by Cecilia Lane
Rylee tried to laugh, but it came out as a strangled sound. “You know what they say about assuming, Major.” She slung her carry on over her shoulder and jerked her suitcase out of the hands of the driver. “Just up the road, is it?”
Delano gestured to the men surrounding him with an air of questioning her sanity. “You really should just stay the night, missy. You don’t know what kind of things those monsters can get into.” He pointed to the healing marks on his face. “Got these from a tussle with one of them. They’re dangerous to everyone around them.”
Rylee drew herself up to her full height, which brought her squarely to Delano’s shoulder. “It’s Doctor Garland, actually. I am a guest of those monsters and here on assignment by your superiors. I will oversee my lab as I see fit, and that means I will go there now, to ensure everything has arrived without damage. I will remain there, to ensure everything stays intact and to make myself available to the subjects I am to study. Now. Am I to enter up the road, or someplace else?”
The scowl on Delano’s face deepened with her every word and made her more firm in her choice. The camp had gone eerily quiet with their exchange, almost as if they were wolves waiting for their leader to attack. She didn’t want to remain with them for a moment longer than necessary.
Delano drew the cigar from his mouth and pointed. “Up the road. Hope they have someone waiting. We don’t have access without them. Cruz, Thompson, Miller, escort the lady to the territory line.”
Rylee didn’t miss the refusal to use her title. At least he didn’t infantilize her with missy again.
She nodded curtly. “I’m aware of how the barrier functions. Thank you.”
She didn’t wait for her escort to assemble. She simply turned on her heel and began her walk toward the territory line. Footfalls behind her were her clue that her guards were following, but she didn’t turn to give them the option of objecting to her decision.
Rylee soon passed the last line of tents. A wide space opened before her on the road and she stepped forward. A small glance over her shoulder showed her the escort standing back with arms crossed over their chests. They didn’t want or couldn’t get closer, then. Fine by her. She didn’t want them crowding her a moment longer.
She peered into the distance. There was nothing to see but more trees and an empty road. “Excuse me? I’m Rylee Garland. I’m supposed to set up a lab in Bearden?” She knocked on empty air. “Anyone home?”
Without warning, a man appeared. He simply stepped out of nothing. Rylee sucked in a surprised breath, hands going to her throat and eyes widening. Well, shoot. She’d been told it was a shock, she’d watched videos of the phenomena, but nothing prepared her for the real thing.
“Ms. Garland, is it? We weren’t expecting you until the morning.” The man extended his hand. “I’m Judah Hawkins, Bearden’s Chief of Police.”
“Doctor Garland.” She reached out and shook his hand. “I’m terribly sorry for surprising you like this, Chief Hawkins. But I arrived early, and would much prefer an actual bed than a camp cot.” She pushed her glasses up her nose and adjusted the bag slung over her shoulder.
Judah blinked, then grabbed her suitcase out of her hand. “Muriel’s Bed and Breakfast will have a bed, I’m sure. Step on through, Doc, and we’ll get you settled.”
Rylee expected to feel something as she took her first step into the Bearden enclave. Other than a shiver she couldn’t set aside as a stray breeze, she didn’t feel a thing. She’d need to remember to write that down as soon as she could pull out her notes and compare it to any other times she managed to step through with a supernatural guide. Was she able to feel the barrier, or was it her own anticipation?
“This the scientist, Chief?”
Rylee jerked in surprise at the voice. She didn’t expect to see two see two patrol cars just feet from where she’d stood. She glanced over her shoulder. The men who escorted her through the military camp were turning around and heading back to their duties.
“This is her, Cullins. I’ll drop her off at Muriel’s. Let me know if the boys get rowdy tonight.” Judah gestured to the car further back. “This way, ma’am.”
He opened the back door and shoved her suitcase inside, then stepped aside for her to enter.
The ride was silent, though not for trying. She pressed him on how crossing the barrier felt, how many citizens lived in the enclave, and how long they’d been there. Each question was met with a mumbled, “You’ll have to ask Mayor Gale.”
Rylee slumped against the seat and let the quiet grow between them. It wasn’t long before they took another precarious curve and then started sloping down. The town of Bearden stretched out in front of her, then they were inside its borders.
“That’s the clinic. I was told your lab will be there,” Chief Hawkins said, pointing to a building on the outskirts as they passed.
“It is. Deliveries should have been made for me,” Rylee said. She sat on her hands to resist the urge of pressing them and her face against the glass.
An entire town, hidden away from the rest of the world. And she didn’t care what the military neglected to say; if one of these enclaves existed, she was certain there were more. She wanted to make a good impression on them and the government, so the others didn’t need to hide.
Judah drove past the clinic, then entered the main stretch of town. It was a charming place suitable to small towns on television shows. Stores and huge trees lined the street, which came to a stop at an open field. Judah followed the road around the square, then pulled to a stop in front of a sprawling building with a handmade sign hanging over the front door.
Rylee barely had time to take in the name before Judah was out of the front seat and opening her door. She stepped onto the sidewalk and dragged her carry on bag with her.
“Here we are. Muriel’s is the place most of our guests stay. Someone will be by in the morning to take you to your lab. Have a good evening, ma’am.” Judah dipped his chin in farewell and left her standing alone in a town that shouldn’t exist.
Trying to keep her delighted grin to herself, Rylee collected her suitcase and stepped into the bed and breakfast. She couldn’t wait to get to work.
Chapter 4
Rylee had been inside the Bearden enclave for less than fourteen hours and she already loved it. She received more than a few glances and whispers behind hands, but no one had approached her with a mean word.
The town itself was like some idyllic television setting, she decided on her walk from the bed and breakfast to her lab at the clinic. Birds chirped in the trees lining Main Street, flowers bloomed around the thick trunks, and everyone seemed to know everyone. She couldn’t wait to explore more than the diner, though she was grateful for Muriel’s recommendation. She’d been picking at the delicious to-go breakfast all morning while she unpacked her lab.
Even if it hadn’t been protocol, she would have insisted on being the one to set the space up herself. She knew how she liked items arranged. Some things would be used far more often, and those needed to be within easy reach. But the actual process of unpacking the shipping boxes was a daunting task.
She was launching herself into the next level of her geneticist career, she kept telling herself as she ripped tape and avoided cardboard cuts on her hands. She marked items off her shipping list as she went. Slides, microscopes, test tubes… check, check, check.
A sliver of what she didn’t have slid into place. She couldn’t share her success with anyone. Oh, she had her family, but it just wasn’t the same. She didn’t trust anyone enough to consider them a partner in her life. She had no one to share her worries and her burdens. She was going about her life alone.
She wished she could learn to trust again. Peter had taken that from her, and nothing seemed to put her at ease enough to move on. She tried, truly. But some part of her always looked for an excuse to back away before she made the leap into getting closer to someone. Friends and colleagues were all held at arm’s length to keep danger at
bay.
The door banged open, and she jumped. The test tubes she’d been pulling from a box rattled in her hands and nearly crashed to the floor.
She whirled at the disturbance and found a tall, dark-haired man shoving his way into the room set aside for her lab. His eyes found her and directed a ferocious scowl her way.
“You were supposed to wait for someone to get you,” the giant growled.
She took a step backward and tried to calm her pounding heart. Her hands went to her throat. She forced a breath out of her lungs, then sucked down her inhale. Waited a second. Then repeated the process all over again. But the breathing exercise did little to calm her.
God, he was huge. Bigger than Peter, bigger than Major Delano, bigger even than Chief Judah Hawkins. She was surprised he didn’t need to duck to enter the door. Tattoos covered his arms and added to the dangerous mystique of the stubble on his cheeks and his perfectly messy dark hair.
While she wanted to take her time studying the inked patterns on his forearms and his hands—his hands! those must have hurt!—it was his eyes that drew her in. They were storms of grey that hinted at a troubled soul, but there was kindness there, too. He could have given her a flat, steely look, but his eyes were soft.
Rylee could feel her cheeks reddening. Her panic was fading as much as it possibly could with a man of his size so close to her. And that ebb in emotion revealed something hidden under the depths: desire.
He was a rugged, handsome man. No. Hot as sin. And extremely, entirely off limits.
His eyebrows shot together, then his nostrils flared like he was catching her scent. Of course. He was a shifter. He could smell her.
His frown didn’t fade, but his voice turned a shade softer when he spoke again. “You’re Rylee, aren’t you?”
She nodded, afraid her voice would crack if she tried to speak.
He leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms over his chest. She didn’t think she could touch her fingers together if she tried to ring his arm. “I’m Cole. I’ll be babysitting you. I’d appreciate it if you let me know of any changes to the schedule.”
She swallowed hard. There was hardly any space to squeeze past him and through the door. He cut off her escape route, should she need it. She hoped she wouldn’t need it.
Rylee pointed a shaking finger toward one corner of the room where she’d shoved a rolling chair until she unpacked everything. “Please stand over there.”
“Oh, so you don’t need to come into contact with what I am?”
“No, because you are so...” She gestured up and down his body. “Big.”
His nostrils flared again. She’d have to ask what she smelled like. Could he scent fear? Did she trigger some sort of prey response? She didn’t even know what sort of creature he turned into. Her binder of research was extremely sparse on the details of the supernatural abilities she’d come into contact with. It was her duty to fill those in and paint a bigger picture of what Bearden held inside its borders.
Without any other objections, he took a seat across the room.
She straightened her glasses on her nose, even though they hadn’t slipped. It gave her something to do with her hands while she collected herself. He was there to help her around the enclave. He could probably reassure Bearden’s residents and get them talking. She’d need their cooperation if she wanted to hear their stories and collect samples to study. “I didn’t know I needed to wait for you. I was just too excited to get to work,” she said to the floor. “How can I reach you?”
Cole cocked his head and studied her for a long moment. She fidgeted with her glasses again, put off by his sudden attention. “You got a phone?”
She nodded and pulled it from her back pocket. He reached forward and slid his phone down the table lining the wall at his back. “Put your number in there and slide it back,” he told her.
Rylee peeked at Cole as she took the few steps to the table on her side of the room. He didn’t move. A little more of her panic eased away. He didn’t look so big or scary when he was seated. Even if he was still nearly her height. She entered her number with fingers that no longer shook and flicked it back toward him.
Cole took up his phone again and a flash of a smile crossed his face. He typed quickly and her phone vibrated before he shoved his back into his pocket.
Easy, little bit. The big, bad wolf won’t gobble you down. He’s not even in the room.
“What are you, if you’re not a wolf?” she blurted out.
“That takes out all the fun of guessing.” Cole shrugged. “You’re supposed to be the scientist. Deduce away.”
“Deduce? I’m not Sherlock Holmes.” She waited, but Cole didn’t give her anything else to work with.
Keeping the room and a stack of boxes between them, she set back to unloading. He dug his phone out of his pocket and fiddled with it, but she didn’t miss his eyes flicking frequently toward her.
Her cheeks flamed after the tenth time they locked eyes. While he watched her, she was busy watching him.
She tried to puzzle out what animal he kept locked under his skin so hard that she forgot to be nervous around him.
Plus, she reasoned, he was there in the room with her. Babysitting her, as much as she hated being infantilized. He could be her first interview. She wasn’t ready to start any blood work, but she could dig into the background of Bearden.
Bearden. It’d been pointed out more than once that it was a smooshing of ‘bear’s den.’ Could Cole be a bear? It seemed too obvious.
She pursed her lips and eyed him critically. Bears in the wild were large creatures and thick with muscle. That fit Cole much better than a sleek wolf. If not a bear, then certainly some other large animal. Definitely a predator.
Rylee pulled a notepad from a box, then tugged a pen out from her hair where she’d last stored it. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”
Cole tracked her as she took a seat at the other end of the table, still keeping the room between them. He barely moved a muscle. “That wasn’t in my job description. I’m here to make sure you don’t get bothered while doing whatever this is.” He swirled a single finger to indicate the mess of her unpacking.
“If you’re supposed to be my guide around the enclave, then you’re doing an awful job. I don’t feel very guided,” she huffed. Despite his soft eyes and his assurances, he was a big, mean jerk. “What do you do here? As a job?”
“I’m a firefighter when I’m not babysitting stray humans.”
“And I’m usually a geneticist when I’m not interviewing rude hippos.”
“Wrong. Never met one. Next question.” He swiveled in his chair and a light of mischief entered his eyes.
Rylee nodded to herself. She could get him talking, she just needed to play his game. “What is the population here?”
“I don’t know. Enough to keep things interesting. Ask the new mayor,” he said sourly.
She’d yet to meet Mayor Olivia Gale in person, though they’d talked over the phone on two occasions. She’d have to be careful navigating any tensions with politics inside the territory.
But first, she needed to lure Cole back into talking to her. She could feel him losing interest with that one change of topic. “And there are shifters of multiple forms like elephants, vampires, and faeries—”
“Wrong again. I don’t think those even exist. And call them fae. They don’t like faerie.”
“Right.” Her pen scratched across the paper as she made a note to correct what was listed in her research. “And fae, all came through the veil.”
“All of this has been answered. None of us were there.”
“Yes, of course. I’m just trying to hear it from your own boar mouth.”
“Boar? No. Closer, though.” He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling like he was begging something above for patience. “Legend has it that the fae were working big, powerful magic in that other place. Something happened, I don’t know what. Someone sneezed on the wrong flower o
r something and the veil opened. Briefly. A rip that zipped right back up as the universe corrected itself, maybe. Only, by that time, we were on this side and everything we knew was on that side.”
Rylee nodded and made a note right next to the list of animals she was quickly crossing out in the margin. Closer, he said. In the boar family, or something to do with their origins? “Was it one big group gathered, or were they spread out across the world?”
“I don’t know! One place, I assume. That’s never been clear. And just so you’re not surprised later, every group has their own veil story. It’s much like creation myths in religions. These stories have been passed down for generations and lost their truth along the way.”
“That’s fine,” she said. “I would like to get all of them down, though. Do they all originate here in Bearden or outside its borders?”
Cole stilled and tensed. She’d struck something valuable. Outside the borders meant more enclaves. And Cole’s reaction seemed to confirm it. “You don’t have to tell me,” she reassured him. “I already suspect there are more enclaves than this.”
His scowl returned. “Oh yeah? Your military, that can’t provide you with the number of people in the town you’re supposed to study, knows there are more of us out there? Not sure if they’re the most reliable of sources.”
“That’s why I’m here,” she said and circled a single word on her pad. More.
More enclaves would mean more shifters and vampires and fae. They’d hidden under humanity’s noses for a long, long while.
“And bites can spread the shifting gene to turn someone into a bear?” Rylee glanced at Cole but didn’t find any sign of their game continuing. He looked angry.
“You want to change us? Turn us into humans? Like we’re the problem here?” He pointed to his phone. “Rylee Garland, geneticist. Ph.D. with top honors. Gene manipulation and study, with a focus on communicable diseases. I’m surprised they let you keep a job profile.”