“Actually,” he said, touching her forehead and brushing something away. “I’m pretty sure it’s not doing anything but letting those ants on it get on your head.”
Ants?
Squeaking, she dropped the wrapper and then watched Hagen carefully.
Hagen caught her around the waist, snickering. “Laney, relax, please. I promise you that I can’t read your mind.”
“What did you tell your team members?” she asked, twisting in his arms.
“That they needed to split and that two would need to get to the hotel to check on your boys,” he responded. “I need the address.”
With a heavy heart, she gave it to him. It felt like a betrayal to the men who trusted her so much. Even though her intentions were good, still she had just handed the Man a verbal map to where her boys were.
Hagen did his freaky look-off-into-nothing stare for a split second and then he took her hand in his. “We need to get to safety. Striker and Boomer are headed this way to rendezvous with us and make sure we can get you to a safe house.”
“No. I want to go to the hotel. I need to check on my boys,” she pressed.
Hagen’s annoyance was hard to miss. “Laney, no. You’re going to a safe house the minute my friends arrive.”
Laney snorted. “That’s what you think.”
“People were just shooting at you. Can you try to think about your own safety for five minutes?” he demanded.
She crossed her arms over her chest. He could get mad. She didn’t care. She was more afraid of losing her family than of pissing off a werewolf. “The men who live in the building with me are like family to me. They are family. They’re important to me. I don’t want them hurt.”
“You think I do?”.
She shook her head. She didn’t really believe he wanted them hurt either. “No.”
“Then please, let’s get somewhere safe. My team is coming. I promise they’ll help.”
“What if those people in the vans already went to my place?” she asked, knowing the answer. If the bad guys had tried her home, they would have found her boys and they wouldn’t have stood a chance against them.
Hagen glanced away, confirming her suspicions.
I could have cost my family their lives.
Laney picked then to lose it, the reality of her situation crashing over her. She considered flailing her arms about and screaming to anyone who would listen, but she realized it would do no good. The damage had probably already been done. If she’d allowed her quest for answers to outweigh her better judgment and gotten innocents caught in the crossfire, she’d never forgive herself.
There was no flailing. No screaming. Only immense sadness. The tears came fast as she sank against him. Suddenly, she felt very drained. More tired than she’d ever been in all her life. She suspected it was shock, but that didn’t change how humiliated she felt.
Hagen didn’t say a word. He lifted her as if she weighed nothing and walked with her down the alley in silence, letting her cry against his expensive shirt. Laney didn’t protest being carried. She wasn’t sure her legs would even work at the moment. She felt safe in his arms. Her connection to him seemed to grow with each step they took and Laney held tighter to him, never wanting him to let her go.
Chapter Ten
Bertrand listened as one of his men finished telling him the details of the other team he’d sent out after the girl. Hanging up the phone, he smiled. While the other team had failed to kill the woman in front of Hagen, they had caused Hagen’s inborn need to protect his mate to kick in and Bertrand had little doubt that was who the female was to Hagen.
The Corporation had done a fair amount of digging on the girl, finding out she had roots in the Asia Project. That was a project close to his heart. It was one he’d learned of when he’d been recruited to join the Corporation and it was one he hoped to one day resurrect. It had been pure genius and so many successes had been birthed from it.
Sadly, they were scattered to the corners of the globe because those meddlesome Immortal Ops agents had stuck their nose where it didn’t belong and then PSI had followed in after them, sniffing around even more facilities involved in the breeding programs. The do gooders had decided they knew what was best as far as scientific advancements, and had begun shutting down the facilities they’d been finding at an alarming rate.
The Corporation, in an attempt to salvage its research—the children—it had disbanded the breeding and incubation labs, hiding the children in foster homes, orphanages, anywhere they could, spreading them out, making it nearly impossible for anyone to track them.
Anyone but the Corporation, of course.
They had teams in place whose only duty had been to try to keep tabs on the subjects as they grew. Some the Corporation pulled in when they were in their teens or young adults, and continued their testing. Others, they simply observed. Laney was one of the watched. The Corporation had even had a hand in facilitating her adoption, putting her with trusted contributors. The girl had been somewhat of a problem child, getting too much attention for her hacking-related mischief. Twice a year when Laney was younger her adoptive parents would bring her to a doctor sanctioned by the Corporation so that he could run tests under the guise of a physical. The Corporation had all of her samples stored away.
The Corporation was smart, though, keeping those details out of any records, hiding them in codes that were nearly impossible to break just in case the records landed in the wrong hands, as had occurred after the fall of one of the facilities in France.
The young hacker had done the unthinkable. She’d actually hunted for them instead of the other way around.
Foolish girl.
She had virtually entered the lion’s den and Bertrand was prepared to strike. He’d spent months sifting through samples on file from Asia Project females and even supernaturals yanked off the streets for testing, looking for ties and links, patterns.
He’d found one.
But Gisbert didn’t want hear of it. Neither did the other scientists who all laughed at his theories that genetics were as big a factor in mating compatibility as destiny, which he put very little stock in.
Bertrand had wanted to find new ways to torture and torment Hagen, the man who had not given in and broken, so he’d looked at every avenue. When he began to experiment to see which samples on file caused a reaction in Hagen—a rise in blood pressure, an increase in aggression, a heightened state of arousal, he had thought that perhaps Gisbert was right—that there was no way to test for mates, but then Bertrand used Laney’s samples. He knew he’d been correct. You could test for it.
Hagen had reacted and exceeded his expectations.
Bertrand knew she was the one who would light Hagen’s fire. He had thought, though, that nature and this so-called destiny would have wanted a stronger female counterpart for such a headstrong male. Her hacking skills were impressive, but from what intel the Corporation had gathered on her, other gifts they’d hoped she’d develop because of the manipulations they’d done to her DNA in utero had not come to pass. She may be smart and good with computers but she was worthless other than that.
But not to Bertrand.
To him she was a way to break Hagen’s spirit.
His prized soldiers had been sent to do what the regular ones had failed to. They would tear the hacker to pieces in front of Hagen and then they would bring Bertrand the man who could fix everything.
And then Gisbert and the others would finally see Bertrand for what he truly was. Not merely human. But rather, the man who was supposed to lead them in their revolution.
Chapter Eleven
James weaved in and out of the alleys and buildings, all while carrying Laney, until he was sure they couldn’t be tracked with ease by anyone other than his teammates. The Pet Projects might be able to catch his scent, but he’d backtracked a good deal in hopes they wouldn’t understand what was going on with his scent and trail.
The sounds and smells of the city streets wer
e ones he was used to, having spent so much time on them over the past ten years, but it was different now that the Corporation—one man in particular, Dr. Bertrand—had altered James’s genetic makeup.
There was no rhyme or reason as to why James’s senses had gone over the top the moment he set eyes on Laney, when they’d been below standard for months. Hell, they’d been human-like. Was it a coincidence that he’d been about to meet her for the first time face-to-face when he lost control of himself? Duke had warned him. Had told him he was pretty much a ticking time bomb and that lack of sex wouldn’t help.
Fucking Duke.
The asshole would love hearing he was right. He’d never let James live it down. Would probably nominate him for Asshole of the Week too. Then James would have his picture plastered on the hall wall next to the one of Boomer and Striker cutting a rug.
James took shallow breaths, hoping to stop the smells of the backend alleys. The sickeningly sweet stench of rotting garbage that had spent far too long in the sun burned James’s nostrils and coated his throat. The wolf in him, who continued to stir, wanted him to shift fully and run from there, find woods, find nature, the concrete jungle not appealing to the animal in the least. And it wanted him to take Laney with him.
His wolf had good taste.
He tried to pull his senses back into himself. As Laney sniffled in his arms, he focused on her scent—a mix of vanilla and citrus. With extreme concentration he was able to isolate only her scent, blocking out the rest. Finally, he could take a deep breath. When he did, his cock decided it would hinder his ability to move quickly, hardening, wanting attention.
Not now.
Laney continued to weep against his chest, and he hated knowing that she was scared and upset over her friends. She was right, though—her boys were probably all dead. The Corporation had more than likely started with her home in their search for her. And the men she thought of as family wouldn’t have been able to stand against the Corporation’s highly trained mercenaries, especially if those mercenaries also included hybrids.
The Corporation would leave no witnesses to tell the tale of Laney’s hacking. That was what the Corporation did—rid themselves of obstacles without hesitation.
With each step James took, the pain in his leg returned. His body, still not fully healed, protested his use of it, trying to convince him to stop, to sit, to rest. Unable to go forward anymore, he moved against a building and held Laney to him, refusing to set her down regardless what shape he was in.
He rested his head against the wall and closed his eyes, praying silently that Laney would come out of all this alive. He didn’t want her life to be the price he paid for past sins. The price he paid for Christopher’s death. He’d refused to listen to his visions then. Refused to see what they were trying to show him. He’d let his temper guide him rather than his gut and Christopher ended up dead. James would never be without the guilt of it. He’d never move fully past it.
How could he?
And now here he was, holding a woman who sparked his every interest, and all he could think was the Fates were going to take her to prove they could. To teach him a lesson.
Please. No. Me for her.
He squeezed her, unclear as to why he was willing to lay down everything for a woman he barely knew. His reactions to her began to play through his head—her scent, the fierce protectiveness, the constant and overwhelming need to claim her, the fact his dick didn’t seem to have an off switch around her and the way he’d been drawn to her like he’d been drawn to no other.
Could it be his wires weren’t crossed? Was she truly his mate? His destined woman?
He was a smart, highly educated man who had never understood why other males of his kind would talk of confusion when meeting their mates. How they could possibly misconstrue the signs spelled out before them. Now that he was suffering from the same affliction, James had to admit, it wasn’t as clear-cut as he thought.
Did he trust his senses and his wolf, one that he had very little control of anymore and who been genetically altered, or did he trust his head? His head said the odds were astronomical that Laney would really be his mate—that by all evidence she was human or maybe even just slightly more than. Slightly more than still did not equal mating material. His body and his wolf said fuck statistics. They didn’t give a shit what she was, only that she wear his mark on her.
My body and my wolf are going to get her killed.
She grunted, her hand tapping his chest. “Too tight.”
“Sorry, sweeting.” He desperately wanted to ravish her mouth once more but didn’t dare attempt it. Not with the state she was in and what she was processing. As much as he wanted her, she had needs, and comfort was one of them now.
She looked up at him, her wide eyes red-rimmed from crying. “I didn’t mean to bring this down on my boys. I never thought I’d get them hurt.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s not in you to hurt them.”
She cried more. “Gus wouldn’t have understood what was happening. He doesn’t talk. Casey and Bill look after him. They don’t let him out of their sight. He wouldn’t understand why men came to hurt him.” She hiccupped as she sobbed. “And Gus lives every day thinking he’s in ’Nam. The poor man. He survived those horrors only for me to get him killed because of my stupid curiosity.”
“Shhh. Laney, don’t do this to yourself,” he said, adjusting his stance to try to take some weight off his bad leg.
“I did this,” she said. “I was so stupid. I thought this would somehow answer my questions. That by following this trail it would lead me to answers about my birth and where I’m from, how I came to be. I didn’t realize it would end like this.”
James let her talk, knowing she needed to get it all out. Needed to talk it through in order to try to wrap her mind around it. None of what had happened could be easy for her to fully grasp. She was young and idealistic. She hadn’t known the true horrors that existed in the world. The monsters hell-bent on destruction. She’d been curious and that was hardly a sin.
“Casey, he’d have put up a fight,” she said softly. “He wouldn’t take an attack lying down. Oh, Hagen, what have I done?”
“When my team gets here, we’ll make sure the hotel is gone to,” he said.
“So that the bodies of my family can be cleaned up before the public finds out, right?” she asked, venom dripping from her words.
“Laney, we don’t know for sure that they are dead. We need all the facts before we go borrowing trouble and getting ahead of ourselves. They could be fine. We don’t know anything yet.”
She closed her eyes a moment. “Maybe, but I don’t think so. I want to hope you’re right but I don’t know.”
“I understand,” he said and he did. He knew what carrying the guilt of getting someone you cared for killed could do to a person. And he was right, they didn’t have anything concrete that said her boys were dead. Luck could have somehow found them, but he doubted it. He’d keep that to himself for now. She didn’t need to hear it.
She leaned her head against his chest and was quiet for a spell, caressing his chest. When she spoke, it was low. “Kiss me again.”
“What?” he asked, sure he’d heard her wrong.
“Kiss me and make me forget. Even if just for a little bit,” she pleaded.
Unable to deny her, James lifted her more and lowered his head. She came up in his arms, her hands going to the sides of his face as she attacked his mouth with hers. James nearly dropped her as fire shot right to his groin, centering there, hardening his cock at an alarming rate. The alpha side of him demanded he take the lead, that he prove he was in charge, but the other part of him, the one that was scared shitless of what Bertrand had done to him and that he might lose control let her set the pace in which they’d move forward.
Her tongue darted into his mouth and James moaned, his hold on her tightening. He had to be mindful not to hurt her. He wanted this woman. Wanted to feel her body wrapped around his.
Wanted to see her face when she came. Wanted to wake up with her still by his side come morning. It had been over a century since he’d felt anything close to raw need, and with a pang of remorse he realized what he’d felt for Elsbeth paled in comparison to what he felt for the woman in his arms—a woman, in truth, he barely knew.
Feels like I’ve known her forever and day.
His wolf pushed up fast and he swayed, fighting to stay upright, keep his beast down and hold Laney.
Claim her.
His gums burned, his teeth threatening to lengthen. He extended his fingers, fearing claws would emerge and in the process cut or harm Laney. That was completely unacceptable. James swallowed hard and nearly dropped Laney, just to put distance between himself and her. She didn’t need to deal with him and his fucked-up alpha-male altered wiring. She had enough crap to deal with.
Her gaze swept up to meet his. She reached up, her lips parting as she touched just beneath his right eye. “Your eyes,” she whispered. “They’re not green anymore.”
Oh shit.
James tensed, waiting for her to freak out about his shifted eye color. He hoped she’d remain calm since she’d taken the sight of his shifted arms without too much theatrics.
“They’re… Hagen, they’re red.”
Red?
In shifted form his eyes were a light amber normally. Red? What the hell had the Corporation done to him? The horror of what he might do, what he might turn into—a single-minded killing machine—hit him with enough force to make him react. He staggered and Laney pushed to get down.
He let her, knowing she needed to be far from him.
The damn fool of a woman she grabbed for him, her fingers brushing over his skin, exciting him more. Was she crazy? Did she have a death wish?
“Hagen?”
He shook his head, leaping back from her. Missing her touch but wanting her safe. “No. I could hurt you.”
With a dramatic huff, she rolled her eyes and approached him quickly. She slapped his arm lightly. “Knock it off. You just told me you wouldn’t hurt me. Remember?”
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