Sophia stood in the military laboratory, staring at her blank laptop screen while focusing on Chase’s telepathic link with her. She felt so useless. She couldn’t tell him where she was, how long she’d been there, or even how she got there.

She heard Jake talking to her from his monitored position in another room. If she didn’t answer him, he’d know something was up. Did he even know she was mated to Chase and could communicate with him?

She told Chase she had to go and hoped he discovered a way to find her. If not, she could be there a long time. And no way in hell was she giving birth in a sixty-year-old abandoned bunker.

Her name echoed in her ears.

“What?” she hollered back. “Quit yelling. I can hear you.”

“Then why aren’t you answering me?” he shot back.

“Because I’m trying to think, which requires ignoring you,” she replied. “Do you think I’m just gonna pull this outta my ass or something? This has never been done before.”

He smirked on the screen. “No funny business, now. I’m trying your serum on you first. If it kills, then you go without me.”

He wanted to play shitty, did he? Bring it on. “Well, let’s see here. You had my work for a week and I don’t see any advancement here. Could it be that you couldn’t even figure out what I did, even though it was right here in front of you?”

His smirk dropped from his face. Anger glared at her. “Oh, wait. That is why you kidnapped me, because you’re too much of an idiot to know what the fuck makes up a DNA strand.”

She was on a roll now. “That makes me wonder how you graduated with your degree. Did you fuck your way through classes, Jake? That’s the only part of you worth anything. God knows your personality sucks.”

The image on the screen became distorted, or was Jake himself becoming distorted?

She continued her poking and prodding. “Don’t you see when you enter a room that others quickly look for a way out? They don’t want to listen to you BS about your great accomplishments when they know you’re so full of shit, you could be your own fertilizer company. Just open your mouth and the shit spews everywhere.”

Strange noises came from the speaker. Pops and snapping that sounded a bit like when Chase shifted to and from his animal.

Stepping closer to the TV on the wall, she couldn’t believe her eyes. Jake’s body had grown taller, and much thinner. What was happening to him? His neck stretched toward the webcam port, like a giraffe reaching for the leaves at the top of the tree.

His head narrowed, pupils turned to slits, and a long, forked tongue flitted out of his mouth.

Sophia slapped a hand over her mouth to dampen her scream. Snakes, especially pythons, were not on her favorites list. She swallowed hard.

“Hey, dude. Chill the fuck out,” she said. “I’m just giving you a hard time. You used to razz me all the time about shit. I’m just returning the favor.”

Jake the Snake pulled back from the camera. His neck shortened and eyes turned back to human.

“Man,” Sophia said, “if you’re going to rule the planet as super snake shifter, you need to build a thicker skin.” She cringed at her words. “No pun intended.”

His body continued to fill out his clothes where they had become baggy and hanging on him.

“Why don’t you check on me in a couple days to see if I’ve come up with anything. I’ve got enough food until then. Take a break and rattle around elsewhere. Maybe curl up and take a nap under a rock.” Shit. She needed to close her mouth.

Jake left the desk where the webcam was setup. She prayed he wasn’t coming to the lab. She’d completely squig out if he slithered into the room.

Not wanting to keep her feet on the floor, she hopped up on counter and scooted back against the wall. She popped a grape into her mouth.

She wondered how she would go about creating a super shifter shot that would make a shifter better than they already were.

First question was what constituted “better”? Being stronger, bigger, faster, smarter? Dinosaurs were big but didn’t last. They could’ve eaten them out of food after so long. Cats were some of the fastest, but they still weren’t top of the food chain. Humans were the smartest, well, supposedly.

Who was it that said humans would need to get off the planet in a thousand years? Stephen Hawking, she thought. Then he said if people continue developing AI, it would overrun humans in a hundred years.

Damn, none of that sounded “better.”

Maybe what comprised of survival wasn’t a supremeness, but the ability to adapt, to change to the environment.

Like when she was in the tree in her wolf form. Her inner ladies put their heads, or paws, together and gave her what was needed to capture her prey.

That was an interesting thought. What if the answer was combining traits instead of magnifying what already existed?

She hopped off the counter and organized her work area. Pulling microscopes, spinners, separators, beakers, burners, and pipets, she set up for quick experiments.

Coming back from the cold storage, she set her pure lioness DNA vial and her pure wolf vial carefully in the rack. With a drop of cat on a glass plate, she slid it under the microscope. Then with a steady hand, she added a drop of wolf onto the feline.

The reaction was incredible. She’d never seen anything like it in her life. The two species attacked each other, virtually swallowing smaller cells until only bigger cells existed, but those cells were now a combination of both DNAs.

So now, only the strongest, biggest of both reproduced. Was that what her insides looked like? She wanted to know.

In a glass container, she created a mixture of half-cat, half-wolf and filled a syringe.

Looking around for something to poke her finger with, she felt a sting in the nail tip. She glanced down to see a needle-sharp claw protruding.

“Nice.” She punctured another finger and squeezed a drop onto a glass slide. Placing it under the scope, she looked into the eyepieces. Surprisingly, they were different.

Why was that? Perhaps the way the cells were introduced to the human DNA made the difference. She had pure samples of both injected at the same time. Not a mixed portion.

She dropped one cc of the combined DNAs onto her blood.

As she watched, the hybrid potion separated into the feline and wolf parts and rejoined with similar cells in her blood.

That made some sense. All the material was from the same base source. What she didn’t know was how the serum would react when introduced to a shifter with its own animal.

Would the cells battle it out to the strongest, or would they combine to create something new? She could only theorize the end result.

“Sophia.” She gasped as Chase’s voice came into her head. Her eyes darted to the monitor. Jake wasn’t watching or at his desk.

“I’m here. Where are you?” she asked.

“I’m where you are,” he replied.

Sophia slapped her hand over her mouth to keep her outcry quiet. He was here. He found her. She wasn’t going to question how, just accept and do what she could to get out.

“Love, it’s a maze. I need help to find your location,” her mate said.

Her head whipped around looking for something that would help. A pair of heavy metal tongs sat on a counter. Snatching those up, she made her way to the iron door.

She banged out the “Shave and a Haircut” ditty, minus the last two knocks. Bum-diddy-bum-bum… Glancing at the monitor, she didn’t see Jake at his desk.

Where could he be? Not knowing about his location worried her.

“Chase,” she said telepathically, “watch for Jake. He could be anywhere.” Just then a red light in a corner began to flash. That couldn’t be a good thing.

“Gotcha. Bang again. I think I’m close.” Tool in hand, she beat bum-diddy-bum-bum, bum-bum. She added the last two beats.

Next thing she heard were sounds coming from the other side of the door. It opened to reveal a naked Chase. She loved this shifting thing, as long as it wasn’t her shifting. That shit hurt.

He scooped her into his arms and swung her in a circle. “You ready to go?” Chase asked.

Sophia looked over her shoulder at her workstation then broke away from him.

“I have to either take the samples or get rid of them somehow.”

At her setup, she put the cap on the end of the syringe needle containing the DNA mixture of both animals. Where could she keep it in a safe place? The securest location on her body was between her plump boobs. As good as any. She slid the container down her bra, needle side facing down. Though it didn’t matter; her tests show the mixed DNA didn’t affect her.

Chase set a hand on her waist. “Are these two the vials you need to get rid of?” he asked.

She nodded. “There isn’t a place here to properly dispose of the material.”

“You mean, like this?” Chase said as he lifted the glass vial from the rack and thrust it onto the concrete floor.

“Chase!” Sophia couldn’t believe what he just did. Then again, the DNA wasn’t toxic, not usable, unless injected.

Chase picked up the second vial and repeated the action. He grabbed her hand. “Come on, let’s get out of here. The flashing light doesn’t give me a good feeling.” Every other second, the room was washed in red illuminance. She felt the same.

Together, they ran through the complex.

“Need to find a plain wood door that leads to the long hallway.”

Chase followed his scent, but he probably went down many wrong turns before finding her. He opened a door to reveal what looked to be a control room.

The first thing she noticed was how big all the individual stations were. Nowadays, a thin laptop and portable printer worked in a space smaller than a TV tray.

The room felt old, like a place where ghosts gathered. The only things that appeared modern were the desk in the corner with a monitor hooked up to wires pulled down through the ceiling. The background was the one she saw in the single monitor in her room.

Sophia hurried into the room and stood behind the desk. Like she suspected, the lab was on the screen.

Across the room, Chase gasped. “Shit.”

“What?” she asked as she walked toward him.

“We have to hurry.” He grabbed her hand again. She looked over her shoulder to see a countdown ticker at fifty, forty-nine, forty-eight, below a red button.

“What’s that?” she asked. Probably a dumb question, but what did she know about old military installations?

Chase said, “If it’s what I think, it’s a countdown to self-destruction.”

“Self-destruction? Shit! Let’s go,” she hollered as she yanked him through the door.

The next wood door they came to opened to the dim path that led out. Made sense. Whoever started the pending apocalypse would’ve wanted to get the hell out as fast as he could.

What Chase failed to understand was that big beautiful women didn’t flat out run long distances. But she understood his reason for rushing. Life or death.

She wrapped her arm under her breasts to keep everything from flopping with each step. She was able to pick up her speed with those babies being controlled.

A swath of light cut through the dimness ahead of them. When they reached the spot, she saw Chase’s clothes on the floor at the base of ladder-like steps going up the wall. This was where he entered and undressed before shifting. How did he find this entrance? They had to be miles from nowhere.

“Go.” Chase lifted her to the third ring. With a little squeak, she grabbed the next rung and climbed. She pulled herself out, Chase right behind her.

He picked her up by the waist and ran along a treeless path. She trusted he knew what he was doing.

The ground shook violently, causing Chase to lose his footing and go down with her. She heard an explosion, and another, and another. Good God, how big was the place they just vacated?

Chase helped her up. “You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, fine,” she replied. “Where are we?”

“Behind the town’s reservoir. I bet the compound was hooked into the water. Probably the reason the government built it.”

She noticed he had his clothes on again. Darn, he’d dressed while she made her way up the ladder. Oh well, still damn good-looking.

Walking along the path, she felt bad about leaving her work behind but now it was buried in the lab under tons of concrete. And without it, no one would want anything from her.

“Do you think Jake was still inside?” she asked Chase. The dirt path was ruddy with grass growing through most of it. It would’ve been somewhat hard to find if not knowing where to look.

The forest lined the sides and the canopy covered it, so it wasn’t noticeable in the air.

“No, I think Jake set the alarm and fled. Once he figured out the compound was breached, he probably high-tailed it out of there. I think this is over.”

Suddenly, she was jerked toward Chase as he was tugged away from her. His hand broke from hers as he was lifted off the ground.

She ogled him as the camouflage-marked snake, hanging off a tree limb, twisted further around Chase’s body. She thought it was a snake but it was as round as a small blown-up beach ball. It had to be Jake. And Jake was a python who could eat a human after suffocating him.

Oh my god. She realized why no one would find Tori’s body. In snake form, Jake had—she would’ve thrown up on the spot if her mate wasn’t in a life or death situation.

“Chase!” The snake had completely encircled Chase, arms pinned to his body. The python squeezed her shifter. With each of Chase’s exhales, the animal constricted. Eventually, Chase wouldn’t be able to breathe in and would suffocate.

If Chase shifted into his wolf, the snake would wrap around it. He’d be in no better shape.

It was up to her to save him. But how? She searched for a downed tree limb.

Chase wiggled and kicked to no avail. With his arms trapped, he couldn’t do anything.

There were no weapons there for Sophia to battle with. The end of her fingers tingled then stung. She looked down to see sharp as shit claws. Those would work well.

Good thing. Chase’s face had turned red. He had seconds left.

Arms extended, Sophia swiped at the lowest twist of snake. The skin split, revealing bright-red blood and pure muscle.

A hiss echoed in the air. The damaged tail end of the snake snapped around and punched her backward where she fell. She got up and charged, claws out and ready. The tail whipped around again, socking her before she even got close.

What else could she do? Chase was turning purple. “Jake, let him go. I’ll give you the serum. I figured it out,” she cried out. It was possible the mix of the DNAs was the solution.

Jake didn’t seem to loosen his hold on her mate. Chase’s head nodded. He was dying.

The sample syringe in her bra came to mind. She had wondered what would happen when introduced to a shifter. She was about to find out. It was her last hope.

She pulled the syringe from between her boobs and took off the needle’s safety cap. Climbing to her feet, she kept the needle hidden in her hand.

“Jake, please.” She stepped forward. “Let’s negotiate. What do you want?” To talk, he’d have to shift, thus releasing Chase. He wasn’t falling for it. Apparently, he wanted to kill her mate first. She took another step, now within arm’s reach of the flesh.

Her thumb rested on the syringe plunger. She took a deep breath, trying to keep her emotions right so Jake wouldn’t smell anything.

With a lunge forward, Sophia stabbed the needle through the thick skin, her thumb pushing as hard as it could. Once again, the end smacked her away.

Sophia watched the snake’s face for any sign of problems.

Suddenly, it dropped Chase. He landed on the side of the path with a thud. He sucked in a loud breath and coughed.

Sophia ran and grabbed him by the arm, dragging him to other side of the trail. The snake fell in a heap, its eyes meeting hers. Confusion overpowered the angry vibes he gave off. Then his slit pupils glazed over.

The snake’s head widened, neck shortening. He was turning into his human shape. Wait—his arms and legs were shifting to those of a wolf. His face spouted golden hairs as his mouth opened, but no sound came out.

Now, its back legs and hips looked like they melted into the browns and olives of the snake. From the cat whiskers, a canine snout pushed out.

His torso rotated between gold, grey, and camo pattern, one after another…

Suddenly, Jake was in his human form, lying on his back, eyes closed. Before Sophia could say anything to him, his body morphed into a pile of water that instantly spread out and soaked into the dirt.

Both she and Chase stared at the wet spot on the ground, mouths gaping. Chase was the first to stand and he pulled her up and away from the dark spot.

“What happened to him?” he asked. “What was all that weird changing he was doing?”

She had theorized correctly earlier. “I think the DNA from the three shifters fought for dominance. None being strong enough to take over.” She stared at the gravesite. “I’m guessing his human form couldn’t take the stress of the battle and his cells...returned to their original state of matter.”

He nodded. “Ashes to ashes.” Perfect analogy. “Let’s go,” he said. “I think this is over.”

Sophia slapped his hand holding hers. “Don’t say that. The last time you did, a snake picked up your ass and tried to kill you.”

“No worries, love,” he wheezed. “I’ve got you to keep my ass safe.”

Sophia smirked. “You got that right. It’s all mine.”