CHAPTER 2

Eli shook his head. The lines on his face deepened even more.

“Get him to the containment facility,” a hard voice ordered.

Whoa…what? Containment? Containment was where his team—the Arcadia division of the CIA’s not-supposed-to-exist Para Unit—sent their captured shifters and vampires for temporary holding. He wasn’t a prisoner. He was one of the good guys.

Damon tried to lift his head. On the second attempt, he actually succeeded, and it was then that he saw the face of his boss, Patrick MC'cain, come into focus. “I’m sorry,” Patrick said, and he actually sounded like he was, odd for the usually emotionless director, “but we don’t have an option.”

Damon jerked at the bonds holding him down. The other agents had strapped him to a gurney and were wheeling him toward a waiting ambulance.

“You were bitten by the suspect.” Real regret tinged Patrick’s voice. “You know what that means.”

Bitten. No. The f**k, no. “Kill me,” Damon snapped. Because there was no way he’d become a monster. The werewolves only existed to torture and kill. To slaughter. Their beasts dominated. They attacked anyone and everything.

Just like they’d attacked his family.

I won’t be like that. When he’d agreed to become part of the secret division, he’d known there would be deadly risks involved in his cases. He’d known the risks, and he’d long ago decided what he would and wouldn’t become.

“No!” Eli yelled as he surged forward. “Patrick, dammit, don’t! You promised—”

Screw any promises that Patrick had made to Eli. Now Damon remembered the feel of teeth tearing into his flesh. His neck. His shoulder. With all of those bites and the blood loss, he should be dead.

But he wasn’t. Because his body was already transforming.

If a werewolf’s bite didn’t kill you…if you had the DNA that would enable you to become a beast, then just one bite from a shifted werewolf would infect you. Transform you.

'I don’t want to be—'

“If you go rogue, I’ll put a silver bullet in your head myself,” Patrick promised, green eyes glittering. Rogue. That was the term for werewolves who couldn’t maintain their control. They lost all touch with humanity. Beasts. Monsters. Patrick’s gaze stayed locked on Damon as the guy continued, “But you’re one of us, and no one is putting you down yet. We’re damn well going to give you a chance at survival first.”

Patrick didn’t understand. He didn’t get it. He was a suit who saw the wolves from a distance. Damon had seen the newly transformed up close and personal. The beast took over. It was all basic instinct. All need and bloodlust.

Patrick looked up and nodded toward the agents around Damon. “Take him to Hellen. She can take care of his wounds and start to get a read on him—”

He snarled. Damon’s body twisted and fire seemed to burn beneath his skin. “Not…her…”

The boss didn’t know how Damon felt for the pretty, little doctor. Hellen was already his temptation with her sweet-smelling skin and her f**k-me eyes. He’d tried to stay away because he’d known she was too fragile to handle someone like him.

If she hadn’t been able to handle the man he’d been, there was no way she’d be safe around his soon-to-be-emerging werewolf side.

“He’s starting to change!” Eli’s shouted. “Drug him and get the guy in that ambulance!”

A needle shoved into his arm.

Damon kept fighting and trying to get them to understand, “Not…Hel…”

They were loading him into the ambulance. They weren’t listening to him. Hellen was the last person he should be around. He wanted her as a man. He knew that a werewolf’s desires were just magnified.

And what the wolf wanted, he took.

Without thought. Without remorse.

No limits. No control. No conscience.

Just the beast.

'He opened his mouth and only a growl escaped. Not Hellen. Keep me away from her. I’ll hurt her.'

He could feel the fire spreading beneath his skin. Hands were on him, holding Damon down because the drug wasn’t working.

“Uh, is he supposed to be this strong?” One of the agents—Shawn, he knew Shawn, they played cards every Wednesday—asked nervously. “Cause this hoss is—”

The strap across his chest broke free, and Damon lunged up.

"Not Hellen!"

Another needle was jabbed into his neck. One straight into his heart.

“That’ll stop a tiger,” Patrick panted out the words.

A tiger…

Or a werewolf.

Damon fell back against the gurney.

'Hellen, I’m sorry.'

His eyes closed.

***

Hellen gasped when the doors to her medical wing were shoved open. She had been packing up, ready to go home for a few hours of chilling on the couch and watching crime TV reruns but—

“Hellen, an agent was bitten!”

She snapped to attention. Everyone in their division knew the risks of the job. When they started hunting monsters, they all realized that the agents faced the risk of one day becoming a monster. Of getting exposed.

Bitten.

She yanked on her gloves even as she motioned toward the operating table on her right. “Put him there, and let me check him out.” Her heart was racing, but her hands were rocky steady.“What are we dealing with?” Hellen asked as she rushed forward. The agent was strapped down. Unmoving. She couldn’t see who it was. There were over two dozen agents in Arcadia’s Para Unit.

“Multiple werewolf bites,” Patrick told her.

Multiple. She gulped. “You know what’s happening to him. He’ll die from the poison in those bites.” There wasn’t much she could do for a werewolf bite. If the agent had been bitten by a vampire, she could have given him a transfusion, and made sure the wound was closed. Possibly saved him.

But a werewolf bite?

Death sentence.

“He’s not dying.” Patrick stared at her with narrowed eyes. “The agent has already started to transform.”

She almost dropped her stethoscope at that news.

A human transforming into a werewolf? That was so rare.

And deadly.

Her heart drummed even faster in her chest, and her hands gave the slightest tremble as she hurried toward the table. The other agents had transferred the wounded man onto the table she’d indicated, and they had already strapped him down once more. Hellen elbowed them aside, trying to make her way through to see the poor agent who’d just been given a one-way ticket to hell.