One Crazy Wolf

by Eliza Gayle

  He touched her cheek. “You are perfect too. Don’t ever say otherwise.”

  Kenzie ignored his statement and continued. “Eventually, I needed less and less care and Fiona went into mating heat. She embraced her duty as a fertile female dragon and was prepared to take whatever mate our father deemed appropriate. She couldn’t wait to bear dragons. Only as you know, Mother Nature doesn’t ever play by the rules and delivered her mate to her in the form of a bear who had come to negotiate with our father.”

  “And your family refused to allow it?”

  She shook her head. “The complete opposite, actually. My father believed in all aspects of shifterhood, but especially fate, magic and free will. So they embraced her decision to mate Andrei and he left his original clan to join ours. He refused to take her away from her family and everyone was thrilled. Soon after Fiona got pregnant and our family got busy preparing for their baby’s grand entrance.”

  Simon wanted to tell Kenzie to stop. The physical pain he sensed from her as she got deeper into the story was driving him crazy. His wolf side was taking it even worse. He was getting angry and restless. But they both knew whatever this was he had to hear it. If he was ever going to understand and overcome her family’s objections to their probable union, he needed to fully grasp their objections.

  “That winter, the child was born and not long after we knew something was very different about Fiona and Andrei’s dragonling. Although no one expected how bad it would become.”

  He tried to think of what could have gone wrong. While shifters were typically born healthier than human babies, there could be complications. “Did you have a doctor to help?”

  She shook her head. “There were no healers in our lair at the time. However, it wouldn’t have helped.”

  He found that hard to believe. “Why not?”

  “Are you familiar with the term Chimera?”

  He nodded, agitation surfacing at the negative connotation. “I have heard it.” His stomach tightened as he imagined she was referring to the term often defined as a monstrous hybrid creature.

  “He was powerful, Simon. Even more powerful than our children usually are. He grew at an alarming rate, had uncontrollable bouts of rage, and could not be subdued even by my most powerful brother. It was crazy and we didn’t know how to handle it. Especially when dead bodies started showing up.”

  He now saw where this was going and wasn’t sure he wanted to hear about how whether they had to kill the child or not. Hybrids were different for sure, but monsters?

  Kenzie wrapped her hand around her throat. “We were all terrified, Simon. We had a real life fire breathing hybrid monster living in our lair and no one other than my sister could get near him.”

  “Kenzie,” he whispered, running his hand back and forth along her spine to comfort her. Her distress had turned palpable and he regretted making her talk about it. “You don’t have to tell me anymore. I think I can extrapolate the rest.”

  She shook her head. “No, you were right. You need to hear it all. Otherwise you will never understand why a mating between us can and never will be allowed to happen.”

  Simon’s already agitated wolf shifted in his mind, his irritation growing in bounds. She was wrong. Whether he heard the story or not, he would never give up. She’d effectively handed him another puzzle to solve. Yes, it seemed unsurmountable, but he didn’t believe in the impossible and wasn’t about to now. Every problem had a solution. He just needed to find it.

  Kenzie took a deep breath and continued. “Word spread about my nephew as did the rumors about his blood thirst. The clan leaders in our territory called for a summit and my father agreed. Rather than risk bringing any outsiders into our lair, my parents consented to go to them and the meeting was set. It was supposed to be a secret, but somehow word got out and by the time the meeting started everyone knew what was happening and why. Andrei and Fiona were with their son when he first heard the rumors. The resulting rampage did more than tear our family apart. It decimated it. My nephew killed his father first and then locked his devastated mother in a cage. I wish I could say that was the worst of it all, but it was only the beginning. By the time my sister got free and was able to subdue him, over thirty people had been killed, including my mother and father.”

  Kenzie’s voice broke and the pain of it pierced through all of his emotional barriers. If for even a second he’d believed that he could walk away from her, and he didn’t, the pain of her story tearing through him cemented his resolve. He would find a way to fix this.

  “I’m so sorry, love.” He leaned forward and kissed at the tears clinging to lashes that seemed to refuse to fall. She was breaking his heart. Fuck. He wanted to take that from her and save her from feeling this all over again.

  “To say our family was devastated is an obvious understatement. Everyone in our territory called for his immediate death. But no one was certain how it could be accomplished. While my brothers contemplated what had to be done, Fiona took the responsibility of stopping him all on herself. My quiet, sweet, loving sister poisoned her son and then took the poison herself. I lost half my family in the span of twenty-four hours and we’ll never be the same. So, no, no matter how you feel or how I feel, we cannot be mated. No one in our family will ever take that risk again.”

  “Kenzie,” he started.

  She pulled away from him and the room around them shimmered. The bed they’d shared faded into the rubble of the abandoned lair. The symbolism of the crumbling stone castle did not escape him. Like their family, this place was in pieces. But what she hadn’t quite figured out yet was that he was the man who would help her put them back together again.

  He’d done a lot of crazy things in his life, especially in the name of helping his family. His clan. It wasn’t much of a stretch for him to expand that to her family as well. She would be his mate. That he knew clear to his bones. He just had to solve the genetic puzzle and his mind was already sifting through the possibilities as she put space between them.

  He’d give her that space for now. He’d brought out an emotional response in her that she wasn’t quite ready for. But she would be. Until then, he had to get to work. He’d had no idea just how important stopping Kenzie’s mating cycle would become beyond the saving her life part.

  He was going to save both their lives. And he had the DNA sitting in his lab to do it.

  “Stop it,” she said, anger tinging her words.

  “Stop what?”

  “I think I know that look, Simon. Stop thinking you can solve this. You can’t.”

  “I can,” he said, refusing to believe otherwise.

  “Then you’re a fool. For years my brothers have believed we would find a way out from under this curse. They even have believed that coming to America and breaking through to this land would be enough to break it. They are wrong. You are wrong too. This isn’t just the case of some half-assed vindictive witch making sure we can’t stand on this land. Nor is it a simple science problem that you can fix in your lab. This is much bigger than that. So stop and take a breath and quit looking for a solution. You can’t break a curse you can’t understand. No one can.”

  “You think this is all because of some curse?”

  Kenzie nodded. “Of course it is. And it’s not going down just because we want it too. So let it go.”

  “I’m not letting it go. Believe what you want—for now. I will prove you wrong. What happened to your family was a tragedy, but it’s not destined to happen again. I will make sure of that.”

  Anger flushed her face bright red. “You need to leave. Just get out of my life and don’t look back. If you can’t do that, then I’ll leave.”

  Her words struck fear into the deepest recesses of his mind, but it also sparked a possessive anger that he couldn’t contain. That small ugly part of him that he hid as best he could. “Leave and I will hunt you, MacKenzie. And I will find you. I don’t care if you can fly to the other side of the world. I will find you. And then you
will be my prisoner until I can figure this out. I have no qualms about locking you in a cage until you understand the truth. So you might as well get it through your head right now. You. Are. Mine.”

  For a moment she said nothing. The air between them stilled as darkness and anger swirled through his blood. There were many ways to define a monster. She just didn’t know it yet. He felt the fur trying to push through his skin and he fought it until he shook from the effort.

  His ability to maintain control thinned and things might have gotten worse if he hadn’t noticed the sweat beading at her brow or heard the air sawing in out and of her lungs in short pants. He started toward her, worry stealing through his mind.

  “Get out. Now.” Her words hit him as if they’d been sharpened by steel and tipped in blood. Or maybe it was the venom in her voice that uttered them. He’d gone way too far. Although he’d meant every word.

  “I’ll go. Because I know you need the space. But I suggest you not test me, Kenzie. Don’t make me hunt you. Neither one of us will like what happens next.”

  Her eyes changed until they glowed with the colors of a raging fire and her pupils narrowed into dragon slits. “Don’t underestimate me either, wolf. I can hold my own. Now get the hell off this land before I burn you to a fucking crisp.”

  Simon chuckled. As palpable as her anger felt, he liked that she didn’t back down. One day she would have to face the truth and it would take every ounce of her strength to deal with it.

  “Message received. I’m going for now. Now it’s your turn to heed my warning—MATE.” He uttered the last and then turned his back on her. He’d go for now because he had a lot of fucking work to do and she needed to catch her breath. But he’d be back and his fiery woman would have to deal with him whether she liked it or not.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Simon hunched over his latest lab notes as his mind wandered to Kenzie as it often did. It had been three weeks since she’d kicked him out and he’d only caught a glimpse of her once in town. True to his word, he’d given her the space she needed and to her credit she had not fled from him.

  It annoyed him a little that his wolf salivated over the idea of giving chase. It fired his blood and kept him on edge almost day and night. Sleep had become a thing of the past as he slaved over his research all while he ached to be with the woman he felt connected to.

  The fact he’d had one night with her and not another since drove him a little crazier each day. There was also the matter of her DNA that he’d been manipulating since his return.

  It had taken him nearly two days to get off that mountain on his own. Two days wasted that had delayed his research. By the time he got started, the adrenaline fueled anger dumping into his system had compromised his ability to control the beast.

  Simon took a slow, deep breath and held it as he placed a drop of his latest serum iteration onto the cell laden slide underneath his microscope. Good old-fashioned research had become his constant companion and probable obsession—i.e., not much had changed in his life since his time with the Blackwood pack.

  Except that he had a mate out there who refused to acknowledge him. Yes, that fact was slowly eating him alive. But it also meant the stakes were a lot higher and made him more determined to solve their problems.

  He was also ignoring the fact that he’d gone against Kenzie’s fervent demands that there be no testing on her. Did indirect testing really count? He’d extracted DNA from her body to save her, which made him feel morally obligated to study it. He almost laughed at the thought anything he did had to do with morals. He’d lost those a long time ago.

  As he studied his latest testing results with renewed hope, a buzzer sounded from one of his security screens. He glanced up to find Rafe standing outside the lab door inside his office. Simon set aside his research and got up to let him in. Not even his alpha had the ability to enter this lab without Simon’s permission.

  Upon his return to the clinic, and before he pulled Kenzie’s egg from cold storage, he’d changed all the locks to his office and removed all access from anyone other than him. This shit was too important for an accident or someone butting into what he considered his personal business.

  At his computer station he entered the entry code to let Rafe in and he watched the door pop open and Rafe enter. Ignoring the sounds of his footfalls on the cement floor, he returned to his work station and again stared at the slide. At first, he didn’t believe what he was seeing. The cells were reacting to the serum in ways they’d never done before.

  “This better be good, Simon. You know I don’t enjoy being summoned. And there’s the fact I’ve been calling you for days and you haven’t responded. Are you having trouble with your chain of command again?”

  “I’ve made a breakthrough and I needed every second to make it work.”

  “A breakthrough? What exactly have you been working on in your mad scientist lab this time?”

  He rolled his eyes at Rafe’s assessment. He could mock and poke fun all he wanted, but if this fucking serum worked, he’d be eating crow for years to come.

  “What I’ve always worked on. And I think I’ve finally got something useful. I’ve created a fertility drug for our shifter females that utilizes the dragon magic that is embedded in Kenzie’s DNA.”

  “What! Are you serious?”

  He nodded at his friend. “Dead serious. It should counteract the hostile environment that’s been building over the last several decades.”

  “It should? You aren’t sure?”

  He lifted his shoulders. “My tests at the cellular level are conclusive. However, I have gone as far as I can without true clinical trials.”

  “What the hell does that mean? English, man. I don’t speak scientific.”

  Simon bit back a smile. It wasn’t that hard to understand what he meant, but he suspected Rafe wasn’t pleased to hear the next step.

  “I think you know,” he said. “Someone has to test it on live subjects. In order to do that I need female shifters to volunteer.”

  Rafe frowned, obviously mulling over the implications of that. “Is it dangerous?”

  “It could be. There’s no guarantee that on a larger scale the females won’t have a reaction of some kind or negative side effects.”

  “Dammit, Simon. Just tell me already. What kind of side effects and could they be lethal?”

  “You’re asking for facts I don’t yet have. Magic has always been and always will be volatile and with witches few and far between these days, I’m not sure we can prepare for the worst before testing.”

  Rafe stayed silent for a few minutes as he mulled over the facts. Simon expected nothing less from his friend. He wasn’t generally an impulsive leap of faith kind of leader. He liked to gather the facts and then consider them all before making a decision.

  “Can’t you test at least the dangerous aspects of it on some mice or something? There must be a way to find out more before we risk any of the females.”

  “No. We aren’t human and lab rats mimic human systems far different from ours. Any conclusions I could draw from a non-shifter would be near useless to us. We’ve got to live test it on a shifter female who has unsuccessfully tried to conceive or carry a child to term.”

  Rafe shoved his fingers through his hair. “Fuck. That’s tantamount to abuse. We’d be preying on the most desperate of our females willing to do anything to have a child. That’s a decision I’m not willing to make without at least consulting with a few others.”

  Simon cringed. If Rafe thought the council would take this serious he was in for a rude awakening. Those assholes were part of the problems among shifter kind. They couldn’t get out of their own damned way if their life depended on it.

  A heavy weight settled around his shoulders and threatened to drag him down. He was starting to come down from the adrenaline high he’d been using to fuel his research. It could work for a while when the excitement became palpable, but the aftermath crash would not be pleasant. He needed
to eat and sleep.

  “You do what you gotta do. I did my part. I found you a solution. If it sits here going to waste then I took a big risk for nothing.” He scrubbed his palm over his face and stifled a yawn.

  “Don’t worry about it. She never has to know, dude. You did right by your clan and that’s the important part.”

  Simon’s gut twisted at the idea of Rafe being wrong. Since connecting with Kenzie, the machinations of clan life didn’t seem as important as they once did. He had something more critical to strive for and that was getting and keeping Kenzie in his life forever.

  To do that he needed to turn his research in a different direction. In an area of genetics that in the wrong hands would be more dangerous than that serum Rafe was afraid to test.

  He glanced at his safe and wished for Rafe to leave. He’d saved all of his work with the Blackwood pack and it was time to re-examine it. There had to be a way to manipulate the combined DNA between a dragon and a wolf that would not create murderous offspring.

  As if reading part of his thoughts, Rafe looked up at him and asked, “What are you going to do now? Do you still feel the pull to the Ferguson girl?”

  Rafe’s casual reference to her by her surname made anger rise inside him. The wolf too. She wasn’t just some girl. He expected his best friend of all people to understand that. He was a wolf mated to a cougar for Goddess’ sake.

  Not quite the same.

  He brushed that thought aside and refocused on his Alpha. “She is my mate,” he seethed through clenched teeth. “And there’s a lot more to her than just the Ferguson girl.” He followed that up with a series of unbidden growls. Rafe had stirred his wolf and he was feeling every ounce the anger Simon did.

  When Rafe broke into laughter, it took him every bit of strength he possessed not to punch the other man. While he might deserve it, Simon was still concerned as hell about this constant slipping of his control.