The clinic was the most modern building in the city. Nobody but the scientists had been past the lobby, except for the subjects. But the subjects never made it back out unless the experiment was successful.
It hadn’t seemed to deter many applicants, though. The scientists had never offered money just to be part of an experiment before—they usually only offered a life of riches to the surviving subjects.
But this time, every accepted applicant was getting fifty thousand dollars. I’d die for that kind of money. Especially when the alternative was not worth living for.
I was at college, scraping by, using my body as payment for most things, and scrounging for whatever scraps I could. Which wasn’t much.
I was just tired of it all, tired of being a hybrid in a world where humans and wolves coexisted but refused the idea that something could exist between those two categories.
I looked down at my phone and watched the clock tick over from eight fifty-nine to nine o’clock and took a deep breath. This was it. I officially belonged to the scientists for the summer.
It filled me with nervous dread because they weren’t the only ones I was going to be with for the summer. Ryken was going to be there too.
As I gripped the handle for the door, the same black car that had picked up Ryken yesterday drove up to the curb in front of the steps. Ryken stepped out moments later and I sucked in a breath at the way his presence hit me. Like a full sucker-punch to the gut.
He was in a tight black shirt. Black jeans. Biker boots. With his arm tattoos on display and his dark braid down his back.
But his aura was what hit the hardest. Not the clean stubble, not the hard glare he directed at me. It was the overwhelming Alpha vibe that radiated off him. He hadn’t had that when we were younger.
It made me want to kneel in obedience.
And other ways.
More Storm Blood Pack climbed out of the car. Viking. He was tall, built like a fucking tank, and had long dark blond hair that he wore half up, half down with a braid.
He looked the same as he did when I was ten—but bigger. He stood with Ryken. He glared too, but he didn’t have the same hardness in his eyes. He also reeked. The man smelled like a brewery and groaned like he’d drunk everything in it.
Viking nodded towards me and I nodded back. Wow, at least one of them knew the meaning of respect. Ryken growled at Viking, who rolled his eyes at the Alpha and looked away from me. Interesting. Most would die for such a look at the Alpha in any pack. Not Viking, though. That meant they were as close as they had been when we were kids.
I stored that bit of information in my head in case I needed it later. I should have gone inside then, but my feet were planted there, my hand still on the door handle as I watched another pack member get out of the SUV.
Fucking Sullivan.
He was as vicious as they came. A true wolf with not enough humanity in him to spare a thought for anything other than his base urges. He was terrifying. He’d been on my tail more than a few times and there had been whispers.
His name was always in the rumor mill with another kill, another punishment exacted at Cerberus’s request. He was the Alpha’s pitbull, his executioner, and I had learned over the years that he thoroughly enjoyed that role.
I stowed my fear away before he sensed it, guarding my expressions and stacking the walls inside me higher. He had a shaved head that was shiny with tattoos, and dark eyes. His tattoos he had decorated in blood spatter. I’d heard a rumor that every time he killed, he added their blood spatter to his body art.
He had on an open vest that showed it all off and the muscles that made him broad. But it was the wolf head with the lightning through it in a huge chest piece that made him scarier. The wolf head had teeth, blood dripping from them.
How the hell had he gotten in? There was no way his answer to the question about being around other species had been yes. He very much lived in Cerberus Storm’s world where anything without pure blood was a despicable sin. Which made me sure there was something else going on. There had to be a reason Ryken and Sullivan had been sent in and it wasn’t money.
As soon as I thought the words, Sullivan looked up at me. His lip curled and his teeth bared. I poked my tongue at him.
I wasn’t about to shrivel back and let the terror get to me. Not when I had to spend the summer with him. He saw any weakness in his prey and went for the kill. I wouldn’t let that be me.
He snarled, gnashing his sharp teeth. He went to charge, but Ryken’s big hand flattened against Sullivan’s chest, directly over the wolf tattoo. “No,” he bit in full Alpha voice.
Sullivan glared at his Alpha, then at me, snarling again. I smirked, teasing him more. Sullivan could rot in hell for all I cared and after what he did when he found me all those years ago, I’d make sure I was right there with him to give him everything he deserved.
I flipped him off and went to go inside, but another wolf got out of the car. “Calm down, Sul. We’ll get our chance with her. Just not right now, so play nice and I’ll let you have an extra special treat once we’re inside,” Dana said, her heels dropping to the concrete, clicking as she moved between the three men. She belonged there too.
Poised, beautiful, and elegant as always. She never looked as evil as she was. Her eyes were lined thickly, her lashes long, her darker skin flawless. Her black hair was in a straight, silky, shoulder-length cut that framed her face.
Her lips and nails were red, her eyes as dark as Sullivan’s—the only giveaway that she was as awful as he was. She smirked up at me. Not a friendly one, the same one she’d had for me last time I’d seen her. Even at ten years old she’d been just as nasty.
The hostility rolled off her lithe body in waves. Where I was all skin and bone, she was curves and lush bronze skin. I couldn’t help the inferiority complex that hit. “Should gut the bitch right here.”
I scoffed at Sullivan’s comment. “Yeah, probably. But you won’t because it’s against the rules and we all officially belong to the scientists. So heel, Pup,” I taunted.
Sullivan growled, his fists clenching as he shook.
Dana narrowed her eyes on me. “Watch your back, hybrid. We’re only here for the summer. You’re fair game as soon as that’s over,” she snapped.
I laughed at that. According to the wolves, I had been fair game since I was born. It wasn’t my fault my mother had fallen in love with a human.
This summer changed nothing except the numbers in my bank account.
“Looking forward to it,” I winked at her and went inside. I wasn’t scared of Dana.
Sullivan was the one who chased me into a cave for weeks, hunting me like a rogue to the point where I was surviving on insects just to stay awake.
The second I passed out and fell asleep, he had attacked. I scrunched my face up, refusing to revisit those memories. I’d slept with a knife under my pillow ever since.
I had slashed him up good for that. He thought I wasn’t wolf enough to have claws, but he was wrong.
I grinned and went over to the front desk.
There was no one there and the entire lobby was empty.
I frowned and looked around.
The lobby was all white with neon blue lighting everywhere. Other than that, there was no decor. A few seats lined one wall. Double doors that blended in with the white walls.
And cameras. They were everywhere.
I looked around, then down at the desk.
There was a tablet there with a lit-up message.
~“Please scan in. Hand and eyes.”~
I placed my hand on the space for it. The tablet scanned my hand, then the blue light hovered in front of me.
It lasered my eyes and I barely held back the urge to back away.
It was the fight-or-flight instinct in me that made a stone drop in my gut.
“Welcome, Mackenzie Murlow. Hybrid. Human-Werewolf.”
Great, that introduction was going to get old really fast.
A set of doors to my left slid open. “Enter.”
I took a shaky breath. This was real. I was really going to be a part of the experiment. I was really going to give my body over to them, and possibly my sanity.
I walked into the stark white room and the doors slid shut again behind me. It was so bright that I had to squint.
“Now what?” I asked the empty room.
It took a long moment for the voice to answer. “Please remove your clothes and personal items and place them in the bin.”
“You want me to ~what?~” I gawked, but apparently the voice didn’t feel the need to elaborate.
Groaning, I stripped down, leaving my clothes, wallet, and phone in the bin in the corner of the room. As soon as I stepped away again, the bin disappeared through a chute in the floor.
Great. There went everything I owned. And any hope of escape.
I was about to ask the voice what the hell they needed me naked for, but then a loud hissing sound filled the room.
Seconds later, a white, freezing mist surrounded me, clouding my vision. It got in my eyes and my throat, making me choke.
“What the f—”
But I couldn’t finish the question, because just then a second chute opened in the floor, right under my feet.
And all I could feel was falling.