Pack

by Cassandra Chandler

  “You can’t be serious.” And yet, Marcus knew she was.

  It wasn’t just the way she was staring at him, the set line of her jaw. It was everything he’d learned about her in their brief time together. Her determination, her drive.

  He still felt half-sick. There had to be some way they could cure her without having to remove her arm.

  “Without infecting her myself.” He thought the words as strongly as he could, making sure his dweller knew where he stood.

  Porter’s expression had gone cold again. Calculating. He would probably love the chance to study Tessa’s dwellers.

  “He’s just as bad as Dexter.”

  Marcus started to growl. His skin prickled and tingled, his hair standing on end.

  “Stop.” Tessa shifted closer to him and ran the fingertips of her free hand over his jaw—the hand she was contemplating losing.

  Marcus grabbed her wrist above her wristband and pressed her palm against his cheek. He had to be able to protect her better than this. He had to keep her whole.

  “My dad—my human dad—was a doctor,” she said. “We talked about situations like this sometimes. Sacrifices that had to be made to save people. Removing disease so that the person could flourish.”

  Marcus shook his head, pulling her hand away from his face. “Tessa…”

  “Humans have been dealing with this kind of choice forever,” she said. “Think of sailors who had to have amputations at sea. I’ll have a clean OR, an extraordinarily qualified surgeon—given Porter’s knowledge of dwellers—and probably some kind of freaking laser-cutter-scalpel thanks to Vaughn.”

  “Actually—” Vaughn had perked up, but his expression fell under the weight of Marcus’s glare. After a moment, Vaughn glared back and shook his head. “You know what? No. Not this time. It’s too important.”

  Vaughn stepped right in front of Marcus, PAWN at his side. Normally, he held it up like a shield.

  “People deal with all kinds of necessary modifications to their bodies nowadays, Marcus. Is it a big deal? Yeah. But it becomes a bigger deal if you just ignore it and hope it’ll go away. If removing her arm will spare Tessa from having to eat people—living people—I say we go for it.”

  “Your beta has a spine after all.”

  Marcus growled, willing his dweller to shut the fuck up. His voice was harsher than he intended when he spoke. “There has to be another way.”

  “I watched cancer kill my mom,” Vaughn said. “I watched it eat her up from the inside over years. Years, Marcus. If there was anything that could have been done to save her—anything—I would have made sure it happened. Whatever it took, whatever it cost me—or her, if that was her choice. You shouldn’t be fighting Tessa on this. You should be supporting her.”

  Shit.

  “Thanks, Vaughn,” Tessa said.

  Vaughn was right. They were both right.

  Tessa squeezed Marcus’s hand and let out a tiny laugh. “As much as I know you’d love to pin Vaughn to the wall, this is my decision. And I choose to stay human.”

  To stay human.

  Even if Marcus was willing to infect her, she wouldn’t be willing to let him try.

  “I’ve seen…” She took a deep, shaky breath, then let it out slow. “I’ve seen Edgar feed. I won’t let that happen. I won’t become that. It’s this or the incinerator.”

  He pulled her against his chest, burrowing his head in the nape of her neck. What the hell kind of alpha was he if he couldn’t protect his pack? And what would happen between them if Tessa became fully human again? What if it made it harder for him to control himself? Or he slipped up and turned her?

  He wanted to tell himself it wouldn’t be that bad if she became a Hive Mother. But after everything he’d learned, he couldn’t fool himself. And he knew he was being selfish.

  Just because he couldn’t protect her from things that had happened in her past didn’t mean he couldn’t protect her in the present—or the future. He would control himself, even if she didn’t have the buffer of her dweller keeping him in check. He would watch over Porter to be sure Tessa was treated right. And he would take care of her while she healed.

  The thought of it, though. It was almost too much. His skin was crawling. He wanted to howl.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck, stroking his hair. No matter how brave a face she was putting on, he could feel her trembling. He could smell her fear.

  He could also smell her dwellers. The scent was growing stronger.

  Porter’s voice sounded behind them. “Vaughn, prep the stasis chamber.”

  “What…now?” Vaughn said. “Shouldn’t we, I don’t know, wait till tomorrow morning? Give her some time to psych herself up?”

  Tessa pulled away from Marcus. This time, he didn’t fight it. He didn’t let himself. He followed her instead.

  “Porter’s right,” she said. “We need to do this as soon as possible.”

  “If Edgar is on her trail, there’s no telling how quickly he’ll show up.” Porter was already opening drawers that were built into the walls, pulling out tools and lining them up inside the glovebox in the lab. “We need these dwellers incapacitated before that happens, especially if he’s able to awaken them from their dormancy.”

  “Wait, ‘incapacitated’ or ‘fried’?” Tessa said.

  “We can’t let go of this opportunity to study them,” Porter said. “There’s too much at stake.”

  “Like the Blade you were trying to save with G-450?”

  “That’s G-405.” Porter gave her another placid smile. “If the stasis field doesn’t work, the chamber can be flooded with fire, cold, or electricity.”

  “Cold will just slow them down,” Tessa said. “And fire will only work if you can completely incinerate my arm instantly. Like even turning the bone to ash. Otherwise, they’ll spread.”

  “Electricity it is, then.” Porter turned back to the chamber. “We already know it works for both stunning and destruction from our experience with G-405. Vaughn, if you could assist.”

  “Yeah.” Vaughn had gone pale. He glanced at Tessa, then bowed his head and joined Porter.

  The room changed as they worked. A stinging antiseptic smell tainted the air. Even the spectrum of the lights shifted, adding a pale blue glow to the walls.

  Tessa leaned into Marcus. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and hugged her tight.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” he said.

  She laughed. “I’m sure I don’t want to do this. But I have to.”

  He kissed the top of her head, wishing there was another way. Knowing there wasn’t.

  “I’ll take care of you afterwards,” he said. “While you heal.”

  “I know. That’s why I think I can go through with this.” She pulled back enough that she could look up into his eyes. “I’m done running, Marcus.”

  Before he could think better of it, he leaned down and kissed her. Slow, deep, possessive.

  She was done running. And if this was how she was taking her stand, he would be right at her side.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The way her stomach was flopping around, Tessa wondered if it thought it was on the chopping block instead of her arm. Her mouth was dry and the fingers of both hands had a pins-and-needles sensation from the adrenaline in her system.

  She needed to calm down. Getting worked up would set off her dwellers. Huddling closer to Marcus’s chest helped. His arms were warm and strong around her.

  Holy shit, her life had changed dramatically in twenty-four hours.

  Marcus seemed even more upset about the procedure than she was. But then, he didn’t know what was really at stake. He’d never sat through one of Edgar’s meals.

  She shook her head and wrapped her arms around Marcus, squeezing him tighter. He probably thought she was nervous about losing her arm. She was more worried about not losing it.

  “We’re ready,” Porter said.

  He was standing next to what looked like a
modified glovebox. Vaughn was a few feet away, holding his shiny clipboard-computer-thing in clenched hands.

  Marcus put his arm around her shoulders as they walked toward the box.

  “What do I do?” she said.

  “Push your arm through there.” Porter nodded toward a circular access panel in the side of the box that was sealed with what looked like flexible plastic.

  She did as he said and gave a nervous laugh. “My dad used to let me go to work with him sometimes when I was a little girl. I always thought these things were so cool.”

  “I guarantee you’ve never seen one as cool as this,” Vaughn said.

  His smile was so forced, it hurt to look at him. She tried to smile back. Pretending that everything was okay.

  Her hand was shaking.

  Porter slid his arms into the gloves built into the side of the box. He surprised her by grasping her hand in one of his and giving it a reassuring squeeze.

  “Marcus, if you could stand behind Tessa and help hold her still if needed,” he said.

  “Hey.” She mustered as much bravado as she could. “I’m still a hunter. I can handle this.”

  Dexter had been hanging back, but he stepped into her periphery. “You’re not a hunter anymore. You’re a Blade.”

  Somehow, hearing him say that made her eyes flood with tears. She forced them back, letting out a half-strangled laugh. Marcus’s grip on her shoulders increased and he moved closer, his chest pressed against her back.

  “I guess once you go through losing an appendage together, it forms a lifelong bond,” she said.

  “Tessa…” Porter looked at her with sudden warmth. He squeezed her hand tighter.

  He opened his mouth as if to say something, but then winced and snapped it shut. The warmth fled, and he turned back to look at her arm with a dispassionate stare.

  “You sure you’re up for this?” she said.

  He chuckled briefly. “We’re sure.”

  So weird.

  He let go of her hand and started prepping her arm for the surgery, messing with the tools he’d put in the glovebox. The first thing he did was apply a tourniquet a few inches above her wristband. It was much tighter than she was used to, which was reassuring.

  The temperature inside the box dropped. Vaughn was tapping commands into his clipboard.

  “What is that thing, anyway?” She shivered as the skin on her arm raised in goosebumps.

  “It’s a PAWN. P-A-W-N. Like a portable computer, only cooler.”

  “Of course.” She laughed, grateful for the distraction. “What do the letters stand for?”

  “Portable Access to the Wireless Network.” Vaughn glanced over and gave her another half-smile. “It sounded better in my head. Nobody’s ever asked before.”

  “You guys really need to talk more,” she said.

  “At the moment, Vaughn needs to focus.” Porter was staring intently at her arm. “Drop the temperature by another ten degrees, please.”

  Vaughn tapped on the PAWN and the temperature in the box immediately lowered.

  “That’s a neat trick,” she said. “I guess you weren’t kidding about being able to flood the box with electricity or fire.”

  “I promise I will do my best not to incinerate or electrocute you.” Vaughn cast a strained grin at her. “Unless you want me to.”

  “I’ll let you know.” She leaned against Marcus’s chest, grateful for his support. “Wait, if you electrocute me, is there a chance you’ll catch Marcus as well?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Marcus said. “Even if something goes south and they hit me, too, electricity doesn’t kill werewolves. It just hurts like hell.”

  “And fills the room with the smell of burnt dog hair.” Vaughn laughed. “Hey, finally, something we know that the hunter doesn’t.”

  Tessa snorted. “If this goes well enough, we’ll have plenty of time to compare notes.”

  Porter picked up something that looked like a scalpel, but with a larger handle. Tessa tried not to look at the other tools, but it was hard to avoid them.

  Scalpels, tweezers, swabs, something that looked like a high-tech bone saw…

  She wanted to look up at the ceiling, but forced herself to keep watching what he was doing. If even one of her dwellers escaped, they would all be in danger. Turning into a ghoul was only moderately better than becoming a Hive Mother. She took a deep breath and blew it out, focusing on Marcus’s warmth behind her.

  “The cold will slow them down,” Porter said. He lifted her arm and slid a metal trough underneath, then set her arm on top of it.

  “What’s that?” she said.

  “Stasis chamber.” Vaughn tapped on his PAWN some more.

  Tessa shook her head. “Okay, we really need to talk about this. You’re not trying to capture some of these, are you?”

  “You said they’re subcutaneous—living just beneath your skin,” Porter said.

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you can safely pick a few out and keep them around as pets.”

  “If we thought we could remove all of your dwellers safely, we’d be working on an extraction instead of an amputation,” he said.

  “Then why the stasis chamber?”

  “We need to see how they react to a threat. If we can capture one in the process, so much the better.”

  “But—”

  Porter cut her off. “This procedure will take time. If your dwellers decide to burrow into your muscle tissue or bone to spread through your body before we’re done, there will be no stopping them.”

  Shit. That was a terrifying thought.

  “They’ve never done anything like that before,” she said. That didn’t mean it wasn’t possible.

  Porter was peering at a screen built into the top of the glovebox that magnified her arm. She could see it as well. The fine hairs sprouting from her skin looked as big as trees.

  “You’ve probably never done anything like this before,” he said.

  She snorted. “Actually, I have.”

  Everyone looked at her. She thought she could even feel Marcus’s stare from over her shoulder. There was no point in waiting for follow-up questions, so she dove in.

  “A year after I was infected, I hooked up with this guy named Kyle. He had a degree in biology and was working through med school. He’d stumbled across dwellers, and I helped him not get himself killed.” At least, not by the Redcap he was stupidly trying to capture.

  “Did he try to remove your dwellers?” Porter asked.

  “Just one. To study.” She shook her head, biting the inside of her cheek to try to push back the guilt and grief that always surged through her when she thought about Kyle.

  They’d already run so many tests by then. They thought it would be safe to remove one. To see if they could cure her.

  After a few moments of silence, Vaughn was the one who asked, “What happened?”

  “He was able to remove one. But the rest in my arm went nuts. He was so focused on tightening the tourniquets he had put on my wrist and arm and making sure they didn’t spread that…he lost track of the one he’d removed.”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head, trying not to remember the fear in his eyes, how he’d screamed when the thing had made it to his ear without them knowing.

  How he’d begged her—begged her—not to kill him afterwards.

  “Please, Tess. I don’t feel any different. It’s still me.”

  Marcus tightened his grip on her again. She felt him lean his forehead on the top of her head.

  Killing someone was bad enough. Infecting them…

  Marcus knew that fear. He had to feel the urge to spread his infection, to make more of his kind. He was fighting it—and winning. She would fight, too.

  “Kyle tried to cure me,” she said. “He wound up becoming infected. I won’t let anyone here risk that. So take off my arm and burn it.”

  If her warning scared Porter at all, he didn’t show it. He just kept staring at her with that stupi
d little smile. He turned to Vaughn, who tapped furiously on his PAWN. The air in the chamber became colder. Her fingertips were turning blue.

  Porter looked back at his screen. “We are a bit more experienced, here. But the tourniquet at the wrist is a good idea.”

  He added the other tourniquet as if it was no big deal. What did it take to rattle these guys?

  Finally, the moment she was dreading even more than the first cut happened. Porter hooked one gloved finger under her wristband and pulled it down her arm.

  Tessa didn’t get a chance to look at the area often. She forced herself to keep looking now.

  The skin was completely white. It glistened in the light, a waxy cast to it. The scar from the Hive Father’s teeth formed a circle on the side of her forearm. Seeing it again prompted a fresh wave of hatred for Edgar to wash through her body.

  She had to survive. To survive and kill the bastard who had done this to her. Who had killed her family, and so many others.

  “They’re larger than we anticipated.” Porter brought his scalpel near one of the inch-long lumps just under her skin. It shifted away from the blade. He kept talking, as if he was carrying on a conversation with someone who wasn’t in the room. “They’re remarkably aware of their surroundings. How must their senses work…”

  Marcus let out a low growl behind her. “Tessa, are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” She nodded. “The cold is making my arm numb. And they aren’t as…wriggly…as usual.”

  “I think I’m going to be sick.” Vaughn started to move away, but Dexter grabbed his shoulder and held him in place.

  “Hold it together for a little longer,” Dexter said. “That goes for you, too, Marcus.”

  Tessa didn’t know what was going on behind her, but Marcus had been growling pretty steadily since Porter had peeled off her wristband. She lifted her head toward Marcus, trying to reassure him.

  “How bad is it?” His voice was a deep, guttural sound.

  Porter didn’t seem to notice. He was too busy studying Tessa’s arm. “There’s only one way to be sure. Vaughn, initiate the chamber.”

  After a few taps, the metal trough underneath her arm buzzed. Ripples of energy spread over her skin up to her elbow.