“Fuck me, she shot him.”

Safely concealed by darkness and a net curtain on the second floor, Darce watched the little drama play out in the courtyard below. His amber eyes tracked the tall woman as she holstered her pistol. She stood for a long moment, just looking at the body in front of her. That had been real anguish and anger on her face. Definitely a history with whoever the RA had been when he was alive.

Without intervention from his brain, his eyes returned to caress the lines of her slender image. Dressed for combat in black battle fatigues, complete with tac-rig and enough weaponry to give a survival nut a serious hard-on, she was a walking wet dream for a guy like him. Not just for a guy like him. For him. As he’d opened the main doors, the wind had changed direction for a second and he’d caught a trace of her scent.

The fragrance had hit him broadside, reached deep inside him and stole his ability to breathe right out of his lungs. As soon as he’d caught her scent, he knew. She was the one. Trouble was, she was a Blood. His mate was a heartless, blood-sucking vampire.

Who’d just shot an RA dead…okay, deader…before it could be deployed. As she turned away from the body, something that looked suspiciously like a tear glittered on her cheek. She was crying? Over killing an RA? Darce frowned as she walked out of sight, tucking a loose strand of dark hair behind his ear as he moved to try and keep her in view.

“Shit, shit, shit. Come back, pretty lady,” he muttered, but she stood too close to the building for him to see. He could feel her, as if his body was attuned to her like a compass to true north.

It was no good. She wasn’t going to move back into view so he could ogle her some more and, from the sounds he could hear below, the RAs were moving it.

“Later,” he promised the unseen beauty below. Blood, or not, she was his, and he would claim her.

* * *

The corridor was cold and dark. The soldiers outside had cut the power lines, and the backup generator hadn’t come online. Since it was in an outbuilding at the rear of the hospital, Lillian suspected that it too had been sabotaged.

Crouched down behind Jack, she tried to creep closer to his warmth without being noticed. Still naked to the waist, he wore a determined expression as he methodically loaded and checked his weaponry. Scattered around him were more weapons. She could only identify the hand pistols, the rest were like something out of an action film. He wasn’t alone—one of his men sat against the other wall doing exactly the same. Opposite them, in the other corridor, three other guys were also loading weapons. When done, they’d move back along the twisted corridor so that the two teams weren’t shooting directly at each other.

Between them, they had enough guns for a small army.

“Where the hell did you get all those?” she asked, using the question to cover another move closer. She sighed in relief. Warmth rose from his bare skin as if he was some kind of human radiator.

“Guard station on this wing.”

Her eyes threatened to bug out of her head. “What? They had all that in there?”

He nodded but didn’t look at her. He was too busy loading what looked like a hand cannon. She edged closer still, until she was almost leaning against his back, and looked at the small pile.

“Which one do I get?”

His lips compressed. “None of them. You stay behind me and down out of sight behind the cabinet.”

She looked at him as though he’d grown another head.

“Excuse me? Can you repeat that? I thought you just told me that I don’t get a gun.”

He picked up a shotgun and cocked with a swift, efficient movement. “Yup, that’s exactly what I said.”

“Well, screw that! I want a gun.”

“You’re not getting one.”

He turned his head and favored her with a hard look. Amber leeched into his blue eyes. She glared back. They were at an impasse, one she was determined to win.

“Oh no you don’t. Pulling the weird wolf eyes thing on me doesn’t work. Now give me a gun. I need one. Hell, after all this weird stuff, I damn well deserve a way to protect myself.”

His eyes were fully amber now, but she didn’t back down. She knew him…as much as it was possible to know someone she’d met less than twenty-four hours ago. Instinct told her that neither he nor the creature inside him would harm a hair on her head.

“You talk too much.”

“Oh yeah? I can talk more. Especially if it irritates you enough to give me a gun.”

Her body tensed, her hands practically itched with the need to grab some form of weaponry. She couldn’t sit here knowing something was coming through those doors with no way to defend herself.

“Talk all you want. You’re not getting a gun. Have you had any training?” He smirked in triumph when she shook her head. “There, see? You’d only shoot me or, God forbid, yourself if I gave you one.”

“Fine.”

Lillian sat back on her haunches and crossed her arms as she tried to figure out a way to get him to let her have a gun. Her gaze wandered over to the other soldier with them. He studiously avoided her gaze. Great, so none of them would go up against their almighty alpha.

Refusing to look at the hunk of gorgeousness beside her, she studied the wall of the corridor. Her gaze followed the design in the plaster until…with a grin, she pushed off and marched down the corridor.

“Don’t go too far,” Jack called out as he continued what he was doing.

Lillian ignored him. She wasn’t going far, just to the nearest fire point. Every wing had several of them, each containing different types of extinguishers, a first-aid kit and, locked away safely in a cabinet, a fire axe.

Sliding her jacket off, she wrapped it around her fist and punched the glass.

“Fucking hell!”

Pain shot up her arm as her fist connected with the glass. Glass which remained stubbornly in place and whole. She glared at it as she shook her hand, shoving it under her armpit as she waited for the pain to dissipate. If looks could kill or shatter glass, she’d be fine. But they didn’t, so she needed to channel her inner Bruce Lee.

Sighing, she re-wrapped her jacket around her arm and concentrated on the karate moves she’d learned as a kid. Sure, the lessons were nearly twenty years ago, but muscles remembered these things, didn’t they?

Taking a deep breath she closed her eyes and moved before she could think about it. Using her elbow, she slammed it against the glass. Her reward was a satisfying crack. The safety glass broke up around her arm, falling harmlessly into the bottom of the cabinet in small cubes.

Crowing with triumph, she reached in and snatched the axe off its bracket. A couple of practice swings only increased the broad grin across her face. Screw Jack, she didn’t need his guns. She could arm herself quite nicely, thank you very much.

“Good. You’re bac—where the fuck did yo…” Jack paused for a moment to look at the heavy red axe in her hands. He shook his head. “Never mind. We have company.”

* * *

Darce hit the stairs at a run and thundered down them three at a time. Adrenalin pumping through his body, he raced down the corridor and slid around the last corner and into place between Nic and Sanders. Drunk on the power of his Lycan body and the fact he’d at last scented his true-mate, he grinned at the pair of them.

Sanders lifted an eyebrow but didn’t make a comment. Nic looked at him as though he’d grown another head, her ice-blue eyes fixing him with a hard stare. He suppressed a shiver. That was the one thing he would never get used to about Nic’s transformation.

Before she’d turned Lycan, her eyes had been the softest green he’d ever seen. The arctic blue was from her wolf. Unlike the rest of the pack, who could play human easily enough if they needed to, Nic’s eyes didn’t change back to green anymore. He missed her eyes…actually, he missed the softer, laughing Nic he remembered from their days in basic. Then memory smacked him around the back of the head as he recalled his mate outside. He grinned again.

Oh yeah, he felt good.

Nic frowned, her gaze flicking over him in assessment as her nose twitched slightly. He’d always found that cute. He’d have reached out and tweaked it…if he didn’t know she’d take his arm off at the shoulder for doing it.

She stilled, her expression deadening. Slowly, her gaze marched down to his groin. He didn’t bother to hide the tented fabric at his crotch. His scent would give him away anyway.

She lifted her brow, lips pursed. “Impressive. Weird but impressive. Didn’t know RAs got you off this badly.”

He snorted and waved a hand dismissively. He was in too good a mood to be brought down by her sarcasm.

“She’s here!”

He had been going to keep the amazing news to himself, but instead he found himself blurting the words out without any apparent intervention from his brain. Once they were out, there was no taking them back, so he stood in the middle of the corridor grinning like a fool.

The two other wolves froze. There was no question what he meant. A wolf only meant one thing when he said “she” in that tone of voice. He was talking about the other half of his soul, his perfect mate. The woman made especially for him.

“One of the RAs? Man, that sucks. I’m sorry,” Sanders, a man of few words, spoke into the silence.

“Oh. God, no. She’s not an RA. She’s one of the troops that came with them—”

Nic speared him with a look so icy he was surprised his blood didn’t freeze. “She? With the troops? There’s only one woman with them and she…” Her lip curled in disgust. “She’s a Blood.”

Darce grinned and nodded like a fool. He knew what she was, and he didn’t care.

The female werewolf’s gaze stabbed toward his groin again.

"Seriously, Darce? We’re about to be overrun by RAs and you’ve got a boner for some Blood bitch?” Her anger radiated out from her like a porcupines quills. If she’d been in wolf form, her fur would have stood on end. “That’s all we need…a new and improved way for them to slaughter us. Send in the hot Blood bitch so you all stop thinking with the big head and follow your dicks around. Fucking heat-seeking missiles!” She shook her head. “Sick, just sick!”

Power filled the corridor. Darce caught his breath as it wandered up his skin, tingling as the pressure grew and grew. It felt like the pressure in a plane cabin as a plane took off. He wriggled his jaw to try and equalize his ears, but before they could, there was a pop. Not so much a sound as a feeling against his skin. Where Nic had been standing, there was a two hundred pound white-furred wolf glaring at him in anger instead.

Darce admired her for a moment, careful not to get caught doing it. Nic had a hair-trigger temper and no issues with trying to take down a member of her own squad. Sometimes he wondered where all her rage came from, then he remembered how they’d been made into what they were, and the pieces all fit into place.

If he thought too much about it, all the anger and bitterness locked somewhere deep inside tried to escape and overwhelm him. The difference between him and Nic, hell Nic and most of the squad, was that they didn’t let it. They preferred to live in the here and now, and play the hand life had dealt them.

Today, despite the fact they were about to face down a horde of re-animates, Darce felt as if he’d hit the jackpot.

* * *

Should he have given her a gun? Jack didn’t have long to ponder the question before his sensitive nose got the first whiff of incoming re-animates. His lip curled, even the slightest hint of flesh just starting to rot and blood gone black was enough to curdle his stomach, and set the creature within off.

“RAs inbound,” he whispered to the woman at his side. The re-animates were too far away for her to hear yet, and she didn’t have the enhanced sense of smell the rest of them had. The low level growl emanating from all around told him the rest of the squad had already picked up the same scents.

Bloods he could deal with. Although they were vicious-fast and liked their food on the rare side, there was at least intelligence there. Some semblance of humanity left. Not much when the bloodlust hit them, but there was some.

Not so with re-animates. They were the zombies Lillian had called them. An experiment into increased regeneration gone wrong, the RA-17 serum had had unexpected and disastrous effects on the test subjects.

It had killed them outright. No argument or confusion. As soon as the serum had been injected it spread through their systems with an ease cyanide would have envied. The subjects had all cocked their toes up there and then, right on the tables. The exact opposite of the intended result.

The bodies zipped up and carted off to the morgue, the experiment had been deemed a failure. Until the next morning. First shift in the morgue had found the night guard, or what remained of him, and five docile, shuffling dead people.

The project scope was quickly altered, and RA-17 was hailed a success. So effective, it was used during cleanup of infection sites. Mortality rates of normal troops against Lycanthropes were high, almost a hundred percent. Those same rates didn’t count with re-animates. You couldn’t kill something that was already dead.

“What, now? Where?”

Her eyes were wide with a mixture of apprehension and determination. Her knuckles whitened on the shaft of the axe she held. He didn’t tell her that he had absolutely no intention of letting her near enough to the RAs for her to use it.

“Side window.”

He nodded toward it and checked his weaponry again. Like most soldiers, it was a compulsive need. Move, check weapons. Breathe, check weapons. Fart, check weapons. It was ingrained deep into his psyche.

A shuffling noise reached his ears. The sound of feet dragging against the linoleum. A sound that exasperated the mothers of young children and put Jack and his men on high alert.

Through the window next to them, he looked out across the small grassy area outside to the windows of the corridor that intersected theirs. With all the gates opened, it was the path of least resistance. RAs were dumb, they’d go whichever way they were herded until they couldn’t go any farther. After that, everything was up for grabs. If they were left alone, they’d mill about in confusion. If they were stimulated by prey or hungry, they’d kick up a storm.

Indistinct shadows moved behind the barred windows. It could have been a trick of the light, but he knew better. The low moan that followed, like a chorus from asthmatic organ pipes, confirmed what his nose was telling him. The re-animates were here, and they were hungry.

Lillian caught her breath as she saw them. At this distance, there was no way she could see detail. Which was a blessing in disguise. Even if this lot had re-animated just before they left the nearest Project base, the journey in a closed container, the only safe way to transport re-animates, wouldn’t have done them any favors. The heat and minor wounds caused by rattling around in the thing meant they were starting to degrade and, by the smell wafting up the corridors, they’d already started to snack on one of their number.

“That’s them?” she whispered.

Jack didn’t get time to answer. The groan increased, gaining in pitch and volume. The shuffling separated out into the patter of running feet.

“Incoming,” he yelled, bringing his rifle into his shoulder. “Fire at will!”

All hell broke loose. The first RA into the line of fire had been a young man. A prisoner, by the looks of the jumpsuit. These days, lethal injection was the least of your worries if you were stupid enough to end up on death row. Thanks to a governmental mandate, if you were sentenced to death your ass belonged to science. Or, more specifically, the Project. Just more grist for the RA mill.

His eyes were fixed on where Darce, Sanders and Nic stood. Drool dripped from his chin and he moaned hungrily, lurching toward them with a single-minded intensity common in re-animates. Once they got an idea fixed in their decaying heads, that was it.

He didn’t make two steps before the air was alive with bullets. They slammed into him, his dead body jumping and jerking like a marionette on speed. The projectiles tore through his clothing, shredding flesh, muscle and bone as though it were paper. They didn’t leave wounds, just ragged holes that leaked corrupt blood.

Jack didn’t stop firing, even when the first RA was joined by others in an overwhelming press. He targeted limb joints. Knees, ankles, hips. If the things couldn’t run, they were easier to put down.

“Thom,” he yelled over the din. “RAs down, shotgun. Darce, get your fur on. We got runners.”