Keller twisted quickly, but not quickly enough to avoid the attack. Lounds had Shifted back to his human form as well, and had crept up from behind while Keller and Samantha were talking.

As Samantha watched in horror, the Hyena Shifter raised the razor-sharp scalpel he’d been about to use on her earlier and plunged it into Keller’s back.

Keller gasped and stiffened, his back arching in pain as he turned to grapple with Lounds. Blood gushed down his muscular side, and he seemed to be having trouble breathing, but still he fought.

“You bastard!” Samantha heard the rage in her voice and the Cougar—her own Cougar—roared inside her, telling her the Hyena was hurting their mate.

Samantha wanted to attack, to help defend Keller as he had defended her, but she couldn’t risk letting the other half of herself—the beast half—out. Not now. Frantically, she looked around for a weapon—anything she could use to help her mate.

Nothing came to mind, but then she rolled over and felt something hard against her hip. Reaching her hand into the pocket of her white lab coat, she pulled out the small case which contained the syringe Keller had given her what felt like a lifetime ago.

Her ankles were still bound to the bed rails, but that was all right—the fight was happening right in front of her, practically right on top of her—as the two Shifters, both naked and bleeding now, grappled at the foot of the birthing bed.

Sitting up, she pulled out the syringe of blue fluid and thumbed the cap off the sixteen-gauge needle that topped it.

“This is for trying to hurt my baby, you asshole,” she snarled. Leaning forward, she took aim and stabbed the huge, sharp needle directly into the side of Lounds’s skinny throat. Then, for good measure, she pushed the plunger with her thumb, injecting him with the reverse-Rejuvenation compound.

The effect on the Hyena Shifter was immediate and dramatic.

He stopped fighting Keller at once and gasped, his hands going to his throat as though trying to pull the syringe out of the side of his neck. Then, as Samantha watched, his thick black hair started thinning and turning first gray, then white. The agonized lines of his face caved in and wrinkles magically appeared, creating deep grooves and lines around his eyes and nose and mouth. Everywhere on his naked body his flesh drooped and sagged.

“Oh . . . oh my God,” she whispered, scrambling to get back from the man who was desiccating like a mummy before her eyes. Her feet were still tied, however, so she couldn’t get far. She could only watch as Lounds aged dramatically and so rapidly it was like watching time-lapse photography.

“God!” Keller stood back too, releasing his hold on the other Shifter.

“What’s happening to him?” Samantha whispered, watching Lounds, who now looked like a ninety year old man and was still aging. “I thought you said the compound just reversed Rejuvenation.”

“It would—in a female Shifter,” Keller said. “But it was formulated specifically for you. As a male, Lounds has a lot more testosterone—I think it must have reacted to the compound.”

“Something sure as hell reacted,” Samantha muttered. Lounds looked incredibly old at this point—so ancient and shriveled he really did look like a mummy now. Yet somehow he was still breathing. He seemed to be trying to say something to her. Cautiously, Samantha leaned toward him, making sure to keep well out of reach of the arthritic claws his hands had become. “What is it, Lounds?” she muttered.

“ . . . the last,” he wheezed, glaring at her from rheumy, clouded eyes. “You’re not . . . not the last, Samantha. There will be . . . more . . . like you.”

His eyes briefly flared yellow, and then the light went out of them altogether. Samantha watched in horror as he drew in a last, gasping breath, and then his skinny ribcage stilled and he stopped breathing.

“I think he’s gone,” Keller growled, still frowning at the dried-up husk Lounds had become.

“He is, but look—his body is still aging.”

They watched in amazement as Lounds’s body dried and aged until it began to resemble something an archeologist might dig out of the sand at an ancient burial site. Soon it was nothing but a fragile shell. When Samantha put out one finger to poke it, the whole thing disintegrated.

“Ahh!” she gasped as what was left of Lounds turned into a pile of brown dust at the foot of the bed.

“He’s gone,” Keller said again. He took a deep breath, or tried to, but coughed instead. He covered his mouth, but Samantha was concerned to see his hand come away from his lips bloody.

“Keller, come here and let me see you,” she ordered, forgetting about the mummy dust Lounds had become. “He must have stabbed you in a lung—you’ve got a pneumothorax!”

“Easy enough to fix.” He shifted to his Cougar form, trebling in mass and weight instantly.

Samantha watched him with awe. She couldn’t help it—even though she was now a Shifter herself, watching Keller change from human to animal and back again was still like the best magic trick she’d ever seen.

She expected him to change back right away, but instead, the big cat leaned forward and found the straps that tied her to the bed. Delicately, he took them in his mouth and bit them in two, freeing her at last.

“Thank you.” Samantha scooted up to the head of the bed, trying to put more distance between herself and the mound of brown dust that was Lounds’s remains.

Still Keller didn’t change back. He leapt lightly onto the mattress and sprawled beside her, making himself at home, although there shouldn’t really have been room for a creature so large on the birthing bed.

“Keller?” She looked up at him uncertainly.

Leaning his huge, furry head toward her, he lapped gently at the wound on her temple, where Lounds had hit her with the butt of his gun.

Healing me. He’s healing me, Samantha realized, and tears pricked at her eyes.

“Oh, Keller.” She threw her arms around the Cougar’s neck, just as she had that dreadful night in the Everglades, and buried her face in his ruff. “I’m so sorry for all of this,” she whispered. “And I’m so glad you came for me anyway, even when I was being an idiot.”

The big cat gave his deep, rumbling purr and Samantha thought she caught the faintest hint of a thought from him. . . .

“Sorry too. Together now. Everything all right.”

Her eyes flew wide, and she pulled back and looked into his pale-green, lamplike eyes.

“Keller, did you just . . . but I thought our bond was gone! So how . . . ?”

Closing her eyes, she sought to answer her own question. Finding the space which had been cold and dead after he blocked her, she saw what looked like a tiny, slender root growing. A tiny golden tendril that seemed to promise more to come.

A fear she hadn’t dared to acknowledge—What if the bond is gone forever and we can never get it back?—was suddenly laid to rest, and Samantha found herself crying even harder.

“All right—everything is going to be all r-right,” she whispered, echoing Keller’s Cougar’s affirmation to her. “You’ll see—b-both of us are going to be all right.”

The big cat pushed against her, nudging her with his head. He scooted down and pressed one furry cheek to her lower abdomen. Purring gently, he nuzzled her belly and looked up at her, as if for confirmation.

“Yes,” Samantha said aloud, half laughing through her tears. “You’re right, Keller—all three of us are going to be all right. God, I love you so much!”

“Love you too, Sammie. Let’s get out of here.”