by Alisa Woods
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Wild Fire (Wilding Pack Wolves 5)
Copyright © 2016 by Alisa Woods
April 2016 Edition
All rights reserved.
Sworn Secrets Publishing
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author. For information visit:
Alisa Woods
Cover by Steven Novak
Wild Fire (Wilding Pack Wolves 5)—New Adult Paranormal Romance—the FINAL Wilding Pack Wolves story!
He's a hot fireman. She's a cool scientist. The wildfire between them is nothing short of magic.
Zoe Wilding is a genetic researcher with a secret she’d rather not have—she’s a white wolf—but with Agent Smith’s immorally-acquired experimental data on shifters, that may change. If she can just isolate the gene that expresses her dangerous white wolf, she’ll finally have a normal life. One that might include a man, if not a mate.
Then her lab blows up.
Troy Hartman is a firefighter and EMT who fought his way out of the shifter gangs as a kid. He’s been watching the Wilding family in the news as they battle the Wolf Hunter, and he’s been itching to join the cause. When the Wilding research facility gets firebombed, he’s first on the scene… and first to rescue a beautiful blue-eyed white wolf.
Only this is no ordinary shifter.
All five of the Wilding families have now been targeted by the Wolf Hunter, and the entire cadre of white wolves—Grace, Noah, Kaden, Owen, and now Zoe—have joined together to find him. Troy’s all-in with Daniel Wilding for the hunt, but the closer Troy gets to Zoe, the more his wolf wants her… only she’s hell-bent on destroying the magic inside her. Can he win over this gorgeous girl and get her to accept the beauty of her inner wolf… or will finding the Wolf Hunter destroy the wild fire inside the woman he’s starting to love?
Some days, Zoe felt like she was chasing a unicorn.
Of course, being a white wolf was like being a unicorn in the shifter world, but the elusive, almost mythical, thing she was after was much less magical and more scientific—a gene therapy to get rid of her internal beast. To erase everything unique, special, and wrong with her. She’d spent months in her lab trying to find a cure for what she was, and even though, as a scientist, she knew each failed experiment was one step closer to success… it sure as hell felt like failure ninety-nine percent of the time.
Zoe pushed away from the DNA simulator on her screen and leaned back in her chair to stretch and rub her eyes. The sun was sinking and painting her laboratory in blood reds and burnt oranges. Most of the staff had left the lab, and probably the UDub campus entirely, hours ago. She got up to brew another pot in the battered coffee maker in the corner of the lab, explicitly marked “food—not for experimentation.” The words had been etched in permanent marker on the machine after an unfortunate incident involving live cultures and not-so-thorough glassware cleaning.
Zoe stretched out the aches in her back as the coffee sputtered and brewed—she would probably drink the whole pot tonight. Progress needed to be made, and there just weren’t enough hours in the day. Maybe she should start learning some Dark Arts spells so she could resurrect Agent Smith and grill him until she got the answers she needed.
She sighed. Her frustration level had to be maxed out if she was wistfully considering both magic and Agent Smith in the same thought. The rogue NSA operative had tormented and experimented on legions of shifters—he was a horrible person, and it was a good thing he was dead. But Zoe couldn’t help wanting to resurrect his ghost in order to ask him a few pointed questions about his sloppy record-keeping methods and what, if anything, his serums accomplished when they were injected into actual shifters. She hated what he did—he was like a modern-day Joseph Mengele, performing experiments on people like they were no better than animals—but Agent Smith’s data was incredibly valuable, scientifically speaking. He had been serving a cause that was just as fucked up as he was, but he managed to develop two specific serums from the magic in shifter blood—one that enhanced a shifter’s capabilities, like magic on steroids, and another that eliminated them, but only temporarily.
Zoe was only interested in one of those, and it wasn’t the one that would create a super soldier. She wanted a permanent cure for the white wolf inside her, but that dream was proving elusive, even with all of Agent Smith’s horrifically obtained data, paid for in shifter blood, laid out before her.
There were times when she wanted to delete all of it and never look back… but the data didn’t belong to her. And now that the possibility of getting rid of her curse—the dark Wilding family secret buried in her DNA—dangled in front of her, she couldn’t help chasing after it. The white wolf that was part of the Wilding genetic code passed down through the generations had done nothing but cause grief. She sure as hell didn’t want to pass it on to her progeny and extend the curse another generation. Her white wolf might be mostly witch—she knew that was the basis for its power—but she still had a strong sense of wolf inside her.
And that wolf was craving a mate. Her inner beast whined and whined for an alpha to come along, claim her for his own, and love and protect her for the rest of her life.
But that meant pups… and Zoe refused to go there.
Not until she’d gotten rid of the curse locked in her DNA.
Her coffee was done, so Zoe carried it back to the computer, determined to keep hacking away at the problem, synthesizing another DNA strand based on Agent Smith’s data. But before she could settle in, a Skype notice pinged on her screen.
It was Grace Krepky, the openly-shifter candidate running for the House of Representatives… and Zoe’s partner in crime.
She accepted the call.
“Zoe Wilding, tell me you’ve got some good news for me.” Grace’s pretty face filled the screen—a bit younger than Zoe’s twenty-five years, blonde-haired where Zoe’s was raven black, but they had something very important in common… they were both white wolves.
“Sorry,” Zoe said, taking a sip of her coffee. “Science is slow sometimes.” That was certainly true, and it was definitely true that Zoe did not yet have what Grace was looking for, although she was getting closer. She’d been able to replicate the serum that Agent Smith developed to eliminate shifter abilities temporarily, but she couldn’t get it to work permanently. She needed more time. Or to muster the courage to try it out on herself.
Grace scowled. “The election is only two weeks away.”
“I know.” Zoe sighed. “I’m doing the best I can.”
“I know you are.” Grace still let out a small
growl of frustration. “It’s just that this tech would make such a difference.” She was convinced the superhealing ability of white wolves could be distilled into a serum that would be useful to humans—which was technically possible, but Zoe was nowhere near that yet. Even Agent Smith had been surprised by Grace’s superhealing when he had her captured and under his knife. His research only had a few hints that he’d seen anything like Grace’s ability in his test subjects before that.
“Superhealing is great,” Zoe said. “But there are so many variables. Even getting it to the point where we’re ready to trial it on human subjects… I don’t know, Grace, you’d be taking a big gamble going public with this before it’s something we can replicate in the lab.”
Grace’s brow wrinkled up. “Even if there was just the possibility, that’s really something we need to share with the public, Zo. If we did, humans would see us as something amazing like we truly are… and then maybe they wouldn’t be so afraid. Maybe they wouldn’t hate us quite so much.”
Zoe nodded, even though she didn’t really agree. As far she could tell, humans had nothing but hate for shifters… and even more so for witches. Their hate was born of a fear of what shifters could do, and that wouldn’t go away, even with the possibility of superhealing being transferred from shifters to humans. But Zoe wasn’t a politician like Grace—she was just a scientist. That was all she ever wanted to be. She got her Ph.D. when she was only twenty-one and had practically grown up in her father’s lab. Genetic research was where her heart lay, and she was all for using it to improve the condition of humankind… and shifter kind. And she was fine with shifters being shifters if that’s what they wanted. But she wanted it to be a choice, not a destiny built into your DNA. If there was anything she truly believed in, here in her father’s gene therapy institute at the University of Washington, it was that DNA shouldn’t be a prison.
“Speaking of hate,” Zoe said, trying to steer the conversation away from her lack of results. “Did Terra talk to you about her experience with the Wolf Hunter?” Zoe’s cousin Terra Wilding had been kidnapped by the Wolf Hunter—and it turned out, he was a white wolf! That brought the number of known direct descendants of a white wolf to three—Grace, Terra’s mate Kaden, and now the Wolf Hunter. Then there were the two second-generation white wolves in the Wilding family—Zoe and her cousin Noah—and lastly, Owen Harding, whose white wolf had been created under Agent Smith’s torture-via-experimentation. Six white wolves, three different pathways. Which only confirmed to Zoe’s theory that the white wolf gene was some kind of a rogue element, not always expressing under the same apparent conditions. And while her family and friends were good people, the Wolf Hunter was decidedly not. He was like the original white wolf that haunted the Wilding family gene pool—Zoe’s grandfather, an all-purpose asshole who preyed on his own kind and broke up the Wilding pack two generations ago.
“Yes, I talked to Terra.” Grace didn’t seem too excited about that. “The Wolf Hunter is a white wolf, too? I have to admit, I nearly tossed my lunch when I realized I might be a half-sister to that guy.”
“I can imagine.” Zoe knew that sick feeling well—she felt the same whenever she thought about carrying her grandfather’s DNA around. “But that’s not what I meant.” She held up her hand, ticking the points with her fingers. “First, we know the Wolf Hunter is a white wolf like you and me. Second, we know he’s after his father, who is also apparently a white wolf. And the dude’s totally obsessed with this—clearly he has some kind of psychosis or mental issue or something. But it’s possible the white wolf he’s searching for is also your father.”
Grace’s face pinched in. “Okay, look—I know we started out this whole enterprise with me giving you Agent Smith’s data because I wanted to know who my father really was. Obviously not the ex-Senator. But I’m really okay with letting that go. Your priority needs to be isolating this superhealing gene—that’s more important for all of humanity, not to mention the shifters who have to live among them.”
Zoe quirked up one side of her mouth. “And… it wouldn’t hurt your election campaign, either.”
Grace scowled at her. “Well, yes. But I’m not trying to get elected because I want power. I’m not like the ex-Senator, Zo. He only wanted influence, and he was willing to use people’s hate to get there. I’m trying to help people.”
“I know, Grace.” Zoe held up her hands, feeling bad for working her up and getting her so defensive. She really hadn’t meant it that way—she just wanted Grace to slow down a little on the time frame. Give Zoe more time to figure out her part. “I know you’re one of the good guys—trust me, I know the difference. I’m just saying… the Wolf Hunter’s looking for a white wolf who might be your father, and maybe we should be focusing on that. Because it would be a disaster if the Wolf Hunter found him before we did.”
“A disaster?” Grace’s pretty face scrunched up. “Why? And do you really think he’s still hanging around Seattle, like the Wolf Hunter told Terra?”
“It’s entirely possible,” Zoe said. “And it’s also possible we’re talking about the same genetic origin for all the white wolves. Remember—this dude’s really a witch, and witches live freaking forever. The same white wolf could be your father, the Wolf Hunter’s father, Kaden’s father… and even my grandfather. He could be eighty and not look anything over forty. Do you have any idea how old some of the witches are in those covens downtown?”
“Yeah, like two hundred years old? I’ve heard rumors.” Grace was back to scowling. “So you think it’s all the same guy?”
“Maybe. But here’s the key—he’s the source material, Grace. The source material for the superhealing.” Zoe still had her hand up, with only two fingers counted off. She ticked off a third. “We know the Wolf Hunter is collecting DNA. When he was kidnapping all those shifters from the gangs downtown—Marco’s gang—he was taking DNA. Why?”
Grace shrugged on the screen. “I don’t know, the guy’s crazy—”
Zoe shook her head. “It doesn’t matter if he’s crazy—what matters is what he’s trying to do. And we know he’s trying to find a white wolf, with a heavy suspicion that he’s using DNA to do it. But how would a few random samples of DNA help him?”
Grace looked confused. “Just spell it out for me, Zoe. I’m not a brilliant scientist like you.” She was getting annoyed, so Zoe got to the point.
“I talked to my cousin Marco, and he told me that while the Wolf Hunter was torturing him, he injected him with a serum that he supposedly got from his “friend” Agent Smith. It was the suppressor serum, the ones used in Agent Smith’s experiments! Marco is just a normal wolf, so the suppressor worked on him. My theory is that the Wolf Hunter was trying to figure out if Marco was a white wolf.”
Grace’s frown was getting deeper and deeper. “Wait a minute—you’re telling me that the Wolf Hunter has some kind of connection to Agent Smith?”
Zoe shook her head. “I don’t know. The pieces don’t entirely fit together. According to Terra, the Wolf Hunter didn’t realize there were any white wolves besides himself until he saw you come out on TV. But according to Marco, the Wolf Hunter somehow has access to the serums that Agent Smith used.”
“Only Agent Smith was dead before I came out as a wolf.” Grace scowled.
“Exactly.” Zoe lifted her eyebrows. “There’s only one thing that survived past Agent Smith and his very fortunate demise…”
Grace’s lovely face paled a little more. “The database.”
“Are you sure you have the only copy?” Zoe asked. “Absolutely, positively sure? Because the database has enough information for me to re-create the suppressor serum. And if I can do it, and the Wolf Hunter has access to the same database…”
“He can do it, too.” Grace closed her eyes and tipped back her head, letting out a long sigh. Then she opened her eyes and gave Zoe a deadly serious look. “I am absolutely positive that no one else has had access to that data.”
Zoe nodded an
d bit her lip. “Well, it’s possible that Agent Smith had a backup we’re not aware of. And that somehow, the Wolf Hunter got hold of it. Either way, if he has it, he can use it, along with DNA samples from wolves around Seattle, to try to track down the white wolf ancestor. Your father. My grandfather. And the source material for the superhealing serum you want.”
Grace’s shoulders dropped in defeat. “Okay, you’re right. We need to find my father before the Wolf Hunter does.”
Zoe let out a sigh of relief but tried not to let it show. “Good. I’ll see what I can do with the data as well. If we both have the same information, maybe I can beat him to it.”
“All right.” Grace grimaced—it certainly wasn’t the progress she must have been hoping for when she called, but going after the white wolf source would buy Zoe a little more time. And if they actually found the guy, it would legitimately speed up her research—both for the superhealing and for Zoe’s more secret plan to eliminate her own wolf.
Grace pulled in a breath and continued, “We’re doing what we can here at Riverwise to track down the Wolf Hunter.” Her mate, Jared, was one of the River brothers who ran the Riverwise security firm. “You keep doing your job, we’ll keep doing ours.”
“Agreed.” Zoe felt her energy rising up, gearing for more work tonight. She didn’t know how much time she had just bought, but she needed to make the most of it.
Some movement at the end of the lab caught her eye—her father was weaving through the rows of benches, heading her way.
“Gotta go,” she said, reaching to hit the Skype button. It cut off before Grace could reply, but also before her father could see who she was skyping with.
