3
Whatever Tehya was sleeping on was soft. At least, it was softer than the cabin floor she was used to when it was too warm to curl up at the foot of Lobo’s bed.
Yawning, she lifted her hind leg to scratch her ear . . . but something was wrong with it.
Her gritty eyes stung as she peeled them open, and then she hastily shut them again when bright light nearly blinded her. Did Lobo have all the lights on?
She tried again, blinking to focus her blurry vision. As the haze faded, a million colors assaulted her vision, and she realized she wasn’t stretched out in front of the fire in Lobo’s cabin. She was lying on a pile of blankets on the floor of . . . a hospital? Or laboratory? IV supplies and bandages were scattered around, as if she’d ripped them away in a struggle. Would Lobo have brought her to a veterinarian for some reason? Maybe that would explain why her leg wasn’t working right—oh, Jesus!
Her leg . . . it wasn’t covered in fur. It was the wrong shape. The wrong size. It was a human leg.
Panicked, her heart racing and her breath coming in panting puffs, she held her hand in front of her face. Her hand, not her paw. Every coherent thought scattered as she scanned her naked body over and over, unable to believe she was looking at herself no matter how many times she counted her fingers and toes.
Could it really be that after twelve winters of living as a wolf, she was human again?
She licked her lips, catching her tongue on sharp fang tips. Right . . . not human.
Vampire.
Her mind spun as she tried to corral the memories that had grown distant over the years. She’d been human once, working as a dental assistant while attending college to become a dentist. And then her mom had died, and she’d been bitten by a vampire. She’d gotten sick, had spent weeks in a haze of nausea and fever as she transitioned into a vampire and then, shockingly, into a wolf.
After that . . . She shook her head, hating how clear her memories were now that she was no longer canine. It was as if someone had remastered an old, staticky black-and-white movie to make it ultra-high-def, with hypervibrant color. There was so much pain in her past, and without the filter of her wolf-brain to tone it down, it was nearly overwhelming.
But she supposed that at the moment her past was the least of her concerns. Right now she was in a strange place, she was naked, and she was freezing her bare butt off.
Shivering, she attempted to wrap one of the blankets around her shoulders. It took three tries and way too much concentration to make her hands behave like hands and not like paws, but she finally managed to cover herself.
But she was still on the floor.
Awkwardly she reached up with one hand to grab the edge of the counter. Her muscles, stiff and unaccustomed to this new form, seized in protest as she hauled herself to her feet. She swayed violently; thank God for the counter, or she’d have keeled over.
She stood there for a moment, sweating and wheezing, allowing herself time to adjust to standing upright and seeing things from twice the height she was used to. What now? She wasn’t sure what to do besides run in a blind panic around the room.
Just breathe. You’ve been through worse.
Yes, she had. And as her mother used to say, “Panic leads to mistakes. Know your surroundings. Get the lay of the land, and always have a plan to escape.”
Her mother should know, given that she’d been on the run from the government since the day Tehya was conceived.
Tehya willed herself to calm down and look around. There were rows of counters and tables covered with machines, computers, and lab equipment, but not a single window and only one door. She got the uneasy feeling she was underground. But where?
Tentatively she released her death grip on the counter and took a step toward the door. Then another. And another. Her first steps on two feet in more than a decade.
Her feet padded unsteadily on the hard floor as she shuffled across it. If she could just peek outside the room, maybe she’d get a better handle on her situation. But before she was even halfway across the room, the sound of voices drifted through the closed door.
“I’ll tell Riker you’re looking for him,” a female voice called out. “He’s meeting me here in a minute.”
The door whispered open.
With a startled yelp, Tehya hit the floor, taking cover behind a cabinet.
“Oh, shit,” the newcomer gasped. “The wolf.”
Suddenly a strawberry-blond woman came around the corner, stopping short and gasping again when she saw Tehya crouching on the floor. For a few terrifying heartbeats, Tehya stared at the other female, unable to move. More heartbeats. More staring.
“Who . . . who are you?” the other female asked, and that fast, Tehya snapped out of the grip fear had on her.
She leaped to her feet and darted toward the door, but the woman moved like a snake. Her fingers dug into Tehya’s shoulder and spun her hard into a wall. Terrified and confused, Tehya went on the attack, sinking her teeth into the other woman’s arm and shaking hard. Blood spurted into her mouth, and even as her mind registered disgust, she moaned as the rich, silky nourishment coated her tongue.
The female screamed in pain, and Tehya went into a fresh spin of panic. People were bound to hear this, and then what? What would happen to her?
Who were these people?
Shoving with all her strength, Tehya slammed the female into what looked like an X-ray machine, and then she watched in horror as the woman crumpled to the floor, her mangled arm cradling her swollen belly.
Oh, shit. Pregnant. The female was pregnant.
Torn between wanting to make sure the female was okay and wanting to run, Tehya hesitated. The pounding of feet outside made her decision. She tore out of the room, bounced off a big guy who was heading for the lab at a dead run, and skidded around a corner, belatedly realizing she’d lost the blanket and was as naked as a newborn.
Whatever.
She sped blindly through the maze of hallways, careening off walls and people as she ran. She came to a Y split in the passage and, fighting her instinct to keep running, forced herself to slow down and take a deep breath. A million different scents filtered through her nostrils, from the musky tang of sex and the succulent odor of cooking meat to the crisp, green scent of outside fresh air from the tunnel on the right.
The sound of running footsteps once again spurred her into action. She sprinted down the right tunnel and followed the fresh air until she burst into the welcome sunshine.
She didn’t stop. She didn’t think she’d ever stop. Accompanied by the chirps of birds high in the trees, she bolted into the forest, easing up only when she caught the scent of smoke and roasting meat and realized she was running toward a human campsite.
Okay, chill out. Think. Get your act together.
Her mother hadn’t merely been full of good advice; she used to make Tehya practice using her brain during an emergency, and as Tehya crouched against a fallen tree she took back every complaint she’d ever uttered during those exercises.
Think. Breathe. List your options.
That last thing was easy, because she had very few options, and only one of them made sense. She had to find Lobo.
But how was he going to react? He knew her only as a wolf. He’d even named her Tehya. She had basically been his pet for twelve years, and now . . . now she was a vampire. A vampire who had been human until only a month before she shifted into a wolf and couldn’t shift back. A vampire who was in love with a man who knew her only as a canine.
God, how was she going to explain this?
Her stomach contracted sharply, reminding her that she was truly a vampire, and she needed blood. Desperately. But did she dare risk approaching the human campsite by herself? She didn’t know how to hunt or feed. She’d only fed from one human, a sleeping homeless man she’d attacked during the mindless insanity of her transformation. The campers would be healthy, awake, and perhaps even armed.
Worse, something besides hunger was gnawing at her. A need she couldn’t quite identify, one that required blood, but also . . . something else. A . . . male?
An instant ache bloomed deep in her chest and in her pelvis at that thought. Of course! If what she’d learned about vampirism was true, it wasn’t human blood she would crave during the new moon phase. She automatically looked up at the sky, but the only celestial body hovering overhead was the sun. Still, her instincts were telling her what she needed.
She needed to feed from a male vampire.
Lobo’s handsome face filled her vision, his glossy black hair pushed away from his neck so a female could feed from his vein. Possessive anger clawed at her the way it always had when she found him with a female from one of the nearby West Coast clans. Even as a wolf with dulled vampire senses and memories, she’d understood that he needed the blood exchanges to survive . . . but that hadn’t meant she’d liked it.
Cursing, she started toward his cabin. This was going to get interesting.