Kitabı oku: «Claimed by the Wolf»

Chapter One

“The asset has been terminated,” Prince Stefan Zolinski said to the company of men who surrounded him in the small clearing. The only sound he heard in response was the crackling of the torches that enforced the magical boundaries of their perimeter.

He sought out the eyes of each soldier, his Gypsy power pushing hard against their mental shields. He tested them for both their commitment and any weaknesses. It pleased Stefan that he found none. His team was an elite force trained from birth to hunt and eradicate monsters.

“The Aeternali moved up their timeline by partnering with the Department of Defense. Last report from the asset confirmed Dr. Ian Gevaudan is in residence at the Blue Ridge Research Facility and is continuing his vile experimentation. He’s produced a virus communicable through bodily contact with teeth and claws. With uninfected werewolves, it takes three bites. This virus can spread with a scratch to both monsters and humans.” Stefan met each man’s eyes again. “We have to take the facility down.”

He left the rest unspoken—if Gevaudan was permitted to continue unchallenged, he could infect the world, and the governing body that was supposed to protect supernaturals and mortals alike—the Aeternali—had sanctioned his actions.

Johann Graywald, his first lieutenant, spoke. “What intel do we have on their defenses?”

“It comes from Aeternali troops and containment protocol. If the walls are breached, there’s an F-16 that will finish the job for us with a containment payload. Get in, get out and watch it burn. Let’s move out.”

The men broke from the group, each attending to his duty and making themselves battle-ready.

“The asset—” Johann began.

“Is no longer your concern.” Something a lot like guilt formed a cold, hard ball in the pit of his stomach. It seemed wrong somehow to refer to Beth as nothing more than an asset. But that was what she’d been—a means to an end. She was a scientist on the payroll of the Department of Defense and the Aeternali. She was simply a way for him to gather intel about the Blue Ridge Research Facility so he could destroy it.

Collateral damage.

As he recalled vivid memories of Beth, the cold knot in his gut sprouted tentacles that twisted around his spine. Stefan found it odd they made him feel cold because his last moments with her had been so damn hot.

She had awakened that morning sleepy-eyed and wrecked from the night before. He could see it now as clearly as if she stood in front of him. Her red-gold hair tumbling over her pale shoulders, strawberry lips swollen from his kisses, the velvet feel of her slit still slick with the evidence of their coupling as she mounted him. Beth rode him, the sunlight slicing through slats in the blinds to paint her in a soft glow. She’d brushed her lips over his and whispered, “I love you.”

The last thing she’d said to him.

He hadn’t said it back. Instead, he’d drifted back to sleep after they’d both spent. He spread his palms on the table and stared at the map spread out in front of him of their target and plan of attack.

Johann closed a gruff hand over his shoulder. “There’s no shame in mourning her, my prince.”

Stefan steeled himself. “Her death was needless, and I regret I didn’t do more to protect her. That’s all.”

“There was nothing you could’ve done. Giving her Zoranna’s mark of protection would have alerted the Aeternali guard dogs. From what I hear, it wouldn’t have saved her from what happened.”

Stefan fixed his lieutenant with a cold stare. He didn’t want to discuss it. He could think about it later, after he’d assured himself that hell was nothing more than a pile of smoking rubble.

“We’re going to war, not a poetry slam. We’ll save the feelings for long nights by snapping fires with full cups of warm spiced wines in our hands.”

Johann sighed and shrugged. “As you wish.”

It would be great if Stefan could follow his own advice. He couldn’t stop thinking about that voice ringing in his head like a gong. As her fiancé, he’d been listed as next of kin, and he’d gotten the standard notification.

“I’m sorry to inform you Dr. Bethany 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.