There were more covert glances in this room than in any Agatha Christie mystery Zach’s mother used to read. What the hell?

“Asher.” Edward’s voice was low and gravid, without question. If anyone was going to tell Zach what was going on, it had to be the asshole. Fine. An asshole explaining all this was better than no one.

Asher just stared at Zach without comment. Frustration rose like mercury in Zach’s veins, heating him more.

“I know who Tomas Nagy is. He was my old boss at LupiNex. What the hell does he have to do with this? With me?” A sudden, cold dread made him feel three thousand pounds heavy, fear shedding off him like a dog’s winter coat, heat and change making him show his central self more and more.

Then again, Sophia was revealing her true self too.

True motivations.

“Has it ever occurred to you that I am being held against my will?” he persisted, trying to get someone—anyone—to give him information.

Sophia’s eyebrows quirked down, eyes darting around the room as if anxious suddenly. Then her chin tipped up in defiance, shoulders squared. He watched it all, wondering how to decipher it.

And caring less and less by the minute.

Or at least pretending not to care.

Not a single person bothered to answer his question.

“SPEAK!” he bellowed, enough to make Asher roll his eyes and sigh through his nose, mouth tight, eyelids hooded. The look was carefully crafted to appear blasé. Bored.

Zach had a new ability, though. He could sense the man’s inner state. And Asher Stanton might look like a stone statue on the outside, but inside, emotional universes swirled.

To everyone’s surprise, Lilah Stanton unfurled herself, Sophia leaning over to help her stand. Lilah’s enormous, bulging belly made her back sway as she stood and walked to him, her face twisted with a guilty kindness. She wore a long, diaphanous maternity dress with a simple gathering under her breasts, the fabric like gauze, in layers of earth tones. Adobe red, moss green, and sand beige swirled about her like a work of art shaped by a ceramics sculptor, the colors highlighting the lives that would soon enter the world.

Gavin Stanton watched Zach watching Lilah. His frown deepened.

Zach didn’t care. And yet, why would Lilah Stanton be the one to speak?

“Tomas Nagy took the serum that was in you and changed it. Then one of the men working for him injected himself with it.” Lilah’s hand, so soft and feminine, rested on Zach’s bare forearm. It felt like being touched by his mother when he was a little boy and ill.

“There are more people… like me? The LupiNex serum is being tested on other humans? How? That can’t be ethical.”

Lilah gave Zach a look of— Oh shit.

Pity.

“It’s not like that,” she started to explain. As she watched him with compassion and empathy, he picked up a subtext, his senses scrambled as they fought to find the truth of what he could feel in the air. His nostrils widened, smelling her pregnancy. Not Lilah’s body fluids but the pregnancy itself. As he observed her, a glow radiated to him. Not because she was so ripe, but because he saw it, eyes going through that odd depth perception shift until a strange sensation struck him behind one ear as his jaw clenched.

“You’re human,” Zach said to Lilah. “But you’re also a shifter.” He stepped toward her, hands loose at his sides. “You’re both, but neither. What are you? Are you like me? Did you take the serum too?” His eyes lowered to her belly, a shot of fear making its way up his back. What were these people doing?

And what did they plan to do with him? With Lilah Stanton?

With her babies?

Gavin Stanton moved between them, using his body as a wall. “How do you know that?”

“Know what?”

“That Lilah is both human and shifter.”

Zach sniffed. Looked at her. Felt the truth, the way you feel air itself. “I just know. Don’t you?”

Gavin’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “My wife is my business. Mine. Not yours.” One of Gavin’s arms wrapped around Lilah’s waist as he stepped back, curling it behind her.

“Oh, for God’s sake, I’m not a threat to her!” Zach called out. “I’m worried about her! Her and the babies. What are you people doing here? From my perspective, you’re experimenting on innocent people like me, like her.” He pointed to Lilah, moving closer to her, the image of the babies being used for some evil DNA experiment too much. It was all too much.

The room began to swim, his vision distorting, his skin turning to fire as hair turned to fur.

“No, Zach, you have the wrong impression,” Sophia protested, trying to explain. “It’s not like that—”

“Like those babies. Don’t you dare hurt those babies,” he growled, his voice crackling like the crunch of dead acorns on an autumn path, like running on rocks with boots.

Like he was about to shift.

“Zach. Zach!” Sophia grabbed his arm and yanked, hard.

He did not move.

“Zach, Lilah is a human who became a shifter, but through love. Not the serum. Not the serum. No one injected her or experimented on her. No one!” She grabbed his face with both palms, stood on tiptoe, and forced him to make eye contact. Her upper lashes curled against the bones of her eye sockets, touching the lower edge of her thick eyebrows, her mouth severe.

With tiny shreds of human thought remaining, he clung to the fact that the last time he’d started to shift, lust had driven him.

This shift was not triggered by lust.

It was triggered by protectiveness. By defending those who needed defense.

By making sure that Lilah and her babies were safe.

“How… do… I… know… this… is… true?” he said, words halting, Sophia trying to force him to breathe a pattern with her. The arms of his shirt felt like sausage casing, the rolled cuffs cutting off blood supply, his pants impossibly tight as his muscles swelled.

Believe me, Sophia said in his head.

I want to, he said back. Oh, how I want to.

“Do you trust me, Zach?” Lilah asked, giving him a look of such beseeching understanding that the switch inside him flipped as if someone slammed a circuit breaker to the off position, sending his white-hot fury into a dark, cold hole.

“Are you here of your own free will?” he asked, flexing his hands, looking around Gavin to maintain eye contact with her.

Gavin made a strangled sound of disbelief.

“Yes,” she said, stepping around her husband, then wincing slightly, one hand curling under her belly, the other rubbing the top. Her breathing picked up, a hitched breath turned from one she made through her mouth to her nose.

The room went still.

Seconds passed, Zach’s scalp tingling, his ears too sharp for his own good. He heard the babies—heard them—move lower, down Lilah’s body, their journey to this world a few inches closer.

“Lilah,” Gavin said in a husky, fear-filled voice. “You need to go back to our cabin. Sam needs to give you the serum.”

Zach’s eyes flew open, and he flew across the room, separating Lilah from her husband. “Serum? Serum? You said—”

The crack against his jaw as Gavin punched him felt like part of another man’s body.

In every way imaginable, it was.

But the arm that cocked back, shoulder engaging in perfect form, thighs tightening for the lunge, was all Zach’s as he punched with an uppercut that sent Gavin Stanton flying across the room, over the back of a sofa, and directly into a wingback chair that promptly tipped over, leaving Gavin’s lower legs dangling in the air like a puppet’s.

“GAVIN!” Lilah screamed, gingerly moving to her husband as Zach rubbed his jaw, his own skin like putty, his body purely human.

As were all his emotions, ranging from horror to marvel to pride to—

Oh fuck.

The room was suddenly filled with animals. A mountain lion. A bear. Three wolves.

And Edward’s fiancée, Molly, peering intently at him from across the room, right next to the chair where Gavin had fallen, in her hand a glass of wine that had clearly splashed on her during the melee, a long stripe of burgundy marring her lovely white top.

Step by step she walked toward him, the mountain lion at her side, looking at Zach through slitted eyes. His own shift was there, so close, so close, and yet instinct told him to try.

Try hard to stay human.

Sophia moved to his left, next to him, her thick, scratchy fur grazing against a bare spot on his ankle. The weight of her felt like a boulder pressing against him. Her heartbeat rang through him, a gong without end.

The wolves just watched him, Lilah’s heavy belly standing out. Unable to tell the difference between the two male wolves, Zach just viewed Gavin and Asher as twin threats.

One wrong move, and he was dead.

Or they were, if he shifted. A part of him knew that. Felt it to his core.

But he had no desire to test it.

Molly reached out one hand, making the mountain lion (who must, Zach realized, be Edward) growl a sound of warning.

She touched Zach anyhow.

And relaxed.

“You’re nothing like Mason Webb. Not one bit. You’re so pure. In fact, you’re—”

As her eyes rolled up and her body went limp, Zach reached for her, helpless.

And outnumbered.

Zach tried to catch Molly before her unconscious body hit the floor, but Edward snapped at him first, the lion’s teeth grazing the skin over his jugular. As Zach recoiled, Edward returned to human form in a flash and caught Molly himself, his naked human body startling.

“What did you do to her?” Edward demanded, stroking Molly’s cheeks, giving Zach an incriminating look.

“Nothing!” Zach cried.

“You must’ve done something. Look at her!”

Around the room, each of the animals returned to their human form. Torn or discarded clothes littered the floor at their feet, though no one made an effort to retrieve them.

Zach was surrounded by naked humans. Grown men, a hugely pregnant woman, Sophia.

It should’ve been comical, but he’d never been so intimidated in his life.

“I didn’t do anything to her,” Zach said, willing his voice not to shake. “I swear it.”

Asher moved closer, his bulging muscles—quite impressive, actually; did he lift?—flexed to impose punishment.

On Zach.

“He’s good. He’s good.”

It was Molly, speaking in a faint voice from Edward’s protective embrace on the floor.

“We can see he’s in fine health,” Asher said, his tone suggesting that condition wouldn’t last much longer. “It’s your well-being that concerns us, Molly.”

“And Lilah’s,” Gavin growled. He held her arm and was trying to lead her to the door. “She’s too close to her time to be subjected to this.”

Zach turned his newly acute gaze on Lilah and saw again just how close to the birth she really was. If Gavin could sense what Zach could, he’d be shouting for the doctor.

“Wherever you planned on having your baby,” Zach told Lilah, “I think you should get there as soon as possible.” Zach had always wanted what Gavin Stanton appeared to have—a loving wife, children, a home. Money be damned.

It was family that mattered. And Zach had none. The fiercely protective streak in him didn’t come as a surprise, though the timing left much to be desired.

“Don’t concern yourself with my wife,” Gavin snapped.

“No, he’s right,” Molly said, sitting up, her voice stronger. “I see it too. Lilah, it’s time.”

“Don’t worry,” Lilah said. “Women in my family have long, long labors. My mother had contractions for days. She went to the hospital four times with Jess, and each time they sent her back, saying it was too soon.”

“Nevertheless, we’re calling the doctor,” Gavin said. “And you’re getting in bed.”

“I’m fine, really. My grandmother, my aunt, two of my cousins—long labors. Days. A week. People always think we’re exaggerating, and then the hours and days go on and on.”

“Lilah, my darling,” Gavin said, “you are no longer the same as your mother, grandmother, aunts, or cousins. We must be careful. Please, take pity on your adoring husband and return to our cabin.”

Flushing—all over her body, Zach noticed before averting his eyes—Lilah smiled at Gavin, took his hand with a nod, and let him escort her to the doorway, where Ariana waited with a fleece robe. Gavin helped her into it, quickly dressed himself with another set of clothes Ariana offered, and they departed.

Zach wondered if their “cabin” was as huge as Sophia’s. He’d only seen the foyer of hers and was curious to see the rest of her private retreat, explore the rooms and corners of a building that must reflect the deeper, softer, private parts of her psyche.

No. He couldn’t think about Sophia Stanton too deeply. Her attentions to him had been for the sake of her family and her own kind—to protect their world. To train him. To restrain him.

He was still a prisoner here, and she one of the jailers. A beautiful, passionate jailer who stirred his soul but no more than that.

He had to protect his own interests. One thing he’d told learned during those agonizing months in the clinic: trust nobody.

The only one he could rely on was himself.

When Gavin and Lilah were visible through the great room windows, walking away together on the path outside, Asher strode to his leather armchair and sat down. Although nude, he bore himself with the assurance and indifference of a king.

At that moment a trio of wordless servants appeared with armfuls of clothing for the shifters in the room. Like the costumers of a play, they handed out fresh sets of clothing and immediately disappeared again.

“Molly, I pray you’re feeling better?” Asher asked after dressing himself.

She had risen to her feet and was now leaning on Edward’s arm. “I’m fine, totally fine, it’s nothing.”

“I suspect it must’ve been something,” Asher said. “You were regarding Zachary Hayden—excuse me, Dr. Zachary Hayden—when you seemed to become overwhelmed. Did he… Can you be certain he didn’t touch your… mind in some way?”

While Zach appreciated the formal nod to his PhD, the acid tone made him want to strangle Asher.

Edward turned a shocked face to his eldest brother. “Are you suggesting they shared the Beat, Asher?” he asked, his voice dangerously low.

“He doesn’t believe in the old legend,” Sophia said. Her beautiful body was now covered by a tight black T-shirt and skinny dark jeans that drew Zach’s attention to every delicious curve.

“And you do, sister?” Asher snapped.

While Sophia paused, Zach felt the world freeze on its axis. At that moment, he would’ve died for her to look at him the way she had in the forest, open her body and her mind for him, and say yes. Yes, I know it. I feel it.

A heartbeat not his own pounded in his ears.

But all Sophia said was, “Molly has the sight. She saw Zach.”

“And fainted in terror.” Asher squeezed the arms of the chair.

Molly shook her head. “I fainted because I haven’t eaten and I’m not used to… to the sight, as Sophia calls it. I haven’t learned how to control it. If I go too deep, I feel like I’m drowning and… No, it’s more like suffocating. No… I don’t know. I’m learning. It certainly isn’t Zach’s fault. All I saw in him was goodness. Protectiveness for the babies. Love. Nothing like Webb.” Molly shuddered and turned into Edward’s embrace.

Zach would analyze her claim of special powers at a later time. Right now he had to get solid, concrete facts. “Who is Webb? You mentioned him before.”

Asher regarded Zach for a long moment, weighing and measuring, calculating, manipulating. Finally he said, “A businessman, a human, in league with Tomas Nagy, our cousin, to steal the serum at LupiNex and use it for his own ends. Webb took the serum and became a monster. We fought him and won.”

“Where is he now?”

Asher frowned slightly in surprise. “Dead, of course.”

Zach spasmed with an involuntary shiver. Of course. What they’d do to him if he wasn’t careful.

He had a faint memory of hearing the name Webb before, perhaps on the LupiNex business page, but he was fairly sure he’d never met the man. “And Tomas is in Rome. Why didn’t you kill him?”

“He escaped,” Sophia said. “We know he has some of the serum and the knowledge to do things with it. Asher had him tracked down in Eastern Europe, now Rome.”

“You know where he is. So why haven’t you killed him, if he’s so dangerous?” Zach asked.

“Are you so bloodthirsty then?” Asher asked. “Perhaps Molly was too quick with her judgments. Perhaps she lost consciousness before she got to the bottom of the well of your so-called heart.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Molly interjected, throwing Zach a compassionate glance. “Zach’s good. He risked his life to save Lilah, who he thought needed his help. And her babies. He was worried about the babies. He’s good and that’s final.”

A faint smile flickered at Asher’s lips. “Perhaps I should attempt to believe you, Molly. After all, your talents were able to heal those I care for.”

Sophia touched Zach’s arm. “Webb nearly killed Edward. Tore him apart. Molly and Jess were able to save him.” She glanced at her eldest brother. “As well as Asher himself.”

Zach nodded at Molly, but his thoughts were racing with the implications of what he was hearing, piecing it together as best he could. Webb, a human like Zach, had taken the serum the Stantons had created at LupiNex, turned into a monster, and nearly killed Edward, Asher, and possibly others. In response, the Stantons had killed him. The man responsible, a shifter, had been allowed to live.

Why should Zach believe their description of Webb as a monster? In what way was Zach, an unnaturally large wolf with immeasurable strength and uncontrollable instincts to mate and dominate, not a monster?

It slowly dawned on him that his life was in greater danger than he’d realized. Perhaps even more now than when his bones were shattered, his skin stretched and torn, his organs scrambled, his altered life hanging by a thread.

More than ever, he had to learn everything he could. And learn to control himself. Absolute control. Or else he could suffer Webb’s fate.

“Why do you think Tomas is in Rome?” Zach asked. Knowledge. He needed to know everything.

“I don’t know,” Asher said. “But I’ll find out.”

At that moment, Ariana burst into the room, her professional training nowhere to be seen. Now she was a very young woman freaking out.

“Gavin sent me. Lilah’s having the babies!” she cried. “Like right now!”