Willis hurried to ready the unconscious dormants with eager efficiency. As Cain watched him work, doubts plagued him. Was he letting obsession blind him, as he had with Alice? But what choice did he have? Without results, everything he’d built would crumble. Vampires would continue to be stuck in the shadows of the night.
Jaw set, Cain shoved the doubts away. He had sacrificed too much to turn back now. The hybrid army would become a reality. He could finish this without her. Or so he told himself, ignoring the hollow ache in his chest. She’d changed something in him, awakened needs and doubts he thought long dead. But he couldn’t allow himself to be weakened by sentiment. His course was set.
Soon the dormants were prepped, IVs ready to dose them with the mixed blood compound. No going back now.
“Begin the trial,” Cain ordered.
Willis’s eyes glowed with zealot fervor as he moved down the line, starting the injections. Cain observed stoically as the crimson fluid flowed into the wolves’ veins. The die was cast.
In minutes, the first subjects began to stir, roused from their unnatural slumber by the blood taking effect. Cain watched impassively as they woke disoriented, then began writhing and convulsing in agony.
Horrible cracking, snapping noises filled the air as bones broke and reshaped. The wolves’ screams rose to an unbearable pitch, inhuman noises of absolute torment. Despite himself, Cain flinched at the ghastly sounds of their transformation. Lizzy hadn’t changed forms with all of the fanfare. She’d gone from being a woman one minute to a wolf the next. Why were these dormants having such problems? What was different with their transfusion and Lizzy’s?Nothing.
This was the price of progress, he reminded himself harshly. But the clinical mantra rang hollow, even in his own mind. Something different was happening, but he didn’t have a damn clue what it was.
Endless minutes dragged by, every one an eternity. Finally, the subjects collapsed into stillness, quivering and panting. It was over. For better or worse, the hybrids were made.
Cain moved slowly between the beds, examining his new creations. Aside from residual tremors wracking their limbs, the wolves seemed intact and stabilized. Shifting had taken a brutal toll, but the blood was already accelerating their healing. He still couldn’t help but consider how different their reaction to the blood was versus Lizzy’s.
“Remarkable,” Willis breathed out at his side. “The changes are profound. Their wolf forms practically vibrate with power.”
Cain nodded grimly. “But Lizzy’s wasn’t anything like this.” Already he could sense the formidable strength his hybrids now possessed in their blood. But only time would tell if their minds had survived equally intact.
“Lizzy has a true mate,” Willis pointed out. “That changes everything.”
“Shit,” Cain ground out as realization dawned. Why hadn’t he considered there might be a difference in the reaction if there was no mate bond in play?Because you’re distracted by a female,he growled at himself.
A low moan drew his attention. The nearest subject was stirring weakly, eyes blinking open to reveal glowing silver irises. The wolf’s nose twitched, then his gaze locked on Cain with sudden feral intensity.
Every instinct screamed danger. In a blur of motion, the hybrid launched himself at Cain’s throat, lips peeled back from vicious fangs.
Only Cain’s preternatural speed saved him from being ripped in two as he twisted clear. The wolf hit the floor in a crouch, a frenzied snarl erupting as he circled.
“Security!” Cain shouted, cursing himself again for not expecting volatility in his new creations. They were still ruled by primal instincts. And they had no mate to help take the edge off.
His guards burst through the doors, tranquilizer guns raised. But before they could fire, the crazed hybrid shot past them faster than the eye could track, straight out the door. The other subjects stirred as well, violence emanating from them.
“Contain them!” Cain ordered. But he knew it was already too late. The hybrid beasts were mindless with agony and bloodlust, freed from their bonds. His perfect weapons had become monsters he could no longer control.
Alice’s face flickered through his mind as chaos erupted around him. She would have reminded him of the differences in Lizzy and the other dormants. She would have made sure he didn’t take unnecessary risks. Cain closed his eyes against a surge of regret and grief. But he had no time for that now.
He could only do what he had always done: keep fighting at any cost. Even if it damned him further. Even if she could never forgive him. The beast inside drove him relentlessly onward.
Cain leapt into the fray, his own fangs bared. The wolves’ howls of madness and pain mingled with the screams of dying men. And beneath it all thundered the hungry pulse of blood and victory. Perhaps this would please the masters who held his leash, after all. They will know about the hybrids soon enough, considering at least ten had escaped the lab room doors. Who knows how far they’d actually make it?
“Get the doors closed and locked, Willis!” Cain bellowed, hoping the scientist had been smart enough to lock himself in the small lab that looked out onto the main subject floor.
“On it, boss man,” Willis’s voice came through the overhead speakers.
Then there was a loud whooshing sound, and the room quickly filled with fog. Cain sniffed. Not fog. Gas. “You could have warned me.” Cain attempted to use his shirt over his mouth and nose.
“Then I would have been warning everyone else, too,” Willis pointed out. “This way they all go nighty night without the chance to diminish the effectiveness of the gas.”
Cain became drowsy. The room was spinning and wolf forms were dropping like flies. Before the gas finally took him down, he managed to say, “You’d better come get me out of here as soon as you can.”
Just before he lost consciousness, Cain heard alarm bells that indicated the compound had been breached. These weren’t going off because of the dormants that had escaped. These alarms were going off because someone who didn’t belong had managed to get inside.
“Protect Alice,” Cain called out before everything went black.
