Chapter 1
Jenny Houlton tucked her chin lower and hunched her shoulders against the rain pouring down. She’d gotten as far as she could in falcon form, but ended up shifting in the woods in an attempt to hitch a ride in the hopes of conserving energy. She was exhausted. Even now, her limbs trembled from exertion and the cold rain that seeped through her clothes wasn’t helping. Teeth chattering, body quaking, soul aching, she was in bad form, and hopes of hitching a ride were fading fast. No one had stopped. No one was willing to pick her up. Honestly, she couldn’t blame the few cars this far out in the Montana forestland that’d given her a wide berth and sped on their way. She wouldn’t pick up a drenched hitchhiker either. They probably thought she was some psychopath.
Feet aching, muscles sore from being tensed against the cold, she realized now that running hadn’t been her brightest idea. Even now she could feel the mental nudge indicating one of her fellow Skin Walkers was attempting to contact her through the mist. She wouldn’t permit it. She couldn’t. Why? Because they’d want to know what had spooked her into running from StoneCrow Estates without so much as a farewell. How could she explain that not only had she isolated the gene that caused the Skin Walker affliction but that she’d been experimenting with it as well? And, not only had she been experimenting with it, but she’d been experimenting on her own unacknowledged Walker mate…without his knowledge.
Letting her head fall back, she welcomed the fat rain that pelted her upturned face and cooled her suddenly flushed cheeks. Affliction. Just thinking the word made her skin go hot, made her breasts grow heavy, and had heat pooling between her legs. Hell, the friction of merely walking was about to do her in, but she couldn’t stop. Stopping meant getting found. Getting found meant getting dragged back to StoneCrow. And, going back to StoneCrow meant facing Bishop.
Bishop Arkinson. She tossed his name around in her head. Jenny Houlton… Jenny Arkinson.
Mentally toying with their names, she wondered what her mate would do now that he’d found out her secret. Their secret.
They’d become afflicted, only he didn’t know what it meant. Jenny did. It meant an insatiable need to claim and be claimed. Once afflicted, a male Skin Walker would forego eating and sleeping, too consumed with the need to rut. She’d hidden the affliction from Bishop. She’d had her nurse convince him it was something else and had placated his inner beasts with supplements and drugs to get nutrition into his body and to force sleep cycles in an effort to study what was happening between them. She’d hidden from him. The entire six months that they’d been afflicted, she’d hidden from Bishop because she knew that once he laid eyes on her, he’d know.
It hadn’t mattered in the end though. He’d stormed the infirmary and found her and then…
She swallowed hard at the memory even as damp heat pooled between her legs and slipped free. Just the thought of Bishop ripping her clothes from her body had an aching need throbbing at the apex of her thighs and deep in her womb.
Stopping to catch her breath, she planted her hands on her knees and focused on taking in slow and easy breaths. It wasn’t easy. The friction on her nipples from the simple act of inhaling was pure torture. She needed Bishop. He hadn’t been the only one who’d suffered the past six months. No, she’d endured her own brand of hell. It was probably worse for her because she knew how to end it but couldn’t. So, she’d lied to him and experimented on them both, and in the end, had most likely ruined everything.
She’d hurt him with her actions, she knew she had, but the scientist in her couldn’t simply stand by when such an opportunity was presented. He wouldn’t understand. He couldn’t. There was no way for him to know how much was riding on her isolating the mating gene. He didn’t know that for the Walkers at StoneCrow, who’d already had so much taken from them, having a say in a mate was paramount. She was trying to give Walkers that choice, or at least buy them the time to form a connection with their pre-destined Angel before the affliction took all choice from them.
She thought on that a moment and even alone in the middle of the damn forest on a lonely stretch of road, she still couldn’t admit to herself the real reason for meddling. It was for the women. Women needed a say. They deserved a say.
Jenny was like a lot of the other Skin Walkers at StoneCrow Estates. Some of the Walkers had spent time in captivity, being experimented on in labs. Others had been held prisoner by the government, used as weapons. Hell, some Walkers were even just now learning their full Skin Walker capabilities. Not her. She’d learned from an early age exactly what she was. Her abilities had been ripped from her too young and inexperienced body. Her first memories were of being in a cage, and that cage is where she’d stayed until, at the age of sixteen, she’d been rescued by him!
Huddled up on the concrete floor of her cell, her knees had been tucked beneath her as she shivered in the cold. Suddenly, the door to the basement where she was being held blasted off its hinges. Everything happened so fast. A team of mercs blacked out head-to-toe in battle fatigues rushed the room. Her guards were shot without a moment’s hesitation.
One of the mercs ripped the keys to her cell from one of the dead guards, and then he was in the space with her, hands held out in a placating gesture as she huddled against the bars. He’d ripped the mask off his head and to this day, she didn’t know if it was a God complex or not, but that man, Lawder Cassell, stole her breath. Severe gray eyes locked on hers as he spoke gently through those impossibly full lips. They were almost too full for a man, but damn they’d looked good on him.
Jenny later learned that Lawder—Law as everyone called him—and his team of Skin Walker mercs had been sent in by Elias StoneCrow, father to current Skin Walker dominant, Monroe StoneCrow.
She’d been rescued after countless years of captivity. Elias and his wife, Fleur, kept Jenny with them for a few years, making sure she was sane and helping her to recover before they paid for her to go away to school. She had to catch up on all the years she’d missed, and surprisingly, Jenny turned out to be a natural academic. Jenny spent the next seventeen years engulfed in education until she finally graduated with her medical Doctorate. Initially, she’d planned on becoming a geneticist but had quickly changed her mind when she realized that not only would Skin Walkers need to be studied by someone they could trust, but they’d also need specialized treatment. All through school and even after, Elias and Fleur had been there to support her. They were the only family she’d ever truly had. They were as supportive and caring as any real parents could have been, and even when Jenny turned twenty-six and had asked Elias about Lawder, he’d grinned knowingly and assured her she’d see him again one day. It had never happened. The day Lawder Cassell rescued her was the first and last time she’d ever seen him.
Dragging her feet through a puddle, Jenny was brought back to the present as the cold water soaked through her shoes to her feet. Sighing, she wondered how proud Elias and Fleur would be of her now. She’d done the one thing they’d always warned her away from. She’d run.
“Skin Walkers don’t run,” Elias would boom. “We don’t hide from what we are. We embrace it, protect it.” He’d taught her to be proud of what she was and to never shy away from her abilities.
A horn honked long and hard, startling her as it splashed passed.
Assholes! She lifted her hand and flipped off the car is it sped down the road but not for getting her wet. She was already soaked. No, it just pissed her off how people treated each other. No one cared about anyone else anymore.
That thought ricocheted around in her head, and her head dipped lower when she thought about how Bishop must feel like she didn’t care about him. If he only knew. She’d been watching him, aching for him for six endless months. And, the more she watched, the more she wanted. She liked him. She really liked him. He was a genuinely great guy. Everyone liked him even with his crotchety attitude from being afflicted without relief. She’d seen how King and RedKnife had both reacted from being afflicted. Both men had turned into monsters with a single purpose, their Angel. Bishop hadn’t been like that. Granted, he didn’t know why he was suffering, but it hadn’t prevented him from showing up to his work shifts every single day despite Stoney’s advising against it. It was more than admirable because Jenny knew just how difficult it was to function in this state. Even now the only thing she could think of was Bishop coming to find her to collar, bind, and claim her properly.
Despite what had happened between them in the infirmary, she still wasn’t his, which meant that the affliction was still pounding through both of them full force.
Another car sped past and slowed. Hope flared but fizzled quickly when the car sped off. Clearly, she wasn’t going to get picked up regardless of the fact that she was clad in figure-hugging jeans tucked into knee-high boots and a drenched cashmere sweater that was now at least five pounds. Her raven black hair was plastered to her head and down her back. She wished she’d have pulled the waist-length locks into a braid or ponytail before the rain had hit. Too late now. But she wasn’t sure the words were in reference to her hair or her hopes of a relationship with Bishop.
Angling her head to the side, she eyed the forest, debating on shifting form and finding someplace to hole up for the night. She desperately needed rest, but she wasn’t sure she even had enough energy to shift at this point.
She’d give anything to be back home right now. She missed her park side condo with its warm rooms and soft cotton sheets. Her stomach growled, and she knew she was due for a shot. It’s how she and Bishop had been sustaining. Any attempt to physically eat before their affliction had been sated resulted in puking up any bite she’d taken down. None of her experimenting had changed that, so she’d been relegated to injecting herself and Bishop—via Stoney—with nutrient supplements to sustain them. There was also a designer antibody she’d created for herself and Bishop from a mixture of both their DNA in hopes of fooling the affliction into thinking they’d fully claimed each other. It had worked for a few days, but mother nature was apparently smarter than science.
They’d also been forced to endure nightly sedation for rest, which helped but not much. Each morning the affliction greeted her full force, and she felt little revitalization from her forced slumber. Even now exhaustion tugged at her, and she could practically feel her body breaking down her muscle just to keep going. She needed to get warm. She needed her lab back at StoneCrow. She needed her drugs. She needed this all to be over. She needed…Bishop.
Turning, she took two steps down the irrigation ditch, praying her knees didn’t buckle, when every hair on her body suddenly stood on end. It felt like lightning was about to strike. Jerking her head back, she frowned up at the sky.
“JENNY!”
She startled hard and whipped her head around so fast it made her dizzy. Or was that the malnutrition and exhaustion? She swayed and had to throw out her arms to steady herself.
There, standing dead center in the road with hands fisted and broad shoulders squared up was Bishop. Every time she saw him, she thought he looked like a Norse God with his long blond hair gathered at the nape of his neck while his beard and mustache twitched with the angry tick in his strong jaw. Right now he looked even more like a deity with his gray form-fitting thermal shirt plastered to all those muscles that bunched and flexed under his labored breathing. Thick legs were splayed in dark denim over black leather boots while his bright blue eyes narrowed on her.
For a second she considered making a run for it, but she had nothing left. Her tank was fucking empty and worse, her beasts were in her head now. They knew what she needed, and they were baying in mutinous demand to take over her form and give her what she so desperately needed.
Turning to fully face him, she lifted her dainty chin in clear defiance, her dove-gray eyes sparking with challenge. Yes, she’d been wrong not to go to him, to tell him of her discovery and to ask his help, but it hadn’t been one hundred percent selfish. She was trying to help all the afflicted women and Skin Walkers, and for that, she would never apologize.
Apparently, the show of bravado sapped the last of her strength though because as she glared at her mate, the world rocked and then tilted violently. She hadn’t even realized she was going down until Bishop yelled her name again before rushing her as everything went black.