There were no words spoken, and yet he heard his pack mates’ thoughts loud and clear. We’re here. We have you. You’re not going through this alone. We are pack, and we stand together. Decebel absorbed it all. His wolf reached out for the comfort of the males who had become more than friends. They’d become his brothers. He took what they offered and felt the rage subside, leaving only the sorrow behind.

  By the time he walked back into the healing room where his mate lay, he had once again regained control. He’d stopped in and checked on Thia, though she was sound asleep in the nursery. Rachel, the ever-watchful and protective momma wolf, assured him that Thia would be fine for the night. And so he’d kissed his beautiful daughter and then headed back to Jennifer. She was sitting up on the bed with a cup of hot chocolate in her hands. Jacque and Sally both sat on the end of the bed, holding their own drinks. None of them were crying, and that felt to Decebel like a small victory.

  “B.” Jen looked up at him, her voice hesitant and her blue eyes pleading with him to stay, not just physically, but mentally as well. He’d tried to block his thoughts from her while he’d been fighting Fane, but he knew some of it had slipped through.

  Decebel dipped his head to her and repeated what his alpha had said to him. “I will be whatever you need me to be.”

  She reached out a hand to him. “I just need you.”

  Jacque and Sally both stood, gave her quick hugs, and then hugged Decebel as well before leaving them alone.

  He walked over and took her hand, sitting down beside her. Decebel reached up and cupped her cheek, looking at her beautiful face. “I’m sorry I left.”

  She shook her head. “No apologies. We support each other unless either of us is doing something that we should totally have our asses kicked for. Otherwise, we will just be there for one another.”

  A small smile turned up on his lips, one he didn’t expect because he wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to smile again. But he should have known better. Though he could still feel his mate’s pain, and they were far from out of the ocean of sorrow, he should have known that his Jennifer could always find a smidgen of light in the darkest places. She could find humor in the most unlikely moments. He treasured every second of those moments and every moment in between.

  “No apologies.”

  She nodded, then set her cup on the table next to the bed and laid down. “Is Thia okay?”

  “She’s safe and sound. Snoozing until it’s time for her to wake up and raise hell tomorrow.” He hoped to reassure her that their daughter would be fine without them for tonight.

  She let out a deep breath and then patted the spot beside her. “Hold me, B. I’m not finished crying yet.”

  Decebel did as she asked and let her tears wash away the rest of his anger. “I love you, baby.”

  She didn’t answer with words, but Decebel felt her response in the way she clung to him and how she let him comfort her. She let him be strong for her and gave him her vulnerability, trusting that he would protect her, that he would shelter her through this storm.

  The door opened, and Decebel raised his head to see who was there. A massive wolf stood in the doorway. Fane. Decebel’s alpha bowed his head to him. Then he walked in, followed by the rest of the pack males, all in their wolf form, each with their mates in human form standing beside them. To his surprise, Boain, a male Decebel had known and fought bedside for a very long time, also stepped in, though he was in his human form along with his mate.

  The group took up spots all around the bed as close as they could get. The room seemed to expand from the amount of love each of his pack members brought with them. Decebel clenched his jaw and met the eyes of every member, each of them bowing their heads to him and his mate, acknowledging the loss of their child.

  “I love you all,” Jen said softly.

  If the people in the room hadn’t already had his respect, loyalty, and love, they did now, every ounce he possessed.

  Chapter 16

  “There comes a point in the life of every scientist where they must contemplate the consequences of their research. They must consider if the knowledge they are uncovering will make the world a better place or a worse one. They have to look at their internal moral compass and ask themselves if there’s a line they’re not willing to cross. And if they step over that line, can they live with the consequences of their actions?” ~Alice

  “I wasn’t planning on eating you, but you are seriously trying my patience. And the more irritated I become with you, the more you look like a tasty midnight snack.” The vampire king clenched his fist. Within his palm was a glass slide containing two samples of blood—one vampiric and one Canis lupus. He threw it to the ground, where it shattered. Once again, the two species failed to unite.

  Alice’s head pounded like a jackhammer was rattling around in her skull so hard she feared it might explode. Perhaps death by vampire would be less painful than head explosion. At the moment, she really didn’t give a flying pig’s ass about Cain and his threat to her and Willis. They were doing their damndest to figure out what was going wrong. They were missing something, but she didn’t have a clue as to what. It wasn’t like she was purposely failing to give him the results he wanted. Her father had called two days prior and raked her over the coals because she had made no progress. The conversation had left her shaken. She had thought the government had sent her in to keep tabs on Cain. Alice had no idea they would actually want her to succeed at mixing werewolves and vampires. She should have known that dear old dad would have another agenda.

  Alice’s elbow rested on the table, with her chin propped on her palm. She dropped her head to the side so she could see her partner. “You seriously want to be that?” She pointed at Cain. In all the hours—many, many hours— they had spent together in the lab, Willis had confided in her that the main reason he’d agreed to work for the government and Cain on this project was because Cain had promised to turn him into a vampire. Alice had thrown her shoe at him and called him a dumbass.

  “Think of how much you could discover if your life was longer than a mere seventy to eighty years.” Once again he attempted to appeal to the researcher in her. As a scientist, Alice was driven to figure out the whys, hows, what ifs, and isn’t-that-freaking-awesomes of the world. And yes, to think that she could have endless time to do that would be amazing. But at what cost?

  “You know you’re going to have to change your name, right?” She smirked. “Willis is no kind of vampire name. You’ll be laughed at by all the other vampires, and they won’t include you in any vampire games.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Did you seriously just reference Rudolph?”

  Alice shrugged. “If the fangs fit…”

  “Bloody hell!” Cain yelled. “Are you two even listening to me?”

  “We hear you,” Alice said dryly. “We just don’t care about what you have to say. Your threats cannot force us to figure this out any faster. We’re doing everything we can. If you’re going to kill us, get on with it already. At least then my damn head would stop hurting.”

  He glared at her. “Using my blood made no difference in your test?”

  Alice had suggested that perhaps in a brand-new vampire, the virus might be stronger than an older vampire and therefore able to fight back against the werewolf’s dominant strength. The hypothesis hadn’t panned out. So, then she’d done the opposite and tried the blood of an old vampire, namely the very pissed-off one in front of her, to see if the virus was actually stronger in an ancient vamp. Again, the werewolf blood had overpowered the virus.

  “I have a theory.” Alice pinched the bridge of her nose and attempted to will away the migraine. “Blood needs a bonding agent to bind to iron. Maybe there needs to be a bonding agent for the virus and werewolf blood to join.”

  Willis snapped and pointed at her. “You’re brilliant.”

  “That’s why they pay me the big bucks,” she deadpanned.

  Willis frowned. “You’re getting paid?”

  “Yes, with things like crappy food, dorm-like living accommodations at a very pathetic college, and the joy of being around that.” She looked at the frowning vampire king. “But I’ve yet to see any monetary compensation.”

  “You’ve obviously never worked for the government.” Willis gathered up blood samples from the centrifuge machine. They’d tried separating the red blood cells, platelets, and plasma all in an attempt to join the two races. So far, it had been one dead end after another.

  She stood up and walked to the fridge to grab fresh samples, all the while wracking her brain for something they could use as a bonding agent. Alice was tired. Sleep had become something that only happened when she simply couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer and her head ended up resting on her arms at one of the lab tables. She hadn’t taken a shower in several days, and she was pretty sure she had a forest growing under her arms and on her legs. Super sexy. Not that she had any imminent prospects, considering she was living in a secret government facility surrounded by unconscious people and god-only-knows how many vampires. Oh, and also Willis, who was definitely not an option. Alice preferred her men to be fully grown and not just physically. Their emotions and maturity had to at least match her own. And she’d always been a pretty serious person, even as a child. It was becoming increasingly difficult to find a man who didn’t say, “That’s what she said” every other sentence. Seriously, once a month was enough for that particular joke.

  Alice grabbed a tray of vampire and werewolf samples and carried them back to the lab table she’d commandeered. Willis had attempted to take up residence on one side of it, but she’d promptly nipped that in the bud. Alice did not like to share her space. She needed to focus, and the man’s presence in the room was bad enough—he was constantly humming, and she found the foible maddening. She certainly didn’t need him directly across the table, hopping around like a three-year-old that had just slammed back a handful of sugar straws.

  Cain paced back and forth across the room, his usually neat hair disheveled from constantly running his hands through it. He seemed extremely agitated, at least more agitated than she’d seen thus far.

  “Are you going to do that all night?” Alice pulled out more glass slides and prepared her work area.

  He snapped his head around to glare at her and bared his fangs, hissing like a damn alley cat. Okay, maybe he was scarier than a cat. Even so, hissing? She was pretty sure he wouldn’t appreciate her snickering at him. So she bit the inside of her cheek. Obviously, her exhaustion was turning her into a five-year-old. All the maturity in which she usually prided herself was flying out the window.

  “I am going to do this until you two so-called geniuses succeed at what you’ve been brought here to do.”

  She shook her head. “Yeah, that’s not going to work for me.” Alice picked up the small suction bulb and stuck it down in the first tube of vampire blood, drawing up a minuscule amount. She then squeezed a small drop onto a slide. Then she got a new suction bulb and repeated the action with the werewolf blood. Alice picked up another glass slide to put on top of the sample, but it slipped and hit the table, shattering.

  Out of instinct, she made to grab for the slide, but it was too late. Alice managed to catch a piece of the broken glass, and a sharp pain ran across the tip of her thumb. She dropped the broken glass and looked at the blood smearing her skin. Alice quickly grabbed a towel from the table and wrapped it tightly around her thumb. When she glanced down, she saw that the broken slide containing her blood had fallen, landing directly on the slide containing the blood of the two supernatural species. “Crap.” She realized the samples were contaminated. Before she could pick up the ruined slide, Willis snatched it up. “Hey,” she blurted out. But he was already putting it under the microscope.

  He shrugged. “Sometimes accidents wind up being serendipitous solutions.” Willis leaned in and pressed his eye to the lens. His hand turned the knob as he adjusted the focus of the microscope. “We haven’t thought of introducing purely human blood. Maybe it’s the necessary bonding agent you brilliantly suggested.”

  “We already know that vampire blood can bond with human blood,” she pointed out. “And from what Dracula here has said, werewolf blood doesn’t bind to it. Why would it have any effect in joining of the two species?”

  “Why does any of this crap work the way it does?” Willis studied the sample. She noticed his hand trembling as he turned the knob again. Then his shoulders tensed, and suddenly he jumped back from the table and threw a fist in the air. “YES! Yes, yes, yes, yes! You did it!” He leaped toward her with outstretched arms.

  “If you touch me, I will cut you.”

  Willis’s smile didn’t falter. He shrugged. “Okay, not a hugger. How about a high-five partner?”

  “We’re not partners.” But she threw him a bone and high-fived him, anyway. Then she pushed him out of the way to look at the sample.

  “I’ll be damned.” Alice breathed out. She watched the human blood draw the two other types into it until there was essentially only a homogenous mixture remaining on the slide.

  She looked up at Cain to see his reaction. He’d stopped pacing and focused on her. The intensity in his gaze made her want to squirm, but Alice was not a squirmer. She hadn’t been as a child, and she sure as hell wasn’t as an adult. “What?”

  He walked toward her, his steps measured and controlled. The agitation he’d exhibited moments ago was gone, replaced with what appeared to be curiosity. Suddenly, he stood a hair’s breadth away from her. She hadn’t even seen him move. First, he’d been moving slowly like a hunting cat, and then he was just here. She was tall at five foot eight, yet he had a few inches on her, and she disliked that she had to look up at him even the slightest bit. The vampire reached up and grabbed the back of her head, fisting her dark hair in his hand.

  “What the hell are you doing?” She growled and tried to pull away, but she couldn’t move so much as a centimeter. His strength was unbelievable. He tilted her head to the side until her neck was exposed, and considering her hair was only chin length, he didn’t have to work around that as an obstacle.

  “Don’t you dare bite me.” She spat out, narrowing her hazel eyes at the vampire king. When she looked into his eyes, she saw something dark and hungry, like a starved man seeing food for the first time in months.

  “Cain,” Willis said, his voice shaky. “Don’t do this. I feel like I’m always having to remind you two to play nice.”

  The vampire’s focus didn’t waiver, and he didn’t acknowledge Willis. Instead, he leaned down until his nose pressed to her flesh. He took a deep breath, and Alice felt his tongue run across the same spot. This was not good.

  “My father will be pissed if you kill me.” She was pretty sure Cain didn’t give a rat’s ass about General Brock’s opinion, nor did he have any fear of what the general might attempt to do.

  His eyes darted to hers. “I’m hungry,” he said, his voice surprisingly soft. “And I find that your blood has drawn my attention. Not just to sate my thirst.” He looked back at her neck. “I apologize, but this is going to hurt.” Then, quick as a snake, he darted forward and sank his fangs into her flesh.

  “Fuuu…” Alice started to groan, but her words were cut off when the pain intensified as he began to suck and pull the blood from her vein. Couldn’t he have made it feel good? Wasn’t that a thing? The freaking movies made it look like a vampire feeding from a human was the equivalent of the best sex in the history of sex. And sex had a long-ass history. But this was not that. She pressed her hands to Cain’s chest and tried to push him away. She might as well have been trying to shove a statue. He continued to drain her, and Alice felt herself growing weak. Spots danced across her vision, and her heart stuttered in her chest. This was it. She was going to die in a lab without having done anything more in her life than study DNA. Her most successful finding would probably never be known by the scientific community. In fact, it would likely be actively covered up by the US government. “I don’t want to die,” she whispered.

  As quickly as he’d bitten her, he pulled back and ran his tongue across her skin again, humming in the back of his throat. “You’re not going to die, lovely Alice,” Cain murmured. Then, to her utter shock, the vampire pressed a kiss to the bite mark. Without releasing her, Cain pulled Alice’s head back until he could look into her eyes. His other hand cupped her face, and he ran his thumb across her cheek. “You’ve just become the most important piece in this puzzle. I will protect you with my life.”

  Minutes ago, he’d been threatening to kill her. Now he was vowing to keep her safe. “Are you bipolar?” She frowned, and her legs gave out beneath her, but Cain didn’t let her fall. He dropped his hand from her head and wrapped his arm around her waist to hold her up. “What are you talking about? Humans are the key. There’s a million of them. Just pick one. I’m not special.”

  His lips turned up slightly. And not for the first time, Alice noticed how handsome he was, especially when he wasn’t displaying his fangs.

  “That’s where you’re wrong. You are but one of eight that I am aware of in the entire world. The Canis lupus would revere you, holding you precious and irreplaceable.”

  “Dude,” Willis muttered. “Are you talking about those chicks in the book? The—”

  “Gypsy healers.” Cain finished for him. “Yes.” He looked at Alice in a way no man ever had. As if he adored her. When he looked at her, the ire that accompanied his gaze was gone. “The rarest of the rare of supernatural beings. The purest of pure.” He chuckled. “Of course it would be your blood that would join two species. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.”

  Alice’s mind was spinning faster than a hamster wheel. What the hell was a gypsy healer? How was it possible that she was one? Was it actually true? Maybe Cain had lost his mind because he hadn’t been feeding. There was no doubt he was mentally unstable. She’d realized that after only a couple of days of being around him. There was no way she was this gypsy healer person that he claimed she was. She couldn’t be. Alice was a PhD, not a medical doctor.