“Do you want it to be?”
I wrinkled my nose. “Not particularly.”
“Then it’s a promise.”
Damn it. I wouldn’t even need the influencer to keep Wayne’s attention. My species and the challenge of my dislike for our kind would do the trick. But then again, maybe the combination would be the secret recipe for earning his ire—assuming he viewed his captivity as a problem.
I got the feeling I’d bitten off a lot more than I could chew, and I’d be earning every penny of my twenty thousand.
Wayne hated my car.He went from sociable to growling, and it amazed me the pixie dust couldn’t override his annoyance at my junker, which had started its life black but had enough salt and rust encrusting it I thought of it as a mottled monster. “This is your car?”
“This is what I can afford. Get your ass into the car and stop whining. And don’t you break my car having a bloody fit of the vapors. I swear. Are all lycanthrope males whiners?”
“Quite possibly, yes.” Wayne heaved a sigh, but he got into my car and buckled in. “This feels like the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done, and that includes choosing to become a lycanthrope.”
I got behind the wheel, locked the doors so he wouldn’t escape, and started the engine. My car spluttered, the equivalent of it heaving a sigh at being asked to do anything at all. “You weren’t born one?”
“No, I wasn’t.”
Huh. We had something in common. “And you weren’t mugged in some dark alley? Seduced by some wayward single female?”
“No, I was not seduced or mugged in a dark alley. I notified the CDC I was interested in becoming a lycanthrope, that I wanted the wolf strain, and agreed to allow them to do an infection test. I used the payout from the infection test to start my first business.”
My brows shot up at his confession, as I couldn’t imagine him agreeing to do anything like I did, especially when it involved severe discomfort.
It had taken me months to get used to the damned perfume that hid my virus and controlled my spikes. My virus had hated it, but the instant she had realized its purpose, she’d cooperated, doing the equivalent of going into hiding whenever I put it on.
The perfume protected us, and she understood that.
“You agreed to be a guinea pig?” I asked, careful to keep my tone inquisitive rather than doubtful.
“I got what I wanted and a nice paycheck for doing it. They needed to confirm an infection theory. They paid me half a million, as it involved a fist fight with a lycanthrope hybrid and a multi-week hospital stay.”
Crap. Wayne had wanted the virus that badly? “You’re a hybrid?”
The last thing I needed was to tango with another hybrid. I’d gotten the form due to severe trauma and exposure to a spiked virus, which accelerated its development in order to preserve my life.
I didn’t remember much about my stay in the hospital, which had lasted for six weeks and involved reconstructive surgery to make certain I wouldn’t be scarred for life. Between the pixie dust and the drugs, the doctors had kept me incoherent to minimize my trauma.
I still didn’t understand why the CDC had opted to cover my treatments, which would had done worse than bankrupt me. I supposed they’d learned a lot from my case.
My virus did have a mind of her own, and she’d worked hard to keep me alive, breaking the conventional rules of magic to do it. According to the samples, the asshole who’d infected me likely lacked the hybrid form.
“The wolf in question is the alpha of my pack, and the idea was to find out just how far someone needed to be beaten to create a situation where the virus might spike at infection for early-onset. I got the beating of my life, but the CDC learned a lot about how the virus operates. Because James didn’t want to kill me, they figure his virus, once it spread to me, acted accordingly. The longer we fought, the harder it became for James to attack me; his virus viewed me as a part of the pack. James freaked in the final stages of the experiment, as his virus did not want to harm me. We had to stop early as a result.”
“The virus is sentient.” I shrugged. “That seems obvious enough to me.”
“You must have a well-developed virus, then. Mine didn’t start making its opinion known until a few years back. That was after a decade of infection.”
“Mine got pretty mouthy early on, but the bastard who infected me almost killed me.”
“That bad?”
“Yeah. That bad. I spent a few weeks in the ICU, and my virus went into self-preservation mode. The CDC footed my medical bills and gave me the perfume to keep my infection status a secret. I have issues. I don’t want one of those issues being the local lycanthropes aware there’s a single lady in their turf.”
“And you don’t trust lycanthropes because one almost killed you.”
“Right.” In Manhattan, there was no easing out of spots. I waited for my first chance, revved my asshole car’s engine, and took the opening, earning a yelp from Wayne.
