Alyssa had fallen asleep quickly, but Dirk found that his mind wouldn’t let him do the same. He propped himself up on his elbow and watched her as she dozed, wondering what made her so different from other women. He had instantly been attracted to her when he’d been introduced to her at Bios Labs, even with the simple way she dressed and the clear lack of plastic surgery. That hadn’t completely been a surprise, since he’d been attracted to many women in his lifetime, but he hadn’t expected such a beauty to be tucked away in an upper corner of a lab building. Though her hair was trapped in a braid, he could instantly see how soft and tempting it was. With her blue eyes and heart-shaped face, she looked almost like any other pretty girl he might have run into. Her lab coat did very little to hide her curves, and it was difficult not to appreciate them openly. But he could see the intelligence behind her eyes, and she had made it very clear back at her office that she was a no-nonsense type of woman. It didn’t hurt when she had taken off after him in the rain, her practical sneakers slapping against the sidewalk as she laughed behind him.

Even stranger was that she didn’t seem to care about his money. Alyssa didn’t seem entirely certain about having him back their lab, and she had been more turned off by his car than turned on. She hadn’t even said anything about his apartment. She was definitely different, and in a way that was irresistible.

To make matters even more bizarre, Dirk found himself opening up to Alyssa in a way he hadn’t even done with his friends back at the Club. Dr. Brinkmann had been there and had heard him talk, but that was purely coincidental. It was Alyssa he wanted to talk to, and Alyssa he wanted to know more about. Oddly enough, the more they talked the more he realized it wasn’t going to be enough. He needed more of her, more than just talking until midnight in a bar could ever get him. Alyssa wasn’t just an ordinary human. He had proven it to himself when he had stopped to ask her explicit permission to make love to her.

As much as he wanted to know about her, he was still curious about what she did. Dr. Brinkmann had given him “the tour,” but it was obvious to Dirk from the very start that the scientist hadn’t been completely honest with him. He was only showing Bennett the bare bones of the company, the sorts of things that could just as easily be discovered by snooping around online. There was more to the story behind Bios Labs, and there was more to Bios Labs itself. There were doors he hadn’t been allowed to go through, doors with a security guard posted nearby and an extra retinal scanner. Whatever Bios had up its sleeve, it was big.

He could hire someone to get a job at Bios and find out for him. He had plenty of money, and he didn’t doubt that he could find a candidate with a good degree and a clean record.

Then again, he could keep Alyssa at his side and hope that she would one day confide in him. It would certainly give him the fringe benefit of having an attractive, intelligent woman in his bed, but he didn’t want to use her like that. He’d certainly used plenty of other women, but it wouldn’t happen with her.

No, he knew exactly what he had to do. Dirk slowly extracted himself from the bed, moving carefully so as not to wake Alyssa. He slipped into the next room and called Ethan, one of his friends from the Darkblood Society.

His friend’s voice was raspy with sleep. “Dude, it’s the middle of the night. I mean, the morning. What’s up?”

Dirk didn’t give any specific details, but he gave the computer mogul just enough information to get him what he needed. “And I need it tonight. Like, right now.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Okay. If you’re sure about this. And I do owe you one. Just come to my office. I have something that will work with just a little bit of reprogramming.”

After a quick stop at Cobalt Computers, Dirk was on his way back to Bios Labs with a small device sitting in his passenger seat. Ethan had promised that it could trick almost any retinal scanner in the world. “But I’m sure as hell not putting my logo on it,” the tech guy had said with a grin.

Dirk parked a block away and trotted up to the building. The squat cube was dark and shadowy, with only one street light on the east side of it to cast any light on the lot. All of the office windows were dark. “Working the night shift, huh?” he muttered to himself as he ducked into the entryway and held the device up to the retinal scanner. His stomach swirled as he waited for an alarm to sound, but the door gave a soft click instead. He was inside.

Dirk went slowly through the lobby, pausing after every footstep to listen for a guard to come running. But none did. He made his way through the offices Dr. Brinkmann had shown him. If he failed at his primary mission, he could always come back through here and snatch a laptop on the way out. Ethan would be able to tell him everything that was on it, but that was just a backup plan. He wanted to see the work with his own eyes.

He rounded a corner into a short hallway with a door at the end. A security guard sat on a chair nearby, his head drooping almost to his chest. Dirk skirted around him and was just pulling the device out of his pocket to fool the lock when he heard the man stir behind him.

“Hey!”

Turning so fast he made his own head spin, Dirk dispatched the guard with a few quick thrusts of his hands. His father had made him take martial arts classes as a child, the sort of thing he’d never really wanted to do, but Mr. Bennett had insisted. “It’ll help you in ways you can’t imagine right now,” his father had assured him. “Both as a human and as a dragon.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Dirk whispered as he watched the guard fall to the floor and turned back to the door. He was through in a moment and found himself in a stairwell. A plain concrete wall lined dull gray steps that descended into the bowels of the building. “That’s not very exciting.”

But the stairs led down to a lab area Brinkmann hadn’t allowed him to see before. As he descended into the basement of the building, he discovered a massive room, brightly lit, with what looked like different medical stations spread around it. Strong young men in paper gowns sat at each of these stations, moving to the next one when they were done, as various scientists poked them with needles and took their vitals. In an observation window overhead sat Dr. Brinkmann.

Dirk crouched behind a large piece of machinery and listened.

“He’s just not taking to the biomechanical arm,” said a young woman. “I think we’re going to have to remove it.”

“We can’t do that. Brinkmann worked on this subject himself,” argued another voice. “He’ll be furious.”

“If he’s so confident in it, then he can come down here and see that 348A’s skin is interacting with the material.”

“But the subject can control it, so just put some ointment on it.”

“You know just as well as I do that it’ll interfere with the neural connection,” the first scientist snapped. “Just call him down here.”

Dirk held his breath. Biomechanical arm? Neural connection? He didn’t like the sound of it.

Heavy footsteps sounded from the other side of the lab, and Dr. Brinkmann’s voice soon followed it. “Tell me what’s the matter,” he sighed.

The female scientist explained something that amounted to a rash. “It’s fine if he’s only wearing it for a few hours, but that’ll never work in the field, especially in harsh conditions. We need to find a different material that will not only pick up the connection but agree with his skin.”

“We haven’t had this problem with the other soldiers,” Brinkmann commented. “Does he have an integumentary disease? I don’t see anything noted on the chart.”

“Nothing that I can find.”

“Well, I’ll have to figure it out later. I’ve been calibrating the heat sensor vision on 879F, and it really can’t wait. Look, here he comes now.”

“Sir, unreported heat signature detected.” This voice was deep and barking, definitely not a scientist.

“See, it’s already glitching on me.”

“Unreported heat signature detected,” the soldier repeated. “Investigating.”

The heavy thud of boots drew nearer to Dirk’s hiding place, and he knew it was all over. He should have brought a gun with him or asked his friends to help. But he was just a spoiled rich boy who thought he was entitled to know everyone’s secrets, and the Darkblood Society didn’t have the time to waste on that. The machinery that had served to hide Dirk went crashing to the side, revealing a real-life toy soldier, complete with a tight t-shirt, camouflage pants, muscled arms, and buzzed hair. Dirk shot to his feet and landed a punch square on the soldier’s jaw. The soldier took it without blinking and grabbed Dirk by the arm.

Brinkmann exclaimed, ready to reprimand the soldier for damaging expensive equipment, but his voice changed as soon as he realized what was actually happening. “You! What are you doing here?”

Dirk didn’t have time to answer. He was stuck in the warrior’s grip, and his human body wasn’t strong enough to break it. Without thinking, he felt an instinctive flush of heat run through his arm. His skin rippled, tearing apart into sections that hardened into scales.

Surprised, the soldier immediately let go, but it was too late. Several other men, some of them still in their paper gowns and others in olive drab, had closed in on him. He sized them up and took a quick view of the lab. There wasn’t enough room to spread his wings and fly out of here, but he had to do something…

“348A, fire!”

At Brinkmann’s command, the soldier with the biomechanical arm twitched. Something exploded into Dirk’s chest, and he sank into blackness.