by Jana Leigh
HEALING CHERRI
Written by:
Jana Leigh
Edited by:
Rose Colton
SMASHWRODS EDITION
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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales are entirely coincidental.
© Copyright 2012 JK Publishing.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
Prologue
Cherri Rett stood in her office for the first time in a week, and looked around. It was a freaking mess. She was gonna kick someone's ass for this, but it was going to have to be later. Kiki was the only thing she was worried about at this particular moment. Cherri had to get the information loaded into her computer, so she could figure out why their friend was still in a coma. Hell, they were in the twenty-sixth century, shit like this just didn’t happen anymore.
Too much crap had happened over the last week for her to concentrate like she needed to. There were times she could just step into her lab and lose herself in the world of science. Not that anyone would believe her, other than her best friends, because her looks made it impossible for some people to take her seriously.
Cherri turned to her guard, Sabrina, and said, "Find out who the hell was in here while I was gone."
Sabrina nodded and turned to pull out her communicator. Even though she was Cherri's guard, Sabrina was also her Pack mate and friend. She would help her anyway she could. Pack mate, what a strange term for her to use right now, she never thought she would ever use that when she was referring to anyone other than her family. That was the way it was now, the laws had changed.
"Sorry, ma'am, this mess is mine." Cherri heard a low Deep-in-the-South drawl coming from somewhere in back of the stack of boxes that were in her office. She felt the tingle right down to her toes from hearing the voice. Wow, she thought, this was not normal. Just a voice sending shivers down her spine? Impossible.
However, if the face matched the voice, she would certainly give him a break, and at least let him tell her what the hell he was doing in her lab. A long break with her, in a room, with a bed, she thought. Cherri grinned; her friends were going to call her a 'slut' again. But who cared, if the man was as sexy as his voice.
Whew, and that accent. She loved a man with a Southern drawl. She had never heard one in real life, merely on the surveillance vids of criminals, and also in the movies, both her only actual entertainment these days. New York wasn’t known for having anything but a New York accent, a Brooklyn accent, or a Long Island accent. Then there was the Jersey accent, and the snobby 5th Ave accent, the list went on. But nowhere was there a Southern accent, especially one that made her think of some very naughty things, things that would definitely not be professional.
Cherri frowned a little and thought for a second. Shifters were not really allowed to move around that much now. Before, they had been able to migrate and find a Pack they fit into. However, with the new human laws, shifters didn’t move unless they had family close by. The ones that did usually did so illegally, and therefore, ended up in the surveillance vids for them to study.
"Well, who are you?" Cherri said softly. She could try her seductive voice, but with Sabrina in the room, that would be awkward. Shit, Sabrina. She turned just as the other woman was pulling out her weapon and getting ready to push Cherri out of the way to make sure the man was not a threat. Someone still wanted them dead, and having a stranger in the room was not good. Even if his voice was smooth, like a good whiskey on a cold winter night, Cherri shivered again thinking about curling up in front of a fire place. Where the fuck are these images coming from? She was not one of those whimpering girls who wanted to get MARRIED!
"Well, ma'am, HOLY SHIT! Now, why the hell are you pointing that gun at me?" the Southern voice said with a firm tone.
Cherri once again felt herself shiver. He was strong and commanding. She just wanted a peek at him. There was no way he could be a lab rat like some of her other assistants. He had to be built with that voice.
"Hands up, and state your business," Sabrina ordered and then said, "Badge number, and ID password."
Cherri rolled her eyes and looked at her nails. Damn it, she was going to have to go to the salon again, they were chipping. Her communicator went off, and Cherri pulled it from her pocket. It was her friend and Alpha, Kade.
"Hi, Kade," she said into the communicator.
"Why is Sabrina's alarm going off?" Kade said calmly.
"Because there is a stranger in the lab," Cherri said.
"Fuck," Kade said and hung up. The Calvary was coming.
"Hey mister, you had better get those credentials out quick, ‘cause there's gonna be two pissed-off Alphas coming in the door in three...two...one," Cherri said and the door burst open with Kade, Calli, and Thomas with guns drawn.
Cherri loved it when there were hot men with guns. Even if Kade was her best friend's new mate, she could still appreciate a prime piece of male ass. And his was fine. Cherri looked out to see her best friend Calli frown at her, and then motion with her head to the other side of the room where the stranger was standing still out of her line of sight. Cherri shrugged her shoulders and then grinned.
“I have no idea who this is. I came into the lab to load up the latest data about Kiki and he started talking. You know, I kinda thought for a second that my lack of sleep was affecting my mind and creating a person’s voice to talk to me. You know how I am, I would have made it all sexy and rough like his is. However, I never would have put the Southern drawl into it, that’s when I realized he was not my imagination.”
“Damn it, Cherri, stop prattling on, and figure out who the fuck he is before I actually have to shoot someone. And right now, you're like at the top of the list just for annoying me,” Calli ground out.
“Watch those teeth, hun, because you know what grinding them can do. I have told you over and over, I'm a doctor not a dentist, and I can’t help you if you break one,” Cherri chided her friend.
“Grrr,” her friend said, flipped Cherri off with one hand while still holding her gun in the other.
Cherri rolled her eyes. “Hey sexy man voice, who the fuck are you and why are you in my lab?” Cherri called and smiled sweetly at her friend. She loved driving her nuts.
Cherri was a contradiction in terms. Yeah, she had the blonde hair, which she had dyed the other day to a nice rich brown because she needed a change. After all the shit that happened over the last few weeks, she felt she deserved it. But when people normally looked at her, they saw a blonde, ditzy bombshell, they didn’t see the real her. She had three Doctorate degrees as did her two best friends, all in different things that complimented each other. Cherri was a doctor and a damn good one. She was also a shifter, or what humans liked to call them, the Breyting, a fancy word for shifters thought up by humans to make it sound better to their ears. And according to her parents, she and her friends were descendants of some powerful wolves from a butt ass long time ago. That was the big news last week, look what that got her, now people were trying to actively kill her. Sad really, some people just wanted her and her friends
dead because of the positions they held at the Drekinn Agency.
Cherri was the lead medical doctor for the Drekinn; it entailed a lot of research and more patience. But getting to the top, she had stepped on a few toes, so had her friends. Calli was the Lead Enforcer with her new mate. This meant she got to kick shifters’ asses regularly and not apologize. That, in and of itself, could get you killed in this world. Rissa was just your run-of-the-mill computer genius who could also build a nuclear weapon if she wanted to. On a Killable scale of one to ten, probably a seven, not exactly a good number to have on that particular scale.
an Ulfer, or a stupid-ass mutant shifter that had no control over his shifting or emotions. They lacked a piece of the DNA which allowed them to be good doggies, kitties, or bears, basically magical people with no conscience. The humans feared all of them because of a few bad apples. And all the assholes were led by King Bondi, better known to Cherri and her friends as, ‘The Fucking Dipshit who put a hit out on our Asses'. It was exhausting making up names for all these people because of the freaks they had flowing around; someone had come up with that name. They voted it was one of the stupid asses with a hero worship thing going on, but so far, no confirmation has been made.
Let’s just put it this way, the bad guys really didn’t like the name the medical people gave them. Since the Ulfer technically, in some weird foreign language, means mutant. They took offense, which seems impossible because they really do lack the moral fiber to actually care about what someone thinks. However, for some reason, this was a sticking point? So they elected the meanest asshole of the lot and called him the King, stupid yet simple.
Then there was ‘Mr. Twisted’, another sick fuck who was making their lives hell. He was the King’s right-hand man, so he did all the dirty work, and apparently loved it. The torture some of the Breyting had gone through over the last few weeks had been horrific. Cherri grimaced when she thought about the shifters in the morgue area. They had to still do autopsies to see what the actual cause of death was. The poor shifters, they thought they had been injected with some kind of drug which supposedly turned the Ulfer into a Breyting. Confusing? Yes, Cherri thought, and continued to stare at her nails and ignored the people around her. However, something just didn’t seem right about the drug they were injecting, but so far Cherri had been unable to run the tests she wanted. She just didn’t have the time or the energy to have this drama. Of course, if someone ended up dead, then she would have to help.
“Hey,” Cherri called, suddenly paying attention to her friends, who were still tensely holding the guns in the general direction she’d heard the voice. “Country, just give them your ID and shit, and let’s get this over with. Calli here has an itchy trigger finger, and she's dying to try out the new bullets she has for her gun. The psycho bitch that she is, she would just shoot your ass for fun, so let’s move it along.”
“Blonde Bitch,” Calli murmured.
“Ha, not blonde anymore,” Cherri crooned. Her friends loved to call her the blonde bimbo of the group.
“Once a blonde always a blonde, there's no going back,” Calli drawled and then lowered her gun when Sabrina called from the other end of the room that it was all clear.
Cherri stepped out from behind the large wall she had been pushed behind when Calli and Kade entered. She really just wanted to get to her computer and upload her information. She had an idea and wanted to see if she could make it work. If she could, then maybe Kiki would wake up. When he was shot in the head, they gave him a drug to help him repair his brain; part of the drug was a strange mixture of a sedative and regenerating drug. Cherri thought possibly Kiki was having a reaction to the sedative. Ah, modern technology, a bullet to the head was no longer deadly, well only if you missed the important area on a shifter that needed to be hit. There were only a few ways to kill a shifter; the tried and true bullet was one of the deadliest.
“So, what’s going on?” Cherri said, trying to stand on her tip toes to see above the towering bodies in front of her. “I need to get back to work. Kade, just take him out in the hall and beat the shit out of him for invading my space, and if his face is as handsome as his voice, don’t leave marks. It would ruin the mood if I decide to give him a spin.”
Chapter 1
Declan Chase had been busy emptying his boxes when all hell broke loose around him. He had guns pointed at him, and then the most delicious voice floated from across the room. Whoever it belonged to had to be hot and sexy; her sweet, husky voice flowed over him, and his wolf stood up and took notice. It had been a while since that happened, and the last time he thought Lily had been his mate. Sadly, she had only been a vicious guttersnipe who wanted his money to go shopping with, but he would gladly give the person behind that voice what she wanted in order to hear her talk again.
Ms. Praton had hired him a few months ago to take over at the lab. He had been unable to actually get up here until he settled things at home in Texas. His parent’s died last year and had left a mess. They had owned a large cattle ranch which he inherited, but he had no intention on actually running it. His passion was medicine and he refused to give it up. The last straw had been Lily. When Ms. Praton called asking for help because of the mutations that were showing up, Declan had jumped at the chance to work for the Agency. In the shifting world, no matter how smart you were, if you could shift, the humans were afraid. So unless you lived in a large city like New York, you didn’t really do well with patients. This was going to be his ticket to move from the country now that his parents were no longer with him; he’d been labeled a Loner. This meant he could find a small family Pack and join, not that he had to. It was just easier in the eyes of the humans if he did.
So, he had to hire someone to work the ranch for him, and then make sure things were running smoothly enough for him to leave and come to New York. It had felt like forever since he had been in a lab. When he had all his equipment shipped, Declan had followed with the actual shipment so he knew everything made it. It also gave him an excuse to leave early.
When he came in this morning, Ms. Praton had not been in, and the security had been a bitch to get through. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but this was not the same place he had visited a few months ago. Something must have happened, but being too engrossed in getting settled in the lab and right to work, he had blown off the warnings about making sure you carry your ID’s with you. He could see the mistake now that he was staring down the end of a weapon. Declan was not a stranger to guns, living on the ranch he had been a precision shot, but he really didn’t think pointing it out to the woman who was setting her sights on him that she was holding the gun wrong, was a good idea.
“Your ID and information say you are the new head of the lab?” Sabrina said, and looked over her shoulder. She had a confused look on her face. Someone named Ms. Rett was the head of the Lab right now, and apparently she was getting a promotion or something, because he was taking her spot.
“Yes ma’am, that's what I was hired for,” he said, making sure his drawl came out to make it sound a little sarcastic. He already had the security checks, why would they even question this? “Can you tell me why you're all in here pointing your weapons at me?”
“Because they're worried you're here to kill me,” the voice said from the back of the room. “But who cares, the bigger question is, who the hell hired you to run this lab?”
Declan smirked, and then said, “The big honcho did, and now I would love for someone to start answering my questions instead of asking more.”
He heard the husky chuckle, and his cock got hard. Why was he having such as reaction to just a voice? It was driving him nuts, he needed to see her. His wolf was pushing at him to walk forward and find her.
“Oh, I would love to answer your questions, Country,” the woman said and finally came into view. His wolf went nuts. Declan held up his head and inhaled deeply through his nose. Mate, he thought, and looked at the woman and hoped he was scenting right.
There wer
e a lot of people in the room, including the tall woman who was heavily armed in a protective stance and growling, pulling his mate behind her. And then a large man, who seemed to be the tall woman’s partner, stepped in front of the pair of them and blocked his view completely. Declan refused to allow his mate to retreat, and responded to the woman and man with a snarl. The Enforcer who was closest to him made a noise and then tension filled the air again.
Now the guns came back out, and Declan was forced to hold up his hands and wait while everyone yelled around him, he didn’t care because he was staring at his mate. Since all the people seemed to think he was a threat, they were focused on him and moved away from her. She was gorgeous, and perfect, he thought. Long, dark hair with reddish highlights, and her eyes were flawless and green—she was like a pint-sized pixie. Her heart-shaped face, pert lips, and her body, oh man, her body was the things centerfolds were made of. Of course, those were from the old days. Now the pictures were in the vids, but Declan still had some old magazines his father had stored. He, of course, would never admit it, but there were a few of those ladies he had thought of when he pleasured himself. After seeing his mate, he couldn’t think of what a single one of those women looked like. Shit, he needed to get closer to her.
“Sir, please step back and put your hands on the table in front of you. We have cleared you with security, but until we get a few questions answered, you need to remain where we instruct,” the large man said with a commanding voice.
Declan paused and then looked at the man. His wolf howled and then bowed. What the fuck was going on? He did as they said, figuring if he complied, it would make it so he could get with his mate faster. But then he felt some strange connection with all the people in the room. He counted six of them. The Enforcer who was in front of him and the Enforcer who stood behind her. Then there were the obvious couple who seemed to be the leaders, and then his mate.
