by Milly Taiden
Chase gripped her hard, growling into her neck. His teeth clamped down on her shoulder, marking her again, while his hot seed filled her, coating her insides and soothing her sex.
He held her up and shut off the water. Wrapping her in a towel, he carried her back to bed. Neither was willing to go anywhere until her heat passed.
Ratface and his group snuck through the bushes into the scientist’s backyard. She’d been gone for a couple days. They found her car at the sister’s home and had been watching to see if she left.
None of his guys saw hide nor hair of the target outside the house, but she wasn’t anywhere else in town. She had to be there.
Ratface waved his man forward to the back door. Goon pulled his lock pick tools from his pocket. Squeaky giggles rolled off the hyena and Rat slapped him upside the head.
“Shut it or I’ll shut it for you.”
Goon cringed and leaned out of his reach. “Sorry, boss.” A few seconds later, the door swung open.
The group swiftly moved in.
“Search everything,” Ratface said. “We’re looking for scientific stuff.”
One of his men asked, “How will we know if it’s scientific?”
Ratface shook his head. How could he fly like an eagle when he was stuck with the dogs?
He said, “If you can’t tell what it is and it has a bunch of numbers, it’s probably scientific.”
The group looked at each other. Mumbles of, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. He’s smart,” rolled through them along with titters.
What a fucked-up group of piss ants he worked with. He needed to get away from the big city. Find someplace new where he could start over and she’d never find him. He couldn’t take it any longer.
He wanted to get this gig done and over with and…what? What could he possibly do after being a punk gang member for so long? He’d never held a legitimate job. Didn’t have anyone he could call a true friend. Just those who rode his coattails when he was on a paying job. Fuck.
Ratface left the idiots with him and went into the home’s office and started pulling out drawers and dumping them. He searched for flash drives, files, papers, anything that looked suspicious.
From a closet, he pulled out an old shoebox and flipped the lid off. Inside, a pile of handwritten papers and some envelopes filled the space, one side to the other.
Could this be what they were looking for?
He pulled out a group of several pages folded together. The writing was faded and in pencil. The pretty, looping cursive script flowed across the lines from top to bottom.
He straightened the wrinkled sheets and read the first page:
Dear Nicki,
Summer camp stinks. I wish…
That name struck a chord inside him. He knew a Nicki once. A long time ago. And damn, did he miss her.
The years with her were the happiest of his life. In fact, they were the only happy years he ever had.
They met the summer of her sixteenth year. Back then, there were no phones, no electronic hand-held games, no Facebook. Just person to person conversations.
She was coming in the door of a Kwiki Mart as he was walking out. They saw each other through the glass entrance. He was sure she was staring at his ugly face like everyone did.
He couldn’t help the rodent-like features his face displayed in his hyena body. Somewhere in the family line, someone married or fucked a rat and he was paying the price for it.
Outside the Kwiki Mart, he lit up a cigarette from the pack he just purchased. He felt the rush as nicotine flooded his system and calmed him. He swore he was at the slowest gas pump in the world. It was taking forever to fill the gas tank of his souped-up Mustang.
He paced a few yards from the gas pumps. Not getting close because of the cigarette. He took a big drag into his lungs.
“Hey,” a sweet, feminine voice said behind him, “groovy ride you got there.”
He spun around to see the girl from the store. She held a Coke in one hand and dollar bills in the other.
“Thanks,” he said, then hacked into a coughing fit from the smoke he’d forgotten to exhale.
She laughed and patted his back. “You okay, dude? You look like a fire-breathing dragon with all that smoke coming out.”
He raised a brow at her. Fire-breathing dragon? “That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,” he replied. Most things he heard where rat jokes and negative comments on his looks.
She laughed again. So beautiful. “Dude, you need to hang around different peeps then.”
She was right. He had just dropped out of school a year ago to hang full-time with the gang he belonged to. With them there were no rodent remarks or beatings. They were past that. Went on to other things for entertainment.
He couldn’t get the girl out of his mind. He was so stupid—not getting her name or phone number or anything. He was sure he’d never see her again.
Nichola wasn’t his true mate, but his human side loved her nevertheless. His hyena could get over it.
A couple days later, he and a buddy were sitting in a car waiting for the right time to go in and rob the mart. No guns or knives during that time. The amateurs never carried weapons in town. It just wasn’t done. Fortunately, he had claws and sharp teeth if the need to defend himself ever arose.
Just before closing, there she was again—going inside. He was out of the car and in the store in a heartbeat. She stood in front of the chilled soft drink bottles, looking over the selection.
“You know,” he said, coming up behind her, “the orange drink is pretty good without too much sweetness.”
She swiveled in her long gypsy-style skirt and loose-hanging shirt. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail showing off her clear complexion.
When she turned and smiled at him, he was a goner. His heart would never belong to another. Needless to say, the robbery scheduled for that night didn’t happen. He received a beating when he got back for botching the plan. But it was worth it. Because she was going to meet him the next day at the beach.
After her initial shock from learning about shifters, she was into the species and wanted to know everything about them. He thought that was so groovy. Until she found out about mates.
Her heartfelt need to be perfect for him became her downfall.
Sudden anger and sadness flooded him. He grabbed onto the closet door and ripped it off its hinges, throwing it across the room. A small two-drawer file cabinet sat next to him. He yanked that off the floor and launched it through the air.
His head tipped back and a lone howl erupted from his throat.
When he came back to himself, he noted the men had gathered around the door to the destroyed office. All looking at him with awe or stupidity. He wasn’t sure which, nor did he care.
He pushed through them and headed out the front door, not caring what the neighbors saw. He was done there. What they were looking for wasn’t in the house. He’d send another group to the lab tomorrow.
He wanted this “job” over and done with so he could go back to his self-destructive habits. That was the only way to keep the memories at bay.
Right now, he just wanted to be away from the looks. From the questions. From the heartache.
After four days of nonstop sex and food, they’d finally made it out of Julia’s house Wednesday evening. Sophia had called her boss to take the rest of the week off to get over the…whatever was driving her body.
“You didn’t need to come with me, you know,” she protested when Chase drove them to her lab.
“Yes, I do,” he said while holding the steering wheel in a death grip. They’d just left her house and were headed toward her lab in his black SUV.
When they arrived at her house, they found her front door open. Chase, the macho wolf, had made her sit in his car until he checked out her house and ensured there was no danger to her.
Her home office had been completely trashed. It had made her see red to know someone dared touch her stuff without her consent. Chas
e had called the sheriff, who happened to be a close friend, and told him about the break-in.
“So? Are you ever planning on telling me what you smelled in my house?” she demanded.
“Fine.” His tone was grim when he explained how he scented multiple hyena shifters.
“What would they want with me?” Stunned that other shifters would tear her house apart, she turned to gape at Chase.
“I think someone found out about your research and knows what you can do.” His fingers flexed on the wheel. “We need to make sure your work is secure. Maybe talk to your boss about what’s going on.”
“But…but I was careful with all my work. Every piece of paper I used was shredded and all my samples were stored in my private freezer or destroyed by my own hand.”
“Somehow someone found out, and now they want to get their hands on it. Don’t worry, love, I won’t let anyone lay a hand on you.” Determination lined his features.
She held back from smiling at his words for fear of offending him. He acted like she couldn’t defend herself, but didn’t Chase say she was a shifter now? Well, then she would kick some shifter ass if she needed to.
God, she hoped she would need to so she could finally see what the whole turning into an animal was all about. Get ready, bad guys, there was a new wolf-cat in town, and she was going to shred them to pieces first and ask questions later.
He parked in the back of the building. She noticed how few cars there were. It was after working hours, but most weekdays employees worked late into the night.
Once inside, they walked to her lab where she and Chase found no trace of any disturbance.
“Ew. What is that smell?” She wrinkled her noise in complaint at one of the not-so-fun shifter side effects, a great sense of smell.
“Bleach and ammonia. Someone was in here.” Chase looked around all her equipment, but she had already explained she was extremely careful with her samples and never left anything out so there was nothing to find.
They turned to her secured freezer, where she accessed the inside and pulled out a few vials and beakers and set them on the table workstation.
“Crap,” she started, “I still need to write my notes from that night and add them.” She pulled several loose-leaf sheets of paper with scratched writing on them from a shelf and set them next to the vials. She’d use her jotted down notes to jog her memory of the DNA compounds she played with before discovering the right combination.
“Everything looks fine, Chase.” Sophia closed the vault’s door.
A low noise filled the air. It sounded like a laugh and a whine mixed together.
She scanned the inside of her lab but couldn’t see anyone in the large, dimly lit room. Chase tensed and moved to step between her and the lab entrance, giving her his back.
“What is it?” she whispered, unsure if she should be making any noise.
“Hyenas. They’re already in animal form. I need to shift. We can connect through our wolves. Stay back and don’t do anything to make me want to strangle you later, okay, sweetheart?”
Outraged, she fisted her hands on her hips and glared at the broad expanse of his sexy back while he removed his T-shirt. She didn’t like how she was ready to drool at the sight of him shirtless.
She wished they weren’t in danger so she could have him fuck her on one of her lab tables in clear view of anyone that went by. She wanted to slap herself to stop the erotic visuals that kept filling her head. Focus, woman! She was in danger of getting mauled in her lab, and all she could think of was getting fucked.
“You are one depraved, sick woman in need of mental help,” she whispered to herself.
“You can tell me all about it later—and whatever it was that made that delicious scent come out of you.” She could hear the smile in his voice.
She rolled her eyes and turned her back to him.
She glanced around again and thought about what he had said earlier.
Wait a second, did he mean they could communicate via telepathy? She didn’t get a chance to ask because when she turned to glare at his back, he’d already shifted into a large, black wolf.
She sucked in a sharp breath at the size of his animal. He had to be over six feet in length, with a massively muscular body surrounded by thick black fur, and paws as big as her face. Okay, maybe not that big, but he was huge.
Her inner wolf howled with pride, and wicked thoughts of him going feral to protect her brought a fresh flood of arousal.
“Chase?” she called out to him tentatively in her mind.
“Sophia, don’t move from that spot, sweetheart. They will have to come through me to get to you.”
“How many are there?” She worried her lower lip watching the entrance, scared for his safety.
“I see two coming down the hall, but smelled four.”
She wished she could do something to help him.
“Chase, what if I shift—”
“No!” He growled so loud she winced. Well, crap!
“But why not? I mean I can help you—”
“No.” Frustration and anger built inside her. He seemed to have sensed it because he sighed and then continued at a lower tone. “You cannot shift, Sophia.”
“I can try,” she urged, hoping he would change his mind. “I mean, I know I haven’t ever done it before, but I can give it a shot. I mean, how hard can it be, right? And maybe help you in the process.”
She could sense the tension he was feeling at her words.
“It’s not safe for you to shift.” His voice was soft but serious.
“Why?” Her question was drowned by a loud, piercing laugh. A large hyena dove through the air and went straight for Chase. The animal was big with black and brown coarse fur. The thing looked like a cross between a sick lion and a dog on steroids, so ugly, she was sure it had to be some kind of science experiment gone wrong.
Chase immediately crouched and leaped, catching the assailant mid-flight. His wide-open jaws clamped and locked on its front leg and then swung his prey out the door.
The hyena’s body slapped against the white wall with a loud whine, creating a long bloody mark when it slid down to the floor. Another set of the ugly animals attempted to attack Chase, but he swiped his deadly claws, slicing through the enemies with ease.
He bit into the neck of one and crushed the bones, leaving the hyena in a messy pool of blood on the floor. The other assailant came back with the first aggressor and both attacked, clawing at Chase at the same time. They proved to be enough of a distraction to allow a fourth to break in through one of the lab windows.
Shocked into immobility, Sophia watched the man that stood across the room from her. This was a shifter in his human form. He was shorter than Chase but still a great deal bigger than her, with short black hair and dark brown skin.
The guy was not hard on the eyes either. He looked vaguely familiar. He walked forward, and she wondered again if she should try to shift.
6
“Don’t do it, Sophia. It’s too dangerous with two animals inside you. Your first shift should not be during a stressful situation like this one. If something goes wrong, it’d be a problem we don’t need at this moment,” Chase stated matter-of-factly in her head and continued to fight.
She bristled, hating how much sense he made. Her cat hissed, and her wolf growled.
He made a valid case for waiting. Still, maybe she could find a way to defend herself; she did have claws, and this guy didn’t know that she was now a shifter.
There was enough blood being spilled that she knew he hadn’t picked up her scent, and from what she could tell, hyenas weren’t as sensitive as wolves and cats. She stood, patiently waiting. The intruder came closer.
“Dr. Sophia Reese, why don’t you make this easy on the wolf and come with me now. We’ll let him go, and he won’t come to any harm.” The man had a loud voice with a whiny pitch to it.
“Really? What will you do with me?”
She watched the man and
knew he was assessing her, so she hunched her shoulders and tried to look scared.
“You won’t come to any harm if you give us the experiment you’ve been working on.” He seemed to relax which made her want to pounce on his dumb ass.
“I don’t know what you mean, but I do know one thing. Chase is going to rip you all limb from limb.” She gave him a happy smile.
She prayed one of the animals inside her body was willing to come to her aid. She envisioned her fingers shifting. The man made a grab for her arm. Long, razor-sharp claws stretched out of where her nails would normally be.
Not wasting a second, she turned her body into the man’s, catching him unaware because of her sudden proximity and speed that, she had to admit, had impressed even her. Without a second thought, she buried her claws straight in his jugular, ripping his throat open when she yanked roughly on the soft flesh.
Blood sputtered and splattered all over her face. His shocked, wide eyes stared at her while his claws squeezed painfully into her arm. Fear that he might still hurt her engulfed her for a moment until she saw his large body slump to the floor by her feet.
Nausea rolled up her throat. She watched the man bleed to death.
“Sophia.” Chase’s growl snapped her out of her trance.
She jumped and turned horror-filled eyes to gawk at Chase’s human body. Since he shifted, she was able to see the multiple cuts and bites that covered him.
She tried to swallow down the bile threatening to come out, but her stomach recoiled. For her, it was one thing to say she would kill someone, and quite another to actually do it. She darted past the bloody scene, her sneakers squeaking, and slid over a pool of blood and almost fell on her ass.
Sophia made it to the attached bathroom in the lab just in time to lose all the contents of her stomach in the toilet. Her body heaved until all she could do was gag when nothing else came out.
Chase walked in a moment later in his jeans.
After she rinsed her mouth, he helped her clean her face. He used wet paper towels to get rid of the spots of blood that had splashed her when she tore the hyena’s throat out.