by Zoe Chant
That was the same direction as the inner door they'd found when they were exploring last night. So she figured the feeling was on to something.
"That way," she told Max, and they moved.
Max detailed a couple of the security team to lead the way, but Cassie stayed right on their heels, telling them where to turn and what doors to take. She wasn't going to waste a single minute.
When they got to the inner door, she turned to Dave. "What's the new code for this one?"
He shook his head. "I don't know."
"You what?" Cassie stepped forward. "How can you not know? You had the code for the outer door!"
"They didn't tell me this one when I called!" Dave protested. "I assumed someone would meet me at the entrance and take me through! Everyone was in a huge hurry, it's not like we had time to sit down and discuss it."
Cassie frowned. Now what? Could the security team blow up the door? She'd only seen stuff like that in movies, and she had no idea if it was possible without bringing the ceiling down on their heads. Or if the team had the necessary equipment with them.
She was just about to turn to Max and ask if he knew what to do when the door opened.
"Whoa!" Cassie jumped back as a clearly frightened, disarmed security guard came running through, followed by a crowd of animals. Including an alligator. What on earth was an alligator doing here, and why was it tramping along next to a rabbit and a border collie?
It took her a minute to realize what was happening. Of course. These were the other shifter captives.
But there were no lions with them. So where was Seth?
Beside her, Max raised his voice. "Prisoners! You've been released. If you shift back to human, we'll take your names and provide appropriate restitution."
No one seemed to be listening. The animals were almost past Max’s security team, who didn't seem to know what to do with them. Everyone was just looking at Max.
Max sighed audibly, and then seemed to shiver and blur. Suddenly, in his place, there was an enormous lion.
He roared, and the sound reverberated through the hallway. Cassie saw one of the security guys clap a hand over his ear, and then quickly return the hand to his gun, looking around furtively like he hoped nobody had noticed.
All the animals stopped abruptly.
Max shifted back. "As I was saying," he continued.
Cassie looked at the two point men. "This looks like it might take a little while," she told them. "I'm going through that door. Tell Max if he asks."
She didn't wait for a reply, just marched through the now-open door. She knew which direction Seth was in, and she was going there now.
***
Cassie, Seth’s lion whispered to him. Cassie is here.
Where? he thought. He concentrated on Cassie—brave, cheerful, and determined.
She was here. He could feel her. And she was...getting closer.
And closer. Closer still.
The other two’s conversation faded completely from his ears. He walked to the doorway to the cell block. Behind him, someone said something to him, but it didn’t matter, because Cassie was coming down the hall.
She started to run when she saw him, and Seth took three steps forward and caught her up in his arms.
She smelled so incredibly good, and she felt soft and warm and perfectly right. He wrapped her up tight and held her close, and she buried her face in his neck.
For a few moments, the world was perfect.
Eventually, he remembered where he was, and reluctantly set her down. But then he had to kiss her beautiful lips, and then her cheeks and her forehead and her delicate eyelids, and then her mouth again.
“Why are you here?” he asked into her mouth, wanting to know the answer but not wanting to stop kissing her.
“I came with Max,” she said. “You didn’t think I was just going to sit at home and wait for someone else to find you, was I?”
He laughed, so full of love and happiness he almost couldn’t stand it. “Of course not,” he agreed. “That doesn’t seem like you at all.”
“Good, I’m glad that’s understood, then.” She pulled back a bit and looked around. “Oh. Hello.”
Seth turned, and saw two curious faces peering around the door to the cell block. “These are some of the prisoners they were keeping for experimentation,” he told Cassie. “This is Kevin, and this is...”
“Shoshanna,” said the woman, in her husky voice. “This must be your mate.”
Cassie stepped forward, holding out her hand. “Cassie Shaw,” she said. “It’s a privilege to meet you. I’m so glad this place is being taken down.”
“Some of the people in it need to be taken down, too.” There was a growl in the back of Shoshanna’s voice. Seth remembered that she was a cheetah shifter.
“Don’t worry,” Seth told her. “That’s going to be taken care of. No question.”
After all, if there was one thing Max was, it was thorough.
***
Now that she’d found Seth, Cassie really just wanted to get out of this place.
His arms had felt so strong and good around her. And she was sick of this stupid lab. She really just wanted to go back to her apartment with Seth and curl up in her bed together, nap and make love and nap again. She wanted to sleep together, breathing the same air.
And they had to get these last two prisoners out.
Cassie wondered what kind of animals they were. She thought they both had a catlike quality about them, although she didn’t know how much that might translate into their shifter form.
“How about you just let me—” Kevin was saying to Shoshanna.
“I’m fine,” she growled, stepping away from him. She swayed a little, but stayed on her feet.
Cassie covertly looked her over. She seemed exhausted, and moved like she hurt all over, but there was a fierceness to her, some dangerous quality that she carried with her without seeming to try.
Cassie wondered if she was naturally like that, or if her time here at the facility had forced her to radiate danger! at anyone who came near.
Well, it wasn’t any of her business. She turned to Seth. “I can lead you out. It’s kind of a maze, but I paid attention on the way in.”
“Then let’s go,” said Seth.
She started off, checking to make sure that Shoshanna was walking all right.
When they turned the corner, though, all three of the shifters stopped short.
Cassie looked back at them. “What?”
“That’s the lab,” Seth explained. The other two winced. Shoshanna made a growling noise in the back of her throat.
There was a door hanging open just in front of them. Cassie peered carefully inside. It was empty, but she could see the chair where someone—where Seth—would’ve been held.
Cassie wanted to growl herself. All three of the people behind her had been strapped in to that chair. Seth had been tortured right here.
The second she had him alone, she was going to check him very, very thoroughly for any injuries. And then hug him for the next century or so, because shifter healing or no shifter healing, these people had hurt her mate.
Behind her, Kevin touched Shoshanna’s shoulder and said, “I’ll be right back.” Cassie could hear the snarl in his voice.
She watched him prowl into the room, looking over the place. He stopped right by the dentist’s chair in the middle of the floor, and his claws came out.
Kevin raked his claws down the surface of the chair, ripping it open until shreds of its cushions were hanging out. His bored mask had fallen, and his face was twisted with anger and...pain, Cassie thought.
She hoped they burned this place down after everyone was out.
When the chair was in ribbons, Kevin shifted his hands back to human and stepped back out into the hallway. “Okay,” he said. “We can keep going now.”
The bored mask was firmly back in place. Cassie ached for him.
Then, a door down the hallway opened. In
a flash, Seth was in front of Cassie, his fingertips lengthening into claws.
A guard was standing in the doorway, and behind him was a man in a white lab coat, older and wearing glasses.
Behind her, Cassie heard a furious growl.
A flash of movement on either side of her took her by surprise, and she jumped and stifled a shriek.
Shoshanna, who had been barely able to walk a minute ago, was running down the hall, her shape shifting and blurring as she went, until she hit the floor with four paws, a cheetah racing forward at top speed.
Kevin was behind her. Ahead of them, the guard was shoving the man back into the office. The door slammed shut.
Seth and Cassie hurried to keep up. “Stay behind me,” Seth said to Cassie as they went, and she nodded.
Kevin shifted as he ran like Shoshanna had, his form settling down onto four legs. A black cat, moving almost as fast as Shoshanna was—a panther.
The office door wasn’t one of the steel-reinforced doors that had been on the lab and the cell block, just regular wood with a frosted glass window. Shoshanna didn’t stop or even slow down. Instead, she hit the door with a crunch of splintering wood. The door caved completely in, and she blew past the pieces and into the office.
The rest of them had to race to get there. Cassie was last, huffing behind all of the shifters.
She stopped short when she got to the demolished doorway.
The guard was dead.
The doctor was on the floor, bleeding from a nasty bite in his abdomen and raking claw marks in his left bicep.
But in his right hand, he had a tranquilizer gun. He’d clearly had it at the ready—maybe he’d shot Shoshanna as she leapt for him, or maybe the guard had, because she was unconscious, slumped on the floor beside him.
Kevin had been next, and he was slumping to the ground as Cassie arrived. The gun was pointed at Seth now. Seth had stopped and held out his hands, and that seemed to be keeping the doctor from firing again, at least for the moment.
“You’re not getting out of here, Dr. Benson,” Seth said.
“You underestimate humans, you know,” Benson said to Seth in a conversational tone. “You think that because we don’t have claws and teeth, and we don’t have shifter reflexes, we can’t ever defend ourselves against you. Well, this,” he lifted the gun, “is a tool. It’s what separates the humans from the animals, and it means we will always have the advantage.”
“If that’s how you want to think about it,” Seth said. “Myself, I don’t think about it as humans versus animals, or even humans versus shifters. I don’t think either of us needs to have an advantage.”
He stepped forward into the room. Benson’s gun lifted, although his hand was shaking. Shock and blood loss, Cassie thought. “Don’t come any closer.”
“I just wanted to make a point.” Seth drew Cassie further into the room with him, his movements slow and careful. “This is my mate. She’s the love of my life, the person I will be spending the rest of my days with. I love her, and I also know that we’re meant to be together forever, because shifters all have mates and she’s mine.”
“I know about mates,” Benson said impatiently. “Enough of you have given me information about them.”
“But do you know they can be human?” Seth asked. “Because Cassie’s human.”
Benson’s face was a parody of surprise. He turned his head to stare at Cassie. The gun wavered.
Seth lashed out almost too quickly for Cassie to see, kicking the gun out of his hand. He snatched it up and fired directly into Benson’s chest.
Benson’s head fell instantly to the floor, hitting it with a hard thunk.
Cassie stared at him, tranquilized and bleeding. “Is he going to die?”
“Probably,” Seth said grimly. “These tranquilizers work on shifters, so they must be incredibly strong. That plus the blood loss...and Shoshanna bit him in a good place. Even without the tranq, he might not survive that.”
Cassie wasn’t normally a violent person, but looking at this man who had thought of shifters as animals, who had tortured them and used them for his own ends and not even seen them as people...she couldn’t bring herself to mourn him.
Seth looked down at him. “If anyone here deserves to die, it’s him.”
“Oh, really?” came a voice from the doorway.
They both whirled around. The voice belonged to a tall, white-haired man wearing an expensive-looking suit and a stony expression. He was holding a gun.
“Hendricks,” Seth snarled.
***
Hendricks had his gun pointed directly at Cassie. “Come here, girl,” he said.
“Don’t call me girl,” she snapped.
But she threw a nervous glance at Seth.
He nodded. “Go with him.”
Seth could remember from his childhood that Hendricks shot guns as a hobby. He let out any business frustrations on the shooting range.
He couldn’t risk the slightest possibility that Cassie would be shot.
Even though watching her walk slowly across the room to Hendricks’ side was much, much more painful than anything they’d done to him in the lab.
“Why did you do this?” Seth asked Hendricks. “I thought you were friends with our father. I thought you were friends with Max.”
“Well, Seth, I thought so, too,” said Hendricks in his deep, smooth voice. “You know, your father and I built this company together. It was his idea, so he took the CEO position, but it was on the sweat of both of our backs.
“I don’t know why he never told me your secret. I suspect it was because your father was the type to always keep his advantages close to his chest. And your brother is the same. I was frankly surprised that he told me at all.”
“So surprised you couldn’t just ask him any questions you had? You needed to experiment on people instead?”
“No, Seth.” Hendricks sounded amused now. “It’s not curiosity that’s driving this. And it’s not any sort of betrayed outrage, either—is that what you thought? No.
“I’m simply the sort of man to exploit my advantages to the fullest extent of their potential. And the existence of humans who can turn into animals—well. The possibilities, and the potential profits, are seemingly endless. Particularly if one were to get in on the ground floor, so to speak.”
"Are you saying this was all just for money?"
Cassie sounded more outraged than Seth would have expected for anyone with a gun to their head. She didn't seem scared at all, actually, just furious. Pride swelled inside him at how brave his mate was, even as he himself was terrified for her safety.
How was he going to get her out of this?
Cassie was continuing, though, heedless of the danger she was in. "How could you torture people just for money? You're the CFO of Rowland Global Solutions! Don't you have enough money?"
"It's not money, my dear," Hendricks said.
"Do not call her that," Seth growled.
Hendricks transferred his amused gaze from Cassie to Seth. "And how do you propose to stop me?"
Seth's lion growled, Jump him. Use your teeth!
But Hendricks' finger was resting lightly on the trigger, ready to pull it at the slightest movement. Seth forced his lion back down and stayed where he was, although the hint of a growl was vibrating in the back of his throat.
Hendricks looked back at Cassie. "As I was saying, it's not money itself. Money is only a symbol of how much power you have. If you have no money, you can't do anything. If you have a great deal of money, you can do many things. And this is about power as well. Having control over as great and secret a resource as shapeshifters would be the source of an immense amount of power. That is what this is for."
Cassie was shaking. Not with fear, Seth could tell, but with rage. "I can't believe anyone would do something like this. You're sick."
"And you, my dear, are naive." Hendricks shook his head, as though he was sad for Cassie. "You won't survive long in this world with an a
ttitude like that."
"Oh, really?" Seth asked. "It looks to me like you're the one who's going down."
"And yet I'm not the one with a gun at my temple," Hendricks countered. "Imagine that."
Seth growled, fully out loud this time. Hendricks looked a little disconcerted at the noise, but didn't flinch or move the gun at all.
"You seem to be out of options," he said. "I wonder what you'll do?"
"Don't wonder about him," said another voice from out in the hall. "Wonder about me."
Seth’s brother came slowly into view, his hands casually at his sides.
Hendricks raised his eyebrows. "And what are you planning to do, Max? You don't have any weapons."
"You don't have any options," Max countered. "If you kill her, you'll just be tried for first-degree murder. Somehow, I don't think you want that, particularly on top of all the other charges. Kidnapping, torture, embezzlement, illegal scientific experimentation, crimes against humanity...?"
"Humanity," Hendricks snorted. "If any of you people were human, we wouldn't be having this conversation."
"The jury won't know that."
Max didn't even try to argue that shifters were as human as anybody else, Seth noticed. Was it because he didn't believe that, or was it just because he knew that argument wouldn't work on Hendricks?
He truly hoped it was the second one.
"You think that if it comes to an actual trial—which I can assure you it will not—I won't tell everyone in the world what you are?"
"You think anyone will believe you?" Max countered. "Once they see the video we've rescued from this office of you and Dr. Benson torturing people in human form, they'll understand that you're absolutely deranged and they won't believe a single crazy word about shapeshifting people that comes out of your mouth."
Max looked completely unruffled, and he was behaving as though Cassie wasn't even there. Seth wondered if he had a plan, or if he was just going to stand there and talk until Hendricks got bored.
But as he was thinking that, Max's eyes flickered to him for just a second, and then back to Hendricks.
It was the smallest of signals. But Seth understood.
