X-Ops Exposed

by Paige Tyler

  “Is it that obvious?” Zarina asked.

  Lillie smiled over her shoulder as she walked over to the counter. “Just a little.”

  “Believe it or not, I actually grew up on a farm. It was nothing like this, though,” Zarina admitted. “How about you? Have you lived here long?”

  Lillie cracked half a dozen eggs into a glass bowl and beat them vigorously with a whisk. “About five years. Since I was fourteen. When my mom passed away, my dad decided to sell everything we had and move out here from Montana to start up the camp. I’ve been here ever since.”

  “I’m sorry about your mom,” Zarina said.

  Lillie’s eyes filled with sadness. “Thanks.”

  “Moving here must have been quite a change,” Zarina said.

  The girl shrugged as she sliced mushrooms and added them to the eggs. “I didn’t want to come here at first, that’s true. But looking back on it now, I realize why Dad did it.” She picked up a block of cheese and deftly grated a small amount. “I didn’t handle my mom’s death very well and was heading down a destructive path. My dad had already been a prepper back in Montana, so trading in our farm there for this camp wasn’t really that much of a change. Besides the fact that we don’t have TV or internet.” Her lips curved slightly. “But I don’t mind missing those things, because if we hadn’t come here, I would never have met Spencer.”

  If Zarina had any doubt the girl was in love with the hybrid, she didn’t now. It was obvious from the look in Lillie’s eyes when she said the man’s name.

  “What does your father think of you and Spencer?” Zarina asked.

  Lillie placed two thick slices of bread on a cooking sheet and slipped it into the side compartment of the closest stove, then poured the eggs into the cast-iron skillet already sitting on top.

  “He absolutely hates it,” she said. “He thinks Spencer is bad for me, that he’s dangerous, and that I could do so much better.”

  Zarina took two plates from the open cabinets above the counter. “Silverware?” she asked.

  “Top drawer on your right,” Lillie said.

  Zarina took out two sets of forks and knives, then set the table nearest to them. “Is he right? Is Spencer bad for you? More importantly, is he dangerous?”

  Lillie frowned as she lifted the heavy pan and brought it over to the table. She spooned the scrambled eggs onto the plates in silence, then placed the pan on the counter. With practiced ease, she pulled the toast out and brought that over to the table, too.

  Pouring two mugs of coffee from the pot on the stove, she placed one in front of Zarina, then sat down across from her. Flipping her hair over her shoulder, she pointed at the scar on her neck. “This was totally my fault. Spencer and I have had a special connection since the day we met, and I’ve always felt safe around him even when his control is at its worst. But then I made the mistake of slipping into his cabin and trying to wake him up from a nightmare. It was a stupid thing to do. I knew better. But I couldn’t stand to hear him shouting in fear. It tore me apart.”

  Zarina spread butter on the toast. She’d heard Tanner do the same more times than she could count. Lillie was right. It was hard to listen to. “What happened?”

  Lillie ate a forkful of eggs before answering. “Exactly what you’d expect from startling anyone armed with claws out of a night terror. Spencer lashed out without even knowing I was there. The minute I cried out in pain, it immediately pulled him out of the dream. Or maybe it was just the scent of my blood. Either way, he snapped out of his rage. He almost lost his mind when he realized he’d hurt me. I swear, for a second, I was worried he was going to kill himself when he saw how bad it was. But instead, he picked me up and carried me to Lorraine’s cabin. She fixed me up just fine.”

  Looking at the scars, Zarina reminded herself to never let Lorraine sew a tear in her clothes. The woman had obviously focused on the practical aspects of keeping Lillie alive, not the cosmetic ones.

  Lillie shrugged and stared down at her plate. “We don’t have a lot of mirrors around here, so I barely think about them, but I know they bother Spencer. To him, they’re a constant reminder of how dangerous he is and why we shouldn’t be together. Which is silly. To me, these scars are a sign of how much our love can endure. Not that I expect Spencer to understand that of course, since he’s a guy.”

  Zarina couldn’t help but smile. “Lillie, you might not know it, but you are wise beyond your years. Can I assume your father doesn’t share your view on the matter?”

  She let out a snort. “Dad went ballistic. He wanted to toss Spencer and his friends out on their butts. I told Dad that if he did, I’d leave with Spencer. My dad knew I’d do it, too, so he backed off.”

  Zarina was stunned by how brave and strong Lillie was. She wasn’t sure she could have stood up to her father over something like this at the girl’s age.

  “You must love Spencer very much,” she said softly.

  Lillie nodded, her mouth curving again. “I know it’s crazy to fall for a guy with Spencer’s issues. He’d be the first one to tell you that between his PTSD from the years he spent in the army and what those crazy doctors did to him, he’s dealing with a lot of crap. But love doesn’t care about a person’s past or what issues they have. When you meet the person you’re meant to be with, nothing else matters.”

  Zarina silently agreed. She wished Tanner would take a page out of Spencer’s book and stop pushing her away. Or maybe she was the one who needed to be more like Lillie. Zarina had just met her and could already tell the girl was a force of nature.

  She sipped her coffee, studying Lillie over the rim. “So, how did Spencer and the other hybrids end up in your camp?”

  Lillie eyed her in confusion, quickly finishing the bite of toast she’d just taken. “Hybrids? What’s that?”

  Of course. Stutmeir’s doctors hadn’t started using that term until after Tanner had survived the first dose of the serum. That was after Spencer and the others had already supposedly died.

  “It’s a term the doctors who experimented on Spencer and Tanner came up with,” Zarina explained. “They used it to describe a person who’s half human, half animal.”

  Lillie blinked. “So you really were there in that ski lodge with those lunatics who wanted to turn humans into monsters?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.” Zarina pushed her scrambled eggs around on the plate with her fork. “But like Tanner said, I wasn’t there because I wanted to be. The man who employed the doctors kidnapped me from my apartment in Moscow a few months before and forced me to help them come up with a drug to create hybrids.” Even now, she shuddered at the memory. “I tried everything I could to slow down and sabotage their work, but it didn’t help. I was able to get Tanner out, but I couldn’t do the same for Spencer and the others. I was sure they’d died.”

  Lillie nibbled on her toast. “The guys don’t talk much about what happened in the lodge, but from what little they have told me, the doctors must have thought they were dead, too. They took their bodies into the woods and left them in shallow graves, probably thinking some wild animals would make everything disappear. But Spencer woke up and dragged his friends to a cave about a mile from where they’d been dumped.” She picked up her coffee mug and wrapped both hands around it. “That’s where Burt found them last January. It was in the middle of a blizzard, and they were freezing and starving to death. They’d been surviving on whatever food they could forage, too scared to go down into any of the nearby towns for food and shelter because they were worried they’d lose control and hurt someone. When Burt brought them back here, a lot of people in the camp were scared of them at first, but that changed as soon as Spencer and the other guys proved they could be trusted. My falling in love with Spencer probably helped a little with that, I guess.”

  Zarina smiled. “Probably so.”

  She and Lillie continued to talk while they ate,
with Zarina telling her about hybrids, shifters, and Tanner, while Lillie told her how Spencer and the others helped out around the camp and worked to control their aggressive behaviors. Maybe it was simply because they’d both fallen in love with hybrids, but Zarina found it incredibly easy to talk to the girl despite the fact that they came from completely different backgrounds.

  “Are you and Tanner getting married?” Lillie asked, setting her fork and knife on her empty plate and pushing it aside. “You can tell me to back off if it’s none of my business, but after seeing how he defended you yesterday, not to mention the look you get on your face every time you say his name, I’m figuring the two of you have been together for a while.” She shrugged. “I can’t help thinking if the two of you can make it work, then Spencer and I might, too.”

  Zarina hesitated, hating to dash the girl’s hopes. But she couldn’t lie.

  “No, we’re not getting married.” Tears stung her eyes as she suddenly realized marrying Tanner had been a dream buried deep in her heart all along. She swallowed hard and blinked them back. “Tanner and I care about each other, but in our case, it’s not enough to overcome the obstacles life throws in front of you.”

  Lillie set her mug down on the table with a frown. “Sure it is.”

  Zarina gave her a sad smile. “I wish it could be. But like Spencer, Tanner is constantly worried about hurting me or someone else who’s important to him. That’s why he’s been living out here on his own for the past two months. He thinks that’s the only way to keep other people safe.”

  Lillie let out a sound of frustration. “What is it with guys? Spencer has said the exact same thing to me a dozen times. He thinks it’d be better for everyone if he goes up to Alaska and lives alone in the wilderness. Are all men born with that macho crap in their DNA?”

  Zarina laughed. “Probably. The worst part is that it doesn’t have to be that way. I came out here with an antiserum that will make him human again, but Tanner won’t even consider taking it. He’s so damn stubborn, it drives me insane.”

  Lillie’s eyes widened. “You have a cure for this hybrid thing? Would it work on Spencer?”

  Zarina considered that. She hadn’t thought about it until now, but there was no reason it wouldn’t. “Almost certainly. I developed the antiserum specifically for Tanner’s type of hybrid DNA. Since Spencer and the others were created using the same hybrid serum, it should work on them, too.”

  Excitement danced in Lillie’s eyes. “Taking the drug wouldn’t be dangerous, would it? There wouldn’t be any side effects, right?”

  Zarina sighed. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that simple. “It won’t kill him or cause any significant damage. If there was any chance of that, I’d never consider giving it to Tanner. But Lillie, this drug is designed to make drastic changes to a hybrid’s DNA to reset their body back to what it once was. There’s a price to pay for that.”

  “What kind of price?” Lillie whispered hesitantly, like she was afraid to hear the answer.

  “There could be slight physical and personality changes,” Zarina said. “He’d probably look a little different, maybe shorter and less muscular. His voice and eye color could change. Maybe his hair color, too.”

  She nodded. “That’s not so bad.”

  No, but there were other possible side effects that might be. Ones she didn’t want to so much as consider in Tanner’s case. But she’d deal with them if it meant helping him.

  “Lillie, there’s a small chance Spencer might not remember certain things, maybe not even you. You’d have to start your relationship all over.”

  The girl swallowed hard but then took a breath. “Is that all of it?”

  “I wish it were,” Zarina said sadly. “I’m not sure if Spencer can father children now that he’s a hybrid, but after taking the antiserum, there’s a very good chance he won’t be able to. I didn’t test the antiserum for that possibility, but everything I know about medicine makes me think the back and forth changes to his DNA are probably going to be too extreme to ever let that happen.”

  Lillie’s eyes filled with tears. “I could deal with losing the parts of what make him the Spencer I know, but not the part about him being unable to have kids. He comes from a big family and talks about having a family of his own all the time. I couldn’t let him give that up. I’d rather he stay like he is.”

  “Do you think he’d feel the same?” Zarina asked gently.

  The door opened, and a group of preppers walked in before Lillie could answer. The girl quickly wiped the tears away and gave them a wave as they headed over to the stoves to make breakfast. Then she turned her attention back to Zarina.

  “I don’t know. Spencer would take any risk if he thought it might change him back to what he used to be, especially if he thought it would keep me safe.” She reached across the table to take Zarina’s hand. “Please don’t mention the antiserum to him. Let me tell him.”

  “I will,” Zarina assured her. “I promise.”

  That seemed to satisfy Lillie. The girl released her hand and sat back with a sigh. “Is that why Tanner won’t take it? Because he knows about the side effects?”

  Zarina shook her head. “No. I never got the chance to get into that level of detail with him. He said he wouldn’t take it the moment I brought it up. I’m sure he has his reasons, but he won’t tell me what they are. In fact, he doesn’t tell me much of anything. Instead, he keeps saying he needs to stay as far away from me as he can, and it’s infuriating as hell.”

  Lillie rolled her eyes. “Tell me about it. Please tell me he doesn’t pull the same crap Spencer does and use that line when you tell him you love him.”

  “Actually, I haven’t told him,” Zarina admitted.

  “But you love him, right?”

  “More than anything. But I’ve always thought a conversation like that should wait until we’re…I don’t know…closer, I guess you’d say. Why tell someone you love him if he isn’t ready to hear it?”

  “Because Tanner is a guy,” Lillie said as if that explained everything. “Besides, sometimes you might have to both lead the horse to the water and make him drink.”

  Zarina had absolutely no idea what that meant. Maybe it was an American thing. “I don’t understand.”

  Lillie sighed, and for a moment, it seemed the nineteen-year-old girl was years beyond Zarina in both age and wisdom.

  “I mean that if you want to be in Tanner’s life, you might need to put yourself in it regardless of what he says.”

  * * *

  “So, how did you stumble across these preppers in the first place?” Zarina asked as she pulled the vial of antiserum out of her backpack to check on it. “Did you smell Spencer and the other hybrids?”

  Tanner momentarily turned his attention away from the ax in his hand and the wood he was chopping, glancing suspiciously at the vial in her hand. They were on the edge of the camp, and while they weren’t exactly alone considering there was a whole group of people nearby, she wasn’t worried about anyone overhearing them. Well, maybe except for Spencer and the other hybrids, but they were off patrolling the woods.

  “Yeah,” Tanner said. “I picked up their scent within the first couple of days of getting here. At first, I thought I was having some kind of olfactory flashback, but I figured out soon enough it was real. It wasn’t difficult to track them down after that.”

  From where she sat on a nearby tree stump, Zarina watched Tanner position a big log on its end a few feet in front of him, turning it this way and that like he was a diamond cutter looking for that one perfect place to strike. She waited for him to tell her the rest of the story she’d been curious about hearing since seeing the hybrids yesterday, but he seemed to be done.

  “Weren’t you stunned when you realized the men who’d gone through the hybrid experiments with you were still alive?” she prompted.

  He didn’t say a
nything for a moment, but then he shrugged. “I guess so. I’d figured I was the only one who’d made it out of those labs. Finding out I was wrong was a relief in a way.”

  She was about to ask him what he meant by that, but he gestured to the vial in her hand. “You planning on injecting that stuff into a bear or something?”

  Zarina sighed, giving up on the idea of digging deeper. It was obvious this particular conversation was finished. She flipped the vial’s protective case over in her hands, looking for signs of damage.

  “No, I’m not injecting it into any bears,” she told him after she was satisfied it was completely intact. “It was designed around the specific serum used on you and tailored for your particular hybrid variant. It would have no effect on a bear at all. Or any other animal for that matter.”

  Tanner grunted “That’s good, I guess.” He turned his attention back to the ax in his hand and the big log standing on its end in front of him. “Not that it matters, since I’m not taking it.”

  “I know,” she said. “You’ve already mentioned that to me several times.”

  Tanner’s jaw twitched a little, like he wanted to say something, but he didn’t. Instead, he bounced the ax in his hands a few times, then swung it violently over his head, slamming it into the log in front of him and splitting it neatly in two. He then moved over to the next log he’d already set up and whacked that one in half, too, before turning his attention to the next, and the next, and the next. After he split all of them, he patiently collected up the pieces, brought them back to the center of the flat piece of ground he’d been working on, and set them up to do it all over again. He’d been doing this same thing for over an hour like he was some kind of machine.

  Zarina didn’t say anything, either. Mostly because she was too busy eyeing Tanner’s bare chest and enjoying the way his sweat-covered muscles flexed and strained in the cool mountain air as he worked. She’d seen him without his shirt plenty of times before, but she still found herself transfixed at the sight of his broad shoulders, thick pecs, bulging biceps, and rippling abs. Even that little trail of dark-gold hair that led from his belly button down into his jeans was mesmerizing.