by L. L. Raand
“I appreciate the concerns of the coalition,” Sylvan said, although she was fairly certain that Zachary and Cecelia were jockeying for more power and didn’t represent the entire board. If she were replaced by a Were who didn’t have the ability to dictate policy—and no one did, other than her—Zachary and Cecelia would steamroll the coalition into going along with their own agendas. She had no intention of allowing that to happen. “But there’s really nothing to worry about. Weres have coexisted with humans for millennia without being detected, and we’ll have no problem continuing to coexist now that they know of us.”
“Even when the humans discover that you’re capable of transferring a lethal infection to them?” Zachary asked.
Cecilia sat back, a placid expression on her face, as if she were watching a mildly entertaining tennis match.
Sylvan growled. “What are you talking about?”
Zachary spread his hands. “Just a…rumor…that a number of humans have contracted a fatal condition from Weres. We all know how the humans deal with a threat of that nature—the next thing you know, they’ll want to isolate you in camps, regulate your breeding, experiment on your offspr—”
“How exactly were you made aware of this rumor?”
“A phone call,” Zachary said. “Actually, several of them. Of course, I immediately sought to bring this to your attention.”
“And I certainly appreciate that.” Sylvan stood, waging a fierce internal battle to keep her claws and her canines retracted. Zachary was threatening her Pack and she wanted to scatter pieces of him around the room. “Your solidarity…and Cecelia’s”—she tipped her head to Cecilia, who gave her a slow, indolent smile—“is very much appreciated, but I can assure you, rumor is all there is to this.”
Zachary rose and extended his hand to Cecilia, who rested her fingers delicately on his arm as if he were a royal consort.
“That’s very comforting, Alpha,” Cecilia said. “Please do keep us informed.”
“Of course,” Sylvan said as the pair walked out. When the door closed behind them, she snarled in frustration. Her chest throbbed and she rubbed the bite. Very few individuals knew about the human females who had contracted Were fever. Drake knew, but Drake would never betray her and the Pack. Sophia, who was loyal unto death. Someone else had alerted the Vampire—someone who was not Pack. An enemy.
Niki knocked and edged inside the room. “I’m sorry, Alpha, but while you were engaged a call came in—one I think you’ll want to address.”
“What is it?”
“A request for an urgent meeting with you tonight. From Detective Jody Gates.”
“Zachary’s daughter.”
Niki nodded.
“I wonder if she’s finally decided to do her father’s bidding.”
“The timing is suspicious,” Niki agreed.
“Well, let’s see what she has to say. Set up the meeting.”
“Yes, Alpha.” Niki hesitated, then quietly left.
Sylvan returned to the window. The sun had set, but the night sky was hazy and the city lights obscured the stars. She ached for the taste of pure mountain air in her lungs, for the feel of pine needles under her feet, for a glimpse of an endless midnight sky. She longed for the comfort of another running close by her side, their shoulders touching, their breath mingling.
She picked up her cell and called Elena. “How is she doing?”
“As far as I know, she’s not showing any signs of decompensation. She’s very strong.”
“Where is she?”
Elena hesitated.
“Where is she?” Sylvan demanded.
“She left with Sophia this morning. They haven’t returned.”
“They’ve been gone half a day?”
“Yes, Alpha.”
Sylvan cursed and broke off the call. “Niki!”
Niki burst in. “Alpha?”
“Find Sophia. I need to speak with her.”
“Is something wrong?”
Sylvan leaned on her desk, her claws scraping the surface. “I hope not. She and Drake left the Compound together this morning.”
Niki’s eyes narrowed and she rumbled. “Sophia is with her? With an uncontrolled dominant who’s likely to frenzy at any time?” She snarled and her claws shot out. “If Drake touches her, I’ll kill her.”
“You forget, neither of them is mated. You have nothing to say about it.” Sylvan grimaced bitterly. Nor do I.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Drake waited impatiently in a conference room on the fifteenth floor of a glass-and-steel building, one of many in the sprawling industrial complex that comprised Mir Industries. Sophia had left her to assist her parents with the analysis of the tissue specimens.
Drake would have volunteered to help, but she was no bench scientist.
She’d only be in the way, and she got the feeling that the Revnik lab was off-limits, even to those who made it through the elaborate security at the building entrance. With each passing hour, her physical and emotional agitation accelerated. The conference room, despite being spacious and airy with one entire wall of windows giving a view of the nearby mountains, felt confining. She paced, her skin tight and her limbs twitching with the need to move. To run. She wanted to be back in the Compound. She wanted Sylvan. She wanted to taste her. She wanted to mark her with her mouth and her teeth and her claws. She wanted to come on her again. She wanted Sylvan to carry her scent in every cell.
The door opened and Drake spun around with a warning growl.
“Sorry.” Sophia let the door swing close behind her and stood still, watching Drake cautiously.
Drake rubbed her forehead. “No, I’m sorry. I’m just…jumpy. Anything yet?”
“We’ve got quite a lot of preliminary results. My parents can explain it better than I can. They’ll be here in a minute.”
“Great, thanks.” Drake forced herself to sit down at the conference table. Her T-shirt, damp with sweat despite the air-conditioning, clung to her back and chest. She’d purposefully chosen a pair of jeans a size too big when she’d dressed earlier, but the slightest brush of denim against her center sent slivers of pain and arousal through her.
“How are you doing?” Sophia sat down next to Drake.
“I feel like I’m coming out of my skin.”
Sophia gave her a sympathetic smile. “I’m so sorry.”
Drake shrugged wryly. “Are you uncomfortable around me? Am I…doing anything to you? Anything objectionable?”
“No, of course not.” Sophia’s eyes widened. “And you’re right, I should be more sensitive to your call. I was yesterday.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” Sophia said quickly.
“Please, don’t keep me in the dark,” Drake said urgently. “Everything is moving too fast for me as it is. I need to know as much as I can.”
“It’s just…I might not sense your call because unmated Weres don’t respond when mated Weres are in need. It’s protective—if unmated Weres responded to mated females in heat, there’d be chaos. The dominants would instinctively want to breed and the mates would try to kill them.”
“What are you saying, then?”
Sophia took a deep breath. “You smell like the Alpha. You smell mated.”
“I didn’t bite her again.”
“She bit you, though, didn’t she?”
Drake shuddered and closed her eyes, the memory of Sylvan taking her so potent her body screamed for release. “Yes.”
“I think your wolf wants her, and that’s why your call doesn’t affect me nearly as much.”
“I feel like I’m not in charge of my life,” Drake said. “There’s this huge part of me that wants and I have no idea how to control it.”
“If you had grown up Were, you would have had years to integrate your instincts. You would have gradually learned to control your needs and urges. I think you’re amazingly strong to have survived the transition and for you still to be you.” Sophia reached for
Drake’s hand. “I knew you when you were human, remember. You’re still caring and brave. And honorable.”
Drake grimaced. “I’m not so sure about that.”
“Why don’t you want to mate with the Alpha?”
“Do you think I’m the mate she needs? One the Pack would accept?”
“That’s for the Alpha to decide.”
“We don’t even know what’s happening in my body. What if there’s been some kind of permanent cellular damage—a degenerative process of some kind? What if I can’t shift?” Drake sighed. “I don’t mind telling you, I’m scared.”
Sophia squeezed Drake’s hand. “We’ll help you. You’re not alone.”
Not alone. She’d only ever been alone. Sophia’s hand was warm in hers, steady and calm. Sophia’s eyes were tender and soothing. Drake rubbed Sophia’s hand against her cheek and was comforted.
“That’s better,” Sophia said gently.
“Thank you.”
“You would do the same for me.” Sophia stroked Drake’s cheek.
“I shouldn’t have brought you here. You need to sleep. You’ve been through too much.”
“I’m all right. I can’t sleep. I can’t stop wanting…” Drake flushed and fell silent.
“Maybe this is happening just as fast and unexpectedly for the Alpha as it is for you. Trust her.”
“I do,” Drake murmured, realizing she had trusted Sylvan instinctively since the moment she’d seen her tear into Misha’s shoulder to rip out a lethal piece of silver. Thinking about Sylvan, envisioning her face, remembering Sylvan’s hands and mouth on her brought a surge of unbearable longing and desire. “I do.”
The conference room door opened and a man and a woman Drake assumed were Sophia’s parents walked in. They weren’t at all what she expected. Leo and Nadia Revnik were blond and blue-eyed like Sophia, and didn’t appear to be much older than her. If Drake had met them under other circumstances, she would have put them in their early to mid thirties. Clearly, not only was the Were lifespan much, much longer than humans realized, but the aging process itself was remarkably slower. That alone made it imperative she not allow any further strengthening of the bond with Sylvan. If her transition wasn’t complete, she was likely to die decades, if not centuries, before her.
“I’m Drake McKennan,” she said, standing and extending her hand. The Revniks, each carrying a file folder, introduced themselves and sat down across from her.
“You understand,” Leo said, “until we have advised the Alpha of our findings, we can’t share all the results with you.”
“I appreciate that,” Drake said, “although we are talking about my personal situation.”
Nadia nodded. “And we’re sympathetic to that.” She opened her folder. “There are some things we can tell you now.”
Drake steeled herself. “Go ahead.”
“As you probably already suspected, there’s no evidence of a biological pathogen. No identifiable bacterial toxins or viral components.”
“A chemical agent of some kind, then,” Drake said.
“That was our initial thought.” Sophia’s father passed Drake a serum electrophoresis report. “However, we’ve identified an elevated paraprotein as well as its degradation products in your blood. We’re lucky to have gotten the specimens when we did. In another twentyfour hours, we might not have found this.”
“What do you make of it?” Drake studied the printout.
“We think it’s a synthesized antigen,” Nadia said. “Probably one with mutagenic properties.”
Drake waited, but the scientists remained silent, leaving her to work it through herself. From what little of the evolutionary history of the Praetern species had been made public, she knew Weres, Vampires, and humans had diverged very early in primate development—resulting in similarities in form but vast differences in function. Were fever was a toxic reaction to silver that produced rapid systemic cellular death. That level of destruction usually indicated disruption of critical subcellular functions. The most important job of a cell was the production of energy to sustain life, and the mitochondria were the powerhouses doing the work. Mitochondria also carried DNA, the genetic maps to any number of critical biological functions.
“The Were genes are in the mitochondria, aren’t they?” Drake said. “And mitochondrial DNA is only passed from the mother, which means only a Were female can produce Were offspring.”
The Revniks neither confirmed nor denied, but they didn’t have to.
Everything was so much clearer now. Drake remembered Sylvan’s fury with the adolescent males for taking Misha out of the Compound and failing to protect her. Every female Were, and only the female Weres, carried the genetic material to preserve and propagate the species.
“This antigen you’ve isolated,” Drake said, “it targets mitochondria, but for some reason mine mutated instead of destructing.”
“That’s our present conclusion, yes,” Nadia said.
“But if someone is synthesizing this compound, why?” Drake looked from Sophia to her parents. “Surely they’re not trying to create Weres? Isn’t it more likely they’re trying to produce a chemical weapon against Weres?”
“Either is possible,” Nadia said. “The only thing we can be certain of right now is that all the evidence indicates this agent is almost uniformly fatal in humans. You seem to be the exception.”
“Maybe,” Drake said hollowly. “Maybe the degenerative process is just delayed.”
“No,” Leo said. “We ran your mitochondrial DNA from the muscle biopsies. Your profiles are indistinguishable from native Were DNA.”
Drake’s heart leapt. “Normal?”
“Structurally, yes. Whether all those gene sites are active remains to be seen.”
“You mean, whether I’ll be able to shift,” Drake said.
Sophia shook her head. “You already have shifted.”
“Yes,” Drake said, “when Sylvan forced me to.”
Nadia Revnik sat forward. “The Alpha forced you to shift?”
“Yes.” Drake flushed. “That’s when I bit her and she shifted too.”
Nadia cast her husband a worried look.
“What? Isn’t it normal for Sylvan to be able to force a Were to shift?”
“Yes,” Nadia said, “but you were still in the throes of fever. And you bit her.”
Drake’s heart twisted. “You think I might have transferred something dangerous to Sylvan? That this toxin could hurt her?”
“We don’t know. We might be able to tell more from your progenitor cells—to determine just how complete, and stable, a mutation has occurred,” Nadia said.
“Anything. Do it.”
“We’d like permission to do both bone marrow and laparoscopic ovarian biopsies,” Leo said.
“Yes, of course,” Drake said immediately. “We should do it now. Do you have the equipment here?”
“Wait,” Sophia said. “We can’t do procedures of that magnitude without discussing it with the Alpha.”
“Yes, we can,” Drake insisted. “You have my permission, and we need this information.” She turned and took Sophia’s hands. “And we need to know. We need to know for Sylvan’s sake. Please.”
Sophia hesitated, then nodded.
“Before we do anything,” Nadia said, “the Alpha wants to speak with Sophia. Her imperator called here a few minutes ago looking for her.”
“I’ll call her now,” Sophia said, rising. “May I use your office, Mother?”
“Don’t you have your cell phone?” Drake asked.
“They don’t work in this building,” Sophia said. “Radio transmissions are blocked for security reasons. Only the land lines function.” She paused. “You can come with me if you want to speak with her.”
Drake wanted to hear Sylvan’s voice almost as much as she wanted to see her, touch her. “No. I want your parents to harvest the specimens now. Tell Sylvan…tell her I’m all right. But don’t tell her about the biopsies. I’ll take r
esponsibility for this. I need to know if I’ve hurt her.”
“She’ll be angry.” Sophia glanced at her parents. “With all of us. You must scent what Drake is.”
Leo said, “She is the Alpha’s mate.”
“No.” Drake shot to her feet. “No, I’m not. And if there’s the slightest possibility I’m a danger to her, I can’t go back to the Compound. I can’t see her again. Ever.”
———
Niki’s cell rang as she climbed out of the Rover in front of Jody Gates’s townhouse on State Street.
“Kroff,” Niki said.
“It’s Sophia. My parents said the Alpha was looking for me.”
“Are you all right?” Niki asked.
“Yes, I’m fine. Why?”
“You and Drake haven’t tangled. She hasn’t touched you?”
“What?” Sylvia exclaimed. “No! Of course not.”
“Just be careful,” Niki snapped. She caught up to Sylvan and held out the phone. “Alpha, I have Sophia.”
Sylvan paused on the steps and took the phone. “Is Drake still with you?”
“Yes, Alpha. She’s…with my parents right now.”
“How is she?”
“She seems fine.”
“I want her back at the Compound now, and I want Elena to check her as soon as she returns. I won’t be long.”
Sophia was silent.
“Sophia?” Sylvan growled.
“I don’t know if she wants to go back to the Compound, Alpha.”
“She doesn’t know what’s best for her right now. I want her somewhere safe.”
“I understand, but—”
“Never mind, keep her there. I’ll be there in less than an hour. Tell her I’m coming. Tell her that.”
“Yes, Alpha.”
Sylvan tossed the cell phone back to Niki. “Let’s hear what the Vampire has to say.”
———
Becca probably should have been intimidated by the group gathered in Jody’s bookcase-lined study, but she was fascinated.
As a group they were intimidating, but as individuals, they were breathtaking. She couldn’t stop staring at the wolf Alpha. She’d seen photos of Sylvan Mir, heard her interviewed on television. She’d expected her to be beautiful and confident. She hadn’t expected her to be so magnetic. So powerful. The Weres with her, male and female, were every bit as stunning—wild and dangerous and wary. The Alpha wore a stylish suit with a sense of studied disregard and the others, in dark military pants and skintight black shirts, looked exactly like the soldiers they were.
