him as an animal?
  
  “You are so beautiful,” he whispered. “Stubborn, but beautiful.”
  
  He caressed the delicate curve of her face, content for the moment to just know she was there. His body raged for more. To tear apart the bars between them to hold her in his arms and kiss her until they didn’t know where he ended and she began. His soul, his heart—his cock—ached to make her his in every sense of the word. Even with lust and the power of his wolf charging his blood, he couldn’t do anything about the cage. The Project had made them, and knew how to hold them.
  
  “Who says the two have to be mutually exclusive?”
  
  Her voice soft, she nuzzled his rough palm. The instinctive movement stole a little bit more of his heart. Her eyes were the color of midnight, but they weren’t the soulless pits he’d once thought a Blood’s eyes to be. Instead they sparkled with humor and intelligence.
  
  For a moment he felt a pang, deep in the center of his chest, mourning the fact he’d not seen her eyes when she was human. What color had they been? Blue, brown…green? Then he realized it didn’t matter. She wasn’t human. He couldn’t keep ascribing human norms and values to either of them.
  
  “They don’t have to be exclusive.” His lips quirked in a smile. “You got both in spades. But you have to go, sweetheart. Get out of here. Out of the base if you can.”
  
  Urgency sharpened his voice and he tightened his fingers a little on the back of her neck, trying to convey by touch how important it was to him that she got to safety.
  
  “Head into the hills and look for my squ…my pack. Speak to Jack. That’s Captain Harper. Tell him what’s going on in here. He’ll help.”
  
  She lifted an eyebrow and looked at him like he’d sprouted another head.
  
  “Let me get this straight. You want me, a Blood, to leave the base and head out alone to find a Lycan pack. Because, yeah, like that’s going to end well.”
  
  He opened his mouth to tell her not to be stupid, to tell her that she was his mate and none of the pack would do anything to hurt her. He paused, frowned. He didn’t know that for sure. Yeah, it had been the case with Lilly…but Lilly had been human, not Blood and the enmity between them and Lycans ran deep and vicious.
  
  “No…Jack would scent me on you.” Darce was sure he would, along with the same subtle smell of a wolf-mate that Lilly carried. Once recognized it was unmistakable. “If you can get to him—”
  
  His plea was cut off by boos from the crowd, taser fire, snarling and yelps. The sound of scuffles and approaching boots warned him they were about to get company.
  
  “Go. Now.” The edge of a growl in his voice, he pushed her into the shadows. “Get yourself out of here.”
  
  But she fought him, crowding against the bars for a second to reach in and brush her fingers over his cheek. “I’ll be back. Stay alive. Or I’ll bring you back as an RA just so I can kick your ass.”
  
  He grinned, but it faded as she disappeared back into the shadows. Frowning for a second, he tried to track her but it was like looking for a black cat in a coal cellar. Even the vaguest hint of her slender figure eluded him. How the hell did she do that? Normally he could see Bloods, even when they pulled the freaking still-as-a-statue shit. Disappearing was a new one on him, unless she’d gone down the Dracula route and turned into a flock of bats. He shook his head. No. That would be too fantastical even for his weird-as-shit life.
  
  “Come on handsome, you’re up next.”
  
  A taser sparked behind him and he turned, lip curled. The blue-white glow lit up the guard’s face like a kid with a flashlight under his chin. Behind him stood two more, their fingers on the triggers of their own tasers. He wouldn’t be able to take all three of them down in time. Not in the fucked up reality of the Project. He could shrug off a hail of bullets, unless they were silver, but a mere electrical device took him down like a kick to the balls.
  
  “No need for that, guys. I’m not going to fuck with you.”
  
  He walked to the front of the cage and pushed his hands between two of the bars as indicated. The guard in front gave him a look and slapped heavy-duty cuffs over Darce’s wrists. The bite of silver had his breath escaping in a hiss.
  
  “Yeah, right. That’s what they all say. Out you come.”
  
  The cage clanged open and Darce stepped out, straightening to look down at the three guards. Compared to the rest of the pack, his height and build weren’t anything to write home about. Among “normal” people…yeah. Little piggies needed to lose the tasers and then they’d see what the big bad wolf could do.
  
  “Move it along, dog.” The guard behind him grunted and sparked the taser in his hand.
  
  Darce shot him a glare but moved anyway, his indolent motion arrogant but still swift enough to avoid the guy using the thing on him. Pain didn’t bother him—his wolf would eat it all up and spit fire back—but the damn things fucked with his nervous system. Hard to rip the head off your enemy when your muscles had you doing the funky chicken on the floor.
  
  They marched him around the back of the raised seating area and toward the cage. No spare seats around the cage now, the faces of the audience lit up by the splash-back of the lights around the ring. He gritted his teeth, feeling the muscle in the corner of his jaw jump as he studied their expressions. Twisted, full of hatred and eager for blood, they catcalled and bayed at the action in the cage.
  
  And the humans called him an animal.
  
  A scream drew his attention and he looked toward the ring. Cameras sped around it, looking for the best shot. Darce frowned, narrowing his eyes. This time there weren’t just two opponents in the ring. At least three people were on the floor, scrambling at something…heads close in, like dogs eating at a bowl.
  
  He dug his heels in, brain and nostrils trying to make sense of it all. Blood was thick in the air, coating the inside of his lungs when he breathed. Three men were on the floor of the cage, eating…no, tearing at the abdomen of another while he thrashed and screamed in agony. The victim struck out, throwing one of his attackers off him with the sort of strength only a Lycan was capable of. The other guy spiraled backward onto the sand, then snapped his head upward and looked at Darce.
  
  A Reanimate.
  
  One with intelligence and awareness clear in his eyes as he snarled and launched himself back into the fray.
  
  “Fuck!”
  
  Darce blinked, dumbstruck, not reacting when the guards shoved him roughly forward. He stumbled, hands tethered in front of him, and went down. Even the pain of his knees hitting the concrete didn’t register as the scene in front of him unfolded. The screams died down to whimpers of misery and a rattling breath that faded to nothing.
  
  Darce dropped his head back and closed his eyes, sadness weeping through every cell of his body. Don’t let them eat me alive. Now he understood what his first opponent had meant and how sick and twisted the Project was. They fought and died, or fought and lost to become chow for another of the Project’s pets.
  
  “Awww look at ’im. Do the zombies scare you shitless, little doggie?”
  
  Darce opened his eyes at the mocking comment, looking up into the darkness above his head. Movement caught his eye and the shadows resolved into a vague figure. Female. Toni. Had she seen this? Did she know what they’d done to the RAs? He’d never seen one with any form of intelligence…
  
  Shit. The memory of her talking to an RA outside the hospital surfaced. He hadn’t known, but she had, hadn’t she? That’s why she’d shot the RA, and burnt the body. She knew something was going on.
  
  Get out. Get to Jack. Tell someone, he urged mentally. But telepathy wasn’t part of the skill-set the Project had gifted him with. He dropped his head back down and leveled a hard glare at the guard. The human paled, backing up half a step.
  
  “I’m going to rip your spine out,” Darce growled, his voice deep with promise as they dragged him to his feet.
  
  They dragged him around to the cage door while the ring was cleared. The wire link hummed, charged as a tunnel was shunted and locked into place around the single opening to the ring. Snarls erupted from the RAs’ throats while the guards yelled and postured from outside, then they dragged their prize down the wire tunnel with them.
  
  Darce shivered. RAs working together? It was unnatural. RAs thinking at all was bad enough, but these were near human. And with what looked like a taste for live flesh. The shiver became a full on body shudder. Darce wasn’t religious, but he hoped like fuck that there was a hell for the people who had developed the viruses. They deserved it, many times over.
  
  The tunnel was locked off the moment the RAs disappeared, then it was unhooked and whisked away.
  
  “In you go, mutt.”
  
  A taser grazed the small of his back, and the muscle-clenching pain made him yelp and tumble forward into the ring. The gate slamming shut behind him, he rolled and came back to his feet.
  
  He was on his own, but that wasn’t going to last long. Loud music flooded the room to drown out the crowd. A heavy repetitive beat he recognized as the intro to a rock song.
  
  Oh fuck.
  
  He’d seen enough wrestling and MMA to recognize the entrance of a favored fighter. The music would build to a crescendo, the spots would snap on the champion when he entered the room to the jubilant roars of the crowd before facing whatever hapless sap destined to fall before him.
  
  Darce’s lip curled back. He didn’t do hapless or sap well. Adrenaline flooded his system. He moved away from the cage walls, rolling his neck and shoulders to limber up. Although he might act it with the pack, Darce wasn’t dumb. Whatever was coming for him had to be worse than the intelligent RAs the guards had just herded out. They’d been the freak show but this—with the build-up and the air of anticipation in the room—would be the finale.
  
  Opening the door deep within himself, he touched his wolf, silent communication passing between the two halves of his nature. He needed the creature working with him, not against—needed every advantage he could get. The creature snarled but yielded control, not fighting him when he widened the door and merged man and beast.
  
  Power racing through his body like a lover’s caress, he held the change under his skin. All the small cuts and bruises disappeared as the impending shift healed them. He felt strong, fast…invincible. He wanted to throw back his head and howl with the glory of being alive, of being Lycan, but he held it back. He had one shot at this and the element of surprise was all he had going for him.
  
  He hoped it was enough. If not, he’d be RA chow.
  
  The music crashed to an end and the spots snapped on. The crowd drew its breath in a collective gasp and the cameras sped forward to capture images of the man outlined in the doorway.
  
  Like Darce, he was manacled, but that was where the similarities ended. He strode forward of his own free will, confidence in every step. The guards skittered out of his way. Darce didn’t blame them. Violence and danger clung to the newcomer like a second skin. He had no doubt if one was too slow in getting out of the way, that guard would end up in a world of hurt or dead.
  
  Darce danced lightly on the sands, waiting for the door to open and the champion to duck in. The guy was taller and heavier, moving with the sort of lethal grace all Lycans had. But his scent was odd, not quite Lycan. What the fuck…
  
  Determination surged through Darce’s veins. This was going to be a tough fight. It would hurt. A lot. Possibly kill him.
  
  Bring it on.
  
  His opponent straightened, dark eyes zeroing in on him from across the sand. Then he grinned, flashing Blood fangs.
  
  “Hello, Loverboy.”
  
  Oh shit, this was going to hurt…
  
  
  
  
  
  “Weeeeeelcome to the Jungle!”
  
  Oh my fucking God. Hidden high in the rafters of the underground bunker, Toni widened her eyes in shock and recognition when the new opponent dropped his head back and roared for the crowd.
  
  Oh. My. God. How stupid could she have been? All the clues clicked into place with a resounding thud. The deep voice had a new edge to it but she recognized it and the tall, dark-haired man facing down Darce in the center of the ring.
  
  Major Dean Steele.
  
  True patriot and shit hot soldier.
  
  He’d been on base before she’d arrived herself and before the place went to hell in a hand basket. She’d heard the stories about him. How he’d volunteered for the program…back in the days when they were interested in developing medications to help soldiers. Regenerative boosters to heal minor wounds and get troops back on their feet. Heavier duty medications for IED victims to heal deep flesh wounds, or reconnect severed nerves. High tech super glue and shots to put blown up soldiers back together.
  
  A noble aim.
  
  A darker reality.
  
  When they’d realized they’d made a weapon, all trace of altruism had disappeared and the Project had gone Dark Side. Seriously Dark Side. Not even the Force would be of any help with this one and if some tiny green dude turned up talking weird, she was so headed the other way.
  
  She crawled forward, the space between the struts barely enough for her to squeeze into, only a couple inches of space separating her back and the steel above. Enclosed in the darkness, she watched the scene unfold below.
  
  Even though Steele had volunteered for the program and been infected, it didn’t work for some reason. Every other subject in the test group had been infected with the Blood virus, but despite three injections, Steele’s just hadn’t taken.
  
  He’d been monitored for a delayed reaction and his blood analyzed. Some antibody or something had been found, leading to the development of the vaccines now used for the base personnel to prevent infection. She’d cursed it at one time. If she’d arrived a few months later, she’d have been taking the vaccine and wouldn’t have been infected. She’d also have been dead, but in the first days of her infection—in fact, right up to meeting Foster—she hadn’t thought that would be a bad thing.
  
  Now? She was glad she hadn’t been taking them. She wouldn’t have been turned into a Blood, no, but she also wouldn’t have met Darce.
  
  The thought froze her. She’d always hated her new nature, railed against it, looked for a way out of what she considered to be a miserable existence. But, despite all that, despite the fact that Darce was a Lycan, the link between them was undeniable. Precious. She barely knew him, but somehow when she looked into his eyes, everything was all right. In those eyes she saw hope, and a future.
  
  If they survived the present.
  
  In the ring, the two circled each other, facing off like a couple of rabid dogs. Snaps and snarls rose from the combatants, the audience holding its collective breath in tension and anticipation.
  
  She couldn’t help wriggling forward for a better view. Steele hadn’t been infected despite what they did to him and then he’d been killed in a group suppressing a Lycan fight in one of the pens. Or so they’d been told. Because the guy she was looking at was certainly not dead. Had the Lycan infection taken when the Blood hadn’t? Was it possible that some people could only be turned one way or the other?
  
  It wasn’t until she was over them that the scents rising from the ring hit her. The deep, earth scent redolent of the forest and the outdoors that was Darce, and another equally wild scent. But where Darce smelled of life and vitality, the other scent was different. Still deep and feral, but the scent of the woods in the winter, when almost everything was dead or sleeping, with a thread of something else. Something more familiar. Something she smelled everyday…
  
  Darce attacked low and fast, claws flashing out to rake over Steele’s side. The bigger man howled, throwing his head back as his hands sprouted claws faster than should be possible. Shock slammed into her, stealing her breath when she saw his open mouth. At the heavy fangs top and bottom. Longer than any Lycan ever had.
  
  Shit, he wasn’t just a Lycan, he was Blood too.
  
  A full-on Hybrid.
  
  Fuck. The stories had been true. All those months the rumors of a Hybrid on base had been correct. Had he been down here all that time? Forced to do this? Shit. She’d be surprised if he was even sane anymore.
  
  The roar became one of rage and Steele attacked. Panic wrapped its claws around her as she watched the smaller man dodge and block like a maniac while Steele chipped away at him. Her near-dead heart clenched, her chest, back and neck aching with the need to drop from the rafters and slice her way into the cage to help Darce. She fought the feeling, forcing herself to remain where she was. Blood filled her mouth, her gums lacerated by the fangs that burst free in response to the danger to the man she lo—
  
  She clamped down on the thought before it formed. She didn’t…wasn’t going to use the L-word. A couple of kisses and a fuck-load of danger didn’t amount to that. Besides, even though Darce was a ferocious fighter, he was no match for Steele. Hell, even against her he’d be pushing it, but Steele was something else. She’d seen him fight when he was human, and with both viruses running through his veins…he was lethal.
  
  He’d kill Darce, no question about it.
  
  And she had to stop him.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Twelve
  
  Fuckfuckfuckfuck.
  
  The words ran an endless litany in Toni’s head as she clambered and slid down from her perch high above the ring with far less grace and finesse than when she’d climbed up there. It didn’t matter. No amount of noise she made would matter. The audience below was too fixated on the action in the ring, their hoots and hollers loud enough to cover her slipping and sliding down between the metal rafters.
  
  The recording equipment set up around the ring amplified the sound of fists hitting flesh and grunts of pain, sounds punctuated by the scent of fresh blood on the air. Darce’s blood. Anger ripped through her, the urge to drop into the crowd and carve a swathe of carnage and destruction almost overwhelming.
  
  She gritted her teeth around the snarl trying to escape her throat and dropped the last ten feet to the floor. The guards that were supposed to be on the doors were in with the crowd, sick excitement on their faces while they watched the men in the ring try and beat each other to death.
  
  No. Watched Steele beat Darce to death.
  
  The thought spurred her on and she headed for the holding area. Her mind relayed all the options while she ran. She had to stop this, needed help, and she needed it fast. No time to get topside…and who would she get to help her there? McCoy and his goons would throw her in the ring themselves and with Garry dead, the only other option was Wilson. Yeah, right. He was human. She might as well throw a kitten in with a pack of dogs.
  
  She hit the doors running, bursting through them and into the space beyond like a whirlwind. The room was still packed with cages, the ones who had already been cycled through the ring obvious by the bloodstains. But half—new since she’d crept through here before—hadn’t.
  
  She paused in the middle of the walkway and caught the eye of a Lycan in one of the nearest cages. He put his finger to his lips in warning, but she’d already heard the sound of a cage door locking closed and the stench of human sweat.
  
  “Where?” she mouthed.
  
  The Lycan pointed to the left, then curled his fingers in. Okay, left, and a right.
  
  “How many?”
  
  He held up two fingers, and then lifted his hand, holding it at two levels one after the other. Approximate heights. She nodded, giving him a thumbs up in thanks and padded along the row of cages. Another roar erupted from next door. She closed her eyes and fought back the bile. She had to help Darce. Before there was nothing left to help.
  
  “Fucking things!” A voice burst out, and another metallic screech echoed through the room. “I swear they’ve all got wonky wheels or something.”
  
  Toni flattened herself against the side of a cage. The occupant, another Blood, watched her from the back. She put her finger up to her lips, warning him to be silent. She’d get them out of there. Get them all out of there.
  
  Another squeal of tortured wheels signaled the human’s ongoing struggle with the trolley. Toni took a chance and leaned out to snatch a glance around the corner, before ducking back. Two men offloaded the unconscious occupant of a trolley into another cage. No blood, so a newbie for the ring.
  
  The other guard emerged from the cage. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, John. You always ram them in. You gotta ease them in, persuade them to go the way you want…gentle. Like you’re persuading your missus to let you see a bit of pussy action.”
  
  “I ain’t seen no pussy for months,” John griped.
  
  His partner grinned and took control of the trolley. “You see, exactly my poin—hey!”
  
  His head snapped up and around when Toni stepped out from cover, pretending to study the identification numbers on the cages so they couldn’t see her eyes. Black on black, there was no way she could pass for human.
  
  “Who are you? You can’t be down here.”
  
  “I’m looking for subject number three-five-seven-zero-alpha. You got him down here?”
  
  The first guard frowned and reached for a clipboard.
  
  “No, we haven’t had any of the alp—”
  
  He started but the other guard was looking too closely at Toni. His breath caught. “Fuck, she’s a Blood!”
  
  She launched herself toward the two guards and the cages around her erupted with snarls and roars. The first guard was as inept in hand-to-hand combat as he was with a trolley. He stumbled backward, fear rolling off him in waves and tried to use his clipboard like a shield. Snarling in rage and blood lust, she grabbed him by the front of his shirt and threw him against the cages behind her.
  
  The occupants were ready. The moment he hit, his fleshy body slamming into the reinforced bars, arms snaked between them. Wrapping him up. Holding him in place. He stiffened, his back arching and eyes rolling back. A muffled scream escaped from under the paw-like hand clamped over his mouth. Thick, fat droplets of blood hit the floor below him as the white tips of someone’s claws erupted from his chest.
  
  One down. One to go.
  
  She whipped her head around, dark hair dancing on her shoulders, to zero in on the other guard. He backed up, fumbling for the pistol in his belt. Toni stalked toward him, shoving the trolley out of the way with a violent push.
  
  The cages around them erupted, all the occupants—Blood and Lycan alike— united in their support as they urged Toni on. A sense of kinship filled her and she prowled forward toward the guard. Then he had the weapon in his hand, finger around the trigger.
  
  She was quicker, crossing the space between them in a heartbeat to close her hand over his on the gun.
  
  “Not happening.” Her voice was soft, but the crack of bones breaking as she tore the pistol from his grasp loud. “So not happening.”
  
  He screamed when she twisted the broken wrist and dug her fingers in to grind the edges of the bones together.
  
  “Key code for the cages.”
  
  Her demand was little less than a growl and she started to haul him toward the central control panel for the cage locking system beside a door up ahead. It wasn’t the one she’d come through on the way down, nor the one to the cage room. Fuck knew what was through it, and she didn’t have time to go see.
  
  Pausing with her struggling armful, she kicked the pistol on the floor toward a cage with a Blood in it. He held a hand to his side, blood seeping over his fingers, but his eyes were bright, unclouded by either pain or oncoming death.
  
  “Cover the door,” she ordered. “If it’s human”—Not one of us—“kill it.”
  
  The Blood picked up the weapon and nodded, setting himself against the bars of the cage and covering the door with a grim gaze.
  
  “Please, don’t hurt me…oh, God, don’t hurt me.”
  
  The guard yammered and whimpered while Toni dragged him along. His booted feet kicked and scrabbled at the floor as he tried to get purchase but, even taller than her, he was human, and no match for her strength.
  
  They reached the control station and she threw him across it. He bounced, pathetic cries transformed into a bellow of rage, and came at her, slamming a hard kick into her thigh. Pain flared along her leg, but didn’t hamper her reactions. Her hand was a blur of speed, she punched him across the face, the blow spinning him around to fall across the small desk again.
  
  On him in a second, she flipped him over and pinned him to the desk. One hand curled around his throat, she shoved a hard knee between his thighs and into his groin. He gasped, eyes bugging out when she pressed against his balls. Just enough to cause pain but not enough to incapacitate him.
  
  “Control code. Now.”
  
  She lifted her free hand and stroked her index finger over the soft flesh under his eye. Her skin parted with a fleshy snick as she extended a single claw. It wasn’t a fingernail, not really, it was more a bony talon hidden beneath the nail. Extensible and retractable, the three inch length shouldn’t by rights have fit in the space between the end of her finger and the first knuckle but it did, and she’d long ago stopped questioning the specifics of her change.
  
  He stilled at the sight of the claw. Throughout their fight she hadn’t flashed them or her fangs for one simple reason: one scratch and the shit the guards pumped into their veins to stop them getting infected would kill him faster than she could. Didn’t mean she couldn’t threaten him with it. She’d heard it was a horrible way to die.
  
  “P-please…you don’t have…”
  
  “Code.”
  
  Her talon stroked along his eyelashes and he whimpered in fear, babbling something. Toni leaned in. “What? Louder, man.”
  
  “Five-eight-six-five-one-five-Charlie,” he reeled off and yanked his head to the side the instant she lifted her talon. At least he hadn’t pissed himself, which she’d been expecting. On reflection, perhaps it hadn’t been such a good idea to shove her knee into his balls. She reached over to punch the combination into the keypad, hearing the dull tone and then a click when the cages opened.
  
  “Good boy.” Her voice held a faint note of praise as she moved and let him slump to the floor. “If you want to live. Run.”
  
  He whimpered and scuttled off. She didn't bother to see which way, it was no longer relevant.
  
  It was show time.
  
  So why was nothing happening?
  
  The cage doors remained where they were, open half an inch. There was no mad rush for freedom, as though the occupants didn’t trust the evidence of their own eyes. Didn’t trust that she wasn’t some agent of the Project here to torture them with the promise of freedom only to snatch it away again.
  
  Another roar from the next room had Toni’s head whipping around. Darce was taking a beating out there and these pussies were scared of their own damn shadows.
  
  “Out!” she yelled, running along the first row of cages and flinging the doors wide. “You’re free. Get out…”
  
  Another roar from the crowd and she saw red.
  
  “There’s a man in there being beaten to death. Like this one—”
  
  She slammed a cage door shut, the Lycan within deader than a dodo, the scent of death clear from across the room. She spun around and spotted a dead Blood in another cage. Her hands caught the edge of the metal and with a vicious twist of her trunk, she slammed that door too.
  
  “And this one. And that one, and him over there. They’re killing us and they’re fucking laughing about it. Now move you fucking assholes. Without bars holding us in, what are they?”
  
  The door nearest her edged open, the Lycan within pausing a second before he pushed it farther and ducked down to step out. He straightened up and turned to fix her with a solid amber gaze. He still wore the remains of a pair of combats, but the rest of his uniform and his boots were long gone. Vicious claw marks racked across his stomach, the pink lines almost healed now, and other cuts and bruises scattered over his heavily-muscled body said that he’d survived a couple of turns in the ring.
  
  “Nothing,” he growled in answer. “They’re nothing. They’re…prey.”
  
  “Prey…prey…prey…”
  
  The call was taken up as Blood and Lycan alike scrambled from their cages, retribution ringing in their raised voices. They streamed past Toni and through into the main room. She paused for a moment, long enough for the cheers of the crowd turn to screams. Feral roars and gunfire soon joined the mix.
  
  Nodding to herself, she headed the other way to the last corridor. If they had recording equipment, then that feed had to be going somewhere. Which meant there was a control room. She just had to find it.
  
  Steps silent, she headed for the last door, stopping for a second by the still-warm corpse of the first guard. Her gaze swept over the crumbled form before zeroing in on his sidearm. She reached down and snapped the retainer, palming the weapon. A quick movement later and it was locked and loaded. Holding it down at her side, hidden by her thigh, she pushed the third door open and stepped through.
  
  This corridor was identical to the others, but with a slight upward incline that pulled at the back of her calves. Blood decorated the floor, old by the smell, and one splatter bore trolley wheel marks. They’d brought more victims of, or for, the ring up here.
  
  She trotted along the corridor, her breathing loud in her ears. With each step farther away from the noise in the cage room her unease increased. She shouldn’t have left Darce in the ring…should have gone back for him.
  
  “For fucks sake, stop it,” she growled. Darce Foster wasn’t some lost kid she had to protect. He was, had been, a highly-trained soldier. A rebellious poster boy for spec ops with devastating good looks and a kill record off the chart. And that had been before they’d given him the rabid wolf upgrade and permanent anger management issues.
  
  A footfall warned her a moment before someone stepped around the corner. Four someones, all men, naked to the waist and covered in wounds and scars.
  
  Toni slowed to a stop, a hiss rattling in the back of her throat as every instinct she had went bat-shit crazy. She snapped the pistol up and aimed for the guy in the lead.
  
  “Freeze right there.”
  
  They didn’t stop, just kept on walking and the blood froze in Toni’s veins. Her instincts screamed that they were wrong—abominations—and now her eyes picked up the visual clues. They walked almost normally, so very near perfect for human that it almost fooled her. It would have, if she’d been human. But her vision worked differently, processed images faster. If she concentrated, she could see things in a freaky version of slow motion.
  
  Like now, letting her see the rapid fire jerking movements these guys made, the spasms so fast they were almost imperceptible. But she saw them. Caught the motions when they fanned out, the three at the back scuttling sideways like spiders. She frowned, her logical mind trying to fill the gap with a normal side step but it didn’t quite work. They weren’t human. They weren’t Lycan. Or Blood.
  
  Which left one option.
  
  Reanimates.
  
  She focused on the face of the guy in front, her finger taking the trigger down to first pressure, ready to pull it all the way and blow his face through the back of his head. A face which came into focus. She paused as recognition kicked in and cut through her instinctive reaction to reveal the cutie driver from the hospital attack.
  
  “Fredericks?”
  
  He snapped a hand up—and the small group slowed to a stop—and looked at her. The frown between his brows matched hers.
  
  “Major? Major Fielding?”
  
  She lowered the pistol a little, still wary. It was Fredericks, no doubt about it. Part of her team for the hospital clean up, the last time she’d seen him had been the asylum before they’d parted ways, she to track Foster and he with the main force after the rest of the Lycan team. Her gaze slid sideways, checking out the faces behind him and her heart sank. Perkins, Fletcher and Kelwood. All alive up until a few days ago. Correction: all human up until a few days ago, because what they were now… She hadn’t a fucking clue.
  
  “Crap. What the hell happened?”
  
  Fletcher shrugged and between one blink and the next, he was two steps closer. Toni started, half bringing up the pistol again but made herself hold steady. She knew better than to discriminate on the basis of a person’s humanity, or lack thereof. But hell, that was some scary shit.
  
  With speed like that, they could overpower a Blood or a Lycan with ease. Now the little scene she and Darce had witnessed in the ring made sense. From the runt of the Projects experiments, the Reanimate line had emerged the victor, able to kick the butts of the other two lines.
  
  And fuck, they looked good. The virus had dropped weight off already rangy frames and added muscle. Shitloads of it. They were lean, mean and ripped as fuck. Whatever you wanted to call it, zombies should not look hot enough that any red-blooded female felt an instant need to jump their bones. It was a predatory alteration so clever it was almost poetic. Why stalk your prey when you could get it to come to you, all hot and eager?
  
  “Fredericks…what happened to you guys?” she prompted, not liking the way he looked at her. To the rest of the world she was like Friday the Thirteenth and the Second Coming all rolled into one. To him, she was probably lunch.
  
  Fredericks shook his head and focused in on her again. A sad smile curved his lips. Her gaze flicked down for a second and she winced. He was covered in wounds. None of which seemed to be either bleeding or bothering him.
  
  “You know this place. Live to serve, even when you’re not. Alive that is. Especially when you’re not alive. As for what happened… We got hit by the Lycans, then brought back to base.”
  
  He took another step forward, the smile turning. She backed up a step, then realized her back had hit the wall. How had he gotten so close so fast?
  
  “They didn’t wait for us to croak it. Kelwood was awake when they got us. Said it was some kind of new blend. Gotta have been—because there’s way more going on here than normal.”
  
  He tapped at his temple and took the last step into range. His hand closed over the pistol and took it away. A small voice yammered in the back of her mind as Toni watched him, let him. What the hell was wrong with her? She couldn’t move, like she was hypnotized. Like something deep within her, something dark and dangerous and not human, recognized him and what he was. Something all the way dead, rather than near dead like her.
  
  “The other guys down here say they’ve been using a new strain of RA to fuel this place…” He motioned to himself and the men with him, a look of disgust on his face. “Using us to… No, you don’t want to know.”
  
  “The other guys? There are more of you?”
  
  He stilled, his expression blank, and she knew where some of those wounds had come from. “Not anymore.”
  
  She couldn’t help it. Empathy and sorrow welled up inside her, knocking out all her bad-ass bitch reactions as she put a hand on his arm. He snapped his head around, that freaky-sharp movement making her jump and then catch her breath. But not as much as the look in his eyes did.
  
  In them was sorrow and anger. And something so alien her heart stilled. He stepped in to crowd her against the wall. His hand snapped out, closed around her throat. She stilled. Freeze, flight or fight. All her survival instincts were triggered with a mere look. These new Reanimates…they were dangerous. Way more dangerous than normal RAs.
  
  “So pretty, even for a Blood.” His deep voice pulled at her, pulled at the virus wrapped around her cells. But it was a wrong attraction, like the virus reacting to him, not the woman. “Always thought so…”
  
  He slid his hand up, forcing her chin higher, and his thumb stroked over the line of her jaw. She kept eye contact, looking for the slightest indication he was about to rip her throat out. She’d seen what they could do in the ring…
  
  “C’mon boss, we gotta get out of here.” Fletcher shifted behind Fredericks. “Take care of the Blood and let’s get gone.”
  
  “No!” Fredericks snarled over his shoulder, slamming his free hand into the wall by Toni’s head. “We’re not hurting her. S’not her fault…and we aren’t the monsters they turned us into. We have a choice.”
  
  “No. You’re not monsters.” She saw her chance and clamped the back of his neck. Made him look at her. “None of us are. We don’t need to fight each other. It’s us against them. Against the Project.”
  
  He shook his head.
  
  “You. Not us. We’re too much of a liability. Only four of us left with the new virus. Kelwood heard ’em talking. It’s all they had left, synthesized from the blood of a successful subject. So if they don’t have us…”
  
  “They can’t make more of you.” She nodded in understanding. They were a weapon, pure and simple. And one she couldn’t afford to let fall into Project hands again.
  
  “Go on then, and no chomping on any civilians.”
  
  Her lips quirked as he let her go. She stepped back, adding bravado she didn’t feel to her voice.
  
  “Or I’ll have to track you down and kick your ass.”
  
  A crooked smile split his lips, showing a brief flash of straight white teeth before he winked.
  
  “Darlin’, I’d look forward to it. But all we want to do is disappear somewhere they can’t find us. Can’t use us anymore. Die in peace and let this shit die with us.”
  
  She nodded, watching as the four men walked down the corridor. Fredericks paused when the rest turned the corner and looked over his shoulder. He lifted his hand into a salute. One soldier to another.
  
  With a heavy heart and a grim sense of determination, Toni returned the salute. Then turned and carried on up the corridor. Now she knew there were no more weird-ass RAs to run into, blood was going to be spilled.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Thirteen
  
  That thought, the thought of blood being spilled and vengeance, wrapped up in the violence only a Blood was capable of, sustained Toni as she carried on along the corridor. It gave way to a larger area, opening up to reveal another holding room.
  
  Long and thin, it looked seconded from its original purpose. It looked like a waiting room. She turned a semicircle. Yeah, there was an old coffee table and chairs stacked up in the corner, plastic, metal and cheap fabric with the desolate air of abandonment lay thick over them. A magazine lay underneath, pages curled with age, surrounded by dust and dirt.
  
  The cages had been crammed up in the other end of the room. Jostled in together and packed like sardines, they’d all had their doors ripped off. The scent of blood hit her when she ventured farther. Wrong blood. Corrupt. Black and dead. She held her breath, everything within her rebelling against the smell, and forced herself forward. All but four cages held a body, or the remains of one. Something long dead and rotted. Decayed.
  
  She slapped her hands over her mouth and tried not to breath, forcing herself to look. These were the RAs she’d seen in the ring, they had to be. She looked closer. Yeah…in the corner cage there was a skull, two more and a thigh bone over in another. And in the one nearest the door opposite the one she’d entered was a foot—just one, like Cinderella had taken the shoe but left something more important.
  
  She walked down the center of the room, not bothering to check any of the bodies. They were dead, including the couple of guards by the door. Fredericks and his men were thorough, she’d give them that. She suppressed a shiver and headed for the door opposite. The broadcast room had to be back here somewhere. Wouldn’t make sense for it to be too far from the ring.
  
  It took her a few minutes in rabbit warren corridors covered in dust, tracking the only scents that weren’t at least a decade old to find the broadcast center. Brave assholes, keeping the new RAs between them and the ring and—more importantly—the lifts to the surface. Having seen what they were capable of, she’d have wanted them way below her. Encased in concrete. She wasn’t sure even that would stop them.
  
  On the last corridor, she hit pay dirt. A blue rectangle glowed from under the one at the end.
  
  “Bingo.”
  
  She broke into a light trot, reaching the door in seconds. How long had it been since she’d trashed the holding room and opened the cages? She didn’t know, but time was running out. Hand on the door handle, she pressed down slowly. The latch gave with a small click, barely audible to her hearing, and the door swung open silently to reveal a hive of activity.
  
  “Fuck, we’re four minutes behind and heading up to four ten. Speed it up guys, or the Colonel’ll have friggin’ kittens. You know the paying customers like their blood and guts on time.”
  
  Screens filled the far wall, all showing Darce and Steele’s fight in brutal Technicolor. Three men sat in front of the desks, hands swift on keyboards while they sliced and diced the feeds from what looked like three different cameras.
  
  “Rob, pick up the blood splatter from camera three on time segment five fourteen,” the one in the middle of the trio, obviously the man in charge by his body language, ordered. “Overlay in with the fall in slow-mo…then cut to Steele’s snarl.”
  
  Toni winced as Darce took a heavy right hook to the jaw and went down. Hair hung over his face, but the camera zeroed in on the blood dripping onto the floor.
  
  “Catch the blood guys…ratings go up the more of the red stuff we show ’em.”
  
  Her eyes narrowed. Even with the obvious time delay on the feeds, there should be Lycans and Bloods tearing up the place like teenagers at their first college party pretty soon. Her gaze cut to a smaller monitor set off to one side. It showed a different view than the one on the main screens. The sound was off, probably to avoid distracting the workers.
  
  The screen was half black, half white. She frowned. Was it off? Then she turned her head and realized the camera was on its side and she was looking at the floor. Clawed feet flashed in front of the camera, then something else. One of the guards dragged, wild-eyed and struggling, by his feet across the floor. He screamed silently, mouth stretched wide and clutching anything which came within reach, even the camera. Then he was yanked clear, disappearing from view.
  
  “Okay…yeah, good. Focus on his face. Then get Steele coming in for the kill. Focus on the claws…”
  
  She turned her attention back to the three humans. They were so engrossed in their work that they hadn’t seen her. As she closed the door behind her, a commotion started up in the crowd on screen. The camera wavered, the operator distracted, then a scream cut in over Steele’s snarl.
  
  “Yeah…what the—fuck!”
  
  Taking advantage of their surprise as they stared, dumbstruck, at the events on-screen, she moved in. But the guy on the left turned and caught sight of her. She hissed when he whirled and went for his desk drawer. Gun. She could smell the oil from here. Covering the rest of the distance within a heartbeat, she slammed the drawer shut on his hand and smiled at the sound of bone crunching. Palming the back of his head, she introduced his face to the desk. Blood splattered over the smooth surface and he slid off the desk to a crumpled heap on the floor.
  
  “Holy crap!”
  
  The two other men scrambled out of their chairs. One went for a gun on the other side of the desk, and the other for the door. Body and blood singing with adrenaline and the sheer joy of combat, she grabbed the first thing she could reach. A coffee mug went flying, hurled with lethal accuracy at the back of the fleeing man’s head. It hit with a clunk, dark liquid cascading over the man as he fell. Toni snorted. She’d always said the coffee on base was kill or cure.
  
  Rounding on the last man, she found him pointing the gun at her with shaky hands.
  
  “Stay right there, or else!”
  
  His voice shook more than his hands. She took a step toward him.
  
  “Or else what?”
  
  “I—I’ll kill you.”
  
  “Too late, sunshine. Been dead for months.”
  
  Heart thundering so loud that she could hear it, he pulled at the trigger. The gun didn’t fire. Toni grinned and smacked it out of his hand, closing her other around his throat, claws and all. “You forgot the safety catch. Now, talk.”
  
  Perhaps seeing his own death in her eyes, the guy started to babble.
  
  “We-we just work here. Take the feeds, edit and stream them out. I dunno where, we get given the routing data for each session before we come down here. T-that’s all, I swear!”
  
  Toni growled and slammed him against the wall. “What about the ‘ratings’? Is that what this is to you? Enter-fucking-tainment? What about those who die?”
  
  “What about them?” He struggled against her hold, so she shoved him a little higher. Couldn’t kill him yet, not when she needed information. “They’re just animals that would have been put down anyway. Might as well make some money out of them.”
  
  She paused, fury making her muscles freeze even as they ached. “Money? This is all about money?”
  
  The guy laughed, a gurgling sound with her hand wrapped around his throat.
  
  “Of course it’s about money. It’s always about money. Do you know how much we all make from this little gig?” He pulled at her hand on his throat and looked at her again. “I’ve never seen a Blood female up close before. You don’t look as dangerous as they say.”
  
  “Oh, I’m not dangerous.” She leaned in until her mouth almost touched his. “I’m fucking lethal,” she whispered and ran her lips down his neck, hearing the blood in his veins singing to her.
  
  “Oh, fuck yeah.” He groaned, arousal and lust rolling from his skin in sickening ways.
  
  Toni smiled. She had him right where she wanted him. Then she snapped his neck.
  
  Minutes later she emerged from the broadcast office, leaving a trail of sparking monitors and trashed electronic equipment in her wake. She’d managed to cull the address of a management company and a domain name, but there had been nothing useful on the computers. Nothing that she could get to, anyway. She wasn’t the most able when it came to computers and the internet, she never had been. Smartphones? Way too many buttons.
  
  But a physical address—that was something she could use.
  
  She stepped out into the corridor at the same moment all the lights snapped off. Amusement rolled through her. Standard operating procedure. Yeah, like that was going to stop any of the Project’s creatures. Vampires and werewolves—Monsters of Myth and Legend. Typical Project. Perhaps they’d send down the traditional RAs too, before the human forces. Something to give the guys down here an appetite before the main course.
  
  She made it past the new RA holding area, through the corridor where she’d met Fredericks and his men, and almost to the main holding room before she ran into trouble. A Lycan burst through the doors ahead, fully shifted, his eyes amber and feral as he bounded toward her.
  
  She flattened herself against the wall just in time to avoid being flattened by rampaging wolf. But he wasn’t interested in her, racing right by. The doors crashed open behind him. Smoke grenades followed, bouncing once, twice, three times over the shiny, industrial floor. One rolled to a stop in front of her, spewing noxious purple-gray smoke into the air. She coughed, smoke stinging her eyes and lungs. Soldiers in gas-masks poured through the door and the world took a sharp tilt to the left. She stumbled, realizing she had one shoulder against the wall and was sliding down the vertical surface.
  
  What the fuck?
  
  Shots fired, the muzzle flash blinding her. She reached the deck, bracing herself against the floor. Behind her, the Lycan yelped, and something heavy crashed into the wall. Poor fucker. She lifted the pistol, but her hand wavered in the air. She blinked, mouth open, wiggling her jaw to make her ears pop and relieve some of the pressure. She tried to aim at the shadowy figures which emerged from the smoke. It was no good. No sooner had she focused on one figure, then it split into three, all dancing around her.
  
  Fuck. What was in that stuff?
  
  It couldn’t be the usual sedative. She’d led most of the suppression missions so she’d long since built up immunity to the stuff. Fire ate at her lungs and her eyes streamed with tears. She coughed, doubled over on the floor while her body tried to expel the smoke choking her, lungs and all.
  
  “One down. Someone pick the Blood bitch up. The colonel will want to see her.”
  
  
  
  
  
  The base was locking down for the evening and quiet. As a group, the wolves hunkered in the undergrowth and watched the activities. They’d parked the truck up off the road and hidden it behind scrub brush. From the patrol notes they’d recovered, the vehicle wasn’t expected back until the early hours of the morning. Perfect. The base would be on the graveyard shift, and if they picked their time right the guards would be sleepy but not close enough to the end of shift to be alert and looking forward to changeover.
  
  Sanders lay on his back, looking up at the sky. They had enough eyes on the place to know whether a mouse broke cover. They didn’t need him watching too. Idly, he counted the stars but his attention wasn’t on the task. Instead, it was on Leon, lying less than ten feet away—that lean, hard body on the same dirt as him.
  
  Sanders lifted his hands and studied them. They were large, with a wide palm and broad, blunt-tipped fingers. Working hands, his dad used to call them, before Sanders had joined up. Killing hands more like. Reaching inside, he opened the door between himself and his wolf, thinking about sex and feeding the creature a bolt of pure lust. Not Richards. Even Sanders could see letting his change become dependent on someone—anyone else—was a disaster waiting to happen…but pure, raw lust. Fucking in its most base, primeval form. That worked.
  
  He watched the change in his hands. Skin slid, sprouting fur as bones snapped and popped with what had once been sickening sounds. Now, they were normal, even verging on comforting. His fingers elongated and changed shape, his fingernails growing with a speed any manicurist would envy and sharpening into hardened claws. Fur spread over the skin, racing halfway up his forearms.
  
  “Hey, you’re getting good at that,” Nic said with approval, smiling at him over her shoulder.
  
  “Yeah. Had a bit of a breakthrough.”
  
  He couldn’t help the pride lacing his voice. He’d figured it out. Him, Sanders. The runt. Oh, none of the others had ever said anything, but he’d felt that way anyway. He was the smallest in the pack when shifted, and had been the slowest to master the change. Hell, Jack had even said they’d been surprised he’d survived the infection—he’d been out of it for three days after they’d all been injected.
  
  So sure were they he was going to die, the medics hadn’t even kept him under observation in the lab. Instead, he’d been thrown into a corner of the barracks to shiver and sweat through the fever with only the pack to watch him. Survive or die. Rule of the jungle. And he’d just kicked its ass big time.
  
  Over to the side, Leon grunted and hefted himself to his feet. Sanders reversed the change, letting his hands revert to normal while the sergeant disappeared into the scrub-land. No doubt for a piss.
  
  Yeah, Leon always seemed to have a new girl on his arm, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t…maybe bi? Then there was that look. It must have meant something, surely? Sanders worried at his lower lip and contemplated going after the bigger man, the expression in Nic’s eyes when she spoke of her feelings for Jack uppermost in his mind. Time was short, and each battle could be their last.
  
  He had to find out.
  
  Muscles galvanized with both fear and the need to know, Sanders rolled to his feet in one lithe movement and strolled the way Leon had gone. The straggly bushes parted under his hand as he followed Leon’s scent trail. The wind shifted for a second, bringing the fullness of Leon’s scent and the sharp stink of urine, but just as quickly it shifted again. Sanders slowed his steps. Not too fast. He didn’t want to disturb the guy taking a piss.
  
  The bushes ahead rustled and Leon emerged into view. He paused for a second when he registered Sanders’s presence in the darkness.
  
  “Hey Joe.” His shoulders relaxed a little in recognition. “Might wanna go on up a bit farther. More cover. You know what Nic’s like and I dread to think what the boss-man’d do if one of us flashed Lilly.”
  
  Sanders snorted. The pack spent a good proportion of their time naked, but since he’d found his mate, the alpha had turned into a prude and fussed about them all being dressed around Lilly.
  
  “Mind you,” Leon carried on. “You’d probably be okay. It’s not like you’da meant to do it, what with you being… Might save you an ass-re—ahhh…ummm…might save you from him ripping you a new one.”
  
  If Sanders wasn’t so keyed up, he’d have chuckled at Leon’s verbal acrobatics to avoid the phrase “ass-reaming”. As it was, he managed a small smile, ducking his head and looked up at Leon through his lashes. How could one man be so frigging hot?
  
  “Yeah, there is that.”
  
  He paused and lifted his chin, looking directly at Leon. God, it wasn’t fair. Leon had such gorgeous lips. Full and bow-shaped, Sanders ached to claim them. Taste them. Ached to nibble along the full lower curve before nipping and pulling it into his mouth to suck on. His brain made another leap. Those lips wrapped around his cock, his fingers tangled in Leon’s hair while he bobbed up and down, sliding along his…
  
  “Joe? You okay, man?”
  
  Leon’s voice brought him back to the present with a crash. Sanders dragged a breath in, dispelling the fantasy roughly as he looked at the object of his desire. Now or never. You didn’t know if you didn’t ask.
  
  “Leon.”
  
  “That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”
  
  Okay. Jokey. Jokey was good. Sanders scuffed at the dirt with a bare foot for a second before he pulled himself together. Alpha male. Be the man.
  
  “Okay…you know I’m…”
  
  Leon beat him to it. “You prefer dudes. Yeah, I know man. It’s cool. I know most…yeah, well there are some assholes. But you’re pack. We ain’t got no problem with it.”
  
  Fuck. No. He didn’t want the solidarity speech. The “you’re different but we’re cool. We got your back” thing.
  
  “It’s not that. I—I…” He swallowed to moisten his throat and went for broke. “Leon…I like you. Like really like you. And the looks you’ve been giving me…”
  
  He trailed off, aware that Leon was looking at him in dawning horror. His heart stuttered, then stopped and all hope crumbled into dust.
  
  “I’m sorry,” he babbled, stumbling away. How could he have been such an idiot? “Forget it. I—I shouldn’t have said anything.”
  
  “Fuck…no. Joe, wait!” Leon called out after him, but he shoved through the bushes the way he’d come, desperate to get away.
  
  He raced back along the path, only slowing when he reached where the pack was hidden. He slowed his pace, striding across to where Nic lay and hitting the deck in a bone-jarring flop. She looked at him, concern written over her features but he shook his head. Screw this, screw fucking men. If he could, he’d go straight. Nic was much easier to frigging work out.
  
  Leon emerged from the darkness to loom over him but Sanders turned on his front, ignoring the bigger man.
  
  “Oh come on, Joe. That’s real mature—” Leon started, but was cut off by Jack.
  
  “Quiet. Something’s going on down there.”
  
  All attention snapped to the base below them, which was lit up like a Christmas tree. Alarms blared and guards streamed from the buildings. Within seconds the numbers on the perimeter doubled, grim-faced soldiers looking out into the darkness and waiting for an attack. Instantly, Sanders dismissed thoughts of the pack saddling up and storming the base in their stolen truck. They’d only get cut down by the machine guns in the towers.
  
  “What the fuck is going on?” Jack muttered, using the binoculars to get a closer look. Without the visual aid, Sanders squinted and tried to bring more details of the base below into focus. No hordes of anyone storming the gates, so he shifted his attention to the labs. Nothing doing there either. They looked quiet and unoccupied, locked down for the night even though he knew they wouldn’t be. There would be experiments running—always were. Some of the guards milled about in between the buildings, small like ants, confusion evident in their movements. Around them, everything looked to be quiet. So what had triggered the alarms?
  
  The answer came seconds later. A large explosion split the air as one of the hangars at the back of the base erupted into flames.
  
  “Shit…”
  
  Jack fiddled with the binoculars, bringing them into focus but Sanders could see pretty clearly what was going on without any visual help. The doors and windows of the hangar were out, smoke and flame billowing forth. Figures poured from every possible opening. Running from the doors, and leaping from every window, even those high up on the side of the hangar walls. Some didn’t make it—the fall too much for them—and lay unmoving. Others were cut down from behind, claws flashing and feral howls indicating revenge had been taken on the human guards. Three more explosions rocked the hangar, blowing the main doors open.
  
  “I thought the hangars were all disused,” Jack muttered. “What the fuck are they doing…wait, hold on. We got runners.”
  
  Sanders winced when the gun-towers went into operation, turning from the non-existent threat outside to that within the perimeter, the fleeing Lycans and Bloods right in their sights. The plink-plink-plink of the bigger guns firing was closely followed by the booms when the shots hit, drowning out all other sounds. Covered the howls and screams of pain as Lycans, Bloods and humans alike were cut down. That was the Project all over. They couldn’t run the risk of any of the subjects getting loose into the human population, so if there were any humans in the line of fire, then it was tough shit.
  
  Sanders couldn’t bring himself to feel sorry for them. If they hadn’t known what they’d signed on for, then they soon found out when they got on base. Those that chose to stay only perpetuated the Project machine.
  
  He tracked two runners—one a Blood and one a Lycan. The differences between the two were obvious. The long, loping run of the Lycan with its animalistic bursts of speed contrasted with the smoother, more graceful gait of the Blood next to it. Then his eye was drawn to a different movement…
  
  “Whoa. Jack, third type.” He waved to attract the alpha’s attention. “Middle gun tower. One o’clock and closing in fast.”
  
  “Got it.” Jack’s deep rumble answered him. “Holy shit, what is that? Never seen anything move that way.”
  
  Sanders shook his head in the darkness, awed by what he was seeing. Jack was right. He’d never seen anything like it either. Not a run and not a lope—which cut out both Blood and Lycan. And one thing was for certain: it sure as hell wasn’t human.
  
  The machine gun on the nearest tower fired, taking out the Lycan in an explosion of blood and guts. A pair of legs managed a step or two more, like they were unaware that the rest of their body was gone, then they too dropped. The strange figure slid to the side to avoid the hail of bullets, in a movement almost arachnid in nature.
  
  Sanders frowned. That didn’t make sense. What the hell was the Project breeding now? Fucking spidermen?
  
  The hangar chose that moment to explode again, but it was a smaller blast than before. The exodus from the doors and windows had stopped now, the building surrounded by emergency vehicles putting out the flames. Armed squads swarmed around them, through the doors that were clear. They didn’t seem interested in the fleeing hordes, which meant that whatever they were doing in there was more important.
  
  “Got another one. Coming up on the left flank.” Jack kept up a running commentary as he tracked this new development. “Whatever they are, they’re fast as—holy shit.”
  
  No one needed to ask what he meant. A collective gasp ran though the concealed Lycans when one of the figures made a flying leap onto the side of the tower. It scaled the wall in a skittering motion with the sort of ease a fly would envy. A second later, the orange flares of muzzle flash lit up the turret.
  
  “Crap, they got him.” The disappointment that rang in Jack’s voice found an echo in Sanders. Just for once it would have been nice for someone to stick it to the Project, shafting them in the same manner that they shafted pretty much everyone they came across.
  
  The MK-19 started up again but instead of more runners dropping, the legs on one of the other towers disintegrated. The platform at the top remained suspended for long moments, like an outcrop of rock in an old Road-Runner cartoon.
  
  Then the firing stopped, a pause as metal groaned. The groan became a scream. The platform listed to the side, and then toppled over, taking the remaining legs and most of the fence underneath it down too.
  
  “Yes!” Sanders fist-pumped the air, a move echoed by Nic. Without the tower stopping them, the fleeing prisoners stormed the remaining fence. It went down under the weight of bodies as the machine gun in the middle tower sounded again. The tower on the other side exploded.
  
  “Whoever that is, whatever the fuck they are,” Jack said, standing to get a better look at the carnage now being reaped on the base forces as Project guards tried to retake the perimeter. “I like them already.”
  
  The pack watched while men and women, Bloods and Lycans alike, fled through the broken fences. Jack threw back his head and howled, a feral sound of triumph and freedom—one picked up by others as the escapees fled into the hills.
  
  Both invitation and statement, if any of them wanted to find the pack, they could easily track them. Especially Darce—if he was among them. Sanders clambered to the top of a nearby rock, scanning the running figures until they disappeared into the darkness. Looking for the familiar form of their lieutenant.
  
  “Incoming,” Richards muttered, the warning only half a second before two men stepped into view.
  
  Neither of them were Foster.
  
  Neither of them were human, Blood or Lycan.
  
  Sanders slid down from his perch. This was about to get interesting.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Fourteen
  
  The pack fanned out, tension snapping taut between them as they considered the new arrivals. They were the two runners—that Sanders was sure of. They had to be. And whatever else he’d expected, it hadn’t been this.
  
  They looked normal. Almost. No, fuck that. They looked like something out of the damn Louvre. Like they should have been carved in marble with a frigging fig leaf covering the essentials. Sanders had never been into bodybuilding, not really. When human, he’d been too lean and as a Lycan, there was no point. But he had always been into the bodybuilders themselves, and he knew a perfect physique when he saw one.
  
  Or two.
  
  He hadn’t realized he’d drifted closer until Jack cleared his throat in warning. Sanders’s eyes widened and he stopped, shock coursing through his system. He’d almost come within range of the one on the left, who was watching him with a cold, assessing eye.
  
  “Nice work on the towers,” Jack commented.
  
  His posture, like that of the rest of the pack, was loose and relaxed, but only an idiot would take it to mean non-threatening. Menace and power hung in the air like smog, clinging to the Lycans as they held their changes back. They could shift and be furry within a heartbeat, Jack probably faster. But having seen the new guys in action, Sanders wasn’t sure it would be enough. There was no fear in their eyes, no concern even though they faced down nearly an entire pack. Lycans had been considered one of the Project’s most dangerous creatures, so to be looked at like they were prey was disconcerting.
  
  The one at the front shrugged. “Thanks. It was necessary.”
  
  Sanders narrowed his eyes, noting more about them. They had a stillness, a wrongness, which pulled at all his instincts even though something attracted him like a magnet. His blood on fire, body on edge. All he wanted to do was wrap himself around one of them and…
  
  “Shit.”
  
  He jerked himself back from the edge. Nic shoved herself between him and the object of his fascination. She didn’t seem affected, glaring at the two. Pain lanced through Sanders’s arm, and he looked down to find her claws buried in the muscle. Blood oozed around the punctures but he didn’t mind. It helped him to focus, dispel the strange attraction the pair held over him.
  
  The wind changed, buffeting the two from behind and their scent washed over the pack. Sanders gasped. The scent like a rich perfume even though his mind rejected the smell as wrong. The scent was dead. That fleshy, weird scent the newly dead got. Not yet corrupt—but just after death, before the rigor mortis set in. They smelled like RAs before the things began to rot. With a side of…spider?
  
  “Shiiiiiit.”
  
  At least three wolves backed up, wariness written into every line of their bodies.
  
  “What are you?”
  
  The two men hadn’t moved, despite the clear threat from the fanned out wolves, but the leader—for want of a better word—swiveled his gaze at Jack.
  
  “What do you think we are?”
  
  Jack didn’t pull punches. “You smell like freaking Reanimates. But the last time I checked, you guys didn’t have quite so much going on up top. Which means the Project haven’t quit playing God yet. I’m Harper, you are?”
  
  The RA smiled. From the remains of his fatigues, he’d been military, rather than one of the admin staff on base.
  
  But still, the use of rank now seemed pointless. Rank had devolved into something else entirely. Into pack and other groupings. Into alphas and betas. Leadership was now determined by power and ability, not by a human based system or time in service. One of the other packs—alpha five, from memory—the section Corporal had emerged the other side of the conversion as the alpha.
  
  “I’m Fredericks. This is Perkins. And yeah, we’re Reanimates. Stronger, faster…better. You could say we’re the T2 of the Reanimate world. They call us ‘self-aware Reanimates’. Some dumbfuck nicknamed us SARAs. Can’t say I’m happy about the female moniker but shit happens.” He sighed and ran a hand through close-cropped dark hair, anger and something else apparent on his face. “I know who you are. We were sent to St. Mary’s to bring you guys in. Needless to say, we didn’t manage it.”
  
  Nic’s sharp intake of breath echoed the surprise and recognition surging through Sanders. If they were among the troops who’d been sent in to take them down…
  
  Fredericks’s lips quirked into a bitter little smile.
  
  “Yeah, you got us. Then the Project fucked us over. The first we can forgive. We were doing our jobs, you were fighting for survival. I get it man. The second…there’s no forgiving the Project for what it’s done.”
  
  Jack jerked his head toward the base. All those on foot had made it through the fences now, and the guards were busily trying to rectify the situation. A bit like locking the barn door after the horse had bolted. Of course, it made trying to get into the base a bad idea.
  
  Sanders nibbled his lip. Hopefully Darce had gotten out.
  
  “What’s going on down there? We saw the hangar go up. Thought that side was abandoned.”
  
  The low snarl from Fredericks took them all back, but not as much as the sudden movement of his head. It wasn’t a shake, or a nod, but a rapid jerk up and to the side. Like he was cricking his neck. But faster, almost too fast to see. Like a DVD on the fritz, flicking back and forth between frames. Sanders narrowed his eyes. That wasn’t a human movement. No fucking way. What had they put in the mix with these guys?
  
  “What isn’t going on?” The second man, Perkins, spoke up. “There’s an underground section under the hangars. When they’re done up top with subjects, they move ’em down there. Make ’em fight in cages…have you ever seen a Blood and a Lycan forced to fight to the death while the guards record it? Fuckers.” He spat on the ground in disgust.
  
  “Cages? Recording…” Jack paused and looked down at the flaming ruin of the hangar. Emergency crews still thronged about it, trying to put the flames out. “Holy shit. All of them?”
  
  Perkins and Fredericks nodded, their faces grim. Jack didn’t ask what their roles had been. For that Sanders was grateful. Given the standard RAs’ proclivity for eating their victims, it didn’t make for pleasant thoughts. Not at all.
  
  “The recordings were transmitted somewhere. From what we picked up, it was a money-making scam with the guys at the top. Then one of yours got in the ring and the shit hit the fan.”
  
  Jack stilled. The entire pack stiffened.
  
  “One of ours? You saw Foster? Did he get clear?”
  
  Fredericks nodded, but his expression was tight. “Saw him, but he was in the ring last time any of us had eyes on. I’m sorry, but I doubt he survived. They’ve got a Hybrid in there. Big bastard.”
  
  “Hybrid? Fuck it, I don’t think I want to know.” Jack shook his head. “But he was alive the last time you saw him?”
  
  The SARAs nodded.
  
  “Good enough for me. Whatever it takes, we’ll get him out.” Jack looked around the pack, who gave him small grunts of agreement. They wouldn’t leave one of their own in a hellhole like that. He turned back to the two men.
  
  “Can we count on your support?”
  
  Fredericks shook his head. “You don’t want us around. Seriously. There are…elements of our new natures that make us too dangerous. For you, for anyone. We destroyed the other subjects.”
  
  He flicked a glance calmly over his shoulder as though talking about killing his own kind was an everyday occurrence and carried on.
  
  “Flame and corruption will mean they can’t use them. We have two recovering their research and any remaining serum so they won’t be able to make more of us. Best place for us is to disappear somewhere quietly. Stay under the radar and get rid of the evidence somehow when the time comes so we don’t infect anyone or anything.”
  
  The pack fell silent at the firm resolve in Fredericks’s voice. No gung-ho “make them all pay”, no “we are the best, the fastest, and we’ll make sure everyone knows it”. Just a quiet and dignified decision to put right what had been made wrong. Jack cleared his throat when the two men turned to go.
  
  “Respect, man. I hope things…turn out the way you wish them too. And if you need us, you know how to find us…” The pack alpha paused. Sanders chewed on the inside of his lip in thought. Just what were these guys capable of? Could they do what the Project couldn’t and locate the pack?
  
  “I guess, anyway?” Jack asked.
  
  Fredericks looked over his shoulder. A set of vicious claw marks had opened the flesh, revealing the stark whiteness of bone. Sanders winced. That had to freaking hurt like a bitch, but Fredericks didn’t seem to notice. Like his skin was nothing more than another layer of clothing.
  
  “Yeah. We can find you. Good luck finding your man.”
  
  In the next instant they were gone, just the tall grasses swaying slightly to mark their passing.
  
  “Well…hell. That was unexpected.” Jack ran his hand over his head, scrubbing at the shaved strands and he extended an arm for Lilly to nestle under. Sanders watched them for a second, a pang deep in his heart so sharp it took his breath away. He felt someone’s eyes on him—Richards—but he refused to look at the bigger Lycan, instead moving closer to pay attention to Jack.
  
  “’Kay, this is what we’re gonna do. We’ve got no chance of getting in now, not with extra men on the perimeter. Best we lay low until they start to change the shifts and see if there’s a gap in the pattern. Then we’ll slip through in the truck.” Jack paused for the wolves to gather around. “But this changes things. Nic, I need you to peel off and find someone for me. Colonel Jamison Tanner. He was my old CO and as straight as they come. If anyone can bring this shit-storm down, it’s him.”
  
  Nic nodded. “Sure thing boss. Where do I find him?”
  
  “Last I heard he retired and went back home. Wilson, Arizona.”
  
  
  
  
  
  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, stop your damn sniveling, woman.”
  
  Colonel Fitzgerald’s voice cut through the foggy haze in Toni’s brain as she was dragged along yet another corridor and into an office. She was slumped between two burly guards. Her head lolled and she tried to get a look at where she was. Looked like the main admin buildings, but she couldn’t be sure with her brain off in never-never land.
  
  Whatever they’d used in the smoke grenades, it was new and damn good stuff. Her body ached like she’d been on a three week bender with a chaser of anesthetic. Her legs weren’t working right, and her feet dragged uselessly on the floor. She’d tried to stand up, fight the guards, but her left knee had done the funky chicken while her right knee was denying the existence of the rest of her body. Coordination and the whole walking thing? Totally beyond her at the moment. Hell, thinking was enough of a challenge.
  
  “I haven’t put your family in the RA program, what more do you want?”
  
  The sound of soft sobbing filtered through the haze. Toni rolled her head back, blinking away the fog in her eyes to see Fitzgerald rearranging his fly while his aide, a pretty, petite little woman Toni had seen around the base, cowered in the corner. Anger surged through her, her instinctive reaction to slap seven shades of shit out of the bastard thwarted by the drugs in her system.
  
  The guards all looked the other way, the set expressions on their faces telling her they’d seen it all before. And ignored it. Let it continue. She knew not one of them was going to stop the Colonel from abusing the poor woman.
  
  Disgust flared as the guards dragged her into the center of the room. She wanted to rip the “didn’t see nothing” expressions off their faces, but she’d settle for ripping their faces off period. What was it about assholes and scumbags which made them run in packs? Was there some kind of secret code—perhaps a silly handshake with a rubber chicken—that they used to recognize each other?
  
  She sagged in their hold deliberately, making them bear her weight. Why should she make it easy for them? This was bad shit all round now, and the only way she might possibly make it out alive was to use every weapon at her disposal. Right now, that amounted to the fact she was thinking, and that her right knee was kind of beginning to talk to the rest of her body again. Go her.
  
  “McCoy, keep her shut.”
  
  Fitzgerald’s snarl made Toni snap her eyes open again to find the Colonel advancing toward her, his pet Blood moving in behind him to grab the crying aide and hold her still with a hard hand in her hair. “Well, well, well…Major Fielding. So nice to see you again.”
  
  He shot a look at the guards while she struggled to her feet. “Where did you find her?”
  
  “Between the SARA holding area and the main,” one of her captors replied, shoving her back down to her knees in front of the colonel. “Looks like she was the one who trashed the cutting and broadcast room.”
  
  “Oh really? What makes you say that?” Fitz asked, his voice casual, like they were discussing the Base summer fete. He reached out and stroked a chubby finger down Toni’s cheek. She growled at the touch, and snapped at the hand but her movement was slow, sluggish, and easily evaded. Fitz chuckled and grabbed her jaw in a punishing grip, something he’d never have been able to do if she wasn’t sedated. “And she made it past the SARAs? Alive? Interesting.”
  
  “Yeah, had to have been her. Not the new RAs. The bodies weren’t—” The guard cleared his throat, shifting from foot to foot. “They weren’t chewed up or eaten. Clean kills. Well, kind of.”
  
  “Hmmm.” He forced her chin up and made her look at him. She hissed, flashing her fangs. No point playing nice now.
  
  Fitz backhanded her, the blow catching her by surprise. The ring on his right hand cut her cheek. Pain lanced through her face as the scent of thick, black blood blossomed on the air. Her blood.
  
  “Behave, or else,” he threatened and nodded to the guards.
  
  She sprawled across the floor, letting her body weight take her down. Her muscles were heavy and her limbs hard to control. Frustration rolled through her when her right knee gave in again.
  
  Fitz grabbed her by the hair at the back of her neck and hauled her up against him. She recoiled, pushing against him but her struggles were weak. What the fuck was happening? The drugs should be wearing off by now.
  
  “Yeah, you like that?” He snarled, expression twisted. “It’s a new blend of sedative cooked up by the scientists in the SARA labs. Virus-based delivery, so it works its way through the vic’s system and finds the best way to fuck them up. By the looks of you, it’s a raging success.”
  
  His voice dropped softer and he looked down at her, something else replacing the hatred in his eyes. Frustration? Lust? The thought made her sick to her stomach.
  
  “You always were the best and fastest we had. I remember when you arrived on base.” He trailed almost tender fingers down the side of her face. “So beautiful…all the guys wanted you, I could see it. Filthy perverts. I was going to ask you out…”
  
  His expression twisted, his hold becoming harder in her hair. Her head was forced back and tears sprang to her eyes. Was he going to kiss her? She bared her fangs as he bent his head. Not a fucking chance. She might be drugged up to the eyeballs but if he put his lips anywhere near hers, she’d take them off at the damn skull.
  
  “But you had to go and get yourself infected. Now you’re fucking useless. I won’t touch anything that’s not human.”
  
  He turned and threw her over the desk. Pain shot up her forearms as she got her hands up in time, but didn’t do anything to protect her hip when it slammed into the edge. Immediately Fitz was on her, the thick swelling pressing against her ass proof his claims of immunity were bullshit.
  
  His hand tangled in her hair again. He yanked her head up, and pain tore through her scalp. She caught the eye of the aide, tears streaming down the girl’s face as Brent held her. His eyes were fixed on Toni though, sick eagerness in the black on black depths. He wanted Fitz to hurt her. Bastard.
  
  “Then you go and fuck me over? Ruin my little side enterprise?”
  
  He moved, the pressure of his cock sliding between her ass cheeks. Bile rose and she swallowed painfully. God, she was going to throw up. There was a click and something pressed hard against the side of her head.
  
  She froze, recognizing the feel of a muzzle. Fear ran a hot tide through her limbs. Since her infection, she’d known it would end this way. A bullet to the head. Unmarked grave. Her breath whispered from her lungs and she closed her eyes. A wave of peace washed over her. She regretted nothing…except the fact she’d only kissed her Lycan. Her Lycan, no one else’s, despite all the rules that said she should want to rip his heart out, not screw him senseless.
  
  Her mind filled with memories, each locked away carefully and provided without hesitation. The feel of his lips on hers. The slide of skin over wet skin. The prickle of his stubble against her jaw, her throat. The rush of pleasure that turned her limbs to mush and her body compliant to his when he covered her. Heat and need slammed through her with the force of a grenade, and was overlaid with grief. He was likely dead now, cut down by the guards like the Lycan in the corridor.
  
  Pain took her breath away. She should never have brought him back here…should have let him go. Gone with him. In a split second her mind supplied her with endless erotic might-have-beens—the life they might have lived, and her heart ached with it. In that second she’d have traded everything she had, an eternity of pain and suffering for one more moment in his arms.
  
  “Fucking bitch. Even being hot won’t save you now.” Fitz snarled and moved, jamming the pistol harder behind her ear. This was it. He would pull the trigger and end everything. The pain, the loneliness, the constant struggle against the darkness with her, would all be gone.
  
  Someone cleared a throat behind them.
  
  “Sir, if I may?” The voice was cultured, and sounded well educated. Certainly more so than the average grunt Fitz chose for his guards. “She’s a highly viable subject for our…other program?”
  
  The breath hissed out between her teeth and the pressure behind her ear eased. She could practically hear the cogs turning in Fitz’s head. He pushed away and she sagged against the desk in relief. Every cell in her body screamed in pain, protesting the presence of the drugs in her system.
  
  “Right. Yeah…good point.”
  
  He yanked Toni back up and shoved her toward McCoy, who dropped the aide like a hot cake to catch Toni. He then yanked her up hard against his taller form, retribution and sick eagerness in his eyes. She hissed weakly at him but her struggles were easily contained.
  
  “Put ’em both in. The sniveling bitch as well. And McCoy?”
  
  The Blood looked up, his hand hard around Toni’s throat. “Yeah?”
  
  “She doesn’t have to be a looker, but she has to be fully functional for the program. Understand me?”
  
  McCoy growled, the angry sound soft in the back of his throat but he nodded.
  
  “Yeah, I understand.”
  
  Brent dragged her toward the door, one of his bully boys following with the sobbing aide. She ground her teeth and tried again to clear the drugs from her system. Then gasped as her head pounded and her lungs burned. Then her knees began to shake.
  
  Fuck.
  
  This was going to hurt.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Fifteen
  
  Everything. Hurt.
  
  Darce groaned, rolled onto his side and cracked open an eyelid.
  
  “Fuck. Shit. Crapping hell!”
  
  Pain drove hot knives right through his skull as he lay on the metal floor. What the hell had they hit him with? He remembered the fight and the Hybrid beating the ever-loving crap out of him. Then the lights had gone out, Lycans and Bloods crashing through the doors to tear into the crowd gathered around the cage baying for blood. His blood. In the end, it had been theirs washing over the concrete floor.
  
  The second the screaming had started, the Hybrid had laid off him. Instead of pounding Darce into a bloody mush, he’d simply sat down in the middle of the cage and started to meditate. Fucking meditate, of all things. Darce had staggered against the cage for a second. Simple relief at not being attacked anymore had surged through his veins while he quietly dripped blood on the floor. He’d managed to recover and was trying to get out of the cage when the soldiers had come pouring in.
  
  Shots had filled the room, the thrown grenades chugging out thick clouds of greasy black smoke. Each breath had been like inhaling razor-blades, whatever was in the stuff eating him from the inside out. Infiltrating his blood, making his body sluggish and even sending his wolf into slumber.
  
  Then he remembered nothing.
  
  “Breathe.” A deep voice advised. “Sickness’ll pass in a while.”
  
  Darce rolled his head until he rest against his temple and risked opening one eye again. There in a cage opposite was the Hybrid. Still sitting cross-legged, he rifled through a bowl in front of him, nose curled as he sorted the contents. His claws clicked against the sides each time he reached in and selected a morsel. Darce grimaced. Even from here, whatever the Hybrid was eating smelled terrible.
  
  “Ugh, if you say so.” Darce swallowed. His throat felt like sandpaper. “Wanna keep it down to a dull roar? What happened?”
  
  Darce rolled his head forward again, resting against the cold metal. His limbs felt heavy and strange, almost like they didn’t belong to him. Felt…disconnected somehow. He reached for his wolf but the creature grunted back sleepily, the merest trickle of energy coming back when before the thing had been a powerhouse, throwing out more heat than a furnace. No help there. Shit. He racked his memories, thinking back to all the other times he’d been drugged. Had he ever felt so weak…so human again before?
  
  “Hit us with some kind of new gas. Dropped us like stones.”
  
  Click-click-click. The Hybrid continued to ferret in the bowl, each little tic like nails jammed through Darce’s skull.
  
  “I swear to God, man. If you don’t stop that noise, I’m gonna ram that bowl up your fucking ass.”
  
  A deep chuckle answered him, followed by the slide of metal over metal. “I was done anyway.”
  
  A grunt of effort escaped Darce’s lips as he rolled onto his side. The simple movement left him weak and his head pounding. This time when he opened his eyes, the light didn’t feel like someone had taken a jackhammer to his brain. He lay for a while, head turned to watch the technicians and guards outside the cage. They were twitchy, the technicians constantly looking over their shoulders while the guards stood by with their fingers resting on their trigger guards. A door banged and at least three whirled around, rifles on their shoulders to scan for the threat.
  
  Darce chuckled and dropped his head back. One woman had done that. His woman, and he had to find her. Although he’d told her to leave, to go and find his pack, he knew she wouldn’t have. He’d seen it in the flash in her eyes. Damn stubborn woman.
  
  He closed his eyes. Concentrated. Marshalling every ounce of his energy, he wrapped it around the trickle of power from his sleeping wolf, pulling more from the creature and feeding back in a perpetual loop. Slowly at first, but gaining in speed, the charge in his body built and built until his blood sang and the tiny hairs on his skin lifted. Pain warred with the power. His teeth chattered and his bones ached but he held all the energy in at the core. Drew it tight. Then, in one almighty rush, he released it, dumping the whole lot into his veins.
  
  Power rushed through him— a Juggernaut on a seek and destroy mission for every last drop of the sedative in his body. Hot and cold chills raced over his skin like butterflies in spiked boots, drawing sweat up and through his pores. The sharp stink of chemicals and medication filled his nostrils. He turned his head away to try and escape the stench but it was no good. The stuff crawled from him. Even the skin between his nose and his lip was wet with the stuff.
  
  “Nice trick.”
  
  Darce opened his eyes to see the Hybrid watching him. Of course. With both Blood and Lycan combined, he could probably scent a flea fart at six hundred meters.
  
  “Thanks. Hurts like a bitch though.”
  
  He sighed in relief, feeling the last of the stuff slough off his skin to evaporate within seconds from the metal underneath him.
  
  “Hey man, what do I call you?”
  
  The Hybrid grunted, moving farther back in his cage at the sound of a door somewhere behind them opening. The sound of boots approached. Darce groaned and scooted back. Anything to make the bastards work for it more.
  
  “Name’s Steele. You?”
  
  “Foster.”
  
  “Cool. Nice to meet ya. Heads up, they’re bringing injured in.”
  
  Darce craned his neck to see, not arguing with Steele’s assessment of the situation. The guy had been here a lot longer than he had. Four soldiers walked toward them, boots loud on the concrete. Each pair dragged a woman. The first was on her feet, terrified and shaking, but walking. The second was slumped between the two men, head down, feet dragging on the floor behind. Blood dripped steadily, leaving a deep black trail.
  
  His heart stuttered in his chest and he slammed against the front of the cage before realizing that he’d moved.
  
  “Oh fuck…no no no.”
  
  It was Toni.
  
  “Back up, dog.” One guard held a weapon covering the door as it opened and his partner bundled Toni through. Darce got to her before she hit the ground, catching her slender form and wrapping her up in his arms. She whimpered in pain. He cradled her close to his chest and scooted to the back of the cage. In the darkness, away from prying eyes.
  
  “Shhh, sweetheart. I got you,” he murmured, trying to keep his voice soft. No hint of the panic rolling through his bigger frame in his tone. Shit, she was covered in blood, and the rich, deep scent filling his nostrils told him it was hers.
  
  “You’re safe now. I promise. I got you. Where does it hurt, sweets?”
  
  She didn’t reply, a whisper of a moan passing her lips. Her head lolled against his shoulder and he winced at the bruises across her face and throat. Blood trickled down her jaw and neck from a deep cut on her lip. He lowered himself to a sitting position, holding her carefully. Even her breathing was labored, each intake a struggle that ended with a rattle.
  
  Arm supporting Toni’s back, he set her in his lap and used his free hand to lift her top. His breath hissed from his lungs. Her sides and abdomen were black and blue. Whoever had done this had worked her over good and proper. Anger boiled in his veins. His brain listed all the internal injuries and problems such a beating could incur. But almost as fast, his mind went blank. Shit. What did he do to help her?
  
  Her lips pursed and she made a small sound. He lifted his head to find her looking at him, but her eyes were off focus–even when she tried to smile—and he knew she wasn’t really seeing him.
  
  “Hey!” He pitched his voice to carry, catching the attention of a nearby guard. “She’s hurt bad…”
  
  The guard swept a disinterested look over the bruised and battered woman in Darce’s arms. “Yeah, and?”
  
  Darce grit his teeth. “She needs to see a doctor.”
  
  The answer was a short bark of a laugh. “Yeah, right. For a Blood? Bitch needs a vet, not a doctor.”
  
  Darce snarled, in a crouch with Toni pulled protectively beneath him. One hand was still in her hair, cradling her head while the other one sprouted a set of claws any movie monster would envy. Just one hand shifted, not the one in her hair. Something he’d never been able to do before but he wouldn’t risk a hair on her head.
  
  “Whoa!” The guard stumbled backward, snatching at his rifle to aim it at them. “Back off, dog. Or I’ll blow both your brains over the back of that cage.”
  
  “Foster!” The Hybrid barked from the cage opposite. “Do it. You’re no use to her dead.”
  
  Sense filtered through the red haze over his vision. The claws retracted and the snarl trailed off, his lip dropping back to its normal position. Steele had a point. Pushing the guard was only going to get them dead. Fast. It would solve the problem—Toni wouldn’t be in pain anymore—but wasn’t the solution he was looking for.
  
  “Yeah, that’s right.” Emboldened now, the guard surged forward, shoving the muzzle of the rifle through the bars threateningly. “You back down, or I’ll put you both down.”
  
  It almost killed him to bow his head deferentially but Darce managed, hand up in the universal gesture of surrender. “I’m down, honest man. Don’t shoot.”
  
  “Woods,” a voice shouted from farther down the room. “Stop fucking about and leave the subjects alone. Or I’ll have you shifted topside.”
  
  “Yes sir!” Woods gave Darce a warning glare, then pushed away and walked off.
  
  Darce watched him until he was out of sight, then turned his attention back to Toni. She lay under him, unmoving. His heart stuttered again and he shoved his fingers against her throat. Crap, no. She couldn’t have left him. Not yet. Panic threatened to overwhelm him, the darkness rising.
  
  Then he felt it. The smallest pulse against his fingers. Her heart still beat. Slow. Weak. But still there.
  
  “Hey, doll. Hang on for me. Let’s get you more comfortable.”
  
  He laid her down gently, then reached over to the ratty pile of rags in the corner that had once been a blanket. A quick sniff assured him that they’d been clean when they’d been shredded and there was nothing objectionable on them. He made a soft bed of sorts, and moved her carefully. His heart wrung with every small sound of pain she made, but she didn’t fight him. Luckily. He didn’t think that his heart could take hurting her, even if he was only hurting her to stop her from hurting herself.
  
  He got her settled and she opened her eyes again when he curled around her. This time they were clearer, a soft smile curving her lips before her eyelids fluttered closed again. She reached out, her hand brushing across his ribs before falling as though she were exhausted. A small gesture but his heart leaped. She knew who he was and that eased the ache deep within.
  
  Still he swore under his breath. Why the fuck couldn’t he have been a doctor or something useful? Instead, he’d practically been born a soldier. Which meant all he could do was make her comfortable.
  
  “Make her bite you.”
  
  “Excuse me?”
  
  Darce couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice as he looked at Steele. The bigger man was in the back of his own cage, arms wrapped around the other woman they’d dragged in with Toni. He cradled her gently against his broad chest, rocking her as though she were an infant. From the movement of her shoulders, she hadn’t stopped crying yet.
  
  “She needs blood,” Steele said bluntly with a quick glance at Toni, his voice at the deep level the humans around them had trouble hearing. “The kind of damage she’s taken, she needs blood to repair. I’m not seeing this lot lining up a transfusion anytime soon so, sorry bud, you want her to survive, she needs to get a little fang happy with your neck.”
  
  Hell. Of course, why hadn’t he thought of that? She was a Blood, she’d need blood to survive—
  
  “Right you lot, who’s up first for the honeymoon suite?” One of the doctors broke in over the conversation, cackling at his own joke and rubbing his hands. “Let’s see if we can’t get this show on the road and get the Colonel some little freak babies to cheer him up after the FUBAR today has become.”
  
  He crouched down to peer in the cage at Darce and Toni, looking owlishly over his glasses. He clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth and pursed his lips.
  
  “She’s not much of a looker, is she? Ahh well. A shower will make a lot of difference. Clean clothes. If all else fails you can turn the lights off.”
  
  “There’s a shower?” Darce couldn’t help the quick question. A shower meant clean water.
  
  “Yeah, even a bed rather than the floor. All the luxuries.”
  
  A bed meant sheets. And sheets could be ripped up into bandages.
  
  “We’re first.”
  
  Darce was already clambering to his feet, his precious burden held close to his chest. She was light, too light, like her weight was related to her belligerent attitude. She’d seemed taller when she’d faced off against him, as though her personality had made her seem bigger.
  
  “Excellent!”
  
  The doctor smiled in approval, as though this was routine and he wasn’t involved in some morally dubious shit. Shit that would get him sacked and imprisoned had he tried it in the real world, or that would have him burning in the Hell of the world’s major religions.
  
  “Okay guys, give them some space and let’s get them into room one.”
  
  The guards all stood back while the cage was unlocked and the pair emerged. Darce had to duck his head to fit through the low door, the cage more suited to containing a large animal than a guy over six feet tall. He tried not to jostle Toni, tucking her head against his shoulder to brace her against the movement as he walked. The guards kept their distance, but the fingers against triggers warned him not to try any funny moves. They were so twitchy that they’d cut him down in a heartbeat, probably putting enough lead in him to drop a herd of rhinos.
  
  On his own, he might have risked an escape attempt. Now though, with his mate in his arms, the thought was the furthest one from his mind. All he wanted to do was to get her into a shower and tend to the wounds he could see, then get her to bite him to deal with the ones he couldn’t.
  
  The corridor passed in a blur until the doctor paused at an open door. He folded his arms over the clipboard against his chest and smiled again.
  
  “Now, try not to be nervous. Let things take their natural course. Stress has been shown to be a major cause of inability to conceive. We’ll give you twelve hours. That should give you guys enough time to get acquainted.”
  
  Was this guy for real? Darce lifted an eyebrow and nodded tersely as he stalked through the door. Quickly. In case Doc Happy started offering sex tips.
  
  He ignored the bed in the room and only registered the door closing because of the metallic click of the lock. He was more focused on getting her into the shower.
  
  “Nearly there, darlin’…I got you,” he promised, walking them both right into the large enclosure. He juggled her in one arm and against a lifted knee so he could trigger the shower, then turned suddenly to take the first blast of water across his bare back in case he’d fucked up and it was cold.
  
  He got lucky. The spray was lukewarm, quickly warming to pleasant. The water driving needles into his skin, he sank to the floor with Toni.
  
  She gasped as the water cascaded over them, her eyes opening to latch onto his. They focused and he winced at the pain in them. He’d kill whoever had done this. He’d hunt them down and rip their guts out through their assholes. Slowly. Rage tightened his hold until she winced, crying out and reaching for him. Instinctively. The way a mate should.
  
  “Shhh, it’s okay. It’s all going to be okay,” he promised, wiping the blood from her face. Blood. Steele had said blood. His blood.
  
  Lifting his hand, he punched fangs through his gums and tore into his own wrist. The pain was nothing compared to the possibility of losing her. Blood welled, pouring down his arm to join the water swirling into the drain.
  
  “Drink, darlin’,” he urged, pressing his wrist to her lips.
  
  She murmured in protest, turning her head away. Scarlet smeared her cheek in a dark stain before it washing away in the needle-fine spray. He moved, cradling her head in the crook of his arm, the heavy muscles holding her immobile while he forced his wrist against her mouth.
  
  “Come on, sweets. Drink,” he begged, easily quelling her struggles when she fought to escape him.
  
  Each pained attempt tore at his heart but he held firm. He knew Steele was right. She was a creature of blood and darkness. She needed the stuff for her survival…and he was going to provide it. Whatever she needed, anything she needed, he would provide. Even the thought of her going to another man, sinking those delicate little fangs into another guy’s neck, was enough to bring his wolf rushing to the fore, snarling with possessiveness.
  
  She was his. End of. And if those fangs were going in anyone’s neck—
  
  “Ahhhhoooohh.”
  
  She turned her head and struck, forcing a gasp from his lips. It was weak, admittedly, but she still struck. Sank fang into the ripped flesh of his wrist and sucked. Pain flared for a second before immeasurable pleasure flooded his body on a hot tide from his head down to his toes. She shifted in his arms, her hands coming up to wrap around his wrist. Holding it to her lips so she could swallow. Each pull stronger and stronger.
  
  Darce shuddered and leaned back against the tile while she fed from him. Every swallow sent tingles through his heavy frame, the heat in his body coalescing into a tight band around his waist that reached down to encircle his balls before rushing to his cock. He was hard in a heartbeat, stiff enough to fly the stars and stripes from. With an effort he held back. Concentrated on lying passive while she took what she needed from him, despite the fact that all he wanted to do was lay her down and cover her with his body. Part her thighs and sink into her…take them both to heaven and back.
  
  Darce gritted his teeth and slammed his head back against the tiles as her pulls slowed. He shouldn’t be thinking about sex. She was hurt, and he was a pervert.
  
  Her grip gentled on his wrist and her hands fell away. Another hiss of pleasure escaped his lips as she gently detached her fangs, and then swiped her tongue over his skin in a lazy movement that sent another jolt of heat through his groin. He ignored it, his heart stolen anew when she purred in contentment and snuggled deeper into his arms.
  
  She was gorgeous.
  
  Darce sat in the shower. The buzz of blood loss sang through his body but he didn’t care. He had the woman he loved in his lap, drifting off to sleep. Already her color was better, his blood surging through her system and bringing a pink wash on her cheeks. He had no idea what his virus-laden blood would do to her, but already he saw changes. The cut on her lip had been red-raw but as he watched, it went pink, then lighter, until it looked like it had been healing for weeks.
  
  He extended his claws and cut the remains of her top and pants, carefully washing the remnants of blood from her skin. The bruises faded while he worked, and he had to pause just to watch in amazement. He’d always known the Bloods healed quickly, some quicker than Lycans, but this was something else.
  
  And then there was her scent. Even over the shower and the cheap, generic, mass-purchased soap, he could smell it blossoming. Changing. Going from what it had been, alluring as that was, to something deeper and richer. Like her body combined his scent in with hers. Smelling himself on her was the most erotic thing he’d ever scented. Like he’d marked her, owned her and her body had accepted his claim by mimicking his scent.
  
  He left her underwear on and washed her as best he could. He couldn’t remove it and retain his sanity. Not with her finally in his arms and the arousal from her bite still surging through his body.
  
  “Nearly there, doll.”
  
  He reached up to snap the water off. The room was warm, fan heaters had kicked in when he’d turned the water on, so she didn’t shiver when he stepped out. To be sure, he grabbed a couple of towels off the rail and wrapped her up in them. The last thing he wanted was for her to catch a chill on the back of whatever injuries she’d already sustained.
  
  She murmured when he lifted her into his arms. Making soothing noises, he carried her through to the waiting bed and laid her gently on its surface. They still had at least eleven hours, so screw Doc Happy—he was going to make sure she slept. Then they would formulate a battle plan.
  
  Because she was getting out of there.
  
  Even if it killed him.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Sixteen
  
  Blood hit Toni’s starved cells like a bullet. Rich, dark, warm, life-giving blood. It coated her throat and she eagerly latched on, clamping her hands around and drinking from the source. The scarlet ambrosia surged rhythmically. Like a drum. Or a heartbeat.
  
  Caught in the wasteland between life and death, Toni focused on that heartbeat. Strong and powerful, it called to her and she used it like a beacon. Dragging herself toward it, farther and farther out of the clinging quicksand of the true death. The flow of rich fluid stopped, the source removed, and she pouted for a second before she realized she could still hear the heartbeat. It was part of her now. Prowling through her blood with the aggression and protectiveness of a guardian angel as sleep wrapped itself around her and pulled her down into another type of darkness.
  
  The next time she woke, it was by degrees. She was warm and comfortable, but her body ached with the echoes of violence. Memory teased her with snippets. Of being dragged from Fitz’s office by McCoy and his henchmen. There, life had become a fight for survival from one breath to the next while the pack of Bloods took advantage of her drugged state, free with their fists and feet. Just like Brent had been with his words before she’d beaten the snot out of him in the barracks. No claws though, and no teeth. They’d wanted to keep her alive for something. But what?
  
  Her body resisted her push to bring herself back to full consciousness, arguing the point warmth and comfort were good. Nothing hurt. Yet. If she woke up, those echoes would turn into bruises and worse. She’d felt at least three ribs crack during the beating as she tried to keep herself between the Bloods and the unfortunate aide, and her left ankle was at best broken, at worst shattered, which would hurt like a bitch when she woke up.
  
  Still, she couldn’t stay here hiding in sleep like a damn coward. With a groan, she stopped fighting the pull of consciousness and let her mind drag her up a few layers out of the darkness. She tensed every cell, sinew and muscle and waited for the pain to hit like a tidal wave hitting the shore.
  
  Nothing happened.
  
  Her senses expanded and fed her more information of her surroundings. She lay on a comfortable surface, cushioned and springy—a mattress, maybe— covered with something warm and cozy. She sighed in contentment and a sheet rustled, the scent of clean linen surrounding her. A bed then.
  
  But that realization was ignored under another. She wasn’t alone in the bed. A large, warm, male body wrapped around and over hers. A powerful heartbeat echoed the one in her head, the one which had pulled her from the wastelands. Her sense of smell kicking in, she opened her eyes and met warm brown ones ringed with amber.
  
  Foster. Darce. Her Darce.
  
  Relief stole her breath for a moment and she smiled, realizing her comfortable pillow was his arm. “You often watch women while they sleep?”
  
  “Just you, sweetness. You do it so well, I didn’t want to miss a second of the show.”
  
  His voice was low and gruff from his beast but she didn’t care. It hit her low down, sparking off a latent heat in the pit of her belly that then spiraled out through her body, infusing her limbs with warmth and heaviness. She could stay here all day in his arms.
  
  “Am I naked under this sheet?”
  
  “Hmmm, can I plead the fifth?”
  
  She knew from the smell of the room they hadn’t escaped the Project—the anti-bacterial floor cleanser was annoyingly distinctive—and only an idiot would have expected to get away after the going over she’d gotten from McCoy and his gang. She didn’t care. She was alive, he was alive, and they didn’t appear to be in any immediate danger. She’d take that for now.
  
  Sliding her leg along his, she reveled in the feeling of his hair-roughened skin against hers. His nostrils flared at the contact and her smile widened.
  
  “No, I don’t think you can.”
  
  She shifted closer and spread her hand over his broad chest. His human frame was solidly built, powerful even without the strength of the Lycan within. She liked that.
  
  “In fact, soldier, I think you need to fess up, right now. That’s an order.”
  
  His eyes darkened another notch, the ring of amber thicker for a moment before it receded.
  
  “Oh, an order now, is it?”
  
  He’d moved before she registered the movement, stretching out over her lazily. One of his knees slid between hers, gently parting them but he didn’t settle. Just held himself over her.
  
  “So…ma’am. What would you like to know? How I stripped each item of clothing from your luscious body, piece by piece? Or how I carried you naked to the bed? Lowered you between these fine sheets?” He smiled and stroked the hair back from her face, looking down at her. “Or shall I tell you I watched an angel sleep in my arms and kept her safe from harm? How I’d give everything, over and over again…blood and body, my life even, for just one smile from your sweet lips?”
  
  Her heart melted, a little pile of mush right there in the center of her chest. Unable to resist, she reached up and brushed her lips over his. Gasped as electricity arced between them, and she kissed him again.
  
  She pushed the curtains of his hair back from his face and explored his lips. They were warm and firm, with a sensuous curve that just begged her to nibble. She did, taking care to keep her fangs out of the way, and was rewarded with a sharp gasp and a shudder which rolled from his head to his toes.
  
  “Teasing now sweets,” he warned, his voice dropping into a near growl.
  
  At one point the evidence of his other nature would have disgusted her. Now it just turned her on all the more. She wanted to bait him, make him lose control. What was the worst that could happen? He could bite her?
  
  God yes, please.
  
  The thought of his teeth in her skin sent a wave of heat through her so intense she trembled with it. What was wrong with her? She’d never found biting even the slightest bit sexy, but now all she wanted to do was part her legs and let him sink into her as his teeth found her neck. Held her still while he took her over and over.
  
  Blood and body. His words hit her with the force of a truck. The memory of her fangs in his wrist, his hot blood gushing down her throat, filled her. He’d fed her. Given her his blood when she needed it. She pulled back to search his eyes, the trust in that act and the amber-ringed orbs rocking her to the core.
  
  Then she shuddered, and smiled.
  
  “Yeah. You got a problem with that?”
  
  She nipped him again, stroking her tongue over the hurt and was rewarded with a deep shudder that rocked his shoulders.
  
  “Fuck…no. But at zoos, they tell you not to feed the animals for a reason.”
  
  He shoved her thighs wider apart and dropped his hips. Just enough to brush against her. She bit her lip at the feel of his aroused body against hers. Not pressing hard, not brash or overwhelming. Gentle, and not. Forceful, but tempered. In her weakened state he could have forced the issue but she knew he wouldn’t. Knew she’d never been so safe as she was in his arms.
  
  “Perhaps I like teasing the animals…or just one animal,” she whispered against his lips, then kissed him again.
  
  This time there was no teasing. Heat and need flared between them, a potent combination. He groaned when she parted his lips with a sweep of her tongue and drove it inside, seeking his. His taste exploded through her. Feral. Wild. Unique.
  
  He dropped his hips farther. Pressed against her as he wound his tongue around hers. The slick slide of moist flesh. Wet brushes tempered with hot kisses. Open-mouthed, wild…bordering on frantic. Tension and need surged through her body, dragging a gasp from her lips. A gasp he swallowed before he took control. The kiss was long and hard. He drove his hands into the hair either side of her head to hold her still and made love to her with his mouth. Used the surge and thrust of his tongue into the soft recesses past her lips to tease and tantalize her. Let her know what he planned to do to her body.
  
  She whimpered, clinging to him as all her defenses were swept away. Defenses? Ha, who was she kidding? When it came to him, she had none. He’d staked a claim with that first kiss in the forest and she hadn’t been able to get him out of her head since.
  
  Guilt hit her and she broke away, her breathing ragged. Leaning her forehead against his shoulder, she felt their hearts beat in perfect time. “Oh god, I’m so sorry. I should never have brought y—”
  
  He moved, forcing her to look up at him.
  
  “No. No recriminations, no apologies.” He smiled, but his expression was firm. “Not between us. Not ever. Darlin’, I’d have followed you anyway, so you did us both a favor by bringing me in. Besides, I think I’ll always have a fondness for truck beds now.”
  
  His lips quirked and she couldn’t help smiling in response. His eyes darkened and the smile disappeared. Her breathing caught as, in the space between one heartbeat and the next, the tension between them tightened to breaking point.
  
  “I want to kiss you again.”
  
  “Yes.”
  
  She answered his question before he’d asked it, lifting her lips and offering him everything that she was.
  
  A growl of triumph rolled from his chest as he claimed her lips again, all but crushing them under his. He swept the sheet away and dropped it on the floor. She gasped when he pressed fully against her, the sound lost under his kiss. He was tall, hard and gloriously naked. Fully aroused, the thick, hard bar of his cock pressed into her stomach and she reveled in the proof of his masculinity.
  
  He broke away from her lips, leaving a trail of hard, biting kisses along her jaw and down her throat. She wasn’t naked, clad in underwear that was soon gone—whether by her hands or his, she didn’t know. Didn’t care. All she cared about was touching him and getting more of her skin on his. He moved over her, the contact playing shivers over her skin while her pussy clenched in an empty ache.
  
  “Darce,” she whispered, the sound perilously close to a plea.
  
  “I got you sweets,” he promised and cupped her breast in a large, warm hand. The calluses on his palms abraded her skin and she mewled, arching her back to offer him more. She wanted more. She wanted everything. Wanted to give him everything she had.
  
  She clung to his shoulders, nails scoring his back as his hand slid down. Flirted with the curve of her waist and smoothed over the slight swell of her stomach, the soft curve one that she’d never been able to totally eradicate.
  
  “Your skin is so soft. Delicate,” he murmured against her ear, stroking a single fingertip down the crease between her hip and thigh. “I could touch you forever and be a happy man.”
  
  She laughed, a sound between amusement and torture. “Only if you want to drive me insane.”
  
  “Challenge accepted.”
  
  His chuckle vibrated against the skin of her throat as he kissed behind her ear. The soft spot which turned her knees to jelly. But he didn’t stop there, sliding a thick finger between her folds while his lips caressed her throat.
  
  “You’re hot, and wet. All for me.” He groaned, his finger rubbing against her flesh and smoothing the slickness further over her.
  
  With pinpoint accuracy he found her clit. Circled and rubbed. Pleasure radiated outward from the tiny button buried deep in the folds. She gasped, clutched at his arms while he drove her higher and higher. Tension snapped into a familiar pattern, albeit one she’d thought lost with her humanity. Her body woke under his hands, climbing higher and higher as he played it with a deft touch. Like his blood in her veins was the catalyst for unlocking the side of her she’d thought lost
  
  Not lost. Asleep. Slumbering. Waiting for him. And now it was back. Hot, hard, more intense than it had been. Hot prickles swept over her skin, bringing tears to her eyes. Her hips rocked. Sought more sensation, more pleasure, more…everything.
  
  “That’s it sweets.” His deep voice soft in her ear, he cradled her. Protected her from the outside world with his body while his hand moved between her thighs. Darce took nothing for himself as he taught her how to fly. “Come for me. Just let go and come for me.”
  
  He turned his hand, pressing hard against her clit with his thumb and sliding two fingers deep inside her slick channel. The penetration was smooth but unexpected. A cry broke from her lips. Everything crumpled around her. Her body clamped hard around his fingers, and her hips rocked as he finger-fucked her. Short, hard thrusts to get her body ready for his. Then he curled his fingers back to press against the inner wall up behind her pelvis and she lost it.
  
  His lips crashed down on hers when she came, her body shuddering under the force of it. Long, hot waves of pleasure crashed through her in an unstoppable tide. A whole body experience she felt from her center outward, right to the top of her head and down to her toes. He claimed her with his kiss, thrusting his tongue deep in the same rhythm as his fingers until she didn’t know where he ended and she began.
  
  He broke away, his breathing ragged, and pulled his hand free. She pouted in disappointment, still shuddering from the force of her release. But even though she’d just come, harder than she ever had before, it wasn’t enough. A soul deep ache rolled through her, her body demanding to be filled by more than his fingers. She needed him. Filling her, claiming her, taking her and making her his.
  
  “Darce…please.” She was begging now, but she didn’t care. She just wanted him. “Now!”
  
  “Yes, ma’am.” He chuckled, the sound shaky, and moved over her. “Hell yes.”
  
  She parted her thighs to welcome him, a hiss escaping her lips when he settled into the cradle of her hips. A hiss that became a moan as the thick, blunt head of his cock pressed against the entrance to her pussy. Bracing himself over her on strong arms, he held her gaze and started to push into her. Her eyelids fluttered closed but he growled a warning.
  
  “No, I want to see you. Want you to see me as I take you and make you mine.”
  
  She nodded, her heart melting. He fisted a hand in the bedding by her head and pressed forward again. A long, slow ride of pressure and fullness and heat. Her body relaxed under his possession. He was big, long and thick…so much so she wasn’t sure she’d be able to take all of him but before she knew it, his hips met hers. One arm slid under her to grasp the nape of her neck, holding her to him, under him when he paused and looked down to check she was okay. That little consideration did it. If she hadn’t already been head over heels for him, she’d have fallen for him right there and then, and damn the consequences.
  
  She nodded and the worry eased from his expression. To be replaced by something far hotter and more feral. He pulled back, the slide of his cock in her pussy, stroking nerve endings she hadn’t known existed, almost sent her over the edge once more. But then he thrust back in and all bets were off. Pleasure hit her again and again, with each heavy thrust and sharp retreat. He built a hard and fast rhythm driven by the wildness and tension mounting between them.
  
  She gasped and held on, which was all she could do. Clung to him and trusted in his strength as he directed their pleasure, moving with him to wherever he wanted to take them. Trusting him to guide them to heaven and back in an erotic ride that took her breath away.
  
  He grunted, and the soft sounds of sex filled the room. The slide of skin on skin, the slap of his hips against hers. The liquid melody of pleasure under light feminine gasps and deeper, masculine groans.
  
  Just when she thought it couldn’t get better, he rolled his hips to press against something deep inside her and she was there all over again. His name falling from her lips, she paused right on the precipice. Perfect tension and pleasure poised on a knife edge while she waited for him. Opening her eyes, she looked into his and smiled. His nostrils flared, the ring of amber bright in the dark brown but she didn’t care. She wanted him all, beast and man.
  
  He nodded, and drove forward again. Pleasure shattered over her and she screamed his name. Wave after wave of bliss assaulted her and for a moment she was almost swept away by it. He threw back his head, chords standing out in his neck as her body tightened around his. She trembled, moving with him. She searched for control. Gained it and surfed the pleasure coursing through her body while he chased his own release. His thrusts were harder, stronger, the force slamming the bed against the wall. She clung to him. Reveled in the power and his loss of control when he faltered. Thrust once, twice, then roared her name as he came deep inside her.
  
  
  
  
  
  The guards came for them early, crashing through the door to train rifles on them.
  
  Darce snarled, on his feet and in front of his mate with his claws extended before he was fully awake. They’d get to Toni over his dead body. He flexed his fingers, the claws glinting dully in the low light as he turned his head, picking his targets among the men in the room. Mentally, he tracked a path of devastation through them, a swathe of amputated limbs and organ removal until they were all dead and he was covered in blood.
  
  “Back down, gentlemen. Give the Lieutenant some space.”
  
  Doc Happy breezed through the door, the same smile on his face that he’d had when he’d locked Toni and Darce in the room hours ago. He flicked a glance over them, taking in Darce’s protective stance and Toni curled up in the sheet and huddled at the top of the bed. His heart raced, surging with adrenaline, man and wolf in perfect accord. Protection of their mate at all costs.
  
  She was still pale, too pale, but a lot stronger than she had been hours ago. Another snarl rumbled up from the center of Darce’s chest. She wasn’t up to exchanging blows with this lot though. That was his job.
  
  The guards backed off a few steps, one glancing sideways at the doctor as if to say “Really? There’s a cocked and ready werewolf ready to go off in the room and you want us to back down?” At least, that’s what Darce would have been thinking had he been in the same situation. There was nothing more dangerous than a cornered wolf, unless it was a cornered wolf with his mate.
  
  “Excellent,” the doctor proclaimed and rubbed his hands together, forcing Darce to wonder if he was actually on the same level of reality as the rest of them. “Protective behavior. He’s beginning to bond with her. We’d thought this would happen eventually.”
  
  Darce lifted an eyebrow. They’d suspected the Lycans would bond? Boy, were they behind with current affairs…
  
  “And how are you feeling, my dear? Better now?” Doc Happy addressed Toni directly, moving to step around Darce.
  
  “Stay away from her.” The growl of warning slipped from his throat before he could stop it, his hands up and central in a threatening gesture while the claws on his toes scratched deep gouges in the flooring.
  
  “Yes, yes, of course.” The doctor finally looked discomfited and he backed down, clearing his throat. “Right, give them some room. If she can’t walk, you’ll need to carry her. And you might want to put on some clothes. Sergeant, if you would.”
  
  One of the men threw a pile of garments on the floor in front of Darce. Keeping an eye on the armed guards, he dragged on fatigues and boots quickly, adding a T-shirt as an afterthought. Made no difference. If he shifted, anything he wore would get trashed just the same.
  
  Without a word he turned and gathered Toni in his arms. They hadn’t brought new clothes for her, but she had on her underwear at the least. As an added protection, he wrapped the sheet around her. Trust shone in her dark eyes, a silent message passing between them. Softly, softly.
  
  He’d fed her again during the night, twice, both times leading to the most earth-shattering sex he’d ever experienced. She wasn’t completely recovered, but near to it. And that element of surprise could be the edge they needed when their chance came. Darce nodded at the doctor as he headed for the door, the guards parting like water.
  
  “Lead the way.”
  
  
  
  
  
  “And this is the main holding area.”
  
  Toni woke from her light doze at the sound of Fitzgerald’s voice. Ignoring the slight edge of nausea that had been present since she woke in Darce’s arms, she struggled to sit up. Darce grunted and pulled her closer, wrapping his larger body protectively around her. A smile curved her lips for a second. When the Bloods had worked her over, she’d thought that was it. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Cats might have nine lives, but no cat DNA was used to create the Bloods, so she’d be shit out of luck.
  
  When she’d awoken in his arms, she thought she’d died and gone to Heaven. That her dying brain had granted the one thing she wanted most in the world, him, and given her a glimpse of Utopia. His kisses, his body over hers. All sublime. She hadn’t thought it could get better and then he’d cradled her in his lap and offered her his throat. The sight of the blood pulsing under the skin while his arms wrapped around her had set her mouth to watering, then he’d cupped the back of her head and brought her lips to his neck and she’d been lost.
  
  “Darce, wake up.” She shook his shoulder as the sound of footsteps and voice’s got closer.
  
  “I understand you had some issues recently? Last night’s feed was cut abruptly and let me tell you, our investors were not happy. Not happy at all. Can you give us some assurances that the same thing won’t happen again?”
  
  “Huh? Wh—” Darce came awake sharply.
  
  She put her fingers to his lips, cutting him off. “Shhh. We got company.”
  
  He sat up, eyes wide and tension coiled in every line of his body. After hauling them both to their feet, he shoved her behind him when a group came into view at the front of the cage. Led by Fitz in full uniform, it was comprised mostly of men, with only one woman in a power suit which looked like it had come right out of the eighties. All wore badges with the initials VIP emblazoned on them in large blue letters. She knew the system. Each badge had a chip in it that allowed the visitor to certain areas, and lord help any of them if they lost their badge.
  
  “Oh yes.” Fitzgerald nodded, his expression calm but a betraying wash of red was at his neck. “We shut that down quickly and dealt with the instigators. Seemed one of our staff was less than careful when dealing with the stock, one got loose…” He shrugged and spread his hands. “This business is dangerous. Some losses are to be expected.”
  
  The woman’s heels rang out as she approached the bars, peering into the darkness. Darce snarled, claws already out and ready to use. Toni put a hand on his arm and locked eyes with the woman. Slender and blonde, her ice-blue eyes swept over the pair with utter lack of compassion. Toni shivered. She’d never seen such coldness on a human before.
  
  “I see. And this pair?”
  
  Fitz looked past her. “A Blood and a Lycan. Part of the breeding phase. The Lycan has bonded so we have high hopes of conception.”
  
  The woman nodded, but her eyes lingered on Darce’s broad shoulders. “This one has been in the ring?”
  
  Not liking the gleam in the other woman’s eyes, or the purely feminine interest, Toni slid in front of Darce, baring her fangs. Strange, they dropped easier into her mouth than they had before, as though they hadn’t fully retracted. Darce’s hand closed around her wrist and stopped her from rushing the bars. One swipe—that’s all she needed—and she’d open a second smile right along the bitch’s throat. Teach her to ogle Toni’s man.
  
  “He has indeed. One of our more successful fighters.”
  
  “I want to see him fight. If he comes up to scratch I’ll take him off your hands. He’ll be a valuable addition to our stable.” The blonde smiled and straightened up. “Unless of course, your breeding experiment precludes a sale. At our previously agreed rate of course.”
  
  Toni’s heart lurched as Darce’s hand tightened around her wrist. Stable? Sale? Shit, they were going to take him away before they got a chance at escape. Ice washed through her veins and she assessed the guards with the little group. Darce caught her looking and shook his head. There were too many guards. If they tried anything, especially with VIPs in here, they’d be dead before they took another breath.
  
  Fitz’s eyes gleamed for a second but he was quick to mask the expression. He shrugged, expression blank.
  
  “Double it. He’s a very popular subject.”
  
  Blondie wrinkled her nose, but Toni already knew what her answer was going to be. “Done. But I want to see him fight first.”
  
  Fitz nodded and clicked his fingers. “Get him out.”
  
  “No!” The cry escaped Toni’s lips before she could stop it. Whirling around, she wrapped herself around Darce, fear pounding through her system like a battalion in hobnail boots. The worry that if he went out there he wouldn’t come back to her drove its claws deep into her gut and wouldn’t let go.
  
  “Shhh…it’s okay, babe.” He cupped her face, thumb stroking over her cheek while the guards unlocked the cage. Darce leaned in and stole her breath with the softest, sweetest kiss she’d ever been given. “No matter what, I’ll be coming back for you. Don’t you worry.”
  
  She couldn’t do anything but nod, holding back tears as they dragged him from the cage. He snarled, about to lash out until one of the guards to the side turned and aimed his rifle directly at Toni. She swallowed and raised her hands.
  
  “I’m calm, I’m calm.” Darce put his hands out to the side, not responding when two guards moved in and cuffed him. “Just don’t hurt her.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Seventeen
  
  “Fuck. What’s going on?”
  
  Toni paced back and forth in the cage before leaning against the bars and angling her head to try and see down the side of the cage opposite. They’d taken Darce that way in cuffs. The blonde bitch following with a smile like the cat that had gotten the damn cream.
  
  But that had been hours ago. Or felt like it anyway. Probably nearer an hour.
  
  “Fuck!”
  
  She snarled, slammed her hands into the bars and pushed off them to pace around the cage again. Her claws had sprouted in her anger but they ached like a bitch. A scowl twisting her features, she rubbed at her fingers and tried to get them to retract. But they weren’t playing ball, not even when she pressed down on the floor with the tips—a trick she’d used in the past. Instead they throbbed in complaint, a refrain picked up by the rest of her body.
  
  Defeated, she threw herself into a heap on the meager blankets at the back of the small enclosure. Darce’s scent rose to engulf her, wrapping around her and caressing her senses. Her heart swelled as she grabbed the blankets, and gathered them into her lap to bury her nose deep. Tears welled up so she pressed her face deeper. How pathetic was that? The man was gone less than an hour and she was a sniveling wreck.
  
  He’s not coming back…
  
  She jerked her head up, doing her best to ignore the little voice, and leaned back against the wall. Each cage had a solid back, and was linked to the next in a block of two. She was settled in the corner by the empty enclosure next to her. Harder for the technicians to poke at her. Well, unless they came through the empty cell, which would give her enough of a warning to move into the middle.
  
  Arching her back, she stretched and a groan escaped her lips. Why did she hurt so much? She moved to lift her arms above her head, needing to roll her shoulders to ease the deep ache there, but her claws caught on the blankets. Disentangling them, she frowned and looked at her fingers. Was it her imagination, or did her fingers seem longer than before? Like the bones themselves had lengthened. She shook off the notion, slumped back down against the wall and caught Steele looking at her.
  
  “What?”
  
  He shrugged, broad shoulders moving easily despite the heavy bruising she could see over the left side. Darce’s work probably, defending himself. She shivered. Not that defense was really possible against a creature like Steele. Until last night, she hadn’t believed the base stories about a Hybrid. Like most urban myths, she’d dismissed them as fear-mongering. Now she’d seen him in action in the ring…yeah, fear was one word for it. Lethal was another.
  
  “Nothing. Just that you don’t look so hot.”
  
  Toni barked a short laugh. “No shit, Sherlock!”
  
  He frowned and moved forward, leaving the aide sleeping at the back of the cage. Toni flicked a glance her way. Like her, the girl had been given new clothes, but a quick scent of the air revealed that was it. The smell of blood from the beating the two women had been given still clung to her, but nothing else. No smell of sex or anything. Obviously the Project’s breeding experiment wasn’t going so well over there.
  
  “No, I’m serious. You look like crap. How…what are you feeling?”
  
  Toni leaned her head back against the wall and raked her clawed fingers through her hair. The sharp edges nicked her skin but she ignored the slight sting and concentrated on the clues from the rest of her body. She felt terrible. Every muscle ached, and a soul deep chill seemed to be working its way up from her toes and turning her skin to ice while inside, a fire raged to boil her blood. She hugged herself tighter and used her hands to try and rub some warmth back into her upper arms.
  
  “Ugh…” The sound emerged as a groan. Her guts coiled and twisted like a pit of snakes. Red hot snakes, covered in pepper and hot sauce, grating against her insides while they writhed over and around each other. Oh god, she was going to be sick. Tilting her head back, she swallowed convulsively. Lips pressed tightly together, she fought to keep down the contents of her stomach. She hated being sick. Loathed and detested it.
  
  “Insides feel like they’re on fire? But you got ice crawling over your skin?” Steele’s deep voice broke through her pain-filled semi-trance.
  
  Another wave of bile rose, so she just nodded.
  
  “Drink some water. It’ll help.”
  
  She opened her eyes with what seemed like extraordinary effort and focused on the water-bowl to the left. Her vision swam, three different versions of the steel bowl doing a slow waltz around each other. While she watched, they got fuzzier. Whatever was wrong with her was getting worse, fast. She tried to move toward the bowl but her arm didn’t work properly. Instead of reaching out, the useless thing fell to the side. She followed it down, slumping onto her side as the first wave of convulsions hit.
  
  Her teeth chattered but she rode the shivers out. Fuck. What had they done to her? Poison…in the food maybe? But she hadn’t eaten or drank…unless it was from Darce. Just the smell of food and water had turned her off, so he’d eaten it and his blood filled her belly instead of the meal the techs had thrown into the cage.
  
  “Shit…” Steele’s voice sounded panicked. Toni lay there, curled up into a ball, teeth chattering as the sweat poured from her.
  
  “Someone get some help in here! I think we’re losing her!”
  
  
  
  
  
  Pain is my friend, pain is my friend. Absorb the pain, work it…be one with it…
  
  As much as Darce tried to convince himself, running the mantra through his head over and over, it wasn’t working. After three bouts under the watchful eye of Colonel Fitzgerald and the VIPs, he had more holes in his skin than in a colander, and he was leaking the red stuff worse than an extra on the Walking Dead. Even his damn toenails hurt. How the fuck did toenails hurt?
  
  Blood perfumed the air—his and that of the other poor bastards they’d thrown in with him—so thick he gagged. God knew how the Bloods were dealing with it. One look at the red sheen in the vampire’s eyes clued him in. They weren’t dealing. They were in blood lust.
  
  He eyed the three Bloods circling him. Blood trailed down his arms and torso and his chest heaved from exertion, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was being the last man standing. Because one thing was for sure: once they cracked the cage to let him out, he wasn’t taking this shit lying down anymore. While getting beat up and battered around the cage, he’d analyzed the positions and armament of the guards, and where they were in relation to the VIPs. If nothing changed then he would take out the two guards on the door and get to the blonde who wanted to buy him before anyone could even blink.
  
  “Come on, you bunch of pussies!” he snarled, opening his arms in invitation.
  
  The Bloods rushed him at once. Fury and energy rolling through him in equal amounts, he turned and launched himself at the side of the cage. One step, two. He leaped and planted a foot in the middle of the mesh in front of him and pushed off. He twisted violently in midair, curled one leg under him and snapped the other out. The toe of his heavy boot, the ones the guards had made him put on before he stepped into the ring, connected with the first Blood’s jaw. There was a sickening crunch as bone gave, shattering within the skin and shoving the broken ends of jaw out the other side of the face. The guy spun like a top, splattering the sand with blood, and collided with one of the others. Both went down in a heap of limbs.
  
  The wolf within roared and Darce tipped his head back, letting the creature have free voice. The door between them was fully open now, the man feeding the beast and the beast feeding the man. For once the creature didn’t push to gain control or go for a shift. Instead, it pumped feral rage through Darce’s human body until he thought he’d burst from it, and allowed him to make all the decisions. Animalistic power and human intellect to drive it. The perfect symbiotic relationship.
  
  Thinking human.
  
  Jack’s favorite phrase and finally, finally, Darce understood.
  
  He dropped his head back as the final Blood rushed in. He didn’t give it a chance to land a blow. Instead, he dodged the lightning fast swipe of claws, and then slid in to wrap a hand around the back of the guy’s neck. His other hand grabbed at the shoulder and he shoved his face right into the Blood’s, then jerked him down. The Blood snarled but Darce’s grip was good, solid. This was going down. Now.
  
  Kicking his feet out from under him and backward, he took them both down. Pulling his head back, he used the momentum to drive his opponent’s face hard into the sand. Unlike before, it was just a thin covering over the concrete beneath, offering no protection when the Blood hit at full speed. Scarlet mingled with the pale gold granules, snaking out from beneath the Blood’s head like the hair of Medusa. On a human, such a move was a finisher—end game—but not with a Blood. The fucker would be up and kicking back in minutes.
  
  Darce didn’t give him the chance. Levering himself up from the prone position, he shifted his hold and, gritting his teeth, snapped the Blood’s neck.
  
  “Bravo!”
  
  Blondie crowed with excitement and clapped her hands. Nearing the mesh, she smiled broadly as Darce climbed to his feet. He kept a sharp eye on the three forms prone on the sand. The one he’d dropped lay still. Dead probably. Hard to tell for sure with the creatures the Project produced.
  
  “Oh, yes. He’s perfect.” The blonde turned to Fitzgerald with a wide smile. “Can he run well?”
  
  Fitzgerald snorted. “He’s a Lycan—full lupine—so he should do, yeah.”
  
  She spun back around, watching Darce watch her.
  
  C’mon, bitch. He rolled his shoulders, tensing all his muscles and posing. Ask to take a closer look, you know you want to. And the instant they let me out of this cage—
  
  “I want to see him against the Hybrid. Just to be sure.”
  
  Wait, what? No. He didn’t want to face Steele again. Not in here. Not anywhere.
  
  “Sounds like an excellent plan.” Fitzgerald nodded to the guards and Darce centered himself. He’d have less than a second to put his plan into action, grab the blonde and get claws in her throat. If she had enough clout to start making deals with Fitzgerald, then Darce would bet the shit would hit the fan if she so much as mussed her hair up.
  
  But the guards, instead of clearing the cage, left the bodies with him and disappeared. Shit. They weren’t clearing the cage yet. He watched the blonde move farther away from the door.
  
  “So…why me?” He sidled to the mesh near where she was, eyeing her up and down with an interest he didn’t feel. But he knew women, and he knew how women saw him—had seen the way she’d looked at him. Underneath whatever other purposes she had, there was female interest too. Interest he could use to his advantage, even if the thought of touching a woman other than Toni made him feel physically sick.
  
  “Why you what?” she asked, stepping back from the mesh as he approached, fear flashing in those baby blues.
  
  He flicked a glance at her badge. Karla Armstrong, Lowery Industries. Who the fuck was she, and what did she want him for?
  
  “Valuable addition to your stable? Doubling your offer? Stop me when I get to something familiar.” He leaned one shoulder against a support post and looked at her through the mesh with one eyebrow raised.
  
  She shrugged, but flicked him a flirty glance from under her lashes. He suppressed the shudder. Focus. He needed to get out of here and she was his meal ticket to both freedom and Toni.
  
  “We’re looking for a Lycan. I wanted the Hybrid but the good colonel won’t part with him.”
  
  “Oho, I’m second choice then, am I?”
  
  She didn’t reply, looking toward the door as it opened. Darce grunted, cast a glance over his shoulder and the blood drained from his body. They had Steele, yeah, but behind him two guards had Toni and the other woman, the one they’d thrown in with Steele. But they weren’t dragging them this time. Instead, both women were walking. Just. Toni was almost bent double, being helped by the other woman, gripping her stomach with agony written all over her face.
  
  “Shit.”
  
  He was across the cage the instant the door opened and they shoved the two women in. He got his arms around Toni before she hit the floor and cradled her in his lap while he checked her over. Paler than a corpse, her skin was waxy and sweat beaded to roll down her skin. She shivered, but when he put his hand to her forehead it was like touching a radiator. Another convulsion hit her, a moan slipping from her. He held her tight until it passed, and she opened her eyes. They were dark, unfocused. Her gaze skittered over his face and onto the cage around them before returning to him. He doubted she knew where they were.
  
  “What’s the matter with her? How long has she been like this?” he demanded, looking up at the woman hovering next to him. Her scent said human, almost. Steele’s scent was all over her, but there was something else— something wild and feral, buried deep down. Not fully human, but he didn’t have time to work out what else she was. Not when his mate looked like death warmed over.
  
  “I d-don’t know. He…” She jerked her head toward where Steele was arguing with one of the technicians. Unlike the two women, he was bound hand and foot, just a short chain between his wrists and ankles allowing him to move. “He said she was ill. Tried to get help, but then they came for us.”
  
  Darce nodded, and froze when one of the doctors plunged a needle in Steele’s arm. The Hybrid roared and swiped at the needle, tearing it away and backhanding the technician into a cluster of equipment.
  
  “Quick. Get him inside!” Fitzgerald ordered, but the guards were already moving. With their taser batons sparking, the guards herded the big man into the cage and slammed the door shut.
  
  Steele stumbled, went to one knee with his head down. His shoulders shook, his fist opening and closing in a reflex action. Instinct plucked at Darce, all his wolfy-senses going batshit as he eased Toni to the ground behind him.
  
  “Look after her,” he shot to the woman hovering next to him and stood. “Steele, man…you okay?”
  
  At his question, the Hybrid’s head snapped up. Darce swore.
  
  His eyes were totally red.
  
  
  
  Her blood was on fire.
  
  Toni groaned and rolled over, grinding her forehead into the sand beneath. It hurt so she did it again, anything to distract her from the pain in her guts. The scent of blood and sweat—other less pleasant aromas—rose to clog up her nostrils when she disturbed the grains. The heated blackness rolled back, and her hearing returned. The sounds of battle filled her ears, along with terrified sobs.
  
  Where was she? What the hell was going on?
  
  Another wave of fire stole her breath but she rode it out, eyes pressed tightly shut. When it receded she gathered herself, and—arms clutched tightly around her middle—got her knees under her. The sand abraded her forehead but she didn’t care. That was pain, a normal pain, not like the agony that attacked her through her own blood.
  
  “Oh god, please… He’s going to kill him. You have to get up!”
  
  Hands pulled at her arms, trying to yank her up from her forehead-down, ass-up crouch. Toni hissed in reply and concentrated on not hurling. Crawling around on the floor and rubbing her forehead across what amounted to sandpaper wasn’t the most dignified thing but she didn’t care. Pain was good, pain was her friend. It cleared her mind and helped her think.
  
  She slammed her hand into the sand by her head. Hard. Agony stampeded up her arm, fighting back the fire in her blood. She hit again and again, until the skin on her knuckles split and the scent of her own blood filled her nostrils. A roar left her lips and she pushed herself up, grinding the open wounds into the floor. To the knees—knees were good. Now if she could just up that to being on her feet, she’d be cooking with gas.
  
  Her head rocked back on her neck and she opened her eyes, trying to focus on what was going on around her. The cage. This time from the inside. Crap, that wasn’t good. The mesh panels zoomed in and out as her vision tried to get with the program. Myriad snarls and the sound of fists on flesh brought her head around and she frowned, trying to bring the combatants into view. Someone was getting a pasting—that was for sure.
  
  The fighters were out of focus but she could make out a bigger man pounding on a smaller one. Animalistic snarls clued her in. Two Lycans for a guess. The bigger one knocked the other off his feet with a brutal elbow and backhand combination that made him stagger into the mesh with a clatter. Her vision cleared in time to see Darce slide down the mesh into a crumpled heap.
  
  “Shit…no…”
  
  Toni lurched to the side, hooking her fingers into the mesh and hauling herself upright. The metal burned and bit when she touched it. She gasped and used the pain to fend off the fire blasting through her. She wanted to curl up into a little ball and sob, to give up and let the agony overwhelm her but she wouldn’t. Not with Darce in danger. No way would the fucking Project win, not while she had breath left in her body.
  
  Darce staggered back to his feet as she managed to reach hers. The aide was right next to her, sliding in under Toni’s arm to keep her upright.
  
  “Thank God. I thought you were a goner for sure. How are you feel—oh…”
  
  Toni clung to the other woman, using the stranger’s strength to stay upright while Darce launched himself into the attack again. As he ran, he changed and another form exploded from his body. The snarl rolling from his lips deepened and transformed as his chest expanded. A muzzle punched out of his human face, filled with sharp fangs, and fur flowed from his nose outward like an oil slick covering his skin. Bones snapped sharply, grew and reformed in an instant. The structure of his legs shifted mid-run. The claws already present at the ends of his fingers lengthened, his hands changing shape to become more like claws but he wasn’t wolf—not fully. Instead, he was something else. Humanoid…a wolf-man.
  
  “Yes! I knew it!” Fitz’s voice rang with triumph from somewhere the other side of the cage but Toni paid it no mind. That bastard would get his comeuppance even if she had to come back from the dead to send him to the afterlife.
  
  The two women caught their breath as Darce charged across the sand. He changed direction, angling himself at the mesh, and then ran up it. In mid-air, he twisted his body and lashed out with a foot. Claws sliced through the air and across Steele’s face. Blood splattered across the sand. The bigger man spun around and went down.
  
  “Holy shit.”
  
  Toni wasn’t sure whether she or the aide had spoken, but it didn’t matter. That had finished the fight. No way could even Steele get back up after such a blow. No way could anyone get up after something like that.
  
  Darce dropped back to his feet, dancing lightly while he studied the prone body on the sands. His eyes were the full amber of his wolf, but sparkled with a human intelligence that was disconcerting.
  
  Pride filled Toni. She straightened, ignoring the claws of fire in her gut. Somehow Darce had found a way to retain to combine the most powerful elements of his two natures into one lethal form. Love blossomed, warming her from the middle of her chest outward and fighting the pain that wanted to tie her in knots.
  
  And he was her man.
  
  She pushed off, needing to get to him. To wrap her arms around him and reassure herself he was actually there, living and breathing in front of her. Before she could take a step, Steele groaned. She paused, unable to believe her eyes. The Hybrid moved, the muscles in his big shoulders and arms popping into high relief as he pushed up, then got to his knees before climbing to his feet. A snarl rolled from Darce’s lips. He flexed his hands, making his claws flash in the lights trained on the ring.
  
  Steele threw back his head and roared, the sound rebounding off the walls. Darce’s claws had opened his face from ear to jaw in three vicious slices. But as the two women watched, the skin knitted and turned black. A darkness that spread out over his skin to flow over the rest of his body. His nose and lips changed, pushing out like Darce’s but then scrunching up. Becoming something else…not lupine, even though he had Lycan blood.
  
  His ears elongated and became bat-like. A series of cracks like gunshots echoed through the silence. With each sharp sound, Steele’s body jerked like a marionette. Bones snapped and reformed within his skin. His hands changed, broader and longer, like paws tipped with vicious talons. Not Lycan and not Blood, but something in between. His legs cracked and changed shape, the movement sickening and painful looking as his lower limbs reformed with the backwards “knee”, like a wolf.
  
  Darce backed up, wariness written in every line of his body. Silence fell and anticipation drew the air taut. Everyone in the room held their breath. Waited to see what Steele had become, what he would do.
  
  That question was answered when he lifted his head, eyes glowing red. He looked around. Spotted Darce. The hiss which emanated from his throat was low and full of malevolence as he launched himself at the Lycan. Darce had no time to block. He tried, but barely managed to stop every second blow. Toni screamed. More and more holes from Steele’s claws appeared in Darce’s skin, bright trails of scarlet staining the fur.
  
  He howled in pain, lashing out with claws and teeth as Steele circled him, but it was easy to see he was outmatched. For every blow Darce tried, Steele came back with three, pinning the Lycan into the corner until there was no escape. An audible wince went through the crowd outside the mesh when Steele hissed, claws flashing before he drove them deep into Darce’s abdomen. Darce stiffened, head thrown back as Steele let go and he slowly slid to the sand.
  
  “Nononono!”
  
  Toni didn’t stop to think. Ignoring the pain curling through her gut, she launched herself across the cage. Something inside her broke, shattering into a million pieces and releasing the blackness in her soul. It flooded through her veins, extinguishing the fires that had raged there and filling every inch and every cell of her body with icy darkness.
  
  Three running steps took her halfway over the sand. On the forth she bunched her legs under her and launched herself into the air. She left the ground and her body changed. Bones popped and snapped, reformed at the speed of thought. She reached out in front of her, redness filtering over her vision as she homed in on her target.
  
  Steele.
  
  One thought filled her mind.
  
  She wouldn’t let him kill the man she loved.
  
  She accepted the thought finally. That she was in love with Darce. In love with the irritating, cocky, sexy-as-hell Lycan who’d told her she was his the first time that they’d met. She was his, she always had been—she just hadn’t known it. He was a Lycan, sure, and no match for a Blood. That side of her rebelled against the thought, even while the other half, the half that was whatever the fuck was wrong with her right now, accepted it immediately. It felt right. Perfect. Meant to be. Which meant she wasn’t going to let this piece of shit Hybrid kill him. Just like in chess, the queen protected the king.
  
  Even if it meant laying down her own life.
  
  Perhaps feeling death coming for him, Steele looked over his shoulder at the last minute. Surprise flowed across his altered features but she was on him. Snarling with rage, she pummeled, stabbing through the thickened hide with her talons. Longer and stronger than they’d ever been, they slid easily even through the blackened skin of this new form, the hot rush of his blood flowing over her fingers and tantalizing her with its heady scent.
  
  She ignored it, snarling again when Steele dropped to the floor and started to roll. They tumbled and the air was knocked from her lungs as he tried to throw her off his back. It didn’t work; she wasn’t going to be dislodged. She had her legs locked around his waist and a full set of talons buried deep in the fleshy part of his shoulder as she used the other to give him more ventilation through his ribcage. He howled, staggered to his feet. Turning, he surged backward a few steps, then slammed her into one of the support struts for the cage.
  
  The back of her skull connected sharply. Stars exploded over her vision, her blows weaker as she was forced to cling on for grim death. She couldn’t let go now. If she went down, then Darce and the poor little human aide were dead.
  
  She couldn’t let that happen.
  
  “Blood… Try blood!” She yelled to the other woman, desperate for anything to get Darce back on his feet and into the fight. Between them, they might have a chance to take this fucker down. After Steele, getting out of here was going to be a walk in the park.
  
  After Steele, anything would be a walk in the park.
  
  She didn’t get chance to see if the other woman got the message. Steele reached over his shoulder, his claws tearing through her arm and up to snarl under her collar-bone. His talon scraped along the underside, dragging a cry of pain from her lips. With a roar, he yanked her off his back and threw her with ease against the side of the cage. She closed her eyes as she sailed through the air, her body limp to try and limit the damage.
  
  The theory was good, but the execution failed.
  
  She crashed into the mesh—or rather her shoulders and her legs did, but the center of her back hit one of the concrete pillars holding the whole thing in place. There was a crack, the wrong sound loud in the sudden silence and she dropped to the sand.
  
  She tried to scramble out of the way but warmth and numbness spread over her lower body. She couldn’t move her legs, not even to move out of the way as Steele raced toward her, his claws outstretched and glinting under the lights. Death came for her with sharp fangs and red eyes.
  
  She had seconds to react, but fuck if she was going out without a fight. Setting her back against the mesh, she hissed in defiance. Steele rolled into her, hands extended. His claws pierced her abdomen at the same time she drove hers through his ribcage.
  
  Blood poured over her hand. Hot. Wet. Thick.
  
  His heart beat against her claws, like it was irritated by the intrusion. At the same time his sliced through her gut, tearing like a dull knife through warm bread. The red eyes above hers started to dim, the weird bat-like features receding to leave a ravaged human face in their wake.
  
  He was dying. Her blow had been a mortal one. Her vision started to gray around the edges. So had his, but she’d achieved what she’d set out to do. Darce was safe and that was all that mattered.
  
  She’d saved the man she loved.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Eighteen
  
  “Yeah, got stuck out on one of the back roads. Useless piece of shit stalled and it took us a while to get the damn thing going again…”
  
  Hidden in the back of their stolen truck, crammed in between Thom and Lilly with Richards opposite, Sanders held his breath as Jack’s easy laugh filtered through from the cab.
  
  “Tell me about it. Been on the fritz for a couple of days. The pool guys’ll have a cow. They’re already pushed to the max with repairs.”
  
  Sanders bit back his snort while the Captain exchanged pleasantries with the guards on the gate and put the truck in motion again. The pool mechanics would have more than a cow if they saw the state of the truck, what with Palmer in the front holding the passenger door in place. After Lilly had ripped the door clean off and its madcap tumble across the sun-baked dirt, at first it had been too twisted and bent to even sit back in place properly.
  
  It had taken three wolves jumping up and down on it to get it back to anywhere near flat. By that time the hinges had been little more than twisted remnants, no use for holding anything—never mind an armored door. Hence Palmer’s current door holding duties, which he’d whined and bitched about since they’d set off, trying to convince Blake—who sat next to him—to switch places. A low growl from the bigger wolf had ended the conversation quickly.
  
  The truck trundled down the road; the potholes and generally shit surface would have clued Sanders in they were on base even if he’d been dropped in blindfolded and with a peg on his nose. The four Lycans in the back—Thom, Richards, Lilly and Sanders—clung to the sides to avoid being thrown around like rocks in a sack. They turned a corner and Lilly lost her grip, sliding to the side with an “Oommph.” Sanders shoved his arm out straight, palm flat against the bulkhead between the cabin and the back, pinning her in place so she didn’t slide around the back of the truck. The rest of the pack was used to travelling in the things, and adjusting to the movement was second nature. But not for Lilly, and if she got so much as a bruise on her tender skin, Jack would blow a gasket. He hadn’t wanted his delicate little mate to come along in the first place but Lilly had won the argument. Again. Sanders hid his smile at the thought. Oh, how the mighty had fallen…
  
  The truck slowed to a stop. Sanders ducked his head. The silhouettes of long, low buildings told him they were right outside the Lycan pens. He gave the enclosures their correct names, refusing to call them barracks anymore. They were pens to keep animals in. Animals like him and his pack.
  
  Thom, nearest the back of the trunk, shot the three of them a wink and slipped out into the darkness. He still squeaked when he spoke, but the job he’d been assigned didn’t require his conversational skills—just his ability to apply bloody and brutal violence.
  
  Sanders lifted his head and drew a breath, and rolled it over his tongue. Five packs in residence if the scents on the wind were accurate. That was good. The more the merrier. Even if all they did was run amok on the base and try and kill each other, it would distract the guards enough trying to get them back under control for the pack to sneak in and complete their mission.
  
  The truck set off again, after pausing a few seconds to let Thom out, which could have been accounted for by shifting gear, or avoiding one of the deeper pot holes in the worn road. Even hitting one of those babies at a low speed was enough to fuck up a vehicle’s suspension.
  
  Silence stretched as the truck rattled past the labs. First the Blood labs, then around and past the Lycan ones. At the RA labs, Jack slowed the truck again. Richards moved to the tailgate and paused to look back. Sanders felt his gaze but ignored it, studying his bare feet instead. Damn, he really should clip his toenails at some point. They were long, even for a wolf. And was that blood under the left little toenail? Perhaps when they were all out of this, he’d head to the nearest spa and get himself a few treatments.
  
  Richards sighed, then took the cue and slipped out into the darkness to infiltrate the RA labs. Everyone on base knew the things were infected on command, with a new batch for each mission, but there were always a few kept in the labs on standby or for observation. Enough to keep the admin staff locked down nice and tight, while the guards were chasing their tails outside with the Lycans.
  
  Almost on cue, howls filled the night air and the truck pulled away again. This time Jack didn’t stick to the on-base limit, but floored it. Sanders grabbed Lilly and held her tight while the vehicle careened around a corner, the door tumbling end over end behind them as they headed for the hangars.
  
  “Brace!” he yelled a warning to Lilly a moment before they hit the fire-damaged hangar doors. He folded himself around her smaller form as the truck juddered and rolled before heading into a long slide that had them facing the opposite way to the one they’d entered. Almost before they’d slid to a stop, Sanders was moving, Lilly half a second behind him.
  
  Reaching deep inside himself, he thought of sex. The slide of skin on skin, the grunts and groans, the rasp of stubble over his jaw when he kissed his partner…all the little things which turned sex from just fucking into something outstanding. He took it all and shoved it right through the door between him and his wolf.
  
  The change ripped through him like wildfire—stronger and faster than he’d ever shifted before into his half-form. He’d only managed it once and lost it before the change was realized, but not this time. This time the form locked into place with a click of finality and he knew he had it. Knew he’d be able to switch forms at will.
  
  It was dizzying. Exhilarating. Fucking a-maz-ing.
  
  He howled just for the pleasure of it. Head and shoulders tipped back, he gave full reign to his voice. Jack and the others spilled from the front of the truck, shifting on the run. Sanders dropped his head and grinned when Jack ran past him. A spring in his step, Sanders sprinted to join the others as they streamed through the doors and down the stairs into the subterranean levels.
  
  The pack avoided the elevator, all of them were wary of small metal boxes they could get trapped in, and raced down the stairs silently. Claws clicked on the concrete and linoleum as they followed the scent of blood and death. They reached the bottom of the stairs and found a long corridor. Sanders grunted. Random blood splatters decorated the walls. Human, Blood and Lycan. The shit had hit the fan in a big way down here, just like the SARAs had said. Which was to be expected with a breakout; the Project sure didn’t like to lose its toys.
  
  A squad of guards turned the corner just before the pack reached it, the wolves looming over the men. Four against a pack of Lycans? Suicide. Before the humans eyes had finished widening, the pack attacked. They didn’t even get chance to shout. One tried to run. He didn’t get far, run down by Palmer. Scarlet stained the walls. Sanders ran past, the pack streaming ahead as they searched for their taken teammate.
  
  They reached a door and piled through it into a larger room with holding cages. A quick glance assured them they were all empty so the pack raced on, following the myriad scents. The best tracker in the group, Sanders was up front—all senses on alert as he turned his head this way and that, catching every scrap of information he could from the overload of scents. Buried deep within them was Darce’s. Sanders bit back his howl of triumph and he hit the next set of double doors ahead of the rest.
  
  Gunfire shattered the air around him. A litany of curses rolling through his head, Sanders threw himself to the side, using a bank of electronic equipment for cover. Bullets tore into the machines, shattering monitors and sending sparks into the air. Wolves crowded in behind him, Jack’s bigger form curled protectively around Lilly’s. Sanders knew without asking the big alpha would walk into a hail of bullets to protect her. Longing pulled at Sanders’s heartstrings again but he banished the thought and watched when Jack gave rapid fire hand gestures, their field training more important now than ever since they couldn’t speak to convey information.
  
  He snapped to, his attention on the room. The gunfire came from the other side from a cluster of guards who were herding a group of people out the door. Non Project, by the quick flash he got of their clothing—smart suits way above the pay-grade of anyone apart from the Colonel shouting orders as he, too, disappeared out of the door.
  
  Sanders’s gaze slid from them to the cage in the middle of the room. For a moment shock froze him to the spot. Blood splattered the sand within the cage in decorative yet gory patterns. A woman crouched to one side. Arms wrapped around herself, she screamed over and over. Foster was slumped near to her, the sand around him scarlet. Sanders’s breath caught in his throat when he took in the still lines of the Lieutenant’s body. Sanders had seen death many times, in Iraq and Afghanistan before he’d been moved to the Project and that kind of utter stillness…that wasn’t good.
  
  Foster coughed, groaning as he filled his lungs. Blood blossomed in the air again, thick and metallic. Breathing a sigh of relief, Sanders raced toward the cage, Jack and Lilly on his heels. His claws skittered against the concrete as he slid to a stop. A slash took out the bolts on the mesh door and then the thing was open, thrown aside by Jack. Sanders barreled through, toes digging into the sand as Foster struggled to his feet.
  
  The guy was in a bad way—punctures, lacerations and deep claw marks scattered over his body. He wore blood like it was the new black, a grisly shirt that said more than words about what he’d been through. But it was the look in his eyes. The utter horror and pain as he looked past Sanders at the final two in the cage. Sanders recognized the woman. She was the Blood who had come after them at the hospital, but the man he didn’t know. The pair was locked in a fatal embrace, the man’s claws in the woman’s gut while hers pierced his chest.
  
  Mutual kill. No winners in that game.
  
  “God no…please, no.”
  
  Darce shoved Sanders out the way to race past, making the other wolf stumble backward against the mesh. The Lieutenant yanked the guy off the Blood and hauled her into his arms, a terrible keen of utter despair ripping from his throat. It was a sound that raised the hackles on the back of Sanders’s neck and reached right down through his body and into the connection he had with his wolf, touching both their souls. The sound of a pain and loss so complete anyone hearing it knew the owner would never be whole again.
  
  “Please, Toni…sweetheart. Wake up,” Darce begged, his voice a broken whisper, the once proud man humbled. He held the slender body of his mate in his arms, tears running down his face. “Please…don’t leave me. You can’t leave me.”
  
  Oh fucking hell, the poor guy. Tears of pity for Darce’s pain welled in Sanders’s eyes. No one deserved that. To find their mate, the one special person who completed them utterly…only to lose them. To not be able to save them. Sanders let his wolf recede, the bigger form folding back into his human body.
  
  A moment’s pride filled him that he’d finally found the key to the change, but it was quickly gone at a new sound. The guy Darce had pulled off his woman groaned, and rolled to his back with a cough. Blood stained his lips and dribbled down his cheek. Training took over and Sanders was down on his knees next to the guy in a heartbeat. Tall and broad, with a head of dark hair and heavy stubble, the injured man had a strange scent. Not wolf, not Blood but somewhere in between. The Hybrid, it had to be.
  
  Sanders checked the guy over, his movements swift and efficient. He was breathing, which meant his airways were open. He’d turned over himself, one knee bent up, and even now his toes wiggled against the sand so his spine was good. Reaching out, Sanders placed his hands on the guy’s chest to sweep down and check for broken ribs that might compromise the abdomen, but things didn’t go quite to plan. The moment Sanders’s hands touched down, black-on-black eyes snapped open to focus on him with pinpoint accuracy.
  
  Sanders’s fingertips stilled just below the collar-bones. Silken skin over muscles that seemed carved from steel invited him to explore, but Sanders kept the temptation strictly in check. Lower down, terrible wounds marked where the female Blood had ripped into him to get to his heart. Literally through his stomach. So much damage…surely even whatever-he-was couldn’t survive that?
  
  “Hey there, bud.” Sanders smiled in reassurance. “You’re safe now. I’m Joe… Just gonna check you’re okay to move, then we’ll get you out of here. Sound good?”
  
  Whatever response Sanders had expected, it wasn’t the one he got. Between one breath and the next, the Hybrid moved. Hard hands closed around Sanders’s arms, and a second later Sanders was flat on his back, pinned under a hard, very male body.
  
  “Better.”
  
  Shit shit shit.
  
  Sanders froze at the feeling of razor-sharp claws across the front of his throat. No one should be able to move so damn fast, especially not wounded like this guy was, but somehow he had. Within a heartbeat, he had Sanders locked down and immobile under him. One arm hooked under Sanders’s shoulder, a hand clasped around the back of his neck to both brace the Hybrid and control Sanders’s upper body at the same time. Sanders’s legs were pinned down just as effectively. Hard thighs covered his and the Hybrid’s feet hooked into his ankles. He wasn’t going anywhere fast.
  
  “Holy crap.”
  
  The pack around them froze, tension and wariness high in the air. As if they hadn’t had enough to deal with recovering Foster, tangling with a wounded and pissed off Hybrid was just an extra kick in the balls.
  
  “Joe…you okay bud?” Jack asked carefully, the others fanning out in a loose semicircle around Sanders and the man hunkered over him. The pack would go to war and back for one of their own and he knew they would willingly take on a host of Hybrids. Whether Sanders himself would survive such a confrontation was another matter entirely.
  
  The Hybrid crouched over Sanders, his lips curling back to reveal vicious fangs just inches from Sanders’s throat—like the smaller man had become his new favorite possession. Sanders just hoped he hadn’t been cast as a chew toy. That could end badly. But the claws didn’t slice. Instead, callused fingertips stroked over the skin of his throat, almost like a caress.
  
  Sanders waved the pack off with his free hand. The Hybrid moved with him, reaching to capture Sanders’s wrist and tug the limb back in against his side. The Hybrid then hissed at Jack and covered Sanders with his own body. Almost like he were protecting the smaller man.
  
  Sanders closed his eyes, a wave of longing washing over him. This must be what having a mate would be like. That was the dream—to have someone there to protect and be protected by, to have someone to lean on… To have a guy feel like that about him.
  
  The Hybrid’s scent wrapped around Sanders when he crowded closer. Warm skin, male sweat and blood overlaid the feral smell of a Lycan, but it was laced with something deeper and darker, which stole Sanders’s breath. Liquid heat flooded his body, racing down his spine to circle his balls then drive into his cock. He was stiff in a heartbeat—the rampant length of his dick pressing up into the other guy’s toned stomach. The hairs there teased against the tip of Sanders’s cock and he bit back a whimper, wincing when the Hybrid drew back to look at him.
  
  Dark eyes met his, a question in their black on black depths. Sanders held his breath. Fuck. He was so getting the shit beat out of him now. Possibly worse given the claws that had stilled on his throat, right over the jugular. In his experience, even men who said that they were cool with the gay thing struggled when it was up close and personal. And it didn’t get more personal than another guy’s dick rubbing a trail across your stomach.
  
  Then, impossibly, heat filled the darkness in the stranger’s eyes. Heat and a feral lust so intense it sent a shiver of weakness from the top of Sanders’s head all the way down to his toes. A weakness which turned to an inferno as a small growl rolled up from the depths of the Hybrid’s chest. Strong fingers closed around Sanders’s throat and turned his head to the side. Bared the length of his throat. The Hybrid leaned down, his warm lips whispering over the pounding vein under the skin, the prickle of stubble making Sanders bite back a whimper.
  
  “God…yeah,” he whispered in agreement, wanting nothing more than to feel this man’s fangs in his throat even though the thought of being bitten by a Blood, even a half-Blood, should have filled him with revulsion. Suddenly he realized what Foster must have been going through. He needed it more than he needed his next breath and he’d do anything to have a guy—this guy—look at him in that way again. With fascination and wonder, as though he was everything.
  
  The Hybrid struck, his fangs piercing Sanders’s skin and into the vein beneath. Sharp pain sliced through Sanders, drawing his spine into a hard arc. The fangs retreated and warm suction took its place. Each hard pull rolled through his body like a locomotive, drawing a direct line right down to his cock. He groaned and tried to stop the automatic roll of his hips but it was impossible. The Hybrid growled and pulled Sanders closer but gently, not like a rag doll, and continued to feed. Shouts and the scent of panic clued him in that the pack was freaking out. Unable to do anything about it, Sanders closed his eyes and opened himself completely to his fate. Even if the guy killed him, it didn’t matter—he’d already given Sanders a taste of heaven. And that was all he’d ever wanted.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Nineteen
  
  Agony. Numbness. Despair.
  
  Darce felt all three and more as he rocked the limp body of the only woman he’d ever really loved in his arms. His heart shattered right there in his chest, the ache so complete it felt like there was a physical hole in the center of his body and soul, the jagged edges seeping his lifeblood out onto the unforgiving floor beneath. He rocked back and forth helplessly, not knowing what else to do.
  
  Toni was clasped close in his embrace, her body cold and lifeless. The eyes that had flashed with heat and humor, or irritation with his cocky answers, were now closed. The energy which had made her seem larger than life was all gone, leaving him with nothing more than a delicate shell to hold. Fresh agony stole his breath. He bent his head over her, burying his face against the slender curve between her shoulder and neck, not caring who saw him cry.
  
  “Oh God, babe. Why?” he whispered against her skin. The Hybrid had had him beat, a few more blows and it would have been all she wrote, but Darce hadn’t cared about that. He’d have done anything—would do anything—to ensure her safety. But instead she’d given up her life for his. Taken on the Hybrid when he was down and it had killed her.
  
  He slammed his head back against the mesh panel, hot tears scalding his face.
  
  It should have been him. Not her. What kind of man was he if he couldn’t protect the woman he loved?
  
  No man. Nothing worth the name.
  
  Darce drew a shuddering breath. He was done. There was nothing—no fight, no anything left in him. They’d just have to leave him here to die. At least then he could finally be with her.
  
  “Fuck! He’s feeding. Joe…shit, Joe!”
  
  “Someone get the bastard off him…he’s gonna kill him!”
  
  A warning growl and the panicked cries of the pack got Darce’s attention. He lifted his head and frowned, squinting to bring the scene in front of him into focus. Richards was off to one side with the woman who’d been shoved in the cage with Toni, while in the middle of the sand Sanders was pinned under Steele, the latter with his teeth buried in the smaller man’s neck. As he watched, Steele disengaged and looked up, directly at Darce.
  
  A snarl of rage spilled from Darce’s lips. How the fuck had Steele survived? How dare he survive when Toni lay dead in Darce’s arms? Anger fed agony which rolled back and forth between wolf and man. The change welled inside Darce, ready to burst from his skin. His hands clenched, the urge to bury his claws in the Hybrid’s throat almost overwhelming.
  
  “Blood, you idiot. She needs blood. Your blood—it’s how Hybrids work.”
  
  Darce’s eyes shot open wide. Fucking hell! He knew this from last time. She was a goddamned Blood—of course she’d need the stuff to repair damage. His hands shook as he lifted his wrist and tore into it. The pain was nothing compared to panic. Blood poured down his arm from the torn flesh but he didn’t care. Instead, he lifted her head and shoved the damaged wrist against her lips.
  
  “Come on sweetheart, drink,” he urged, settling her against his shoulder and arm so he could tilt her head. If he had to pour his blood down her throat, he would. He’d stop at nothing to make sure she lived, even hand her his still-beating heart on a plate if she needed.
  
  “C’mon, babe. Swallow some, please.”
  
  There it was, slowly at first but definitely a ripple of movement, as though she was trying to drink. His heart sang. It was working. Encouraged, Darce held her tighter, crooning in a soft voice when the ripple became more defined, until she started to swallow weakly.
  
  “That’s it. Attagirl. That’s great. Just a little more.”
  
  He watched her like a hawk, relief replacing the panic in his heart as she took more and more, the pull on his wrist stronger and stronger. Warmth started to seep back into her limbs, radiating to him wherever they touched. Deep within him the wolf paced, feeding more and more power without asking anything in return. Darce knew he was beat—his body riding the keen edge of exhaustion and blood loss—but he couldn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop.
  
  Her eyes flicked opened and she disengaged her fangs, then swept her tongue against his wrist to seal the wound. She lay back in his arms, and looked up at him.
  
  “Hey.” Her voice was croaky, tight with pain, but she was speaking. Alive.
  
  “Hey yourself. How do you feel?”
  
  She coughed, the spasms wracking her body but when he looked down to check her stomach, the vicious tears were all but closed over. He blinked in surprise. That was some serious mojo right there. Finally she stopped coughing, resting her head against his shoulder as the other members of the pack surrounded those on the floor. Steele had sat up, watching the very pale-looking Sanders with an expression of concern. The sparks flying off them held enough warmth to heat the room.
  
  “Cold,” she admitted, and burrowed a little closer. Darce’s heart sang and he brushed his lips against her forehead. His eyes closed for a second. He was clawed and bitten, weak with blood loss and they were all well behind enemy lines. But he couldn’t have cared one jot—wouldn’t trade places with anyone else in the world.
  
  “That’s okay, sweetheart. I’ll keep you warm. Forever.” He reached down and picked up her hand, placing it over his heart. “It’s yours. Now and always.” Sudden doubt assailed him and he added, “If you want it, that is…”
  
  She snorted, the soft sound turning his heart over. “Of course I want it, you idiot. I swear, Lycans…all balls and no brains.”
  
  A couple of the wolves around them grumbled but Darce ignored them, the smile already spreading over his face. “Hey, I resemble that remark.”
  
  She looked up and he was lost. Honest emotion—love—shone in her dark eyes. Eyes which now sported a soft ring of amber around the edges. The same color as his wolf.
  
  “Darcy Foster. I love you. When…” Her voice cracked a little but she swallowed and carried on. “When I saw Steele about to kill you, something changed inside. Cracked and broke. I’m sorry I brought you back here, into all this.” She gestured at the room around them. “I should’ve let you go in the forest. I’m sorry.”
  
  Darce shook his head, knowing he was grinning like a damn fool. “Nah, wouldn’t have worked. I’d only have followed you back here and gotten myself in all sorts of trouble trying to attract your attention.”
  
  “Uh-huh. Like getting yourself thrown in a cage and pissing off an unstable Hybrid?”
  
  “It got your attention, didn’t it?” He threw back, leaning in to claim her lips in the softest, sweetest kiss he’d ever experienced. No more questions, just answers and promises. A pledge from both of them which needed no words, just the gentle brush of their lips to seal the deal.
  
  “Ugh…” One of the wolves sighed behind them—Palmer, by the sound of it. “Insert obligatory love scene. Get a freaking room.”
  
  Without breaking the kiss, Darce extended his hand and flipped Palmer the bird.
  
  “Guys, I really hate to break it up, but we need to haul ass,” Jack added. “Those guards up top aren’t gonna be held up for long and I’d rather be in the open when they come for us, rather than cooped up down here.”
  
  Darce couldn’t agree more. Without a word, he accepted Jack and Palmer’s help to get to his feet but wouldn’t let them help Toni. She was his to care for, his to keep and there was no way he would fail that duty at the first step. Holding her close to his chest, he managed a few steps before she started to wriggle.
  
  “Put me down, you great oaf! I can walk.”
  
  “Not a chance, I nearly lost you so I’m not taking any chances now,” he told her as half the pack furred up and led the way, surrounding the two of them and Sanders who supported Steele. His heart warmed. They hadn’t abandoned him. They’d come through for him and Toni. He’d known that they would.
  
  Yeah, he’d caught the sideways looks when they’d arrived. She was a Blood, after all. Or was. Now, with the amber ring in her eyes like Steele’s and his Lycan scent wrapped around hers, she was something else entirely. A Hybrid all his own. Neither Lycan nor Blood but something new and perfect which had emerged from the chaos the Project had created like a phoenix from the ashes.
  
  “No, seriously. I can walk. And you were injured too, remember?”
  
  She pulled his head around and made him look at her as they started up the stairs. None of the pack had made for the empty lift. Darce doubted any of them would travel in the things again, if they survived getting out of here.
  
  “Cut the macho bullshit, okay?” Concern shone in Toni’s dark eyes. Along with love and frustration. “We support and protect each other, or this isn’t going to work.”
  
  “Damn bossy woman,” he grumbled under his breath theatrically, not quite ready to let her out of his arms. A quick glance down at her shredded top revealed pink scars across her taut stomach instead of the vicious slashes that had been there before. When they reached the top of the stairs, he gently put her down. She paled, and wavered on her feet but he hadn’t let go yet.
  
  Firmly, he pulled her into his side, waiting for a second when she clung to him. Her hands clutching at his upper arms for support did something to him deep inside. Within seconds though, she nodded, her lips compressed as she stood up straight. Pride filled him. His mate was a fighter. No matter what the Project had thrown at her, done to her, she always came back kicking.
  
  She’d make a great mother.
  
  The thought hit him out of nowhere, along with an image of her, stomach heavy and swollen with his child. Longing hit him and he pulled her closer into his side. He wanted that and someday, if it was possible medically, he intended to make it happen. After a lot of practice first, of course.
  
  A growl got his attention. Jack, in half wolf form, was by the door, looking through the small porthole style window. He gave the signal and the pack swarmed out into the hangar. The sound of gunshots reached Darce’s ears from outside as they raced past the remains of a truck. It had a large dent in the front, and from the black oil pooling underneath, it wasn’t going anywhere.
  
  They needed a way out.
  
  They emerged from the ruined hangar to find the night lit up. Gunfire warred with the heavy thwap-wap-wap of helicopter blades overhead. The pack ducked automatically, all going for cover—not that there was a lot to be had, not against gunships anyway.
  
  Two humvees roared up and slid to a stop in front of them. The driver leaned out of the window of the first one.
  
  “Gunships, get in! Quickly!” He yelled as gunfire tore into the building behind them. The guys on the back of the Humvees returned fire, covering the group while they made a break for the vehicles. Bullets hit the concrete around the pack’s feet, forcing them to dodge and weave to reach the marginally-safer interior of the vehicle. Darce ran low and fast, arm firmly wrapped around Toni’s waist. She only stumbled once, her cry of pain cut off before he was sure he’d heard it.
  
  Meters away from the vehicle, he lifted and bundled her into the humvee before sliding in after her. Palmer piled in on their heels, his heavy furred form hitting Darce in the center of his back. Darce grunted, arms braced either side of Toni to stop her from getting crushed as Jack and Lilly piled in too. Once inside Lilly changed neatly, reducing her mass so effectively that Darce had to blink. He’d never seen a new wolf change so easily.
  
  “Go go go!” Jack yelled, clambering into the cab and pulling the door shut behind him. The vehicle roared to life, turning a tight circle. Darce got a glimpse of Sanders urging Steele into the second vehicle, Richards’s large form sheltering the human woman.
  
  “Fuck! Incoming!”
  
  The driver hauled the humvee to the side and the big gun mounted on the roof flared to life again. He gunned the engine, rattling the wolves around in the back like peas in a can. The view out of the windows was reduced to a blur of dark shadows and the flash of muzzles.
  
  “Hold on!”
  
  The vehicle lurched, rocking and rolling as the driver spun off the road. The back tires tried to gain traction, spewing up dirt and dust before they gripped and the humvee sped across the grass.
  
  “Shit, watch for the towers!” Darce yelled back, wrapping himself around Toni. Any moment now the big guns on the towers would start up and they’d be fucked. Their only chance was to gun the engines and hope to get under the firing arc before the MK19s started up.
  
  “No worries, big guy. Tower’s are all out.” Palmer grunted as he wriggled in his seat, finally back in human form.
  
  Darce turned his head, a frown creasing his brow. What did he mean, the towers were all out? He didn’t get chance to ask. Right at that moment, the driver yelled a warning and they hit the fence with a metallic bang. Panels tore free and flew past the windows. Then the vehicle was past, free and clear. The driver roared in triumph, which turned to a bellow of anger when they were buzzed by a gunship. Bullets kicked up dirt and dust either side of them. Lilly squeaked and dove for the safety of Jack’s arms.
  
  “Shit shit shit. Is it coming back?” Darce tried to look behind them through the small window but couldn’t see anything apart from brush, low bushes and dirt screaming past.
  
  “Keep going!” Jack bellowed. The driver didn’t need any encouragement. The engine roared as he pushed it harder and faster. Then, just when Darce didn’t think things could get any weirder, the crazy bastard driving cut the headlights.
  
  “Fuck! Can you even see?”
  
  “Don’t ask.” Palmer shook his head, his knuckles white as he held onto the seat to stop himself from rattling around. “Freaking weird shit happening all over tonight.”
  
  Darce nodded, holding his breath in case the gunship came back. Seconds stretched out, becoming minutes and he slowly released a sigh of relief. They might just make it through tonight alive.
  
  
  
  The humvee rumbled on through the darkness, leaving the death and the destruction of the camp behind. Head against Darce’s shoulder, Toni breathed a sigh of relief and let the motion of the vehicle and the warmth of her mate’s bigger body lull her into a light doze. She was still aware of everything going on around her—and of the other Lycans—but didn’t care. All she cared about was the man she loved and being held in his arms. Warm. Safe for now. There would come a point when they’d have to fight again but that was too far away to think about. For now, all she needed was him and some rest.
  
  Because she was beat. Totally and utterly. No fight left in her. Her body was changing, had been since Darce had made her feed from him to heal her injuries. Who knew Lycan blood would have such a dramatic effect on her? Would change her so much into something else. A Hybrid. Not a Blood, not anymore.
  
  She could feel the changes in her body. A new presence lurked deep within, nestled right next to her soul. Feral. Wild. Female. Was this how Lycans felt with their dual natures? Was this how their wolves felt within them? Because it was certainly a new entity—separate but inextricably linked to her.
  
  She’d first felt its presence in the ring, when it had burst free to help her save Darce but she couldn’t recall all the details—like the memory was fuzzy and degraded somehow. All she knew was that she had changed. Darce’s blood had changed her and for that she was glad. It made her feel special to have such a connection with him.
  
  The rumble of the humvee and the soft murmur of conversation lulled her further into sleep. She wasn’t fully healed yet, despite Darce’s life-giving blood. The skin across her abdomen pulled when she moved. A warning all wasn’t completely okay beneath the surface.
  
  She came to a while later to realize they’d stopped. Darce smiled as she looked up into his handsome face.
  
  “Wake up, sleeping beauty. We’re here.”
  
  “Beauty? You need to get your eyes checked, buddy.” She grouched but sat up, blinking the sleep from her eyes. Despite her tone, the compliment warmed her through. He thought she was beautiful.
  
  The Lycans sat in a semicircle around a small campfire. No more than a few twigs in a pile, the fire gave off minimal light and smoke but it was enough. Darce took her hand as they walked toward the group, and gave her a reassuring squeeze. She returned it, even though she didn’t feel in the least reassured, wariness invading every cell in her body. After all, up to a couple of days ago, she’d been hunting these people. And here she was walking up and expecting them to welcome her with open arms just because she’d gotten down and dirty with their LT?
  
  “We’re still down Sanders and Richards.”
  
  The pack’s big alpha, Jack, dug viciously at the dirt between his bare feet with a stick while he spoke to the two men who sat opposite. With a start Toni recognized Fredericks and one of the other SARAs.
  
  “Plus your two guys and the two we picked up in the ring with Darce’s gal. You guys aren’t telepathic by any chance, are you?”
  
  Toni didn’t hear the answer but she figured it was negative when Jack shrugged.
  
  “Huh,” Jack said. “Didn’t think so, but figured it was worth a shot. Stranger things have happened. I’m sure they’re okay, just being careful making their way back to us.”
  
  The pack alpha looked up at Toni and Darce’s approach and rose to his feet, unfolding himself with a lazy grace which would have clued anyone in that he wasn’t human.
  
  “Hi there.” He extended his hand with a smile. “I’m Jack Harper.”
  
  Toni smiled back, her fears eased at the smile and the open, honest expression on his face. Stepping forward, she took his hand and shook it.
  
  “Hey there. I’m Toni, the homicidal bitch who tried to kill you all a couple of nights ago. How you doing?”
  
  Jack chuckled, the deep amused sound rolling around the small clearing, and looked at Darce. “I like her already. C’mon. Grab a pew…we have things to discuss.”
  
  They slid into place next to the woman who had been with them in the humvee. Like the others, she was dressed in tattered fatigues which hung off her tiny frame. But unlike the men, she wore a T-shirt at least three sizes too big for her. Toni drew in a breath and rolled it over her tongue. Lycan for sure, but her scent held tones of Jack’s in the same way she knew her own held hints of Darce’s. She offered the woman a smile as she settled down and Jack started to talk again.
  
  He turned to the two SARAs.
  
  “So, you guys still sitting on the fence in all this? Or was coming back to help us just a flash in the pan?”
  
  Fredericks shrugged, hands clasped loosely in front of him, elbows on his bent knees. Someone had been at him with a medical kit. Bright white dressings were dotted all over his torso.
  
  “We didn’t ask to be part of this, but we are. No running. No hiding. Not anymore.” He looked off into the distance for a second, his expression tight. His head twitched to the side—that rapid movement she’d noted before—then he looked back at them.
  
  “Sow the wind, then you damn well better be prepared to reap the whirlwind.”
  
  “Amen to that, brother.” Jack nodded and held out his hand, his expression serious. “They want a war, then we’ll damn well give them one. Us, the pack and your guys…when they catch back up with us. You ready?”
  
  Fredericks took his hand and shook it firmly.
  
  “Bring it on.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Epilogue
  
  “Antonia Fielding, do you take this man to be your mate?”
  
  Jack Harper’s deep voice rang out as the gentle summer breeze washed over the little group assembled on a bridge in the ass-end of beyond. The landscape cut away beneath them, the silver ribbon of a river meandering hundreds of meters below their feet.
  
  Toni smiled, the chiffon skirts of her dress rustling around her legs as she looked up at her groom. He was so handsome it made her heart ache. His hair tumbled around his shoulders just the way she liked it, and he wore black slacks and a shirt open at the neck.
  
  They couldn’t marry in a church, but she didn’t care. Apart from the fact she still wasn’t sure if she’d spontaneously combust if she tried to set foot in one, all she needed was right here. All she needed was Darce and the pack who had rapidly become a second family. They still hadn’t recovered Richards or Sanders and the status of the two missing SARAs was unknown, but Jack had asked them to go ahead with the ceremony anyway. Something bright to look forward to in the dark times.
  
  She gripped the small bouquet of flowers Lilly had managed to rustle up from somewhere along with the dress, and gazed deep into Darce’s eyes. They shone with love and devotion so deep it stole her breath away. She knew without asking he would lay his life down for her, and she would him.
  
  “Do you promise to love and care for him, as long as you both live… As he will love and care for you? Will you help him when he needs help, and turn to him when you need help? Do you promise to stand by his side in the good times and bad, and, when he pisses you off totally, promise not to kill him?” Jack’s voice dropped from serious to joking and he winked at her. “Because, seriously, he’s a pain in the ass.”
  
  “Oh, thanks for the vote of confidence, boss.”
  
  Darce’s lips broke into a broad grin at the teasing and he stepped forward to take Toni’s hand, his vows already made. Going down on one knee, he lifted her hand to his lips and placed a gentle kiss on her knuckles. Then he rubbed them against his cheek, the gentle move making her knees weak.
  
  “What do you say, babe. Take a chance on me?”
  
  Tears of happiness collected in the corners of her eyes as he stood and took her in his arms. Heart almost overflowing, she nodded.
  
  “I will. Always and forever.”
  
  
  
  
  
  About the Author
  
  Mina Carter was born and raised in Middle Earth (otherwise known as the Midlands, England). After a slew of careers ranging from logistics to land-surveying, she can now be found in the wilds of Leicestershire with her husband and daughter…the true boss of the family.
  
  Suffering the curse of eternal curiosity, Mina never tires of learning new skills, which has led to aromatherapy, corsetry, chain-maille making, welding, canoeing, shooting, and pole-clinging (closely related to pole-dancing but for those terrified of heights) to name but a few.
  
  A full time author and cover artist, Mina can usually be found hunched over a keyboard or graphics tablet, frantically trying to get the images and words in her head out and onto the screen before they drive her mad. She’s addicted to coffee and Nutella on toast.
  
  
  
  www.mina-carter.com
  
  www.twitter.com/minacarter
  
  www.facebook.com/#!/mina.carter
  
  
  
  
  
  Look for these titles by Mina Carter
  
  Now Available:
  
  
  
  Solar Storm
  
  Reaper
  
  
  
  The Project Rebellion
  
  Perfect Mate
  
  
  
  Print Anthology
  
  End of Days
  
  
  
  
  
  Monsters do exist...and they’re the good guys
  
  
  
  Perfect Mate
  
  No 2012 Mina Carter
  
  
  
  Lillian Rosewood leads an ordinary, boring life working as the manager of a psychiatric hospital. The highlights of her day, other than her skinny hot chocolate, are the hunky guards who work in the secure section. Until a late-night emergency is wheeled in.
  
  Captain Jack Harper is insane, drop-dead gorgeous...and just had his abdomen shredded. Despite the fact they're not an emergency room, Lillian can't turn him away and risk a death on her hands. Unable to get the handsome soldier out of her mind, Lillian sneaks into the restricted area to check on him. What she finds is beyond belief. Somehow Jack has managed to heal himself from a near-fatal wound in mere hours.
  
  When one of the doctors, Walker, attempts to rape her, things go from bad to worse. In the blink of an eye, Jack is loose and Walker is dead... and Lillian must accept a truth about her rescuer that will change her world forever. What if the patients aren't insane? What if their stories of secret government experiments and monsters are true?
  
  Contains blood, mayhem and nude werewolves operating heavy weaponry. Large amounts of sarcasm and smart-ass vampires may offend some readers. No civilian hospital staff were harmed in the making of this story.
  
  
  
  Enjoy the following excerpt for Perfect Mate:
  
  She couldn’t believe she was crying. Lillian didn’t cry. Ever. She was tougher than that. Tougher than the stereotypical little woman who fell apart at the first sign of danger… Or the mother who couldn’t cope after the death of her husband and hightailed it to her lover with teary demands to “make the nightmare go away”. And conveniently forgot the fact she’d left her baby daughter behind.
  
  She was not that woman, nor anything like her.
  
  Once in the corridor, away from the stench of death and the sight of all that black, wrong blood, she stepped away from Jack and swiped at her tears with the back of her hand. Despite the fact he’d just killed a man, there was something about him that made her feel safe. Safe with a murderer. Okay, now she knew she was losing it. Perhaps insanity ran in her family and they’d just never told her?
  
  “I’m sorry. I’m not normally like this,” she apologized as she looked up and offered a small, teary smile. Her mouth already open to explain, she stopped.
  
  He was gorgeous.
  
  She’d known that. When they’d brought him in, her mind had told her that he was sex on a stick. But he’d been injured, a patient. Even though she was the hospital manager, she was bound by the patient-doctor thing, surely? The one that said “thou shalt not lust after the patients”.
  
  Now though, without all the blood and the ragged uniform—even in the hospital gown that did nothing for anyone—he was so good-looking it took her breath away. She shook her head slightly, waiting for the hidden cameras and some cheesy reality show host to burst out of the supply cabinet in the corridor next to them. He couldn’t be for real. Soldiers just didn’t look that good.
  
  With warm amber eyes set above sharp cheekbones, his face was bisected by a strong, straight nose over sensually full lips. A severe buzz-cut merely highlighted his attractiveness, concentrating all attention on his face. He should be strutting his stuff on a catwalk, not getting down and dirty playing soldier.
  
  Her eyes travelled downward, and the rest of him more than fulfilled the promise of his face. He was toned…hell no, he was ripped. Even his muscles had muscles. Tall and broad shouldered, he was built like a quarterback, and his life had obviously been one of violence. Old scars dotted his skin like a mad artist had gone to town with his body as the canvas.
  
  “I know you’re not. You’re strong.”
  
  His words drew her attention back to his face. His eyes were blue again. He smiled, which almost robbed her of reason, but she held onto the thought for grim death. No one’s eyes changed that fast. What the hell have they done to him?
  
  “Your eyes… What the hell are you?”
  
  The smile turned cold, his features freezing around it and locking it into place. In hindsight, perhaps a demand for information wasn’t the best way to deal with this, especially after what had gone on in the room behind them. Walker was slumped, dead, but somehow she knew Jack wouldn’t hurt her.
  
  He moved toward her. Only three steps, but with those blue eyes intent upon her, it seemed more like a stalk. With every movement he made, her instincts screamed “predator”.
  
  She held her ground, tilting her head to look at him as he neared. He stopped inches away from her, so close the heat of his body beat at her skin even through her clothing and his gown.
  
  “We don’t have time for this, Lilly.”
  
  He lifted a hand to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. As though he couldn’t stop touching her, he stroked a gentle finger down her cheekbone to the corner of her lips. It took everything she had not to turn her head and press into the small caress, but she held true to her purpose, her eyes on his.
  
  “Make time.”
  
  His lips quirked, and everything female in her went into meltdown. He had to know the effect he had on women, so she ignored the reaction and met him look for look.
  
  “Stubborn little minx.”
  
  She choked. “What did you call me?”
  
  “Minx,” he repeated, lowering his head and brushing his lips over hers to silence her. As a tactic, it worked. The first touch of his lips, warm and firm over hers, was like setting light to kindling. Heat flared and caught, racing through her body like wildfire.
  
  She moaned, unable to stop her lips parting automatically in invitation. No matter what her mind was screaming about the dead guy in the next room and the possibility the hunk stood in front of her wasn’t just human, her body knew what it wanted, and what it intended to get.
  
  He didn’t pass up the invitation. Groaning, he moved closer and deepened the kiss. With a ruthless sweep of his tongue, he parted her lips farther and slid into the softer recesses of her mouth. She shivered, hot and cold chills chasing over her skin as he kissed her in the darkness of the corridor.
  
  She’d been kissed before and, as she’d thought anyway, she’d been kissed well. This was something else entirely. He kissed her as if there was nothing else in the world. As if she was his sun, his moon and stars…his everything. He didn’t kiss her, he made love to her with his lips and tongue.
  
  Abruptly he broke away, tearing his mouth from hers. With a groan of frustration, he leaned forward to rest his forehead against hers.
  
  “I don’t want to let you go.” The tone in his voice pulled on her heartstrings. “When they brought me in, there was just pain and blood…so much blood. Darkness was coming for me, and I was ready. But an angel called my name… I had to come back to see if she was as beautiful as she sounded.”
  
  His words reached deep inside her. She already thought he was gorgeous, but to have him spouting words that…romantic wasn’t the word. The claim he’d come back just to see her, that hit her deep down and resonated in her soul.
  
  “And…?”
  
  She almost dared not ask the question, and when she did, her voice emerged breathy and hopeful. Like a teen finally meeting and speaking to her film idol in the flesh.
  
  “Oh yes, she was worth it.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Love blooms across species, cultures, and time.
  
  
  
  Scent of Salvation
  
  No 2013 Annie Nicholas
  
  
  
  Chronicles of Eorthe, Book 1
  
  Stranded in another dimension, on a primitive version of Earth, Dr. Susan Barlow needs to find a way to survive. There’s no electricity, no cities, and to her shock, no humans. Instead, she faces a population of werewolves, vampires and incubi. The people are vicious but she must find her place among them. And live.
  
  An illness is killing Sorin’s pack. As alpha it’s his responsibility to save them, but it’s a battle this warrior doesn’t know how to fight. Then a blue light in the sky brings a creature he’s never seen. She calls herself human, but to him she smells like hope.
  
  Sorin offers Susan a safe haven in return for a cure, but she’s not that kind of a doctor. She’s a doctor of physics, not a physician. Yet as they search for a cure to save a dying people, they find something special—each other.
  
  But even with Sorin’s protection, Susan can’t help but wonder how long she can survive in a world without humans…
  
  Warning: Feral shifters, power-hungry vampires, and a sole human female suffering culture shock.
  
  
  
  Enjoy the following excerpt for Scent of Salvation:
  
  “What are you?” the female asked.
  
  He glanced over his shoulder to make sure she was speaking to him. “I—I’m a wolf shifter, alpha of the Apisi.” Taking a slow step forward, he sniffed close to her body. “What in creation are you?” Now that he stood only a few inches from her, he could see her un-callused hands, as if she’d never seen a single day’s hard work. No scars on the exposed skin of her neck and face. Apparently, she’d never fought for dominance either. Even her fine, tailored clothes appeared too rich for the area.
  
  She struggled to free her arms but only made things worse. “What?” Cocking her head to the side, she stared at him. “I’m human.”
  
  “Stay still.” He snapped the order. Sorin released his retractable claws on one hand, sliced the vines, and freed her arms. “I’ve never heard of hu-man. You must live farther south from the vampires.” So he’d been following the scent of a human.
  
  She clutched her neck with shaky hands. “Vampires?” Her gaze never left his claws as he slowly sliced her legs free.
  
  Once done, he gave her space. Her fear scent excited his beast since fright usually accompanied prey. He tapped his foot, his claws clicking against the stone floor. “What are you doing on Temple lands?”
  
  “I’m lost.” The human spoke so softly he had to strain to hear. She kept glancing between him and golden-furred Peder as if waiting for one of them to pounce.
  
  He tried not to stare so hard. Soft creatures didn’t survive in the wild long, and this female was filled with all different kinds of softness. He sighed. “Did you see the blue light?” All he had wanted was a few moments of peace. Instead, he found…her.
  
  “No, where was it?” She sidestepped toward the Temple exit.
  
  “Right above our heads, not long ago.” His eyes narrowed. “I don’t know how you missed it.” Since she fell out of it. He’d seen her limp form tumbling in the air from the light just before it winked out.
  
  She trembled, and her scent changed. “I—I—oh yeah, the blue light. Weird phenomenon. Scared the shit out of me.” She quickened her steps to the exit. “I should be heading home.”
  
  “How?” The scent of her untruths grew stronger. Everyone knew you couldn’t lie to shifters. Why was she trying? “You just said you were lost. Will you wander unaccompanied through our forests until someone worse than me finds you?”
  
  Peder quietly stepped behind her to block the exit. He might be submissive for a male, but he was smarter than most and could work without guidance. Sorin would make a hunter of him if it was the last thing he did.
  
  The human blinked her large brown eyes, such an unusual color. Everyone he knew had amber, blue or green eyes, never the rich darkness of mother earth. Life came from the earth, which was why they returned their dead to it. Did this human bring life with her?
  
  “Maybe the Goddess sent her?” Peder’s softly spoken question quieted Sorin’s doubts.
  
  Fanning his ears, Sorin stepped closer to her. “Did she send you?” What little hope he’d sheltered for his people had vanished this morning when he’d spoken the burial rites over the graves. This stranger shed some light through his despair.
  
  She shook her head. “N-no.”
  
  “You will return with me.” Sent from the Goddess or not, he couldn’t afford to take any chances by letting her go. So much for not dragging an unmarked female to his den. It would make hunting and defense that much harder since his healthy hunters would strut through their canyon home and beat each other senseless over a stray.
  
  Her gaze darted to the doorway just before she slipped under his arm and past Peder’s reach. Swift as a jackrabbit, she scrambled down the stairs and squeezed into the thick brush surrounding the Temple.
  
  As he watched her escape, Sorin shook his head. He really was tired. Too many sleepless nights in a row were affecting his reflexes. The odd blue light, her sudden appearance and his need for a miracle were too coincidental.
  
  He pointed at Peder. “Go get the flowers and bring them to Lailanie. I’ll take care of the female.”
  
  “Chasing will only frighten her more, Alpha.” Peder still stared at the floor, but at least he offered his advice without being coerced.
  
  “What would you have me do? Let some other pack have her?”
  
  “No, just don’t be so…intimidating.” He pointed to his exposed teeth with his claws. “Try not thinking she’s prey.”
  
  “Go get the fucking flowers, Peder. I promise not to eat her.” He leapt from the stone steps and skirted brush too dense for him to enter. The sly female wedged easily into the smaller spaces where he couldn’t pursue with his bulk, but the brush didn’t lead anywhere. It only surrounded the Temple foundation. She was trapped.
  
  Crouching low to the ground, he moved along the thick wall of plants. His little prey made enough noise that even the youngest of pups could track her. With ears fanned open, he followed her progress. The birds started their songs again as he got to the far end of the area.
  
  By the Dark Moon, she moved slowly. He could have taken a nap while waiting. He watched Peder head toward their home with a small sack of flowers. The rustling in the bushes drew closer, and Sorin gathered his energy to pounce.
  
  From out of the brush snapped a young sapling, which whipped the sensitive tip of his nose. With a yelp, Sorin fell back, clamping his hands over his muzzle. Through pain-filled eyes, he watched the female tear across the open ground.
  
  Sorin blinked to clear his vision and bounded after his suddenly fast quarry. Her white coat fluttered behind her like a treaty flag, but this female didn’t show any signs of surrender.
  
  She ran full-tilt up the hill toward its summit.
  
  Trailing closer, he could smell the trace of border markings on the wind. If he didn’t hurry, she’d run off the neutral ground of Temple lands and onto some other pack’s territory. He couldn’t follow if she did. “Stop! There’s danger that way.”
  
  She twisted and glanced at him, not watching her step. Something caught her foot at the top of the hill and she fell.
  
  Sorin leaped, reaching with clawed fingers. They pierced the hem of her white jacket. The delicate material tore along the sharp edges of his claws, and the shreds slipped through his fingers. Relief mixed with triumph, pumping through his veins, gave way to dread. He scrambled to grab the tatters and not lose the female, but the momentum of her flight downhill sent her tumbling head-over-heels out of his grasp.
  
  
  
  
  
  Blood Mate
  
  
  
  
  
  Mina Carter
  
  
  
  
  
  The only thing they have in common? Really…sharp…teeth.
  
  
  
  The Project Rebellion, Book 2
  
  Major Antonia Fielding has one goal: to escape the clutches of the Project. With the blood-virus infecting her system, though, a body bag is likely her only way out. Until her boss lets slip that he may just have a cure for her—if she brings in an escaped Lycan.
  
  Can she trust him? Now there’s the million-dollar question. Then again, can she afford not to take that chance?
  
  Darce Foster was a Special Forces soldier, until the Project got hold of him. Now he’s a Lycan, a lab-created werewolf, this close to escaping his creators—until another of the Project’s experiments stops him in his tracks. Not because she has the power to hold him, but because he instantly recognizes the impossible. The vampiress is his mate.
  
  Allowing her to bring him in is his only choice—and possibly the last mistake of his life.
  
  Enemies or lovers, it doesn’t matter. When they discover that the Project is hiding yet more secrets, they must work together to bring it down...or die in the attempt.
  
  
  
  Warning: Contains a cocky wolf who won’t take no for an answer, an ice-queen losing her cool and a pack full of hunky werewolves bent on rescue. And zombie spidermen.
  
  
  
  
  
  eBooks are not transferable.
  
  They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.
  
  
  
  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
  
  
  
  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
  
  11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B
  
  Cincinnati OH 45249
  
  
  
  Blood Mate
  
  Copyright No 2013 by Mina Carter
  
  ISBN: 978-1-61921-655-6
  
  Edited by Holly Atkinson
  
  Cover by Kanaxa
  
  
  
  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
  
  
  
  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: September 2013
  
  www.samhainpublishing.com
  
  
  
  
  
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