They reached the jungle surrounding the Apex base as the sun was going down. The scraps of western sky between the leaves glowed like the heart of a fire. Destiny’s keen tiger’s nose could smell concrete, engine oil, fuel exhaust, and other odors that had no place in a jungle.

She and Ethan stopped, concealed by dense trees and hanging curtains of vines. Destiny nuzzled him, then nudged the backpack he carried in his mouth. He dropped it and became a naked man.

It was good to see him standing strong and confident, not even winded by their long run. She’d been so afraid for him. But that was over now. They were on a dangerous mission, sure, but Ethan did dangerous missions for a living. And so did she. They’d already beaten a T-Rex! She couldn’t imagine that base holding anything that could scare her after that.

Once Destiny became a woman, she took a moment to unabashedly admire him. The stark patterns of his black tattoos covered his chest and arms, following and enhancing the natural angles of bone and swells of muscle. She feasted her eyes on his biceps, his triceps, his pecs, the light dusting of golden hair on his chest. She always had liked men with muscles, and Ethan was well-endowed in that department. In others, too. What a lucky girl she’d turned out to be.

“You look luscious,” Ethan murmured.

“So do you. Being a shifter suits you.”

“It’s hard to believe I was ever anything else.”

He bent down, and she tipped her face up. His strong arms encircled her, protective and loving. They came together for a kiss, breathing in each other’s scent and warmth and presence. His body melded against hers in a perfect fit.

They opened the backpack and dressed quickly, then slung their swords and tiger claws on their belts. She left the gun in the backpack; it was useless without bullets. With any luck they’d soon be able to ambush a guard and acquire a new one. A tranquilizer rifle, preferably. They hoped to be able to get in, radio for help, break out the prisoners, and get out without raising an alarm, and gunshots indoors would certainly do that.

As they began stealthily making their way toward the base, a rustle of leaves made them freeze and drop their hands to the hilts of their swords. They relaxed as they saw the source of the noise, a tiny shape moving behind a bush.

“Just a squirrel,” she said. “Or a little—”

The creature burst out of the shrubbery. It was so covered in clinging wet leaves and moss that Destiny couldn’t tell exactly what it was at first, other than that it walked on two legs.

“Is that a chicken?” Ethan said doubtfully.

The whatever-it-was stopped right in their path, showing no fear of them, and hissed. Destiny imagined she could hear a note of indignation in the sound. Also, it definitely was not a chicken, unless it was a mutant chicken with a whole lot of teeny fangs instead of a beak. It shook itself, sending moss and leaves flying, and revealed itself as a dinosaur. A very small dinosaur.

Destiny and Ethan stared at the creature. It somewhat resembled the Achillobators that had attacked them in the Golden City, but apart from being much smaller, it was black rather than mottled green, and had a sleeker shape. Its color made it blend into the rich black earth of the forest floor, so much so that it was hard to get a good look at it, apart from the gleam of its white fangs and the glow of its yellow eyes.

“I think it’s a velociraptor!” Destiny exclaimed. “Remember, Ayers said they were the size of a chicken.”

The velociraptor, if that was what it was, let out another hiss. Then it suddenly began to grow. Ethan grabbed Destiny’s arm, and they jumped back as the dinosaur went from chicken-sized to Ethan-sized in less than three seconds.

“What the hell…” Ethan muttered, drawing his sword.

So did Destiny. “Must be another Apex agent. We can’t let it report back!”

The dinosaur leaped away, changing shape as it did. A blond man in desert camouflage fell over backward into a bush, exclaiming, “Oops, sorry!”

He sprang up, started to hold out his hand to them as if he was asking for a shake, then pulled it back as Destiny instinctively followed the movement with her sword. “I’m friendly! Ethan, tell her I’m friendly.”

“He’s friendly.” Ethan sounded more resigned than relieved. “Very friendly.”

“I meant to turn into a man, not a man-sized raptor,” the blond guy said, as if that explained anything. “I’m still getting the hang of this.”

“Who are you?” Destiny asked, bewildered.

Ethan made a gesture of introduction. “Destiny, this is Merlin Merrick, from my fire team. Merlin, this is Destiny Ford, my…”

Destiny had to repress a snicker as she watched Ethan fish for an explanation that wouldn’t keep them there all day. But Merlin was a shifter, he’d know what mates were… or had Apex only turned him into a shifter after he’d been captured? There was an easy way to find out.

“Mate,” Destiny said firmly. “We’re mates.”

“Oh.” Merlin blinked a pair of extremely blue eyes at her. “You don’t sound Australian.”

The snicker escaped. “I’m not. It’s a shifter thing. It means…” Now it was Destiny who had to fish for an easy explanation. As the words left her mouth, she realized that she was repeating Hal’s explanation to Ethan from those two very long years ago. “He’s my true love. Shifters mate for life.”

“Congratulations,” Merlin said, as if that didn’t seem the slightest bit odd to him. He seemed sincerely pleased. “And you fight with a sword, very nice. Do you play video games? Ethan’s true love would definitely play video games.”

“Merlin—” Ethan began, sounding exasperated.

It was obvious that the two of them had a lot of clashes under the bridge. Destiny decided to cut the argument off at the pass. “Let’s do the pleased to meet yous later. Here’s the important thing about me: I’m an Army vet, former military police—” She overrode Merlin’s remark of “A mudpuppy, cool,” by continuing, louder, “—a tiger shifter, and also I’m a bodyguard in a private security agency where everyone’s some kind of shifter. If we can get into the base, I can radio them to come back us up. They don’t know I’m here.”

“Merlin, is anyone following you?” Ethan asked.

“I doubt it,” Merlin replied. “I don’t think they know I’m gone yet. I escaped about an hour ago, when I figured out that I could change my size and squeezed through a duct. I’d meant to make a wide circle through the jungle, in case they did check my cell and launch a search, and squeeze back in through some other duct that wasn’t guarded.” Proudly, he added, “I camouflaged myself so if anyone did see me, they’d think I was a… hmm…”

“A chicken-sized leaf monster?” Ethan inquired.

“Something more normal in a jungle than a stealth-sized raptor,” Merlin concluded. “Listen, do you know where Ransom and Pete are?”

“No,” said Ethan. “We were hoping you did.”

Merlin shook his head. “I woke up in a lab. They weren’t there with me and nobody would tell me what happened to them or you. A doctor said they’d put me through some process called Ultimate Predator 3.0. He said it would give me special powers, and once I got them, I had to work for them or die. Then they stuck me in a locked room. Someone really screwed up to give me shrinking powers, then put me in a room with vents.”

“They didn’t know what powers you’d get,” Destiny said. “I have some friends who got caught by this same organization—it’s called Apex—and they think the powers have to do either with your personality, or with what you want at the time you get them.”

“Oh.” Merlin nodded. “Well, I definitely wanted to get out. And here I am. Out!”

Destiny was relieved that he didn’t seem particularly traumatized by his brush with Apex. Maybe it was because his stay at the lab had been too short for them to do anything horrible to him. But she hoped that the T-Rex shifter had also been telling the truth, and their new version of the Ultimate Predator process was less dangerous and damaging than the old one. If the worst that had happened to Ethan’s other two teammates was that they’d become shifters and gained powers, well, Merlin certainly didn’t seem unhappy about that.

Ethan gave Merlin an extremely brief summary of what had happened since they’d last seen each other. Destiny was impressed with Ethan’s ability to explain everything that Merlin actually needed to know in about five minutes, mostly by dint of not stopping whenever he tried to interrupt with a question.

“I like your original plan,” Ethan concluded. “Let’s keep it. We circle around, and you squeeze into a duct and let us in. The three of us can take it from there.”

Destiny was relieved to hear his obvious confidence in Merlin’s abilities, since she didn’t have any tactful way to check for herself. But any man Ethan trusted was good enough for her.

The three of them slipped through the jungle, working their way in the direction Merlin indicated. The sun set, and in the darkness of the night they could hide unseen in the cover of the jungle and survey the base. No one seemed to have discovered Merlin’s escape yet; there was no commotion or search parties that they could see. And while the entrances were all guarded, no one was guarding the vents.

“Here we go,” whispered Merlin. “I’ll try and get out that door there.”

He first became a raptor even bigger than the one they’d first seen, about the size of a small pony. Then, with an exasperated hiss, he shrank into his chicken-sized (or, Destiny supposed, velociraptor-sized) form. Like the T-Rex and daeodon shifters, he took his clothes with him when he transformed.

The raptor’s sleek, black form was even harder to see now that night had fallen, and she almost lost sight of him as he darted out of the jungle and across the ground. He was briefly very visible indeed as he clambered up the green wall of the base, and then, with a lithe wriggle, he vanished into the duct.

“He seems to be taking everything surprisingly in stride,” Destiny whispered.

“Merlin’s like that,” Ethan whispered back. “I’m appreciating it a whole lot more now than I used to.”

They waited, watching the doors. If Merlin wasn’t able to take out the guards himself, hopefully by stealth and in silence, they’d have to jump in and help him. And whether they did so as tigers leaping out of the jungle or sword-wielding humans charging out, it would be neither stealthy nor silent. And then they’d be dealing with a whole ‘nother ball game.

A door opened, and a blond man dressed as a security guard stepped out. Destiny tensed, waiting to see if the other guards would recognize him, but they didn’t. She heard voices, but not what they were saying. Merlin made an animated gesture and pointed. Both guards turned to look, and he neatly shot them both in the back with his tranquilizer rifle. He caught them as they collapsed and dragged them inside.

Destiny and Ethan ran out of the jungle and into the base. There they found Merlin shoving the unconscious guards into the nearest room, an office already occupied by another unconscious man in nothing but boxer shorts.

“Sorry they’re not your size,” he said to Destiny.

“I’ll make do. I’m used to changing on short notice.” When Merlin gave her a puzzled look, she explained, “You take your clothes with you when you shift. Ethan and I don’t. I think it has to do with whether you turn into an ordinary animal or something… else.”

“But why—” Merlin began.

“Later,” said Ethan.

He and Destiny ducked into the office, where they stripped the guards, put on their uniforms, and took their tranquilizer rifles and IDs.

As they were changing, Destiny chuckled. “‘Later?’ No one has any idea why mythic and extinct shifters can take their clothes with them!”

“You haven’t had to work with him,” Ethan said. “If I’d said ‘nobody knows,’ we’d still be out in the corridor listening to him coming up with a hundred reasons why.”

While Destiny rolled up the bottoms of her pants, Ethan stashed their regular clothes and swords in the backpack. It was an unobtrusive black one, so hopefully it wouldn’t attract any attention.

They stepped out into a white corridor lit by fluorescent lights, which seemed to be the standard design for Apex bases if her previous encounter with one was anything to go by. It probably was; Shane had said they designed them to be as identical as possible, so they could move drugged prisoners from one to another without them realizing they’d switched locations. And in that case, Destiny had a rough idea of where things were.

Before Merlin could say anything, Ethan said, “Good job, Merlin,” then turned to her. “Lead on. And we shouldn’t talk unless we have to.”

Destiny led them in silence toward the area where prisoners had been kept in the base she’d been to before. She was nervous about her uniform, which was several sizes too big, but more nervous about Merlin, who could actually get recognized. But all they could do about either was to walk confidently, as if they belonged there, and trust in people’s tendency to not pay close attention. Her heart sped up when they encountered another pair of guards, but they passed without more than a glance and a nod.

At last they came to a door labeled “Subject Thirty.”

“That’ll be Pete or Ransom,” Merlin said. “My door said Subject Thirty-One.”

Destiny frowned. Justin had been Subject Seven, and Shane Subject Eight; Subjects One through Six had been the airmen who had been captured with them, and hadn’t survived the experiments. Carter Howe, whom Fiona and Justin had rescued from the Apex base in Alaska, had been Subject Nine. Presumably the saber-tooth tiger they’d fought had been another subject. But who were the rest of them? Would the T-Rex and daeodon shifters even be counted that way, since they were Apex agents themselves? Destiny’s stomach roiled at the suspicion that most if not all of the other twenty subjects were dead.

Ethan used his stolen ID to open the door. A quick glance showed them a small cell occupied by a single man dressed in desert camouflage, sitting on a cot. Destiny was chilled to see that he had a collar around his neck with an electronic lock and a disc of silvery metal that emitted a very faint glow.

“Ransom!” Ethan called softly.

The man didn’t move or even look up.

“Come on!” Merlin urged.

Ransom didn’t respond. With a sinking feeling, Destiny beckoned the other men inside. She used her ID to close the door behind them.

“Careful with him,” Destiny said as Merlin started to hurry toward him. “He might be…” She didn’t have time to explain exactly how damaged Shane and Justin had been from their experiences at Apex; Merlin had never met either of them, and Ethan didn’t know Justin and had only met Shane after he’d had a year to somewhat recover.

“Think of it like he’s just been through a really traumatizing combat experience,” she said at last. “Don’t grab him.”

Merlin, who had been starting to do exactly that, pulled his hand back.

Ethan knelt down in front of him. “Hey. Hey, buddy, it’s Ethan. Can you talk to me?”

Ransom slowly looked up. Destiny hadn’t gotten a good look at him before, but now she saw that he had a lean and angular face, with auburn hair and high cheekbones. He was handsome, she supposed, or would be if not for the hollow-eyed stare that she remembered all too well from Shane and Justin.

“You’re too late,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Merlin asked. “What did they do to you?”

Ransom didn’t answer. His gaze drifted away from their faces, then sharpened as he seemed to track something moving across the room behind them. All three of them whipped around, snatching for their tranquilizer rifles. But nothing was there. Puzzled, Destiny turned back, and saw Ransom continuing to watch whatever invisible thing he was seeing until it apparently stopped right behind her.

“He’s coming closer,” he said.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Crazy as it was, she couldn’t bear to stay there, feeling like a cold hand or slimy tentacle might grab her from behind at any second. She edged aside. Ransom continued to watch the space where she had been.

“What are you looking at?” she asked.

He gave her about the bleakest stare she’d ever seen. “Everything. Even when I close my eyes. I’ll never see darkness again.”

“You guys,” Merlin broke in. “He’s obviously been drugged.”

Destiny sure hoped that was all it was. But she couldn’t help looking at Ethan, who gave her the briefest head-shake: don’t say it.

“Yeah,” Ethan said. “That’s right. Ransom, whatever you’re feeling is temporary. It’ll go away once whatever they gave you wears off.”

“It’s not going to ‘go away.’” There was an edge of bitter mockery in his voice. “I was already standing on the edge of a cliff. They pushed me over. I’ll never stop falling.”

“There’s no point talking to him,” Merlin said impatiently. “He’s completely off his head. He probably won’t even remember any of this tomorrow. We’ll just have to cross our fingers he doesn’t say something weird to the first guard we meet.”

Ransom shot Merlin an irritated look. As if annoyance had broken through his haze of despair, he said in a much more normal tone, “You’re the compulsive talker, not me.”

“Guys,” Ethan broke in. “We have to get out of here. Now.”

“Wait,” Destiny said. “That collar. Is it going to set off an alarm or… something… if you walk out wearing it?”

Or explode, she thought. From the expression on Merlin’s face, she was pretty sure he was thinking the same thing.

“Or explode?” Ransom asked, as if he didn’t particularly care. He shrugged. “No idea.”

“I wonder why you have one and I don’t,” Merlin said.

Examining the collar, Ethan said, “Whatever it’s for, we’ll have to get it off later. I think it’ll take special tools.”

His expression didn’t betray anything, but Destiny knew him well enough to guess that he was thinking, And a bomb defuser, just in case.

He helped Ransom up and led him to the door. Ransom didn’t lean on Ethan, like a drugged or wounded man would do, but walked haltingly, using him as a guide like a blind person might. In fact, if she hadn’t seen him focusing on her face earlier, she might have thought he was blind.

He doesn’t need to say a thing to give us away, Destiny thought. The first guard we meet is going to take one look at him and raise the alarm.

Merlin, obviously thinking the same thing, said, “Maybe we should leave him here, find Pete, radio out, and collect him on the way back. I could stay with him.”

Destiny’s tiger put in, No beast should be left locked in a cage.

Destiny had to agree. “No. God knows what might happen to him—or you—if we do that.”

Ethan backed her up. “We all stay together. If anyone tries to stop us, we stop them.”

With a final dubious glance at Ransom, Merlin raised his ID and opened the door. To Destiny’s immense relief, the collar did not explode, no alarms went off, and the corridor was empty. They looked for more rooms with “Subject” labels, but found only offices, storage areas, and unmarked empty cells. The corridor ended in a heavy, reinforced door.

“He’s here,” Ransom said.

A tremendous roar shook the air. Something crashed into the door, denting it and cracking the wall around it.

They all jumped backward, raising their tranquilizer rifles.

“Merlin, get Ransom back!” Ethan shouted.

Merlin tried to pull him away, but Ransom dug in his heels. His mouth moved, but whatever he was saying was drowned out in the roar and crash as the thing behind the door smashed through it and burst into the corridor.

It was a bear. But not one like any Destiny had ever seen. Calling this beast a bear was like calling the daeodon a hog, or the T-Rex a lizard. It was bigger than a polar bear, bigger than a grizzly. Even in the wide, high-ceilinged corridor, its sides brushed the walls and the fur of its back touched the ceiling. Its shaggy brown fur covered everything but its dagger-like claws, its gleaming white fangs, and its black eyes. Like the daeodon, this was a beast from another, more primal era.

“A cave bear,” Merlin said, sounding awed.

The bear roared, and both the sound and its glittering eyes were filled with such terrifying rage that all of them instinctively flinched back. For the first time in her life, Destiny knew in her bones what it felt like to be the prey and not the predator.

Then her training took over. She fired her tranquilizer rifle, aware that Ethan was standing right beside her. She heard the puff and hiss of their shots, and saw the darts strike home.

The cave bear roared again and shook itself. The darts clattered to the floor. Destiny wasn’t sure if the bear’s fur was too thick for them to have penetrated or if they had but didn’t affect it, but all they seemed to have done was anger it even more. It came for them in a shambling run with the inexorable deadliness of an avalanche.

“Tigers?” Ethan asked.

“No room!” Destiny gasped. But her own words gave her an idea. “Quick, in here!”

She grabbed Ethan’s arm, beckoned frantically at Merlin and Ransom, and ducked into the nearest storage room. They all piled inside. The cave bear plunged after them, but stuck at the shoulders. But it kept trying, roaring and slapping at them with its immense paws. It was a small room, and they were only a few feet away from it.

“So much for stealth,” Merlin said glumly. “Though on the positive side, we should get reinforcements any second now.”

Sure enough, they heard yelling and pounding footsteps outside. The cave bear withdrew from the room. There was another roar, then a few screams that cut off almost instantly. A moment later, the cave bear roared once more, and stuck its head and paws back into the doorway. There was blood on its claws and muzzle.

In the brief moment of silence between roars, a quiet voice spoke. It was Ransom. “It’s Pete.”

“Then why’s he attacking us?” Merlin began, then cut himself off. “Wait, never mind, they probably drugged him with the same stuff they drugged you with. Hmm. That’s not so good.”

“I’m not drugged.” Ransom’s gaze was more focused now, and he sounded a lot more coherent. “And neither is he.”

“Oh?” Merlin stepped up confidently, though Destiny noticed he didn’t come within range of the cave bear’s paws. “Hey, Pete, you need to turn back—”

The cave bear roared at the top of its lungs, baring its fangs and slashing wildly at Merlin.

“Back off, Merlin, you’re just pissing him off,” Ethan said.

“Same as always,” Merlin sighed, but retreated.

Destiny nudged Ethan. “You try. Remember how you talked me down when I was losing control? Like that.”

Ethan gave her a doubtful glance. “I knew you wouldn’t hurt me. I’m not so sure about Pete. He wouldn’t do it on purpose, but…”

“Then don’t cuddle him,” Destiny advised.

Keeping his posture relaxed and his hands open at his sides, Ethan said, “The battle’s over, Pete. Come back now. Come on, buddy, you can do it. You’re a Marine, so be a Marine. Stand up on two legs and talk to me…”

The cave bear was suddenly gone. A dark-haired man in camouflage stood in the doorway, then staggered and leaned against it.

“Good to see you back with us.” Ethan stepped forward and laid a comforting hand on his shoulder.

Pete jerked away as if Ethan had touched him with a lit cigarette. Then, brown eyes wide, he looked around the room. His gaze settled on Destiny. “Who’s she?”

“Destiny. My—” Ethan paused, obviously not wanting to repeat the “She doesn’t sound Australian” exchange, and settled on, “She’s private security. I’ll explain later. Did you see a radio anywhere? Any sort of communications?”

Pete shook his head. “No, but I saw another prisoner. He was in the infirmary, handcuffed to a bed.”

“Oh, good!” Ethan exclaimed. When everyone gave him a funny look, he said, “I think I saw him being brought here. I’d meant to rescue him anyway. There was a woman, too.”

Pete shrugged. “I didn’t see any female prisoners. Just him.”

“Let’s run for it,” Destiny said. “Once Apex figures out that the cave bear isn’t on the loose any more, they’ll swarm this place.”

“This way,” Pete said.

They followed him at a run, Merlin guiding Ransom. Alarms were going off all over the building. A guard poked his head and rifle barrel out of a room, but Destiny nailed him with a tranquilizer dart to the gun hand before he could get off his shot.

“Good one,” said Ethan.

“Next one’s yours, slowpoke,” Destiny replied.

He grinned at her. Despite the danger, she felt exhilarated rather than afraid. Danger was her home turf. It was literally her job. But facing it with Ethan at her side gave her a completely new sense of fulfillment.

Pete snatched up the unconscious guard’s tranquilizer rifle, then kept running. He stopped at an entrance with deep claw marks in it and the wall and the floor around it. The door had been ripped off its hinges. “Here.”

“What hit this place?” Merlin asked.

“I did,” said Pete shortly. “I came through as a cave bear. The doctors and nurses and guards abandoned the prisoner and ran.” He frowned. “I hope I didn’t hurt him.”

“Don’t you remember?” Destiny asked.

Pete shook his head. “Just bits and pieces.”

They went into the infirmary, Pete staying just inside the room to guard the open doorway. The infirmary had been completely trashed, with beds overturned and pill bottles rolling all over the floor.

It was empty except for the prisoner, who was sitting up in bed. He was African-American, handsome and burly, with silvering hair and a short beard covering his strong jaw. Destiny could see the edge of a bandage where his hospital shirt had been pulled low over his chest. He wore the same collar Ransom had, and was handcuffed to the bed. But despite all that, not to mention having just been trapped with a rampaging cave bear, he didn’t look frightened or helpless. Instead, he was patiently using the needle of the IV he’d apparently just pulled out of his arm to try to pick the lock of the handcuffs.

When they came in, he spoke, it was in the tone of a man used to command. “I’m Roland Walker, United States Army. Are you the rescue team?”

“Unofficially,” Ethan said. “Most of us were captured too. But yes, we’re here to get you out of here.”

“You know how to pick a lock with a needle?” Merlin asked, sounding impressed.

Roland shook his head. “I have no idea how to pick a lock with anything. But the bed’s bolted to the floor and I can’t reach anything else, so I thought I’d give it a try.”

“I can pick locks,” Merlin volunteered. “But I need a piece of wire or a paperclip or something like that.”

“Of course you can,” Pete muttered from the door.

Destiny and Ethan started opening cupboards and drawers, helping Merlin search.

“Here.” Ransom walked straight to a drawer, opened it, and held out a paperclip.

“Thanks.” Merlin took it and got to work on the handcuff lock.

As he did so, Ethan quickly introduced everyone, then asked Roland how he’d ended up in the base.

“I was in the US, driving on a country road,” Roland said. “I was on leave, but I’d gotten a call to come back to the base. In retrospect, it had to have been a setup. A tree was down across the road, but it had been cut, not fallen naturally. I realized that it was an ambush. I went into reverse and stepped on the gas, and just then I saw a car coming off a dirt road. I would’ve T-boned it and maybe killed the driver. So I swerved, went off the road, and rolled my car.

“The woman who’d been driving came out to help me. I was in bad shape. I think she saved my life. She took my hand and told me she wouldn’t leave me. Then these men came up. They had tranquilizer rifles. I knew they must’ve set the ambush, and I told her to run. But she didn’t. She stayed. The last thing I saw was her grabbing a tree branch from the ground and threatening them with it. A branch against guns!”

For the first time, his confident tone wavered. “The next thing I remember, I was here. And she was gone. Nobody would tell me what they’d done to her.”

“Do you remember what she was wearing?” Ethan asked.

“Blue jeans and a white shirt,” Roland said instantly. “She was a tall, slim black woman, about my age. Did you see her?”

“I think so,” Ethan said. “I couldn’t see that much detail, but the clothes match, and she was as tall as some of the men. I saw a man carried off a plane in a stretcher—I assume that was you. The woman fought some of the guards, and then they dragged her inside.”

Roland eagerly leaned forward. “Have you seen her since?”

They all shook their heads.

“If she’s a prisoner here, we’ll find her,” Destiny said. “We found you and Pete—well, Pete kind of found us. You too, actually.”

Roland looked at Pete with a complete lack of recognition, then shook his head. “Sorry. I must’ve been asleep or unconscious.”

When Pete said nothing, Merlin chimed in, “He was the bear.”

Roland looked politely disbelieving. “The grizzly bear? I assumed they were doing animal experiments, and one escaped.”

“Didn’t they put you through Ultimate Predator yet?” Destiny asked.

“That bull—” Roland began, then, to her amusement, changed it to, “That absurd bit of psy ops? Yes, they did. I suppose it’s to test whether prisoners can be brainwashed into believing something as ridiculous as a procedure that gives them powers and turns them into some kind of were-animal.”

“It’s not psy ops,” Destiny replied. “It’s real.”

His forehead creased with incredulity. “They actually think it works?”

“No, I mean it really does work.” Frustrated at his visible disbelief, she tried again. “Why do you think they’d go to all the trouble of kidnapping people and building a secret base if it didn’t?”

“The military has been known to pour a lot of money and effort into things that don’t work,” Roland said drily. “Invisible aircraft. Mind-control. Clairvoyance. In the 60s there was a project that employed hundreds of people and ran for years, consisting of a bunch of guys out in the desert trying to kill goats by staring at them and breaking their noses trying to walk through walls.”

“I can’t demo right now,” Merlin said, indicating the handcuff lock. “And Pete shouldn’t. Ransom, do you even have a shift form?”

Ransom didn’t reply. He was off in his own world again, watching something far away.

“So somebody’s going to have to strip,” Merlin concluded.

Roland’s eyebrows raised nearly high enough to lift the ceiling. Ethan and Destiny looked at each other, then Ethan started to pull off his shirt.

“Incoming!” Ransom pointed toward the door Pete was guarding.

“I don’t…” Pete began, then stiffened. Softly, he said, “Yeah, I hear footsteps. Very quiet. They’re trying to sneak up on us.”

Ethan and Destiny stepped up to the door with their rifles ready; they couldn’t risk becoming tigers and getting taken down with a dart.

Pete glanced at them. “The darts don’t affect me. I could go after them as a bear.”

“No!” exclaimed everyone but Roland, who practically had What gang of lunatics have I fallen in with hovering over his head.

“I could attack them as a raptor, then come back and finish with the handcuffs,” Merlin volunteered.

“Will darts bounce off your skin?” Destiny inquired.

“Umm.” Merlin scratched his chin. “I guess we’ll find out. I could be a small one, so I wouldn’t be hard to carry if they don’t…?”

Destiny rarely snapped at people, no matter how stressed out she got. She prided herself on calm under pressure. But she couldn’t help hissing at him, “You’re not going to stop anyone if you’re the size of a chicken!”

Merlin seemed unperturbed. “Ever had a chicken fly into your face?”

The enemies attacked before she could reply. Destiny, Ethan, and Pete ducked back against the walls as tranquilizer darts hissed into the room, smacking into walls and bedframes.

Merlin and Roland also ducked, but they were both in the line of fire and had no way to shield themselves. A dart missed Roland’s chest by a fraction of an inch, and another stuck in Merlin’s loose sleeve before clattering to the floor. The three at the door returned fire, but it was only a matter of time before both Merlin and Roland would be hit.

“Merlin, how close to done are you?” Ethan called.

“I need another minute!”

“We don’t have another minute,” Roland said grimly. “All of you, get out. Someone can come back for me later.”

Nobody budged.

“Pete, can you—” Ethan started to say, then broke off. Pete was no longer by the door, or anywhere in sight. “Goddammit.”

“You can talk him down later,” Destiny said, softly and for his ears only. “It probably is our best chance.”

“Yeah, but—” From the frustration on Ethan’s face, she was getting an idea of what it had probably been like to work with these guys. Brave and competent as they were, teamwork didn’t seem to be their number one skill.

A familiar roar, followed by familiar cut-off screams and the sound of stampeding feet, sounded through the room.

“Pete,” said Merlin unnecessarily.

There was a moment of silence, which was broken by the click of Roland’s handcuffs opening.

“Okay, Merlin,” said Destiny. “Chicken time!”

With his total lack of offense showing in his quick grin, the man vanished and a raptor stood in his place. It wasn’t chicken-sized, but more like a medium dog. It grew to the size of a large dog, shrank back to medium, and then seemed to give up. It darted out the doorway.

“So,” Roland said, a glint of ironic humor in his eye. “Guess the folk here were doing more than staring at goats.”

The raptor returned. It shrank to the size of a chicken, gave an irritated hiss, then turned back into a man.

“Enemies are dead or gone,” Merlin reported crisply. “And so’s Pete.”

Ethan sighed. “Let’s go after him.”

“That way.” Ransom pointed. Then he turned to Roland. “Can you walk?”

Roland stood up, then swayed. Ransom stepped up close, silently offering his shoulder. Roland accepted his support, and they all went through the door.

Ransom, now walking easily, led the way. He stopped only briefly, to confiscate a tranquilizer rifle from a dead Apex agent and remark, “Not much range on these things. But the armory would have sniper rifles. If we keep heading in this direction, we’ll get to it.”

Ethan murmured into Destiny’s ear, “You ever get the feeling like you’ve completely lost control of a situation?”

“All my life,” Destiny replied softly. “It’s okay, jarhead. We’ve got allies, even if they weren’t the ones we meant to get and they’re a little… new to this sort of thing.”

They turned a corner, and almost tripped over a dead saber-tooth tiger. Pete was kneeling beside it, bleeding from slashes in his face and arms. He didn’t look up at them until Ethan knelt down in front of him and called his name.

“I went to ambush those guys, and then…” Pete’s voice trailed off as he glanced around. “Is that a saber-tooth tiger?”

“A saber-tooth tiger shifter,” said Ransom. “You killed him.”

Pete looked from him to the others, bewildered. “Is this a different part of the base? How’d I get here?”

It was only because Destiny knew Ethan so well that she knew how frustrated he was. But his voice and face remained calm as he said, “As a cave bear, apparently. Listen, Pete, you cannot turn into it again. And don’t just go off without telling anyone. We need to work together if we want to get out of here in one piece.”

Pete didn’t argue, but the set of his face and shoulders was distinctly stubborn.

“Ethan’s right,” Roland said. “We do need to work as a team. All the same, I owe you. You gave us our chance to escape. Thank you.” He offered Pete his hand.

Pete took it, then jerked his hand away as if Roland’s touch was red hot. “Sorry. Hurt my hand.”

There was no time for bandages, and Pete wasn’t bleeding badly. Still, Destiny took a quiet look at his injuries for future reference when they did have time, and was puzzled to see that he had no blood or bruises or swelling anywhere near where Roland had touched. And apart from when he’d pulled his hand away, he didn’t seem to be in any pain.

They came to a door at the end of the corridor. It led to a warehouse, with a lot of construction equipment and multiple doors out. Thankfully, it was empty. They scanned it for hidden Apex agents or traps, but saw none.

Just as they reached the middle of the warehouse, one of the doors slid open, revealing a bunch of Apex agents with tranquilizer rifles. Destiny, Ethan, and the rest dove for the nearest cover, which was a forklift and a bunch of crates. The hiss and clatter of tranquilizer darts filled the air.

Destiny scanned their surroundings. There was one door they could get to without going into the line of fire, but it was all the way across the warehouse. They’d have to run for it before the Apex agents figured out what they were doing and cut them off. She gestured to catch everyone’s attention, then pointed to it and mouthed, Ready, set—

The door slid open. A cacophony of roars, hisses, and shrieks arose as a multitude of monsters were revealed. Destiny caught sight of a huge wormlike thing with a gaping mouth lined with fangs, a mangy rat the size of a Buick, and things she couldn’t even begin to identify: creatures with stings, chitin, and tentacles dripping slime. And then the whole pack of them came charging and slithering and leaping across the floor toward them.

Ethan and Destiny fired their tranquilizer rifles at the creatures. But while both of them hit their targets, the monsters just kept coming. It seemed like they, like Pete’s cave bear, were either armored or immune.

Ethan’s security guard uniform exploded off him as he became a tiger. With a snarl of protective fury, he leaped in front of Destiny and stood guarding her.

Merlin tossed his rifle to Roland, who caught it one-handed, then became a full-sized raptor.

Roland joined Ransom in returning fire at the Apex agents, while Ethan’s tiger and Merlin’s raptor faced the monsters.

Fight, growled Destiny’s tiger, on fire with anticipation of the battle. Fight for your mate!

Destiny had no argument there, but she was gripped more by fear than by eagerness. Trapped between monsters attacking them and agents shooting at them, they were both outgunned and outnumbered. Even Pete’s cave bear would be hard-pressed to fight the immense lumbering thing at the rear of the pack, a monster like some hideous cross between a giant scorpion and a cobra.

Destiny became a tiger. To her keen tiger’s senses, the monsters seemed even more unnatural than they had to her as a human. They were deeply, profoundly wrong—soulless things that should not exist—and they horrified her tiger as well as enraging her.

But Destiny didn’t let herself get swept away by her tiger’s perceptions. She turned to Ethan and they nuzzled each other. She could feel the bond between them, alive and humming with love. Even if this whole adventure ended in their deaths together in this cold underground place, it would be worth it for those few days when they’d finally broken down the barriers between them and loved each other with their whole hearts. And Ethan didn’t have to speak for her to know he was thinking the same thing.

Side by side, they braced for their last stand.