His brows drew down. “We don’t have time for something to come up. The Seattle office just texted, and they won’t have a courier for us for a couple of days. We need that information from them.”
Mia’s brain made connections through all the fragmented pieces spinning around in her head. “Okay, that won’t do. I’ll go get it.” She grabbed Luna’s arm and hustled her down the hallway.
“Mia!” Kurt called out.
“Keep going,” Mia said.
Luna hunched her shoulders, stumbled once, and then kept up. Soon, they were outside in the drizzly day, and Mia looked frantically around for Erik’s stolen truck. Luna had parked it partly up on the sidewalk. She tilted her head.
Luna whistled. “I actually don’t have a driver’s license.”
Fantastic. Mia motioned toward the vehicle. “Get in.” She ran around the front and stepped up into the driver’s seat as Luna climbed in the passenger side.
“He really should get running boards for this thing,” Luna panted, shutting her door and fastening her seat belt. Mia grunted in response, fastened her restraint, and took off quickly.
They were outside of Lost Lake when Luna spoke again. “Why are we driving to Seattle?”
“I need to get a case file.” Mia hunched over the steering wheel, feeling like the hounds of hell were on her heels. This was crazy, but she couldn’t think.
Silence reigned for another half hour or so until Luna put her feet up on the dash. “I don’t mean to be difficult or anything, but are you sure you’re supposed to go to Seattle?”
Mia cut her a quick look and then refocused on the road. “What do you meansupposed to?”
Luna shifted her weight and stared out the windshield. “You’re the Alpha female of the pack. I mean, you’re mated to the Alpha. I don’t think you’re supposed to just leave town when, you know, there’s so much going on.”
The woman looked genuinely puzzled, so Mia didn’t take exception. “I’m an FBI agent and I do my job.” Her hands finally relaxed around the steering wheel. She’d never admit it, but she had expected somebody to try to stop them. Seth had too much going on in his world right now.
She took a deep breath and then another, finally calming the adrenaline flowing through her veins. “Okay. So, Luna, when you arrived at the station, you were panicking at the thought I could be pregnant. Now’s the time for you to tell me why.”
Luna pursed her lips and looked up at the ceiling, down at the floor, and then out the side window.
There wasn’t much traffic on the road, so Mia felt all right turning her head for a moment. “Luna,” she snapped.
The woman sighed. “It’s great if you’re pregnant because every Alpha needs a good lineage.” She hesitated. “But if the pregnancy occurred before you were mated, when you were human, there might be a problem.”
Mia swallowed. “I don’t understand. Why would there be a problem?”
“Because it doesn’t happen. Wolves and humans can’t mate, or rather they can’t procreate,” Luna said, almost mumbling.
“But you just said we might have.”
Luna shrugged. “Yes, it’s very rare. I mean, very,veryrare. But, apparently, based on my research, it has happened a couple of times, and it shouldn’t. It really shouldn’t.”
The hair rose on Mia’s nape. “Why not?” Not that she was pregnant. When was her last period, anyway?
Luna gulped. “I’ve only heard from my one source, and she’s only heard stories passed down, but from what I can tell, a hybrid, meaning wolf and human, would be feral. It’d be stronger, more dangerous, and deadlier than any wolf shifter or human.” Her forehead wrinkled. “You know, it’s probably kind of like the killer bees.”
Mia jolted. “The killer bees?”
“Yeah. Like in the fifties, scientists in Brazil conducted an experiment that went way wrong. Human scientists bred western honeybees with the East African lowland honeybee in order to increase honey production, and the two mellow bees ended up being more aggressive and dangerous. Humans created the killer bee.” She emphasizedhumanswith enough disdain that Mia cut her a hard look. Red filtered into Luna’s face. “I’m just saying.”
Mia was definitely late, but she’d never been all that regular. Plus, she was mated to a big-ass wolf shifter now. Surely, that’d messed with her cycle. Actually, it messed with her entire system.
Luna was quiet for another thirty miles. “If you are pregnant, you need to make sure everybody thinks it happened after you and Seth mated. I mean, unless you think the baby would be dangerous.”
“I don’t,” Mia snapped. She parked a block down from the Seattle FBI office, where she found a spot. “Stay here, please.” She jumped out.
It was an easy matter to run upstairs, show her badge, and acquire the case file she needed. She was back in the truck within fifteen minutes.
