Andreas succumbed to infection....”
Dead.
He snapped the utility belt around his waist and checked his equipment: guns, ammo, silver nitrate pepper spray, knives. He thought about what he’d do to the bastard who had infected her. Stefan had his own containment unit, and he was going to catch the guy, take his wolf skin and tear it from him like an orange peel.
Sweet Beth. So innocent and angel-faced. So trusting. She’d believed every sour lie from his tongue. Nothing could have stopped him from taking her home with him from the bar that night. Stefan hadn’t expected her to be so beautiful, so wild. He hadn’t expected to want to burn in the fire of her hair. For a moment, when they’d met, he’d thought he was going to have to rethink his game and that a mild-mannered accountant wasn’t at all the kind of man who’d move her.
But they’d fucked that first night in the back of her truck under a black, moonless sky.
Stefan had thought if he ever got The Call, he’d feel something...different. Something besides this cold that burned. He’d always known her death was a possibility. She had a dangerous job working with infectious diseases and biowarfare for the Department of Defense. The chances of injury, infection and death were always present—upped exponentially by her involvement with the Aeternali, the supernatural governing body. They were corrupt and foul themselves, turning over their own people for experimentation and even death. The Gypsy hated the Aeternali with a fire so hot it was a physical burn.
Though, somehow, it all paled in the pervasive dark shadow that had hung over him since losing Beth.
He remembered the oddest things from that last day—the smell of her pomegranate shampoo on the pillow, the way the covers rumpled over her side of the bed, the bumblebee slippers on the floor where she’d left them.... They were all tiny things, but they were things she’d never do again.
The dress on the form in the corner, the one she’d sewn by hand for their wedding—it would disintegrate where it hung. The fact shouldn’t have surprised him. How far was he willing to take the ruse, after all? He didn’t listen to the voice in the back of his head that shouted “all the way.”
Her essence still so present, he hadn’t gone back to their little log cabin. As much as he hoped, it wasn’t as if she’d walk through the door any minute and tell him there’d been some kind of mix-up. As if she’d fall into his arms, and there wouldn’t be any need for words. He didn’t have them, anyway.
For the first time in his long existence, Stefan was lost. He didn’t know how to be in his own skin, how to feel, because he wasn’t supposed to feel anything at all—Beth had been a tool. Simply a means to an end. He’d seduced her, manipulated her, and proposed to have access to her and what was going on at the facility. He wasn’t so supposed to care what happened to her when he was done, but now there was this sinkhole in his chest that had been there for a week and it wasn’t going away any time soon. His prime directive had been to find out what exactly the Department of Defense and the Aeternali were doing with the werewolves they’d captured—what kind of superweapon they’d made.
Then he’d figure out how to kill it.
That was what Stefan Zolinski did—what he was born for. He hunted monsters, and he killed them. Werewolves brought nothing but grief to the world, and they should’ve been systematically exterminated when the first one had drawn the breath of life into its lungs. While his sister had turned Guild cop to hunt the beasts that had slaughtered their mother, Stefan didn’t give a damn about being fair to the Aeternali and adhering to their laws. He was Gypsy, and they were a law unto themselves.
Dr. Ian Gevaudan, designer of the zombie virus, and the wolf-beast, Konstantin, would both pay for what they’d done. It was a debt that wouldn’t be satisfied without blood and death.
Bethany would be avenged.
Chapter Two
Cedar and bergamot—Stefan. Bethany would know his scent anywhere.
She also knew he was going to die. The Blue Ridge Research Facility had erupted in a war zone of explosions, gunfire and blood. He was an accountant, not a soldier. Beth scanned the landscape for him, sure he was near. Following the scent, she focused on finding the origin.
Bethany was hungry for the sight of him—her fiancé. When she had been in the terrarium gathering information on the victims of the virus and had realized she’d been infected with the LZ—the lycanthropic zombie virus—she had been sure her life was over and that in minutes she’d become some snarling cannibal dog only looking to fill her belly with meat. Any meat. The sound of the emergency doors locking her in with the beasts had been like the clanging of the gates of hell.
Dr. Daphne Panetta, her boss and best friend, had been the one to slam those doors, but it’d had to be done, they couldn’t risk releasing the virus. She’d understood, and Daphne had stood with her, watching her transformation as much to bear witness and be with her as to study her. Daphne’s nearness had been a comfort, and Bethany had felt like she wasn’t facing the darkness alone.
When the attack on the facility had begun, she had been glad to see Konstantin, the other test subject whose virus was like Bethany’s, carry Daphne away from the carnage. He’d promised her he’d keep her safe, and Beth didn’t doubt it. There was some connection between them, and whether Daphne accepted it or not, they were mated. They belonged together.
When Konstantin had scratched Beth, he’d infected her as a way to help her. His action prevented her from becoming a mindless beast; but it changed her, too, on a cellular level, and there was no undoing it.
Bethany was no longer human—she was a werewolf.
She assumed Stefan had gotten The Call—the next-of-kin notification done by the Department of Defense. But if he thought she was dead, what insanity made him think he could storm the facility like some avenging god? She shook her head and scanned the landscape for Stefan again. She had to find him. The jet with the containment protocol was most likely already in the air.
Her appraisal focused on a man who smelled like Stefan, but the man in her line of sight couldn’t be him.
He was bigger somehow, taller—stronger. He wore his uniform like a second skin, barked orders like a man used to being obeyed. This man cut through his enemies with deadly precision. Each Aeternali soldier who engaged him paid with his life. He was a stone-cold killer—the perfect weapon. There was no hesitation, no remorse. Only death. If this man was an accountant, it was in hell tallying the dead he sent before him.
Epiphany splashed over her like ice water.
He’d lied to her.
It was obvious Stefan was here to kill the things she’d studied, maybe even kill her now that she’d been infected. He’d used her to mine information. How could she have been so stupid?
The knowledge settled with heavy weight in her human consciousness, but in her wolf form it was the beast who was in control. The beast didn’t understand betrayal—that was a human emotion. All the beast knew was that her mate was under attack. When uninfected werewolves poured from the blast hole in the facility wall, Bethany launched herself toward him.
Even as she leaped, he pulled out knives that caused lycanthropic flesh to smoke and tear without regenerating. There was no tang of fear to his scent—he obviously knew exactly what he was doing and exactly what kind of creature he faced. He ripped through the werewolves like paper. They roared and he roared back—a guttural war cry filled with rage.
Beth added her own roar, drowning out the other wolves. Since there were only two of her kind, by default Beth was a Beta wolf to the Alpha of Alphas. She was an Alpha in her own right, and wolves, even of another species, would submit to her might.
Mine, she said to the other wolves. Mine. She lay claim to all the men with Stefan but left the remaining Aeternali for the others. The soldiers were the ones who’d imprisoned them—their own government had handed them over for testing without pause. The