“Where is she?”
Elena hesitated.
“Where is she?” Sylvan demanded.
“She left with Sophia this morning. They haven’t returned.”
“They’ve been gone half a day?”
“Yes, Alpha.”
Sylvan cursed and broke off the call. “Niki!” Niki burst in. “Alpha?”
“Find Sophia. I need to speak with her.”
“Is something wrong?”
Sylvan leaned on her desk, her claws scraping the surface. “I hope not. She and Drake left the Compound together this morning.”
Niki’s eyes narrowed and she rumbled.
“Sophia is with her? With an uncontrolled dominant who’s likely to frenzy at any time?” She snarled and her claws shot out. “If Drake touches her, I’ll kill her.”
“You forget, neither of them is mated. You have nothing to say about it.” Sylvan grimaced bitterly. Nor do I.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Drake waited impatiently in a conference room on the fifteenth floor of a glass-and-steel building, one of many in the sprawling industrial complex that comprised Mir Industries. Sophia had left her to assist her parents with the analysis of the tissue specimens.
Drake would have volunteered to help, but she was no bench scientist.
She’d only be in the way, and she got the feeling that the Revnik lab was off-limits, even to those who made it through the elaborate security at the building entrance. With each passing hour, her physical and emotional agitation accelerated. The conference room, despite being spacious and airy with one entire wall of windows giving a view of the nearby mountains, felt confining. She paced, her skin tight and her limbs twitching with the need to move. To run. She wanted to be back in the Compound. She wanted Sylvan. She wanted to taste her. She wanted to mark her with her mouth and her teeth and her claws. She wanted to come on her again. She wanted Sylvan to carry her scent in every cell.
The door opened and Drake spun around with a warning growl.
“Sorry.” Sophia let the door swing close behind her and stood still, watching Drake cautiously.
Drake rubbed her forehead. “No, I’m sorry. I’m just…jumpy. Anything yet?”
“We’ve got quite a lot of preliminary results. My parents can explain it better than I can. They’ll be here in a minute.”
“Great, thanks.” Drake forced herself to sit down at the conference table. Her T-shirt, damp with sweat despite the air-conditioning, clung to her back and chest. She’d purposefully chosen a pair of jeans a size too big when she’d dressed earlier, but the slightest brush of denim against her center sent slivers of pain and arousal through her.
“How are you doing?” Sophia sat down next to Drake.
“I feel like I’m coming out of my skin.” Sophia gave her a sympathetic smile. “I’m so sorry.” Drake shrugged wryly. “Are you uncomfortable around me? Am I…doing anything to you? Anything objectionable?”
“No, of course not.” Sophia’s eyes widened. “And you’re right, I should be more sensitive to your call. I was yesterday.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” Sophia said quickly.
“Please, don’t keep me in the dark,” Drake said urgently. “Everything is moving too fast for me as it is. I need to know as much as I can.”
“It’s just…I might not sense your call because unmated Weres don’t respond when mated Weres are in need. It’s protective—if unmated Weres responded to mated females in heat, there’d be chaos.
The dominants would instinctively want to breed and the mates would try to kill them.”
“What are you saying, then?”
Sophia took a deep breath. “You smell like the Alpha. You smell mated.”
“I didn’t bite her again.”
“She bit you, though, didn’t she?”
Drake shuddered and closed her eyes, the memory of Sylvan taking her so potent her body screamed for release. “Yes.”
“I think your wolf wants her, and that’s why your call doesn’t affect me nearly as much.”
“I feel like I’m not in charge of my life,” Drake said. “There’s this huge part of me that wants and I have no idea how to control it.”
“If you had grown up Were, you would have had years to integrate your instincts. You would have gradually learned to control your needs and urges. I think you’re amazingly strong to have survived the transition and for you still to be you.” Sophia reached for Drake’s hand.
“I knew you when you were human, remember. You’re still caring and brave. And honorable.”
Drake grimaced. “I’m not so sure about that.”
“Why don’t you want to mate with the Alpha?”
“Do you think I’m the mate she needs? One the Pack would accept?”
“That’s for the Alpha to decide.”
“We don’t even know what’s happening in my body. What if there’s been some kind of permanent cellular damage—a degenerative process of some kind? What if I can’t shift?” Drake sighed. “I don’t mind telling you, I’m scared.”
Sophia squeezed Drake’s hand. “We’ll help you. You’re not alone.”
Not alone. She’d only ever been alone. Sophia’s hand was warm in hers, steady and calm. Sophia’s eyes were tender and soothing. Drake rubbed Sophia’s hand against her cheek and was comforted.
“That’s better,” Sophia said gently.
“Thank you.”
“You would do the same for me.” Sophia stroked Drake’s cheek. “I shouldn’t have brought you here. You need to sleep. You’ve been through too much.”
“I’m all right. I can’t sleep. I can’t stop wanting…” Drake flushed and fell silent.
“Maybe this is happening just as fast and unexpectedly for the Alpha as it is for you. Trust her.”
“I do,” Drake murmured, realizing she had trusted Sylvan instinctively since the moment she’d seen her tear into Misha’s shoulder to rip out a lethal piece of silver. Thinking about Sylvan, envisioning her face, remembering Sylvan’s hands and mouth on her brought a surge of unbearable longing and desire. “I do.”
The conference room door opened and a man and a woman Drake assumed were Sophia’s parents walked in. They weren’t at all what she expected. Leo and Nadia Revnik were blond and blue-eyed like Sophia, and didn’t appear to be much older than her. If Drake had met them under other circumstances, she would have put them in their early to mid thirties. Clearly, not only was the Were lifespan much, much longer than humans realized, but the aging process itself was remarkably slower. That alone made it imperative she not allow any further strengthening of the bond with Sylvan. If her transition wasn’t complete, she was likely to die decades, if not centuries, before her.
“I’m Drake McKennan,” she said, standing and extending her hand. The Revniks, each carrying a file folder, introduced themselves and sat down across from her.
“You understand,” Leo said, “until we have advised the Alpha of our findings, we can’t share all the results with you.”
“I appreciate that,” Drake said, “although we are talking about my personal situation.”
Nadia nodded. “And we’re sympathetic to that.” She opened her folder. “There are some things we can tell you now.” Drake steeled herself.
“Go ahead.”
“As you probably already suspected, there’s no evidence of a biological pathogen. No identifiable bacterial toxins or viral components.”
“A chemical agent of some kind, then,” Drake said.
“That was our initial thought.” Sophia’s father passed Drake a serum electrophoresis report. “However, we’ve identified an elevated paraprotein as well as its degradation products in your blood. We’re lucky to have gotten the specimens when we did. In another twenty-four hours, we might not have found this.”