by Alana Hart
The doors opened, and Liam stepped inside. As they slid shut his eyes locked with Greta’s.
He didn’t wait for the first floor. One floor up, he wrenched the doors open, climbed out, and ran for the nearest stairwell. A moment later alarms sounded and red lights flashed on the walls.
Six flights up and he emerged on the first floor. It was a parking garage.
“Where do I go, Lyss?” he panted. He could hear the panic in his own voice.
She was staring around, blinking rapidly. “We need a car. Get us out of here.”
Liam ran along the cars until he found one he could hotwire that could be easily lost. He was hoping they weren’t in the mountains or in the middle of the desert. From inside the parking garage all Liam knew was that somewhere close there was dirt. He could smell it.
The car revved to life. He buckled Lyss into the passenger seat, slammed his door shut, and took off. They got three floors up before the gunshots sounded. One blew out the back window.
“Exit!” Lyss shouted and pointed to a glowing red sign. Liam turned, tires screeching, and drove up the ramp. In his mirror he saw men in riot gear firing at them. Ahead the way was clear.
At the top of the ramp a gate started to slide down. They would be locked inside. Liam slammed on the accelerator. The car jerked, jumped over the top of the ramp, the roof scraping along the bottom of the gate, and then hit dirt road.
Liam got the car under control and drove as fast as he dared. In the rearview mirror he watched the men aim their guns through the closed gate. From the outside, the facility looked like a large hunting cabin.
They were winding through the woods, the trees so close he could have touched them. The sun glared behind them. New leaves shone bright green on the trees.
“Where the hell are we?” Liam mumbled.
Lyss shot forward and opened the glove box. She rummaged around, tossing this and that, and finally sat back with a GPS in hand. Liam took the turns carefully, but fast, while Lyss turned on the GPS. It was an old piece of technology and it took forever to locate them.
“Maine,” she said. “We’re in Maine.” She turned wide eyes on him. “I’m from Ohio.”
“We need to lose the car. Find us a mall or something.”
Twenty minutes later Liam parked in the crowded lot of a ramshackle old bar with trucks, cars, and—bikes! There were motorcycles. He helped Lyss out of the car, his ears focused on the sounds of pursuit. Either they had lost them, or they were just slower than Liam.
Taking her arm, Liam led Lyss through the lot and to a decent-looking Harley. She grabbed his arm.
“I can’t ride,” she said.
“Just hold on to me and you won’t fall off.”
“No,” she moaned, clutching her stomach. “Everything hurts. I can’t.”
He growled and found them a sedan. It was unlocked. Of course it was; this was Maine. They were on the road again soon after and heading south.
“We’ll go as far as we can and then sleep in the woods for tonight.”
“And here I thought I was finally going to stay in a nice hotel.”
“They might have eyes on any establishments in the area.”
“I was kidding.”
Liam frowned. This wasn’t the time for kidding. “Once we’re far enough away I’ll call my pack.”
“You call them your pack?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you sleep in a doggy bed?” she chuckled.
Liam growled. “The deal was we get out together. Nothing was said about getting you to safety.” Liam started to pull over. He didn’t need her help anymore.
“That’s fine,” she said, pursing her lips. “You leave me here, and when they find me, I’ll lead them right to you.”
He snorted. “How?”
“Your blood’s in me. I can sense you.”
He eyed her. “Bullshit.”
Lyss grinned. “Is it? Best keep me with you just to be sure.”
He had connections with his pack; could tell when one was close, they fed off each other’s power, but would she have that with his blood in her?
Liam ground his teeth. Stupid humans. Why did he ever think she was different?
She gave him a mock pout. “I won’t make anymore dog jokes, promise.”
Liam growled and drove faster. This was going to be a long drive.
Chapter Eight
Lyss pressed a hand against her stomach, the pain there so intense she thought she might be sick. “I do like you as a man, though,” she said, more to distract herself than to annoy him. “Makes more sense now. You never seemed like a little boy.”
“Fantastic,” he said.
The sun began to set as they got on a highway. “So you can turn into a kid? That’s something.”
“I can shift into a kid. And it’s rare.”
“Yeah, yeah, shift.” She rocked forward, trying to get rid of the pain.
“You need the bathroom?”
She shook her head. “Stomach. Hurts.”
He pressed her shoulder, easing her back against the seat. The pain that seared through her stomach blinded her. She gasped. A moment later she felt his hand slide under her shirt and she gasped again.
Cool fingers danced over her hot skin. He glanced at it, then took his hand away. “Your body’s fighting the venom,” he said.
Momentarily silenced, Lyss looked around the car, her gaze lingering on Liam. He looked like a grown up version of the boy. Messy, dark hair, square jaw, the kind of hazel eyes that seemed to change color with his mood. At the moment they were dark blue-green, like a stormy sea. And he was tall. A lot taller than her.
“Quit staring at me,” he snapped. “It’s weird.”
“I’m just trying to connect the boy to the man.”
When she didn’t stop staring he sighed. “I can shift into my eight-year-old self. It’s me, just younger.”
“How long have you been able to do that?”
“Few years.”
“And why were you a little boy in that place?”
“You are a nosey fucker, aren’t you?”
She shrugged. “Can’t help it. You intrigue me.” Now why had she told him that? Not that it wasn’t true, but she had no intentions with this guy beyond getting as far from that place as possible. Why let him think any differently?
“Yeah, well, you don’t intrigue me. Humans are not intriguing.” His cheeks were pink.
Although she had been lying about being able to sense him to the extent that she could hunt him down, she could feel him, his blood, in herself and him. She could feel it now rushing through his veins. He was lying.
Didn’t matter; he was nothing but a ride.
She closed her eyes and leaned her head back, biting her tongue against the pain in her stomach.
Somehow she had fallen asleep. She woke when the car stopped. It was night, the sky dark and glittering with stars. They were parked in a rest stop off the highway.
“Turn off the GPS,” Liam said. “Can’t risk them using it to track us.” He climbed out of the car, slamming the door behind him.
Lyss tested her body, moving it gingerly. Everything hurt. Her stomach mostly, but every inch of her body felt like she had the worst sunburn of her life and was being repeatedly slapped on her bare skin.
She got out of the car and limped along behind Liam as he led the way into the woods. It was dark and quiet. Trees rustled and their feet displaced rocks and twigs, but other than that it was silent. Eerie.
Lyss tripped and stumbled her way over roots and uneven ground. They weren’t on a path. Liam, the shifter-boy-man, probably had supernatural eyesight, the prick.
“So,” Lyss panted, clutching a twinge in her side. “You really don’t like humans.” He ignored her. “Must have really pissed you off to be rooming with one.”
“You got no idea.”
“Guess I’m not really human anymore, though. Got enough shifter in me I probably am one.”
He stopped dead a
nd turned. She crashed into him. He didn’t help her catch her balance, but glared down at her until she did.
“You are not a shifter.”
Lyss smiled up at him. “Aw, you’re so cute when you’re angry.”
Frowning, Liam turned and stalked away from her. Lyss had to jog to catch up. He was moving too fast now for her to say anything else. They didn’t stop walking for almost an hour, and by then Lyss wanted to cry from pain.
“Here’s good,” Liam said leaning into a small cave that was really just a hole beneath a few boulders. “I’ll go get us something to eat. Stay here.”
Thank god it was dark because Lyss thought she was crying. She sat in the cave, stretched her legs, wincing. “I’ll take bar-b-q ribs and a beer.”
She couldn’t see his face as he stared into the cave a moment longer, and then he was gone. Stars shone bright in the sky, the trees swaying darkly. Lying down, Lyss closed her eyes and gritted her teeth while her body screamed against the serum in her blood. If she could just sleep for a bit, she might be okay.
Chapter Nine
Liam tucked his guard clothes by a bush and then shifted into a wolf. It felt good. Hurt like hell, but felt good once he was shifted. He stretched his paws, feeling the cool dirt between his toes. Sniffing, he filled his nose with the scent of pine, cold mud, sleeping animals, and Lyss.
He was too close if he could still smell her. Senses alert, and instincts guiding him, Liam took off for a run.
He couldn’t believe they had actually gotten away. All he needed to do now was get in touch with his pack and wait for them to come get him. He didn’t know what he was going to do with her. Siobhan would probably get all motherly and try to keep her, but Liam decided that once his pack took over, he was done with Lyss. Humans were too much for him, and this one was worse.
Hybrid. What a crock.
Liam ran for a while, ate a fish raw from a stream, and then caught a rabbit, which he brought back to the cave. Lyss was curled in a ball on a patch of moss. Quietly, more so that she didn’t wake up and start annoying him, than not to disturb her, Liam made a small fire at the mouth of the cave and cooked the rabbit.
She woke, her nose wrinkling. “Where’s the food?” she said sleepily.
Liam handed her a hank of sizzling meat. He watched her wince as she sat up, but she didn’t complain. With a little moan, Lyss bit into the meat. She licked the juice from her lips, and Liam focused on his own dinner.
They finished in silence, and afterward, Liam put the fire out and lay down beside Lyss. There wasn’t much room in the cave, but there was enough for one night. He closed his eyes, breathing through his mouth so not to smell Lyss all night long.
She was quiet for a few minutes.
“So,” she said. Liam sighed. “Why is your shifting thing rare?”
“We have a long day tomorrow. Have to find a phone so I can get in touch with my pack, and keep out of the path of those psychos.”
“You the only one in your pack who can shift into a kid?”
“Go to sleep.”
“Not tired.”
“Close your eyes.”
“Everything hurts. Just talk to me. Keep my mind off the pain.”
Liam sighed again. “I don’t know about the rest of the world, but of all the shifters I know, I am the one and only.”
“Why were you at that place?”
“God damn, girl, you are relentless.”
He felt her chuckle beside him.
There was a very slim chance his pack was going to let her go off and live a normal life once they knew what she was, so it wouldn’t hurt to tell her.
If only just to shut her up.
“It’s what we do,” he said. “My pack takes on jobs – finding people, hurting people, whatever – this job was part of another. My brother Aidan was tracking some chick from his past. She had a pup with her. Turned out the kid was from that place. My job was to find out what I could and then bring the pack to take them down.”
“Wow, so you’re like a James Bond kind of guy, aren’t you?”
“Who?”
“Super spy. You don’t know who James Bond is?”
Liam shifted uncomfortably. His shoulder brushed hers. “We didn’t get out much.”
“Okay, what else have you done? For jobs I mean. You can shift into a kid, so what, did they have you looking for stolen lunch money?” She laughed at her own joke.
“Usually I hunt for people who hurt children.”
She sobered. “Like child molesters?”
Liam nodded.
She thought for a second and then said, “What about your parents? They on board with your mafia lifestyle?”
He snorted. “No idea. Haven’t seen them in twenty years.”
“Shit. How old are you?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Wow. Long time. That why you hate humans? Were they humans who abandoned you?”
“No,” he spat. “They’re shifters. I’m a born shifter.”
“Oh, sure.” Her mocking tone was getting on his nerves.
“What about you?” he growled, getting annoyed.
“Me?”
“Yeah you,” Liam turned his head. She was staring at him, her bright eyes catching the starlight. “How the hell did you end up there?”
She shrugged. “Grew up in foster homes. Ran away when I was thirteen. Been on my own since. Trusted the wrong person and wound up in that hellhole.”
“Who’d you trust?” He could only imagine she had followed some guy and gotten herself mixed up with the wrong people.
“Greta, actually,” she said, her eyebrows lifting. “I was hitchhiking in Ohio, heading for the coast because I’ve never seen the ocean. She bought me a meal at a little diner and offered me a place to live and food to eat. She had seemed nice.”
“Until she started shooting you up with serums and letting the guards fuck you, right?”
She was unaffected by his words. Shrugging, she said, “The raping didn’t start until last month. But yeah, she was nice until she got me into the facility. Then she was someone else.”
Liam looked back at the stars outside their cave. For someone who had endured hell, she seemed pretty all right.
“Did you ever have to let them touch you?”
“Who?”
“The child molesters. You were in the facility gathering intel, living like the rest of us, so did you have to live like a—”
“Fuck no. They died before they could try.”
“It’s a logical question.”
Liam folded his arms wishing there was more space. “I had to trail them, watch them and make sure they were targeting kids before I stepped in and killed them.”
“Killed a lot of people?”
“Yes. And I’ll make it one more if you don’t shut up.”
For a moment he listened to her fiddle with a crack in the cave wall. She readjusted, barely hiding the sharp intake of breath.
“What’s the matter?” he sighed.
She shook her head. “Just the venom, like you said.”
He turned to look at her. “Still? Let me see.”
“I’m fine.”
He ignored her, sat up, and yanked her shirt out of the way. Frowning, he ran his fingers over the bite on her belly. It had healed, but not the way it should have. If he hadn’t been so desperate to get out of there he probably wouldn’t have bitten her. He had no idea how she would react to being bit, not only because she was human and he had done his best to stay away from them all his life, but she had also been pumped for two years full of someone else’s blood and venom. He had only assumed since his blood was in her anyway that it was worth the risk.
She could still die, and from the looks of the wound in her belly, she might. The bruise was black and purple, a little green, the injection site bright red and hot. His bite was pink, but the veins beneath were vivid against her skin, pulsing hard.
He closed his eyes, slid his hand up onto her ch
est, and listened to her heart beating. Too fast. He had left for this job before his brother’s friend finished her transition, so Liam had no idea what a hybrid shifter was actually like, besides stories. Would she be vicious like he’d heard? Would she try to kill him in a fit of blind rage? It was possible. He needed to get her to his uncles before that happened.
“Done feeling me up?” Her husky voice snapped his eyes open.
He frowned, suddenly very aware of her breasts on either side of his hand. He fixed her shirt, his cheeks warm. “Whatever’s in you is making you sick. Have to get to my pack soon.”
Her eyes widened for a moment, and he heard her heart stutter. Good. A little fear might make her easier to deal with.
He lay back down on the bits of moss and broken ferns, trying to get comfortable. And then she was scooting closer, pressing back against him. He put a hand out, stopping her.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Undeterred, she moved in close again. “Going to sleep. It’s cold.”
He shoved her this time. She sat up and stared at him, her mouth twitching at the corner.
“Sleep on your side,” he growled. “I’m not your personal heater. And I’m not sleeping with a fucking human.”
Her face split into a grin. “Aw, I don’t think you sleep with anyone.”
He frowned. “The fuck does that mean?”
“You play a tough game, but I think you’re a scared, little virgin.”
“No,” he growled, his face growing hot. He glared at her, trying to come up with something to say that would cut deep enough to shut her up. “I don’t fuck human pussy.”
She just laughed. “You wouldn’t know what to do with a pussy if someone shoved it in your face. And you don’t fuck anyone.”
Liam balled his hands into fists, pressing his back into the cave wall.
She lay down, rolling into him so that her back was against his chest and her ass tucked against his crotch. She pressed back, rubbing her ass against his cock. He inhaled sharply through his teeth, feeling himself respond.
Her chuckle reverberated against his chest, but moments later she was breathing deeply, asleep.
For what seemed like endless minutes, Liam worked to get his body under control. She wasn’t wrong, though how she knew he was a virgin was beyond him. It was his choice. Sex was something reserved for love, and he wanted nothing to do with love. If he could grow old and die without ever having sex, he would die happy. Love was a sickness, a disease.
