Perfect Mate (22 page)

“Don’t think so. Just one or the other, human or furry. Why?”

“Doesn’t matter. Major, I’m ordering you to bring one in. Alive. Whatever the cost. Do you understand me?”

If the tone wasn’t enough to make her freeze, the words were. Her agile mind analyzed the words and the situation within a heartbeat. This operation had been a strictly “no survivors, torch the place” kind of clean up. Now with evidence the Lycans were displaying new abilities, suddenly Full Bird Fitz was more interested.
 

Although Lycans and Bloods wouldn’t get along if they were the last two species left on Earth, she didn’t want to hand them over to the sadistic base commander. Whatever abilities they’d evolved and managed to hide, it gave them more of a fighting chance against their common enemy. One she was loathe to take away from them.

“Did you hear me, Major?” Fitzgerald’s voice was sharp, irritated. He didn’t like being kept waiting. A total contrast to Garry, whose reserves of patience Antonia had never worn out.

“Yes, I heard.” She sat for a moment, thinking. “With the resources at my disposal, I don’t believe I can bring a subject in. Not alive.”

It was a line lifted straight from the “how to be a prick to a superior officer” manual, but she didn’t care. The guy was an ass, and she had no incentive to try and take any of the wolves alive. She liked her skin in one piece too much for that.
 

“Bullshit. Try.” The growl was an order.
 

She sighed, about to close the line when he spoke again, this time as though the words were dragged from him. “Bring one in, alive, and there’s something in it for you.”

Curiouser and curiouser.
 

“Oh?”

“Maybe…it’s not been tested yet, mind you…but there may be a cure for your…condition.”

A cure. Just the thought had held her spellbound for long moments after Fitzgerald had cut the connection. She’d never heard of a cure, for any of them. For re-animates, it was a no-brainer. The RA17 virus killed them dead and then piggybacked on their decaying bodies. Garry had been the only one she’d ever seen display any sign of memory or intelligence.
 

The thought of her dead friend snapped her out of her reverie. She might never have considered him such when he lived, but she was claiming the relationship now. He needed someone on the inside to avenge him.
 

Something inside her rebelled. Since her turning, she’d acted like the dead thing she thought she’d become, refusing any and all overtures of friendship until there was no one and nothing she held close.
 

Fitzgerald was a lying bastard at the best of times. She frowned, the crease in her brow the only movement she made. Did she dare take the risk, though? What if he actually was telling the truth this time, and there was a cure?
 

Her hand stole back up to her throat, her slender finger finding the depressions to activate the microphone. “Close the net at the back. Let’s hunt us some wolf.”

Lillian woke to an empty bed with sheets that smelled of Jack. Rolling onto her stomach, she wrapped them around her and smiled in contentment. Erotic memories of the last few hours filtered through her semi-doze. Her body ached in places she hadn’t thought of for months, certainly not since she’d split with her last boyfriend. It ached in other places she’d had no idea even existed.
 

Her smile grew until she was sure she resembled the cat that got the cream. For all his roughness and other problems, like the fact he wasn’t human, as a lover he was thorough and inventive. Dominant and gentle by turns, he was…wow. Just wow.
 

She didn’t have the words in her head to describe him, so she gave up and just giggled instead and dragged the pillow over her head. Lillian was not a giggler, but this time she couldn’t help it. The happy feeling inside bubbled up and over like champagne, released in sound.
 

Pulling the pillow away, she looked at the ceiling and wondered when he’d be back. The sheets beside her were cool, indicating he’d been gone a while. Disappointment filled her. She wanted his arms around her again.

She wriggled from the embrace of the sheets and looked about for her clothes. Luckily, Jack wasn’t a clothes flinger, so she didn’t have to recover her panties from a lightshade.
 

Grimacing, she pulled her clothes on and headed for the door. She needed a shower or a bath. There were too many hours between her and hot water, not to mention a zombie attack, a mad dash through a tunnel and a hot sex session with the man of her dreams.
 

Was he, though…? Was he the man of her dreams, or had she fallen prey to some twisted version of Stockholm syndrome? Putting the thought out of her head, she stepped into the main room.
 

It was dark and empty. Surprise filled her, and a dead weight settled in her stomach like a brick. After everything, had Jack just up and left her here to fend for herself? She couldn’t make herself believe it, but standing in the middle of the deserted main room, it looked as if she had no choice. She didn’t blame them if they had. She was just human, a liability. She’d slow them down, and without her, they’d be able to cover more ground faster.
 

Her heart twisted as she walked through the empty room aimlessly. It took less than a minute. With nothing else to do she sat on the edge of the sofa, and pushed the hair back from her face. She should go, head back to the hospital. They’d be worried about her. Probably thought she was dead.
 

An aching sense of loss filled her and she looked around the room without seeing it at all. For weeks…months even…she’d been complaining to her friends that her life was too boring, too humdrum. Out of nowhere, Jack and his men had crashed into her life. Suddenly, for the space of a few hours, she was part of something bigger. Something out of the ordinary, fantastical and wondrous in a gory way. She’d been a player, admittedly a minor one, in a story straight out of Hollywood or a
New York Times
bestseller.
 

Like fairy dust, or pixie gold that disappeared with the rays of the morning sun, it was over. She’d been found wanting and left behind. Rubbing her hands over her face, she fought the hot prickle of tears as they stabbed at the back of her eyes.
 

She would not cry. How pathetic was that? She was her own woman, not defined by a man. And she certainly wasn’t going to become a blubbering mess because one had decided she wasn’t worth the effort. Even if the bastard had decided to screw her before he disappeared. A bitter smile twisted her lips. Oh well, at least he was true to male form.

The sound of a toilet flushing in the cabin somewhere behind her made her jump. She turned just as Darce stepped out of what must be the bathroom. She’d never been so pleased to see anyone in her life. They hadn’t left her!

“Hiya. Was beginning to think you’d all abandoned me.” She smiled and waved a little, self-conciously. Darce looked up, his eyes human-hazel under the dark bangs of his long hair. He smiled as soon as he saw her, his lips curving broadly. Easygoing and with an aura of enthusiasm, he was an easy person to like. She’d seen him battle his beast and control it, so she knew she could trust him. Perhaps as much as Jack. Probably why he was the pack second in command.
 

“Heya, gorgeous. No, not at all. The rest are out on watch”

Naked to the waist, he wore the combat pants she’d seen him in earlier, now grubby and stained on one leg. She didn’t ask what the stain was. She had a feeling she didn’t want to know.
 

“Don’t you guys get cold feet?” she couldn’t help asking as she noted his bare toes peeking out from under the pants leg.
 

A low chuckle rumbled around the room, the buzz in her ears telling Lillian most of the sound was outside her hearing range. Outside any human’s hearing range.
 

“Nope.”
 

He moved past her to the window. Standing to one side, he twitched the curtain and checked outside. Whatever he saw out there made him relax, the slight tension she hadn’t been aware of leaving his broad shoulders. Within seconds, it was back again as his gaze settled on the window opposite.
 

“Most of us would still be running about half naked in the middle of the Arctic. Apart from Nic—she gets cold easy. Bizarre, if you ask me. She’s got the coloring of a snow wolf, but she bitches at the slightest bit of cold.”
 

Lillian padded after him on bare feet as he moved from window to window, checking. She tried to move up alongside him to see what he was looking for, but he blocked her with his larger body.
 

“Sorry, chick, eyes only. I can take a bullet and survive, you can’t. And Jack’ll have my guts for garters if you so much as break a nail.”

She pulled a fake pout and laughed when he rolled his eyes at her. Twelve hours ago, she didn’t know him from Adam, but he was so easygoing it was like talking to her brother. If she had one, which she didn’t, but it was exactly how she’d have expected to treat her brother if she did.
 

“What’re you looking for?”
 

A frown creased his brow as he moved back to the first window again. Again with the curtain twitch and the serious look as he peered out into the darkness.
 

“I don’t know. Something feels…odd.”
 

She lifted an eyebrow. “Odd how? We’re in the cabin in the middle of the woods after the zombieclypse at the hospital. You’re a werewolf. There are more werewolves out there. I’d say odd is a relative term, wouldn’t you?”

He blinked, laughed and dropped the curtain.
 

“You’re right, I’m being stupid. But…you know that odd feeling you get when someone’s watching you, or you catch something out of the corner of your eye?”
 

She nodded. It was a feeling she had often. Mostly she put it down to working in a place with such a wealth of history. The amount of time St. Mary’s had been a hospital, there were bound to be a few ghosts around the place.
 

He sighed in frustration and flicked the curtain down again. Leaning against the wall by the door, he ran a hand through his long hair. The ends just brushed his bare shoulders. His very broad and very lickable bare shoulders. But however nice-looking she thought he was, there was no spark of interest within her. Good thing, really. If there had been, she would have been as dumbstruck by his bare chest as she was when Jack was around.
 

“It’s not just that, though,” he carried on, his expression drawn. “It’s a scent as well. Like a hint of perfume on the air after a woman walks from the room. Warm, like it’s only just left her skin. But when I try and isolate it, it’s gone.”

She edged back on the sofa and curled her feet up under her. It was warm in the room thanks to the small heater, so she didn’t need the blanket lying across the back of the sofa.

“My perfume, perhaps?” she offered. “I didn’t think it was that strong, but perhaps you’re getting a hint of that.”

Darce shook his head. “I can tell the difference. And besides, you’re not wearing perfume anymore.”

Lillian frowned and sniffed experimentally at her wrists. It was faint, but she could still smell the base notes of rose and sandalwood from the perfume she’d sprayed on after her shower yesterday.
 

“You got a cold or something? Because I am, I can smell it. Here.”
 

She held out her wrist to him to prove it. Darce’s expression was pained as he shook his head. She got the feeling if he could have backed up, he would have.
 

“Sorry. Not what I meant. To us, you’re not wearing perfume because we can’t smell it. All I can smell on you is Jack.”

“Jack?”

He nodded, his hair dancing over his shoulders again.
 

“Yeah. Since you…and he…” He whistled and slid one finger in and out of the circle of his thumb and forefinger on the other hand. “All I can smell is his scent. Mate-marking. It’s so other wolves know you’re taken.”

He could smell Jack on her. A mate-mark. Oh God, why hadn’t she thought of that? With such a sensitive sense of smell, he probably knew exactly what they’d been up to in the last couple of hours.
Well, durr…
the little voice in her head chided.
Wouldn’t take a damn genius to work that one out with all the noise we were making.
 

Lifting her head, she ignored the flush and went for flippant to cover her embarrassment. “Wait. You’re saying I smell like wet dog?”
 

His head snapped up at the jibe, his lips parting to retort. Instead, his gaze shifted and went out of focus as though he was concentrating on something she couldn’t see or hear.
 

Something about the set of his body, the intense focus, made her pause. Sent a shiver of warning through her body. Warily, she rose to her feet. “Lieutenant?”

“Fuck.” The expletive exploded from him with the force of a small nuclear blast. “They’re here. We gotta go.”

The window behind him exploded, spewing glass into the room and across the floor like candies from a broken piñata.