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 any ideas more complex 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 leaching 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’ 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 lieutenant 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 resting 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’ 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 and 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 gray 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 knew 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, and then she 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 as she 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, a myriad of scents assaulting her. She stopped and took a deep breath, dragging the air over her tongue and starting 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 laid 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 on to the pain, he used it, forcing power through his body to drive out the silver they’d filled him with again. It 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 and let the pain fade, 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 was 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 think 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’ 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.”