“You might wake up with the same urges—we call it sex frenzy,” Elena murmured. “We’ll move away before then just in case. Don’t worry.”
“How long am I going to be like this? So out of control?” Drake asked, instinctively tucking Elena’s head beneath her chin.
“I don’t know. We’ve never had an adult, turned Were in the Pack before.”
Sylvan paced in her office. She wanted to see Drake. After her run she’d gone directly to the infirmary, and before she’d even gotten inside she’d caught the scent hanging thick in the air. The hall was so laden with pheromones, the potent neurotransmitters so dense, her skin had slicked instantly and her sex readied. The bite on her chest throbbed.
Drake was in need, frenzied, and Sylvan wanted to take her. She was surprised other Weres hadn’t responded to the powerful call already.
Instantly enraged at the image of another Were answering Drake’s need, she’d stormed to Drake’s door.
Then she’d heard Drake groan and Elena’s low melodious voice.
She knew what Elena was doing, caressing Drake into a release with her voice. She wanted to rip the door from its hinges and wrench Elena away from Drake. She wanted to be on top of Drake with her teeth buried in Drake’s shoulder, her clitoris pulsing inside Drake’s wet sex.
Her claws had sprouted, her canines jutted out painfully, and a streak of silver shot down the center of her belly.
She wanted Drake so much she knew she couldn’t risk going near her. Drake’s effect on her was too potent, too powerful. She wasn’t sure she could endure another bite without claiming her completely.
She’d dragged herself away, crashing through the door to the porch so violently she’d splintered the wood and knocked Roger down the stairs.Sylvan knew what she had to do. She had to get away. Drake was newly turned and couldn’t control herself. She was broadcasting her needs so powerfully the others in the Pack would soon detect her call. Drake would need to tangle frequently, possibly continuously, and if Elena was right and Drake was as dominant as she seemed, she would have plenty of Weres to choose from. If Sylvan stayed there, she wouldn’t be able to keep away from Drake. Even if she managed to resist, she was afraid she might tear any Were apart who tried to answer Drake’s call.
Niki!
Niki immediately came through the office door, her eyes scanning the room, searching for danger. “Alpha?”
“Call the centuri. I’m going into the city.”
“Until we determine the source of the fever, you’re safer here—”
“Now, Niki.”
Niki’s jaw set. “You think I can’t tell why you want to leave? I smelled your scent on her, too.”
“I told you I forced her transition,” Sylvan said. “That’s all it was.”
“Fine. She’s a mutt, a mutia, and could still turn rabid. At least send her to one of the outposts until she’s safe, or until she needs to be execu—”
Sylvan growled. “Be careful what you say, Niki.”
“You’d leave the safety of the Compound, put yourself in danger, before you’d isolate her? She’s not worth that.”
“Don’t challenge me now,” Sylvan warned.
Niki narrowed her eyes and studied her Alpha. Sylvan was shirtless, as she often was around the Compound. A narrow thick trail of silver glinted above the waistband of her black pants. Her skin glowed as if kissed by moonlight. Her cheekbones were sharply angled, the rims of her deep blue irises haloed in gold. The bite on her breast was darker, bruised looking. Something was riding Sylvan hard, but Niki didn’t detect the Alpha’s powerful call the way she usually did when Sylvan needed release. Something else was the cause of the barrage of pheromones besides sex frenzy. Something even more primitive, more critical.
“The bite—did the bite do something to you?” Niki asked, every protective instinct on alert.
“No,” Sylvan barked roughly. “Enough of this.” Niki had to try one more time. “Rena is coming into heat. Take her. She wants you to.”
“I do not want a mate.” Sylvan’s wolf snapped and snarled as if trying to break out of a cage, refuting Sylvan’s words. Sylvan shuddered with the effort of dominating her.
“Don’t mate her, then,” Niki cried. “Just take her! I’m still crazy to tangle. You must need to even more. Why are you denying your nature?”
Before the words were out of Niki’s mouth, Sylvan was in Niki’s face. She crushed Niki against the door, her arms braced on either side of Niki’s head. Her teeth were on Niki’s neck, her heat enclosing Niki in an inferno. Sylvan’s pelvis jerked against Niki’s, her hard nipples against Niki’s breasts.
Niki whimpered and licked Sylvan’s jaw. “Please, Alpha.”
“I love you, Niki,” Sylvan whispered in Niki’s ear. Then she pushed her aside and stalked into the hall, shouting to Lara and Max,
“Get the Rover. I’m leaving.”
Chapter Eighteen
Sylvan went directly to her office at Capitol Plaza and instructed Niki that she was not to be disturbed. Ignoring the stack of pink message slips on her desk, she put a call through on a secure line to a private number at Mir Industries. Leo Revnik, one of MI’s senior scientists, answered on the second ring.
“Good morning, Alpha,” Leo said in his deep bass voice.
“We may have an outbreak of Were fever in humans,” Sylvan said. “I need to know the origin.”
“How many?”
“Sophia reports possibly four in the last six months.”
“Is there a rabid Were on the loose?”
“If the victims were less uniform, I might think so.” Sylvan explained that all of the suspected cases had been teenaged girls with similar backgrounds. “I’ve never known a rabid Were to have that kind of reasoning ability. Plus, most rab attacks are random, clustered in time and location, and so messy it’s easy to follow the trail of bodies back to the source and neutralize the rab. These attacks seem far more deliberate.”
“I take it you don’t have a carrier in the Pack? A Were who survived the fever, even years ago?”
“Only one,” Sylvan said carefully. “And you know that’s not the source here. If there’s a rabid Were, or several, they’re rogues, not Pack.”Leo grunted. “You believe the focus is urban, then?”
“We have no idea where these girls are even being attacked,” Sylvan said, unable to hide her anger and frustration. “We haven’t yet tracked those who turned up in the ER at Albany General. There may be more who’ve never made it into the system.”
“Forgive me, Alpha, but the pattern is not at all typical for the transmission of the fever. The toxin degrades fairly quickly in the rabs who survive more than a day or two. If the attacks are occurring over the time frame you suggest, either we’re dealing with more than one rab or the toxin has mutated into a longer-acting form.”
“So we may have a new form of fever, is that what you’re saying?” Sylvan asked.
“We’ve always been concerned about the possibility. While it’s theoretically possible, we’ve never been able to reproduce the phenomenon in the laboratory—”
“I’m not interested in theoreticals,” Sylvan growled. “We need to stop the spread to humans and eradicate any rabid carriers.”
“Can you get me blood and tissue samples from the victims?” Leo asked.
“We just became aware of the problem within the last few days. Unfortunately, not in time to have any of our personnel in the hospital system procure samples from the suspected early cases.”