The Wolf Within (Purgatory #1)(20)

The bullet. Ah, yes, that would be why her chest hurt like a bitch.

And why she couldn’t move so much as a single part of her body.

There was a surge of pressure on her chest and then…

The darkness vanished as her eyes opened. She sucked in a deep, shuddering breath.

Pate’s arms tightened around her. “You just scared the shit out of me.”

My lab. He’d carried her back inside. She was on the floor. Half-cradled in his arms.

The shame of what she’d done burned through her. “I went…for your throat.”

He held her tighter. “You weren’t yourself. You’d just gotten werewolf blood. You know the effect that it has on your kind.”

She did. Werewolf blood was reportedly like a drug to her kind—giving them a burst of pleasure, of euphoria, that was rumored to be better than sex.

“The first time you get blood from a live source, and that source had to be a werewolf.” He sounded disgusted now. “Hell, there was no way at all you were maintaining control after that.”

She had control now, though. Her gaze dropped to the floor beside her. Pate had given her a transfusion—a whole lot of blood. Well, that would explain the whole having-control bit.

“What you saw in the woods…it wasn’t what you thought. I gave Duncan orders. He’s going to keep Saul on a leash and use him so that we can find the alpha.”

So Duncan hadn’t been betraying the unit. Her lashes swept down even as relief rose within her.

“When I brought Duncan back here to you, I never thought you’d get his blood. Oh, sis, I swear, I never did.”

She heard the remorse in his voice, and Holly wanted to believe him.

But she couldn’t. Not entirely. Because she knew him better than anyone else. He could be so manipulative.

If he thought he was helping in the battle against the monsters out there, would he risk her life?

He’d risk everything.

She pulled away from him. The wooden bullet—covered with her blood—was in his hand. “Did anyone see?” Holly whispered.

What she was—it was their secret. One they’d protected the entire time she’d been working in the unit.

He shook his head. “I carried you inside. No one saw anything.”

Good. “What happens now?” She’d slipped up. Made the mistake that she’d always feared. Pate had been so confident that no one would ever learn about her. That she’d be safe, as long as she had access to the doses she needed. And in her own lab, a place guarded by a dozen agents, he’d promised that she’d have the security she wanted.

Only she wasn’t safe anymore. Neither was he.

I had Duncan’s blood.

“Nothing happens. We continue just as before.”

Her jaw dropped. “You can’t be serious! I almost killed you.”

His fingers closed over the bullet. “And I did kill you.”

Only she hadn’t stayed dead. She couldn’t. That was the way with her kind. As long as a wooden bullet was in her heart, her body would mimic death. Once the bullet was out…she came back to life, so to speak.

The real truth was that she’d died a year ago.

“Go home. Sleep. Wash away the blood.” His words were clipped, and they were also no longer given in the softer tone of a brother, but rather in the more demanding snap of a boss. “Then you come back here tonight, and you carry on the same as before.”

She rose to her feet. She was already stronger. Thanks to the dose.

The dose…call it what it is…the blood. Though often, the blood was combined with a special drug mix that was supposed to keep her urges in check. “We can’t keep on like this.” She was fighting her instincts. Trying to be something that she wasn’t.

Human.

“We’ll keep on until you find a cure.”

There was no cure. He didn’t get that. It wasn’t that she was sick. She wasn’t human anymore.

“Go home,” Pate ordered again as a muscle jerked in his jaw. “Everything will be better soon.”

Pate. So wrong. So lost.

He blamed himself for what she’d become.

Sometimes, late at night, she blamed him, too. That was her shame.

“If you can’t come up with a cure, then I’ll get another doctor in. You know I can pull any damn strings I want, and I heard that Forbes was in the area.”

Jonathan Forbes. The name had her tensing. He was good with DNA. He was also a prick. And her ex-fiance.

They’d split when she’d suddenly developed an appetite for blood. “Jonathan is more interested in slicing and dicing paranormals than he is in helping them.” That had been one of the main reasons she ran from him.

She hadn’t wanted to wind up as one of his experiments.

Silence. Then, “But he can do the job. There aren’t a whole lot of doctors in the know when it comes to the paranormals.”

No, there weren’t.

Pate continued, “I’ll make sure that he monitors Duncan.”

While she—what? Hid in the shadows?

“I’m not telling you this as your brother. I’m giving you an order as the senior agent for this unit. You’re to stay away from Duncan McGuire from now on.”

Easier said than done. She could still taste him, and she was…craving him. “You sent him out there, all alone, to fight the Seattle alpha?”