I couldn’t believe what I was doing. For the first time in six years, I didn’t follow the route which had become deeply enough ingrained that I could drive it without thinking twice. It felt uncomfortable, a little squirmy. Was I making the right decision?

I didn’t have a choice. That reminder soured any hope for excitement about a new job, a new task. A much larger salary. I swallowed back the tinge of bitterness still in my mouth and told myself to suck it up. Just like I had been all weekend.

At least I didn’t have to pretend to be happy, like I had done for Tommy’s sake. We’d gone shopping, pitched pennies, eaten ice cream until I was sure I’d explode. I had taken him to the movies for an excuse to sit in relative peace for an hour and a half and lose myself in thought. That was Saturday evening.

Mary had called in the morning.

A shifter. I was testing a shifter. She didn’t say who he was or what he shifted into, only that he had a problem. Iron prevented him from taking his other form. It was like testing the biggest rat I’d ever worked on, or so I told myself. Take his blood, analyze it, locate the element which clashed with iron and create an antidote which suppressed it.

No big deal.

“This is unlike anything I’ve ever done,” I’d told her. “I mean, are you sure you have the right person?”

I could hear her gentle chuckle in my head as I drove to my new lab. “I’m sure. You’re a star, Harrison tells me. You have a sharp, analytical mind. You’re a bulldog when it comes to finding solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems. You’re not afraid to think outside the box—whether that has to do with your natural intelligence or your youth isn’t for me to say, but you’re who we need.”

I was a star; how come Harrison never told me?

One thing Mary was clear on was complete secrecy. Nobody could know. I didn’t need to ask why. Shifters weren’t exactly mainstream. They were part of our world, yes, and much more widely accepted than they were when I was a kid. But It wasn’t all sunshine and roses for them.

I had agreed to stay silent. It wasn’t as though I had anybody in my life to talk with—a few girlfriends, sure, but they had sort of faded into the background once Tommy came along. I couldn’t blame them for moving on without me. We suddenly had much less in common—overnight.

“You’ll still be able to pick me up today, Aunt Cari?” His poor little face had looked so worried.

I had turned in my seat. “Of course, honey. You’ll stay in aftercare, just like always. I’ll be here at five.” Mary and I got clear on that right away. I couldn’t afford to spend endless nights at the lab. I had responsibilities at home. She had seemed open to this, though I had the feeling it didn’t please her much to give in. For once, I was calling the shots on something. It felt pretty good.

The little bubble of confidence burst when I arrived at my destination—at least, it was the front gate which blocked trespassers, set in a long chain-link fence topped with spirals of barbed wire which glinted in the sun.

Reminded me of something from one of those Lock Up TV prison shows. Or was that Lockdown?

I gulped as the car came to a stop beside a guard booth. What was it about an official-looking place like that which made an innocent person feel like they had to think twice about everything they said and did? Maybe it was just my nerves. I flashed the burly guard what I hoped was an easy smile.

“Carissa Lomax,” I announced. He checked his computer, my ID, then waved me on. A buzzer sounded as the gate slowly swung open.

I breathed out; I had passed the first test.

It was a beautiful day, with a sky as blue as it could only be in autumn. I had never seen a summer sky as deep and perfectly blue. It made the stark white complex I was approaching look even brighter. Whoever designed it didn’t have beauty in mind, that was for sure. It was about as depressing as a prison. I wondered exactly what sort of work went on there that Mary sent me to do top-secret research.

One last look at myself in the mirror before getting out of the car and walking up to the south entrance. There were dozens of other cars parked near mine, and they were all new or fairly new. All in good shape. They paid well—my salary would double for as long as I worked on my shifter project.

Part of me wondered how long I could stretch out the work. I couldn’t help it. The money meant a nest egg, something I could fall back on in case I ever decided to stop biting my tongue and start speaking my mind around my coworkers. Or a college fund for Tommy.

Yet another guard was inside the entrance, seated between two sets of glass doors. He provided a badge printed with my name and a barcode, which I could use to get in and out of my lab and around the southern wing of the complex. The doors wouldn’t open unless I scanned it. I wondered if my subject would have a badge like that.

My instructions sent me down a long, low-ceilinged hallway. It was so quiet. Almost eerily quiet. I was used to hearing chatter, low but pleasant. I had never felt so completely alone. It was like walking through a scene in a horror movie, where I was the last girl alive. I had to chuckle at myself. Even so, my hand shook when I scanned the badge and opened the door to the lab.

What I saw took my breath away.

I felt like a kid walking into a toy store. A store empty except for me and the things inside. No other shoppers. Just me. Everything in front of me was mine to use—equipment I had only ever dreamed of. Everything was so clean, so bright. Unused? It looked brand new. Hell, it looked like somebody had polished everything up just for me. Or for my subject. Why was he so important?

A laptop was waiting for me, open and ready. I logged in with the credentials Mary had given me over the phone and found instructions. The procedures for analyzing the blood I drew, the equipment at my disposal which would allow me to analyze, as opposed to sending the blood out and waiting for the techs to get the results to me. I could work so much more efficiently this way. For the first time, I felt a flutter of excitement in my stomach.

“Excuse me?”

I almost hit the ceiling at the sound of a deep, male voice and swung around in a circle with one hand over my heart. “Jesus Christ!”

“Sorry!” An alarmingly tall, impossibly built man stood in one corner of the room with his hands up, palms out. “I thought you knew I’d be here.”

“I don’t even know who you are.” But it was all so obvious. The way he was built, the way they were all built. Tall and wide and muscled. The broad shoulders, bulging biceps, larger than I had ever seen on a human man who didn’t consider physical fitness his mission in life, like a professional wrestler, an Olympic weightlifter.

A shifter. He was my subject.

“You must be Cash,” I said when I got my head screwed on straight.

He narrowed his jade-green eyes. “You already know my name?”

I composed myself. It would be important to put myself in a position of authority straight away. If he knew the very sight of his piercing, penetrating eyes or the square jaw under that dark beard gave me goosebumps, it could make for an uncomfortable situation.

I was used to pushing my personal feelings aside for the sake of maintaining credibility. “Of course. Though I have to admit, I don’t know much else about you.”

Those eyes of his. They traveled over me, taking me in, sizing me up—normally, this would piss me off. I imagined Ryan doing the same thing and knew I’d want nothing more than to introduce his balls to my knee. But this shifter, Cash. He was different.

“You have the advantage over me,” he finally said, sliding big hands into jeans pockets. “You know my name. I don’t even know yours. The way Mary made it sound, some friend of hers would be testing me. And the friend is a guy.”

“Harrison,” I blurted out, then wished I hadn’t.

Nervous babbling. The less he knew, the better. What was I even allowed to tell him about the circumstances which brought us together?

“Maybe she wanted to surprise you,” I suggested.

He chuckled, then ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Yeah. That’s exactly something she’d do.”

I looked over his shoulder, where there was an almost invisible door in the wall. “I see. You’re on the other side of that door?”

“Oh, yes. My penthouse suite for the foreseeable future.” He stepped aside and revealed a panel on the wall. “I don’t need one of those badges to get in and out. Just my fingerprint.”

Sure enough, when he tapped his thumb to the sensor, the door slid open. I saw what the people in charge had clearly tried to turn into a bedroom—but it was still a room for test subjects. No matter how comfortable the bed looked or how big the TV on the wall, there was still the ugly, glaring light mounted on the ceiling and the same plain, bare walls. The same ugly, gray tile floor in between the throw rugs somebody thought would make the place a little homier.

Discomfort hung between us. I didn’t know what to say. What did a person say to their test subject? That was the beautiful thing about working on rats. They didn’t expect conversation. And they never made the back of my neck feel prickly and sweaty when they looked at me.

“I guess we should get started.” I turned to a tray which somebody had thoughtfully placed beside the laptop. There were alcohol wipes, syringes, tubes. I waved him over before pulling on a pair of latex gloves.

“I guess so.” He sat on a stool beside the work table and presented one impossibly thick arm. I was almost afraid to touch it, which struck me as a ridiculous response. There was no helping it. He was strength, power, masculinity all wrapped up in one handsome package.

And underneath that, he was something else. An animal. I had to keep that in mind, too. I couldn’t afford to let myself get too comfortable.

“This will sting,” I warned after cleaning his skin.