“C-clean up team?”

Hating the slight shake in her voice, Lillian followed Jack down the corridor. She tried not to look at the bodies on the floor. Faces stretched into hideous screams, their sightless eyes stared at the ceiling, and their backs were distorted into hideous shapes. A tide of nausea rose to burn the back of her throat. They must have suffered so much pain.

“What happened to them? How did you ki…um, how did they die?”

She fired questions at him as she skirted around the corpses. Her first thought as a member of hospital staff—hell, as a member of the human race—was to try and help them. Something, a survival instinct perhaps, warned her not to mess with things she didn’t understand.

She pulled her foot back, making sure not to touch the ever-widening pool of blood. It was thick as tar, and her gut told her it was dangerous.

“The second guard hardly has a scratch on him. How did you…what did you do to him? Just what the hell is going on?” she asked as she scurried after him.

His long strides ate up the corridor. She tried like hell not to ogle his backside, still playing peek-a-boo through the flaps of the gown. How was a girl supposed to think with prime male flesh like that on display? Unbidden an image rose in her mind. Those firm ass cheeks clenching and relaxing as he drove into her…

Color burned her cheeks as she banished the image. What was going on with her? She felt like she’d been dropped into a bad horror movie, surrounded by corpses, and she couldn’t stop ogling Jack. She couldn’t lust after him, not at the moment. It was entirely inappropriate. Maybe if they’d met outside the hospital… No, she shook her head to herself. That still wouldn’t work. He looked liked a model straight out of one of the glossy magazines from the waiting room. She might have admired him from the other side of a bar, but she’d never have plucked up the courage to approach him.

“I didn’t do anything to them. The Project did.” His lips pressed together as he stopped in front of one of the secure cells and studied the lock for a second.

“They create us in controlled conditions. They don’t want random infections and creatures like me on the loose. So they pump their people full of shit to make sure it doesn’t happen.” He nodded back toward the twisted corpses. “That happens instead.”

He looked back at the door. His strong fingers traced the shape of the lock, as though caressing the metal. “Are these double or triple locked?”

“Just double. Hey no, you can’t—” she protested, reaching out to warn him. The secure cells housed the most dangerous patients. Oh yeah, the little voice in her head sneered, more dangerous than a guy who grows claws and slices bits off people?

Too late. He drew his arm back. Claws glinted in the dull light as he slashed at the locks. Metal screamed and parted, cut through as cleanly as though he’d taken a laser-cutter to the door.

Lillian’s jaw dropped. Cutting someone’s hand off was hard, but she knew how fragile the human body could be, how little force it took to damage it beyond repair. But cutting through a solid steel reinforced door was something else entirely.

“What are you…some kind of superhero? Like that one whatshisname… Zach Holland plays?” she asked, naming the lead actor in one of the popular franchises she often drooled over on screen,

His lips quirked as he slid her a look. The amber leeched back into his eyes again. The sight took her breath away. She was beginning to realize that meant the thing inside him was beginning to emerge.

“Yeah. Something like that. Better looking, though.” He threw her a wink.

She snorted. Men, all ego.

“Yeah, right. Sure you are.”

“Stay here.”

He yanked the door open and disappeared into the cell. Stunned, she didn’t argue. She jumped and snatched her hand back from the door. The cut mechanisms within lost their balance and tumbled down within the metal frame with a loud clatter.

Worried, she glanced quickly up the corridor. Someone had to have heard that. Any minute now the rest of the military guards would be hot-footing it down the corridor.

She needn’t have worried. Snarls erupted from the cell, drowning out the small noise she’d made and creating even more noise. Her heart slammed into her chest again, setting up a frantic rhythm as the sounds of a struggle reached her ears.

Wheels screamed in protest, followed by a metallic thud she recognized as a bed being slammed against a wall. Over it all was an angry snarling that increased in volume and malevolence. A meaty smack reached her ears, quickly followed by a yelp.

Not caring about what she’d been told, she shoved the door open. The windows on this wing were all barred, but that only stopped the inmates escaping. It didn’t stop moonlight streaming in as strong as the light of day.

Like a spotlight, it picked out the two men in the middle of the room. Jack, grim-faced determination etched into every line of his large body, had another heavily built guy in a chokehold.

She gasped, her hand flying to her throat. The man stiffened, his head thrown back as he howled. As she watched in horror, his body changed shape. The sounds of bones popping and cracking filled the cell as his knee joints switched direction, stretching the skin around them in a sickening display. If she didn’t know better, she’d think she was on the set of a horror film.

A sense of the surreal and insane surrounded her. She fought the giggle as it tried to escape her lips. Only last week she’d complained to her friends about her boring life. Right now, with a patient claiming to be a werewolf, she’d be quite happy with boredom. After this lot, sanity would be an optional extra.

Within seconds, the hideous sounds stopped and his knees finally decided which direction they wanted to face. He went from sagging against Jack, with his head bowed, to straightening up until he stood on his own two feet. Finally he lifted his head, looking through the dark curtains of shoulder-length hair, and she gasped.

He had the same strange amber eyes as Jack when he was…not fully human. Unlike Jack’s eyes, these were not warm and patient. In this man’s eyes, she could clearly see the beast within, and it scared her.

The next few seconds all happened too fast for her to process. One moment the guy was standing next to Jack, the next he lunged for her, hunger and lust in his eyes. She screamed. Back-pedaled fast. Her ass hit the door, and she went down hard, her feet scrambling uselessly against the floor as she tried to get away.

He was almost on her, his breath hot as it fanned against her neck and the big bulk of his body looming over her. She tensed and turned away. Any moment now, the same vicious claws as Jack’s would tear into her soft flesh. He was too fast, she couldn’t fight, and she couldn’t move fast enough to get away. Her legs shook, fear making her weak and heightening all her senses. Her heart thundered in her chest yet over it she could hear the tick-tock of the clock in the hallway as it marked the seconds to her death.

Seconds stretched out into years, but the blow didn’t come. Instead there was a yelp. The angry presence and hot breath over her disappeared. Yanked away with the skitter of claws on the linoleum.

“No.” Jack’s voice was as sharp and scolding as if he were speaking to a misbehaving puppy. “Mine.”

 

Jack watched with careful eyes as Darce fought for control on the floor. Flat on his back, with a large arm over his eyes, the big man’s broad chest heaved as he dragged air into his lungs.

“Darce…you cool, man?”

Jack couldn’t see his eyes, but they weren’t the only clues as to what Darce would do next. He moved a step closer to the man on the floor. Every muscle in his body was tense, adrenalin running through him. Any moment he expected the other man to explode into action and try to get to Lilly. Until the silver madness was out of his system, Darce would be unpredictable. He always was.

The moon disappeared behind a cloud, and the glow streaming through the windows cut by half. Jack held his breath. He was an Alpha, the lead wolf in the section. He was faster, stronger and more powerful than the rest of them. Even a little moonlight had enabled him to burn through the drugs that held him prisoner. The others had to work more at it, a process that could rob them of human reason for a while.

“Darce…?”

Crap. He was going to have a fight on his hands if Darce couldn’t break through. He knew he could take the other man. He’d always been able to best any of his men in combat, both when they’d been human and now, when they weren’t. But it was the last thing he needed, with Walker setting off the alarm and a suppression team about to breathe down their necks.

“Come on, man, fight it. I need you fit and thinking human. Walker set the alarm. Forget the shit hitting the fan, this place is gonna look like Armageddon soon.”

Darce shuddered. His spine arched into a hard bow as his heels drummed the floor in a rapid tattoo. Even in the half-light that rendered everything in shades of gray, Jack could see the beads of silver as they poked out his pores.

He moved, slid to his knees next to his second in command. Grabbing his hand, Jack held it tight. “That’s it, man. Push the bastard stuff out. You can do it.”

The silver beads grew in size as Darce fought his own body, until it looked as if the soldier had a serious thing about piercings. The chemical scent hit Jack’s sensitive nose like a freight train. His wolf went wild, trying to get away from the stench. Gritting his teeth, he forced it into submission.

He would to pay for it later, but he didn’t care. His relationship with the thing inside him was symbiotic, rather than parasitic as he’d believed at first. He got increased speed, strength and the ability to shrug off wounds that would kill a normal man. In return, all his wolf wanted was to run free.

Darce nodded, grabbing Jack’s hand in his as he fought to expel the silver. The beads grew until they couldn’t maintain their shape. One by one they fell, the silver leaving a black trail in its wake as they rolled down his cheeks.

“Can I help?” The soft voice behind Jack made them both jump. Holy shit. He’d forgotten Lilly was in the room. The last thing he needed was a woman added to the mix, not while Darce was so volatile.

“Lilly, into the corridor,” he warned as he prepared to hold Darce down.

A tiny noise from below him made him look down. Darce’s eyes were open. Silver pooled on the floor beneath the other man, and his face was streaked with black, but his eyes were human brown.

“I got it, Cap’n. Thinking human.”

Relief flooded through Jack, and he switched his grip to haul Darce to his feet.

“Lilly, I’d like you to meet my right hand man. Lieutenant Darcy Foster. Apart from the fact he has a girls name, he’s not half bad as a soldier.”

 

The woman was beautiful. For a moment Darce couldn’t speak, struck dumb in awe. He breathed in, careful not to draw attention to himself, and rolled her scent over his tongue. She even smelled fantastic. A floral, exotic fragrance clung to the surface of her skin, swaths of it releasing into the air every time she moved. He recognized it, or at least part of it…the low-level musk that every wolf yearned to smell.

She was a wolf-mate.

It was different for every one of them. Any Lycan could tell she was destined to bond with one of them, but her scent would only resonate on a soul-deep level with her destined mate. Under the influence of silver, he’d smelled the mate-scent and reacted instinctively, thinking she was to be his. Now himself again, he recognized the scent wasn’t quite right.

Darce’s gaze locked onto the woman again. He knew he was staring, but quite frankly, he didn’t care.

Forget beautiful, she was gorgeous. Petite and with the sort of full curves any straight red-blooded male would kill to get his hands on. The wolf-mate scent clinging to her skin was just the icing on the “want now” cake.

She wasn’t his. Her scent wasn’t right and besides, the way the captain hovered around her—managing to roll protective and possessive into one potentially violent package—her chosen mate had already found her.

He smiled as she approached, careful to keep his grin human, even though his wolf was still too close to the surface for comfort. His fangs ached, lying in wait just behind his blunt human teeth.

Jack was less than a step behind her. His gaze, more amber than blue, locked onto Darce’s outstretched hand as though it were a poisonous snake. He didn’t blame the guy.

Darce wasn’t the pack alpha, but he was next in line, and he could change almost as quickly as Jack could. He’d even begun to master the partial shifts, changing just his hands and leaving everything else human, something only the most powerful of them could manage.

He didn’t blame Jack for being protective, not when the hand he’d extended to Lillian could sprout claws at any moment. The merest scratch would infect a normal human, and the mating-scent would only make her more susceptible. He had no doubt that if he even looked at the cute brunette askance, Jack would take more than a pound of flesh as a punishment.

“Hi. I think it’s a nice name. Unusual but nice.” She smiled shyly as she put her hand in his and shook gently. “I’m Lillian Rosewood. I’m…one of the staff here. I take it you already know Jack?”

One of the staff? Darce’s grip on her hand tightened for a second. Like the rest of the pack, he had no reason to like and every reason to hate doctors.

Her face whitened, and her lips compressed as she carefully tried to extricate her hand. Jack stepped forward, an unmistakable snarl of anger on his lips. Belatedly, Darce realized he was crushing her hand and dropped it.

“Sorry. Don’t know my own strength at times. And thanks, I kinda like it.”

He added a charming smile to ease the tension and backed off a step. The last thing he needed after pushing what felt like a boatload of silver through his pores was a fight with Jack. He might have almost mastered a part-shift, but Jack was pack alpha, and a master of the shift. He was so adept, the guy could shift just his fingernails into lethal, three-inch talons. Mad shifting skills the rest of them could only talk about in envy.

“So…you’re a doctor here?” he asked carefully, shooting a quick look at Jack. The Project were real careful about outsiders knowing what they were up to, and even more careful about other medical staff getting a looksee at their “people”.

If Lillian was a doctor, and she knew what they were…then Jack had just signed her death warrant. Hell, even if she wasn’t a doctor and knew, the Project wouldn’t allow her to live. His eyes unfocused as a wave of the mating scent hit him again and threatened to short-circuit his brain. If she was a wolf-mate, and Jack’s mate, then the pack would be obligated to keep her safe.

She smiled. “Oh, no. No, I’m not. I’m the hospital manager.”

“Fuck me sideways,” he breathed, understanding in his eyes as he looked at Jack. He wouldn’t want to be the guy’s shoes for all the money in the world now. He’d gone from having nothing to live for, to having everything to live for…and everything to protect against an enemy who would stop at nothing to achieve its aim.

“I’d rather not. Why, what’s wrong…you got a thing against admin staff?”

“Huh? What?”

Her swift retort surprised him, and the sly humor in her eyes made him smile again. Catching Jack’s warning glare, he made himself pay better attention, but not too much, to the lady he spoke with.

“No, not at all, pretty lady. I was just thinking we should count our lucky stars. Help on tap with all the horrendous report forms they make us fill out. In blood,” he wailed dramatically, hand over his heart. He peeked out from under the heavy fall of his hair and winked at her.

Jack’s lips compressed, and he all but shoved his petite mate behind him. “That’s quite enough of that, we need to find the others and formulate a plan. Walker triggered a remote alarm. We’re gonna get company and soon.”

Darce nodded, and snapped back to the seasoned and experienced soldier he was. “On it boss-man. You keep the little lady safe, and I’ll round up the lads.”