by Sadie Moss
I’d never seen someone so violently angry in all my life. Unconsciously, I shrank away from him, bumping into a muscled chest behind me. Strong arms with dark skin wrapped around me, but before I could extricate myself from West’s grip, Rhys rounded on me. His piercing blue eyes flashed with rage—and pain. Such a deep, soul-splintering pain that the sight almost called tears to my own eyes.
He dragged me from West’s grip, his bloody fingers leaving red streaks on the damp fabric of my sleeves. He shook me roughly, his lips curling back in a snarl.
“Where is she? Sariah! Was she there? Did they kill her? Answer me!”
My brain rattled in my skull as he shook me again, and nausea churned my stomach.
“What the fuck did they do to her? What did you do?” His broad chest rose and fell quickly, and he gripped my arms so tight it hurt. “Where is she?”
“I—” My tongue felt thick, my lips numb. My teeth chattered uncontrollably. “I d-don’t—know what you’re—t-talking about. I didn’t do—”
Cliff stepped forward, his gray eyes flashing. He shoved his friend away from me. “She didn’t do anything, Rhys! Come on. Does she look like a fucking lap dog to you? She’s as innocent as any one of us.”
Without missing a beat, Rhys rounded on him. “Oh yeah? Then why was—”
But the rest of his angry words were swallowed up by the dull roar that filled my ears. My body shivered so hard it began to shake convulsively, and my knees buckled.
Oh no.
This was it.
My body had been strained to the breaking point, and my disease, having lain in wait for so long, would finally swoop in to finish me.
Please, God. Just let it be quick.
Chapter Seven
Strong hands caught me before I crumpled to the ground. I watched Rhys stare at me with malevolent, icy eyes as Cliff and Jackson lowered me gently to the ground.
“Jesus fuck! She’s freezing.” Cliff bit his lip. “Damn it, Scrubs, why didn’t you say anything?”
“I’m n-not c-cold. I’m s-sick.”
“You are cold. And wet. Shit, your fingers are like ice.”
Cliff grimaced, wrapping his large hand around one of mine. My numb fingers could barely feel the pressure of his grip.
Rhys backed up a few paces, his expression a mixture of guilt, anger, and pain. Then he turned and raced off into the woods.
“Rhys!” Jackson called, looking up from where he knelt at my feet.
My toes peeked out from between his hands, almost blue in the waning light. Tremors still wracked my body, making it hard to speak, hard to breathe.
“Let him go. He needs to shift, he’ll feel better after he does.” West stared after Rhys, grimacing.
“We need to get some dry clothes on her.” Cliff jerked his chin toward one of the packs set against a tree trunk. “West, grab that bag. The clothes we brought for Sariah should fit her.”
“Oh, man.” Jackson shook his head, a humorless chuckle falling from his lips as his hands rubbed my foot in a quick motion. “Rhys is gonna fucking love that.”
“Well, someone should use them, right?” Cliff shot back. “And she’s not here, is she?”
“Not arguing. Just sayin’.”
I tried to follow their conversation, but all I could focus on were the strong, calloused fingers bringing life back to my hands and feet. My muscles still contracted involuntarily, but as Cliff and Jackson massaged my chilled skin, some feeling began to return to my extremities.
West dropped the large backpack on the ground next to me and squatted down, rifling around inside it. “Here. Got pants and a shirt, and socks and shoes. I don’t know shit about sizes, but they look like they’ll fit.”
Hovering above me, Cliff met Jackson’s eyes. “Do you want to…?”
“Undress her? What do I look like, a fucking lech?”
“Jesus Christ. Move.” West elbowed Jackson away from my feet, and he and Cliff helped me sit up. He cupped the sides of my face, his large hands surprisingly gentle. “Listen, we’ve got to get you into warm clothes, okay? We’re gonna take your gown off. There’s nobody else in these woods, and none of us will look. We promise. Is that all right? Jackson will stand guard.”
I jerked my head up and down quickly. If my body was attacking itself from the inside, a fresh set of clothes wouldn’t do much to save me from death. But I craved warmth on a primal level, and at this point, I didn’t care who saw me naked in the process.
“Okay. Pants first.”
West grabbed the pair of pants and helped me work my feet through each leg. When they were bunched up around my thighs, he and Cliff leveraged me to my feet—although without the two of them holding me up, I wouldn’t have stayed vertical. He slid the pants all the way up, reaching under my wet hospital gown to work them over my hips.
When he moved to pull the zipper up, a small breath escaped my lips.
I’d never been touched by any man as intimately as I’d been touched by these men today. It felt foreign and strange, but not altogether unpleasant. Despite the haze of confusion and fear, and the illness ravaging my system, I registered each touch as if they were mapping out uncharted places on my body.
When West slipped the top button closed, his gaze rose to meet mine. Heat flickered in his dark eyes, and his voice was low when he spoke.
“Now the shirt.”
I nodded, suddenly aware of how stiff my nipples were beneath the cold, wet gown. It clung to my body, the translucent fabric revealing so much I might as well be naked already. I had an urge to clamp my hands over my breasts, but instead, I remained perfectly still as West held me up with a firm grip on my hips and Cliff untied the back of the gown.
Then they switched. Cliff supported my weight while West slid the gown off my arms. I could tell he was trying to keep his promise, but for the briefest moment, his gaze flicked to my chest.
I swallowed, a confusing mixture of emotions swirling through me as my skin reacted to his look as though it were a physical touch.
The mocha-skinned man cleared his throat and averted his gaze, tugging the shirt down over my head before helping me slip my arms through and pulling it down the rest of the way.
He seemed to relax as soon as I was fully dressed, and it was only then that I realized how tense he’d been before—as if he’d been holding himself in check somehow.
They lowered me down to sit on the ground, and I found myself cradled between Cliff’s legs, my back pressed to his front. His clothes were still damp from the river, but he radiated so much body heat, I hardly cared.
“Uh, you guys look like you got this.” Jackson glanced over his shoulder from where he’d been keeping lookout. “I’m gonna go find Rhys. Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.”
“Good idea,” Cliff told him. “We don’t need him howling all night. Keep him calm. And stay close.”
“Yeah.” Jackson stepped out from under the protection of the tarp. Then he paused and turned back, glancing down at me. “Hey, what’s your name?”
I blinked, my brain so foggy I almost forgot the answer for a second before I whispered, “A-Alexis.”
He nodded, regarding me thoughtfully. He looked like he smiled a lot, but he wasn’t smiling now. “Alexis. Welcome to the pack. I’m glad you’re okay.”
I didn’t respond, and after a second he shot me a lopsided grin. He gave a quick salute to the other two men before disappearing into the woods.
Where was he going? Where had the angry one with curly black hair gone? I didn’t understand what was going on, and I found myself oddly concerned about the strangers who had abducted me.
Why should I give a single shit what happens to any of them? Is this what Stockholm syndrome feels like?
Maybe it was, but at the moment, I wasn’t sure I cared.
West grabbed my feet, working them over with his hands just like Jackson had done, while Cliff draped his arms over mine, completely enveloping my fists in his larger ones. Warmt
h finally began to sink back into my bones, and my body stopped shuddering.
But as the cold slipped away, so did the last of my strength.
My eyelids drooped, and nothing I did could force them open again.
“I can’t stay out here. I’m… sick…” I murmured, clinging to consciousness. They needed to know. They needed to understand. “I have to… go back. I don’t want to die.”
West made a sound low in his throat. The movement of his hands slowed, and he squeezed my feet in his warm grip.
Cliff let out a deep breath. His words tickled my ear as he spoke in a quiet voice.
“You’re not sick, Scrubs; you never were. We won’t let you die.” There was a beat before he spoke again. “And you can’t ever go back there.”
Chapter Eight
In my dream, I saw my mother’s face.
She sat on the couch in my small room at the Strand complex, talking and laughing with me like we always did. Behind her thick glasses, her caramel brown eyes were warm and open.
Sweet.
Loving.
And then they changed.
The light behind her eyes went out, and those once-kind windows to her soul became as blank and empty as black holes. And as the light inside them dimmed, the rest of her expression shifted too, the soft wrinkles on her face hardening to cold lines. One corner of her mouth lifted in a slight sneer as she reached behind her, pulling a gun from her purse and aiming the barrel right between my eyes.
Cold steel pressed against my forehead. But I knew it would be scalding hot after the gun fired.
After the bullet pierced my brain.
The barrel would smoke, and blood would splatter, and my life would end in a single loud bang.
My mom tilted her head to the side, regarding me where I sat frozen in fear.
“I wasted too many years of my life pretending to love you, Alexis.”
Her voice wasn’t the same. Nothing was the same. The woman I loved, who’d comforted me when I was sick, who’d visited me every week without fail—who had uprooted her life to be near me while I underwent treatment—was gone.
The person sitting across from me was a monster wearing my mother’s face.
Hot tears blurred my vision as they spilled from my eyes, streaming down my cheeks and dropping off my chin.
“Mom.” I drew in a shuddering breath, trying to push my fear and grief away. I needed to reach her somehow, to find the sweet woman under the cruel mask. She had to be in there somewhere. “I love you. Please, don’t do this. I love you!”
She squinted, and suddenly the eyes behind the thick glasses were blue and slightly bloodshot.
Doctor Shepherd.
“No,” he said. The glasses disappeared, and he stared down the barrel of the gun at me. His voice was as smooth and calm as ever. “You don’t, Alexis. You only think you do.”
Then he pulled the trigger, and my world blew apart.
I jerked awake, a scream tearing from my throat.
“Jesus! Keep her quiet!”
Before I could process where I was, a large body rolled over mine and a calloused hand covered my mouth. My shriek died in a muffled whimper, and I fought against the body pinning me down, jerking and kicking.
“Hey, Scrubs, it’s okay! It’s just me. It’s okay!”
The whispered words penetrated my brain, and I blinked up at a pair of beautiful gray-blue eyes.
Cliff.
My muscles relaxed slightly. It was stupid; I had no reason to trust this man, or any of his friends. But with the horror of my dream still lingering on the edges of my mind, I needed something to cling to. I shuddered, letting out a broken sob, and the large man sat up, bringing me with him and wrapping his arms around me.
“It’s okay, Alexis. We’ve got you. It was just a bad dream. We’ve all had them.”
He continued to murmur a stream of comforting words into my ear, and I let him rock me gently until my heart rate slowed and my breathing evened out. As I grew calmer, I became uncomfortably aware of how much of our bodies were touching—and memories of the last time he’d touched me flooded my mind.
I wasn’t uncomfortable with my body. I’d been sick for so long I was used to being poked and prodded by doctors, used to clinical stares. But I wasn’t used to hands that touched me like I was a person, eyes that grew heated when they looked at me.
Clearing my throat, I pulled away from the blond man’s embrace. He released me easily, and I scrambled back a few feet, kneeling on the soft ground beneath the canopy of the tarp as my gaze flicked back and forth between him and the tall man called West. Early morning light pierced the branches of the trees in the forest, dappling the ground with speckles of yellow.
“Cliff.” My voice was scratchy, and I tried to wipe my tears and snot away in a subtle movement—not like they didn’t know I’d just been crying. “What… what is going on? Who are you?”
He grimaced slightly, looking a little sheepish. “Well, first of all, my name isn’t Cliff. It’s Noah.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Cliff was the name I gave Strand when they hired me. I had a whole fake ID set up for their background checks and stuff.”
“Noah,” I repeated slowly, trying not to freak out.
This shouldn’t be the thing that tipped me over the edge of sanity. Of all the strange events in the past twenty-four hours, this didn’t even make the top ten. But why couldn’t anything I believed stay constant for more than a few hours anymore?
I turned to the other man. “And what’s your real name?”
He grinned, his full lips spreading wide over gleaming white teeth. His features were beautiful, almost impossibly symmetrical, and two dimples graced his cheeks.
“It’s still West. Noah was the only one who went in undercover, so he’s the only one who got an alias.”
“I don’t understand. Went in undercover? Why? What were you doing at the Strand complex? Why did you kidnap me?” I paused, realizing that although I was cold and sore, I basically felt okay. “How did you treat me? Do you have medicine?”
Cliff—Noah—shook his head. “Nah. I mean, I think we have some painkillers in one of these packs. But you don’t need medicine, Scrubs. I told you, you’re not sick.”
Jesus. Men.
I bristled. “You’re going to tell me whether I’m sick or not? Do you realize how messed up that is? I’ve been dealing with Speyer’s Disease since I was a kid, I think I would know—”
“You’re not sick. You’re an experiment.”
His quiet voice cut off my tirade. The word experiment pierced my heart, spreading a dull ache in my chest. I had always worried about being seen only as my illness, as nothing but a walking medical mystery.
“No. I’m more than that. Doctor Shepherd said they’re all invested in my recovery. They want to see me get better.”
“They want to see you shift,” West threw out, raising one eyebrow.
I blinked. “Shift?”
Instead of elaborating, he turned to Cli—Noah. “Her wolf hasn’t been called yet?”
Noah scrubbed a hand through his hair, sitting back on his heels and regarding me. “No, not yet. They were doing something different with her. It was a smaller operation, fewer test subjects. They didn’t talk much around me, since I was just an orderly, but they were all really interested in her progress. You saw how it was—that whole complex existed just to house a few subjects. And she was definitely their most promising one.”
Anger and fear welled inside me, making me unusually bold.
“I’m not a fucking test subject! My name is Alexis Maddow, and I’m a human being.”
The two men exchanged a glance I couldn’t interpret before West looked back at me. “Yeah… that’s not exactly true anymore.”
“What. Are. You. Talking. About?”
I couldn’t tell if they were giving me half-answers because they thought I couldn’t handle whatever they had to say, or if they were deliberately tryi
ng to keep me in the dark.
All I knew was that I needed someone to say something that made sense before I entirely lost my shit.
I wasn’t sure anymore what was going on at the Strand Corporation. I didn’t know what had happened to my mother, why she had turned on me—and that wound was still so raw it hurt to even think about. And I didn’t understand how I’d been outside for almost twenty-four hours, tromping through woods and streams, no less, yet seemed to be in okay health.
West must’ve read the look on my face, because he dropped the kid gloves. His voice was a little harder when he spoke next, and he didn’t couch his words or speak in riddles.
“The Strand Corporation is a multi-billion-dollar biomedical research firm. For the past thirteen years, they’ve dedicated a large part of their operation to a secret project: creating shifters. People who are part human, part animal, able to take the form of both. They haven’t perfected it yet. We don’t know what they’re trying to accomplish with this in the long-term, but they’re still running tests. The complex you were in? All the ‘patients’ who were there? You were all a special batch of experiments.”
I wanted to laugh. But the look on his face was so serious, his tone so somber, that I couldn’t. So I didn’t say anything. I just stared at him, as though if I waited long enough, maybe he’d take it all back.
Noah dipped his head to the side, catching my gaze. “It’s true, Scrubs. We all came from another, now defunct complex near San Diego. We escaped a while back, and eventually they shut down that branch. But they didn’t stop experimenting. Why would they? They’re playing god, and it’s working.”
Finally, a small, incredulous laugh did burst from my throat. “No! That’s crazy! I’m sick. I’m not an… an animal. I’ve never shifted in my life. That’s fantasy stuff!”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.” Noah’s large fingers dug lightly into the dirt by his side as he regarded me. “That night you seized? That was the shift starting to happen. Like I said, they did something different to you. A different dose, maybe a different cocktail of drugs? I’m not sure. But your change is coming. They were all really excited about it—that it was finally happening. I don’t think anyone else at that complex survived their first shift.”
