Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Barbara J. Hancock

CAPTURED

Barbara J. Hancock

www.loose-id.com

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Captured

Barbara J. Hancock This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical

events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely

coincidental.

Published by

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Copyright © May 2009 by Barbara J. Hancock All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No

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eISBN 978-1-59632-932-4

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Editor: Venessa Giunta

Cover Artist: Marci Gass

Chapter One

Maya burst out the back door of the old abandoned farmhouse. Her shoulder

scraped the doorjamb, but she ignored the pain. She slipped on the wet, overgrown

grass of the backyard that had been soaked in last night’s rain. The soggy ground

slowed her down. The bright morning sun blinded her and hurt her eyes. She fell

down to one knee and jumped up to run again. With panicked lungs, she fought to

catch her breath. She made it out of the yard and into a neighboring field.

And then the hunters surrounded her.

Like a blur of ominous shadows, they came out of the light to swallow her up.

They were dressed in dark leather and mismatched fatigues, but it seemed to her as if

their darkness came from some internal source.

There was nowhere left to run.

Two men, one on each side, grabbed her. She didn’t fight. She didn’t cry out in

fear or pain, even though their hands were rough and bit hard into the flesh of her

arms.

She wasn’t dead.

But for long moments, as the cold handcuffs bit into her scarred wrists, as her

deepest, darkest fears of recapture were realized, Maya wished she were. The wish

made her cheeks burn.

Fingers dug into her shoulders and pushed her to her knees. She kept her chin

down and clasped her hands together as if in prayer. She was thankful that long sheets

of once-immaculately styled blonde hair kept her embarrassment hidden.

She wouldn’t go back. She couldn’t go back, but even worse than returning to

the research hospital, where they could continue to poke and prod and try to figure out

what made her tick, was the very real possibility that they would use her to capture

her sister.

No way.

Maya swallowed against the knot of fear in her throat as it threatened to cut off

her air supply. She swallowed. She breathed. Slowly, shakily, in and out, in and out.

Those calming breaths were a triumph for her. She claimed the oxygen filling her with

life and pushed the momentary weakness of a death wish away.

Her heart still raced.

Her blood still pounded in her ears.

She still felt like a cornered rabbit about to be forced back into its cage after a

sudden flight of freedom.

But she breathed.

Sometimes you had to take pleasure in the simple things.

The sun warmed the crown of her bowed head. The moist spring grass cushioned

her knees, and its fresh, verdant fragrance rose up to fill her nose. Cold metal tables

waited, as did needles and masked strangers, but Maya’s pulse rate slowed. Here,

now, kneeling in the sun, she found a quick second of peace.

A pair of military-style boots approached accompanied by the jangle of chains.

Maya meant to hold fast and continue to breathe, but the noise of the chains and the

way a chunky heel of one boot inexorably crushed a patch of delicate buttercups made

her flinch. Her clasped hands tightened until her knuckles turned white.

The man who had forced her to her knees laughed. She wasn’t surprised. He had

cuffed her with a huge grin on his face as if her tragedy was his entertainment.

The flower-cruncher allowed one end of his chain to dangle in front of her face.

Sunlight glimmered off the silver links, and Maya blinked. Even with her head bowed,

she found the bright morning was almost too much for her eyes. After six months of

captivity, she had grown accustomed to darkness. She hadn’t been free long enough to

adjust. Her hospital room had been windowless and lit only by scant fluorescent light.

Often, she’d been submerged in a sensory deprivation tank, to control her powers or to

test their limits, she never knew for certain. Since she had escaped, she had slept

during the day and traveled at night, but the storm had forced her to seek shelter, and

now she was caught.

Maya straightened her shoulders and rejected the urge to cringe away from the

chain that now slithered across the bare skin of her upper arm. When the cold links

slid over her left breast, her nipple hardened of its own volition, and she shivered.

She couldn’t stop them from being amused at her plight, she couldn’t help that

they liked her on her knees, but she could at least stay outwardly calm. In her chest,

her heart fluttered like a butterfly caught in a cruel net. On the outside, she composed

herself, willing her body to be as still as stone.

Never let them see you sweat.

It was a good motto…until the scientists shot you up with something that made

you shimmy and shake like a lycanthropy victim in the final throes.

No.

She wouldn’t think of hypodermic needles or stony-faced scientists or the

hospital bed with her name on it. She wouldn’t think of the lycanthropy outbreak that

had changed the world or the werewolf attack that had changed her and her sister’s

world on a much more personal level.

She wouldn’t think.

The cool chain feathered across her skin, but she didn’t move. The flower-

crusher stepped nearer, bringing the heat of his arousal close to her bowed face, but

she didn’t cry. It helped that all her perceptions were a bit bleary around the edges.

The newly risen sun in the cloudless sky caused everyone and everything to be gilded

with a golden haze.

“Don’t touch her, Wiseman. Not if you have any secrets you want to keep.”

The flower-crusher, aka Wiseman, stopped just shy of brushing his cock against

her cheek. She knew he wanted to choke her…and not with his hands. The warning

not to touch her had come from another man with the sun at his back so that he was

nothing but a dark hulk ringed by sunlight.

“I’m not afraid of a witch,” Wiseman growled back. His temper would result in

tighter bindings for her.

Not for the first time, she wished she were a witch. She could definitely use

some “double, double, toil and trouble” to come to her rescue right about now. Maybe

a nose twitch or two. Heck, a rabbit out of a hat would be something solid, something

better than being the frightened bunny herself.

Scientists had discovered her psychic abilities at the hospital after the attack.

People like her were called witches because their abilities were seen as magical even

though research had proved that their power rose from something as simple as

mutations in their genetic code. Since the lycanthropy disease had begun to spread,

people were more superstitious than ever. Nothing like hard evidence that one

monster was real to make you believe in everything you’d ever feared in the dark.

As it was, Maya didn’t need clairvoyant visions to know Wiseman’s mind was

somewhere she didn’t want to go. She’d already seen and felt enough from him.

Inadvertently, she shivered.

In these desperate times, people were prone to paranoia. If you were different

and you knew what was good for you and yours, you stayed hidden. Unfortunately,

the government was very, very good at hide-and-seek.

Maya fought a sudden crazy urge to jump up and shout, Abracadabra, at the top

of her lungs. It might be sweet to see the flower-crushing Wiseman wet his pants, but

considering her hands would still be cuffed and she would still be surrounded by a

dozen mercenaries, she figured the price for her momentary pleasure would be too

great.

Instead, she waited.

She knew Wiseman would love to prove his machismo to his comrades. This

knowing was a talent she’d had since shortly after a werewolf had decided she and her

sister looked like a yummy treat. Even dulled as her powers were by the mental

lockdown that had become second nature to her, she still had this power of hyper-

intuitiveness. Ta-da.

Claws might have been nicer.

It was an irreverent thought. A horrible thought. And one that left her whispering

a soft plea for forgiveness from her sister.

Chains slid and skittered with metallic clinks as Wiseman bent over her kneeling

form. She braced herself. The cuffs were bad enough. She was well and truly trapped.

And her fluttering pulse knew it. The chains wouldn’t make her any less free, but she

feared them nonetheless. She knew the claustrophobic helplessness that would claim

her as soon as her arms and legs were totally immobilized.

Maya decided she would fight. She would kick and bite and scream before she

submitted calmly to Wiseman’s chains, no matter how hopeless it seemed. Her

freedom had come at such a price that she couldn’t surrender it without a fight.

When her captors had started to unlock her secrets, when she didn’t know how

much longer she could hide the knowledge that her sister was a full-fledged werewolf,

she had used every trick at her disposal to escape. She could never go home again.

She would be alone and on the run for as long as she survived. She had abandoned

Sasha in order to save her. She wouldn’t let these mercenaries negate that sacrifice.

The scream had risen all the way up into her throat as Wiseman brought the

chain around her chest, but it gurgled to a halt as he was interrupted.

“Does she look like a werewolf to you, Private?”

Maya’s chin came up. A new man approached. Moving away from her,

Wiseman dropped the chain in the wet grass, where it coiled like a silvery snake

waiting to strike. The others made way for the new man to move forward. Even with

her sun-dazzled eyes, she saw their movements as hurried and deferential. The new

arrival was obviously in charge.

Out of the frying pan into the—

A vision began.

It was a kiss, a simple, impossible kiss.

A firm, warm masculine mouth slid against hers, open just enough so that she

felt a hint of moisture. A questing tongue teased her lips, then beyond them to rub,

rough and slick, as it found the hidden hollows of her mouth. It was a tasting, but it

was also a slow but steady scaling of the mental walls that had kept her locked away

from sweet, sweet contact for far too long. Maya felt as she would feel in the future

when the kiss took place. Emboldened but terrified. Supported but set free. Embraced

but breathless as if she faced a free fall into the unknown.

It wasn’t easy to fight the vision off. She could do it. She’d had to learn to do it

since the world had gone dark and her visions of the future were more often than not

even darker than the present. Sasha thought she was dead. And Maya still fought to

keep her safe, every second of every day. But she was out of practice. She hadn’t

realized until they were forcefully separated how much of her strength came from

Sasha, for Sasha. It was harder to stay strong for her while they were apart, but she

had done it.

She did it now.

Maya’s head swam, but she stayed conscious. Her lips were tender and her skin

heated. She pushed the sensations away and focused on the man who so obviously

held her fate in his hands.

Visions flickered like strobe lights behind her eyes, but even those intimate

future kisses couldn’t take away from the way the man’s confident grace caught her

attention. It wasn’t a swagger, though it was proud. It wasn’t a march, though it was

strong. It was as if his movements were fueled by an inner fire, an inner

energy…contained.

She didn’t need the other men’s reaction to his presence to know he was

dangerous. He looked prepared, as if he was accustomed to erupting out of a stroll

into action at the blink of an eye.

Instinctively, Maya rose to her feet. No one objected. The new man drew every

eye to him. It was as if the field itself shifted until the tall stranger was the center of

the universe. She wasn’t going to fall into orbit like the others and rotate around the

sun of his forceful presence.

And yet, she stood.

She also longed for a wayward cloud to somehow materialize and block the

sun’s blinding beams. She told herself it was because a crisp, clear look at this new

man’s face would hold the visionary world at bay, but part of her wanted, needed, a

clear view of the man’s face, because of the vision.

“Tell me if you see claws or fangs, Wiseman.”

“No, no claws, Shepherd. She’s a witch.”

“We don’t waste chains on psychics. She’s cuffed. She’s caught. Anything more

is not only unnecessary, it’s flamboyant. Do I look like I do flamboyant?”

Shepherd’s voice was low and controlled. Too controlled. His patient tone

suggested that the man himself had very little patience for what he considered

theatrics on Wiseman’s part. It didn’t soothe her to see Wiseman squirm. Ultimately,

the more powerful Shepherd controlled not only Wiseman, but also her. No, it wasn’t

soothing to see the muscle-bound mercenary squirm.

Not at all.

Maya squinted. She couldn’t help it. Suddenly, she was very, very afraid. The

vision kiss had happened when Shepherd had spoken. She couldn’t see his expression.

His face was a mystery to her, but her fingers twitched behind her back because she

thought maybe, just maybe, the feel of his warm, moist lips was not.

Maya watched Wiseman shake his head as she tried not to panic. She clenched

her rebellious fingers and pretended their twitching wasn’t anticipation.

“You play with a ’wolf, you die. Plain and simple. Break a bad habit now before

it gets you killed. This area is known for werewolf activity, gentlemen. Don’t get

distracted. And, Wiseman, give the prisoner your sunglasses. She needs to see to

make her way to the truck.”

All the men stopped in their tracks. They had been prepared to get back to work,

but obviously, the lesson hadn’t ended yet.

Maya looked from the hesitant Wiseman to the expectant Shepherd and back

again. She was impressed. He had seen her squint and surmised its cause even as he

disciplined his men, even as he barely glanced her way.

“If she was a powerful seer, we wouldn’t have been able to trap her. She never

saw us coming,” Shepherd said.

Tactfully, Maya bit her tongue. She didn’t think she’d get those sunglasses if she

admitted that she’d known today would be bad. She’d tried to avoid it, but it had

caught up with her anyway. Sometimes knowing and knowing what to do…two very

different things.

The man who had taunted her with the chain looked green, but he didn’t move.

The tension in the air said anyone seldom, if ever, balked when ordered to do

something by Shepherd.

With an attitude of controlled patience, Shepherd came closer. Maya held her

breath. It was either that or gasp, and she did not want to go there. Please God, let it

not be his lips she had just tasted in her vision. She hoped the vision hadn’t

heightened her awareness of him as a man. She prayed it was simply that her

awareness of him as a threat was already as high as it could go.

He was only a few steps away.

With easy movements, he lifted one arm to snag Wiseman’s sunglasses from the

private’s face as he passed. The sunlight winked on their lenses, and Maya let out the

breath she’d been holding in a quick sigh of relief, only to try to gulp it back when he

narrowed the gap between them from a few steps to a few inches.

She tilted her chin. How could she not? He topped her five feet six inches by at

least another five.

As he came into focus, Maya tried to breathe lightly. She tried not to be shaken

to her toes. His eyes were blue. His face was lean and angular and perfect. His hair

was dark and wavy, so dark it glinted in the sun as blue-black highlights kissed the

crest of every wave. Kissed.

Maya blinked and forgot to be afraid for several seconds.

Then he moved to place the sunglasses on her nose, and once again, she felt like

a cornered rabbit. She closed her eyes and held herself completely motionless.

He would kiss her. Somewhere, sometime, his lips would touch hers. She had

already tasted their firm fullness.

As his fingers barely brushed her cheeks, she drew in air too suddenly and too

quickly to be anything but a reaction to his touch. He paused with the pads of his

thumbs near her hairline at her ears.

Maya opened her eyes. Her new clarity of vision revealed more than she’d been

able to see before. His face was perfectly shaped, but there was a hardness to his

mouth and a stiffness to his expression. And a tense muscle along one side of his jaw

was highlighted by the fine, thin white line of an old scar that ran from his ear to the

tip of his chin.

A werewolf had gone for his throat and missed.

She knew it just as she knew how the scar would feel against her tongue. She

didn’t know how or when such an intimate taste could ever possibly happen. She just

knew it would. The knowing made her tremble. She didn’t want to be in the same

state as this mercenary hunter who had obviously barely survived a ’wolf attack,

much less close enough to—

“Was I wrong to tell Wiseman that this was safe?” A dark eyebrow quirked over

one bright eye. His voice was husky, as if he was unaccustomed to talking in soft,

intimate tones.

Maya, who felt about as dangerous as a stuffed bunny at this point, slowly shook

her head.

His hands touched the sides of her face, and her movements brought her cheeks

more fully into contact with his callused fingers. He spread them, lightly seeking

further contact, and Maya stilled her movements in response to the tingles his touch

raised along her skin.

Even as he didn’t drop his hands, even as he didn’t look away, he spoke to the

men behind him. “’ Wolves, gentlemen. From here on out, we only take what we came

for.”

She thought it might be an apology for his men’s rough handling of her. She

thought she detected the slightest movement of his left thumb as if to test the softness

of her skin. She also thought men like Shepherd didn’t apologize or caress fugitives

like her.

The sunglasses were the smoky kind, far from opaque. He had to see the fear in

her eyes, but he searched them as if he saw other things as well. Maya was the

psychic, but the experience etched on his face made her fear his perception. Had her

intimate vision made her eyes too soft, too vulnerable, too welcoming? Heaven forbid

she should shoot come-hither glances at her worst enemy.

Finally, he took his hands from her face and turned away. Maya rolled her

shoulders to ease tense muscles. No one laughed. In fact, the man who had laughed

earlier looked as if he could use a good stretch as well.

Wiseman herded her to the waiting truck. She wasn’t in chains and she could

see. She counted those blessings even as her spirits fell. She wanted to protect Sasha.

She wanted to be free. But in spite of her fear, she wanted the hunter’s kiss as well.

Those three strong desires were bound to collide.

Chapter Two

They were tracking the largest, most lethal werewolf pack ever tagged, and one

of his men decided to play cops and robbers with a beautiful psychic. When he’d first

seen her in that field of wildflowers, he’d thought fairy, not witch. She was so pale

and delicate.

Shepherd clenched his fists when he remembered Wiseman taunting the helpless

prisoner with a chain. He’d wanted to deck the guy for being that twisted, and then

he’d felt a little bit twisted himself when he’d touched her. He didn’t have time for

lust. He didn’t have time for games. He’d put a stop to Wiseman’s sick play, but that

hadn’t stopped him from secretly wondering what it would be like to taste the

vulnerable psychic’s lips.

With each and every unit he was given, he saw the steady deterioration of honor

and order. He wouldn’t allow himself to go that route even as times grew darker. As

long as he was in charge, their prisoners weren’t going to be treated like toys. The key

to mankind’s survival flowed through the veins of bite survivors. For eight long years,

he’d believed in little else. Through dark days and even darker nights, he’d worked to

serve that belief.

The psychic hadn’t cried. He had watched as she’d squared her shoulders and

met his gaze with unwavering courage.

If victims of werewolf attack didn’t volunteer for testing, they were taken. Plain

and simple. He donated his own blood on a weekly basis, though he hadn’t been

bitten. His whole family had died of the lycanthropy virus when it was still airborne,

like the common cold. The scientists couldn’t explain why some turned, some died,

and some recovered as human as they’d ever been. He’d been eighteen and more

worried about asking Becca Lee Warren to the prom than Armageddon.

There had been less than twenty survivors in his small hometown, all under

twenty, and Becca hadn’t been one of them. They’d been too busy to mourn, though

so much death, so much loss had become a part of them, day and night. They had

banded together, tighter than tight, bound by tragedy and necessity. They became a

new family with new priorities, like rat hunting instead of skateboarding and guarding

their food stash instead of playing video games.

Then werewolves attacked. Some of the ’wolves may have even been the loved

ones they’d lost.

Shepherd fingered the scar along his jaw as he always did when he remembered

that night. He’d never know why he hadn’t been bitten. He had never, not once, felt

lucky. If you were bitten, you were no longer human, even if you didn’t turn into a

full-fledged werewolf. The virus transmitted in a ’wolf’s saliva caused mutations in

the victim’s genes. His genes were untouched, though the attack had changed him. He

would never be the same kid he’d been before. But his genes were still a-okay.

Special ops soldiers found him after the attack. More military than mercenary

back then, they’d taken him back to their base.

’Wolves.

He didn’t just hunt them. He hated them.

If scientists could help mankind come back from the brink of extinction, then

Shepherd was more than willing to send a steady supply of test subjects to them.

Then again, he never felt comfortable detaining no-gos. He was too often

reminded of his own close call. He preferred ’wolves. Violent ’wolves. Nothing like a

do-or-die fight to replace philosophical shades of gray with survival instinct. The

sooner he could hand off this latest catch to another unit and get back to his specialty,

the better.

“Shepherd, there’s a call from HQ. They want her scanned.” Wiseman relayed

the message with a puffed-out chest and a breathless quality to his voice, as if he were

a carrier pigeon that had flown from Fort Lee with the memo in his beak as opposed

to simply receiving it on a battered satellite phone.

“They’re chipping no-gos now?” Shepherd asked.

The scientists used microchip implants to maintain detailed histories of all their

test subjects as well as for identification and limited tracking. The chips had initially

been used only on full-fledged werewolves because they were the most likely to

escape. No-gos were victims of bites who didn’t turn. The jury was still out on how

dangerous no-gos could become.

“Yeah, Freedom Fighters are getting bolder. They’ve helped too many escape,

and it’s playing havoc with record keeping.”

Shepherd’s teeth clicked together, and his jaw started to ache, right about where

the metal plate sat beneath his skin to bolt shattered bone together.

“Damn puppy lovers,” Wiseman said, no doubt seeing Shepherd’s tension and

seeming eager to placate the man he’d crossed earlier. “Want me to do it?”

Shepherd knew he had to watch for two things. One, that Wiseman would be too

afraid of the psychic to properly scan her, and two, that the twisted private would do

something cruel or inappropriate to the flower fairy because his fear of her made him

angry. Either was unacceptable.

“I’ll take care of it,” he decided out loud. He was under control. He’d had

nothing but steely control for years. It was his cold armor, the one thing he could

depend on in a world gone insane.

Besides, the sooner she was scanned, the quicker he could send her back where

she belonged.

* * * * * Maya sat in the back of the old military transport watching dust motes dance in

the beams of sunlight that leaked through the canvas over her head. The canvas was

stretched across metal beams to form a roof, but each seam was aged and frayed to the

point that she didn’t sit in darkness. When they had left her here, she’d tried to see the

future, but clairvoyant visions weren’t easily turned on and off, and the only thing she

could do was replay the flashes she’d seen—and felt and tasted—in the field.

Flashes about Shepherd.

A ruthless mercenary named Shepherd? Shouldn’t he be called Blade or Spike or

the Angel of Death?

He wore leather like a second skin and several polished sheaths. They were

obviously not for mere decoration. The sheaths were cared for, but showed evidence

of frequent use in the way that they were smooth in the places where a quick draw of a

knife would cause rubbing. She’d counted three sheaths, holding wicked knives—on

his waist, his thigh, and his boot. She couldn’t imagine the man wearing long, flowing

robes or carrying a candy cane-shaped staff. His name shouldn’t evoke thoughts of

sanctuary.

Maya bit her lip. The little nip didn’t stop the sensory input her tingling mouth

still felt from dream kisses she vowed would never take place.

Vow. Shmow.

His mouth had looked hard and frowning in the field. In her vision, it had been

soft and beguiling against hers. She knew, beneath the worn leather, his lean,

muscular form was scarred in places, but firm and warm and smooth in others.

She knew his hands were strong and callused, but surprisingly gentle.

She knew he tasted of cinnamon.

It wasn’t okay. It so wasn’t okay, but at least she hadn’t seen needles and lab

coats and gleaming, cruel instruments on a tray.

Maya drew in a shaky breath of dusty air. Soon the truck would rumble to life

and take her back to hell. She would never see Shepherd again. After all, she was well

and truly caught, and the hunter would need to move on to the next quarry and then

the next.

Dusty air didn’t soothe her nerves.

Not at all.

Logic never swayed her visions, and somehow or another they always came true.

As if manifested by that thought, the back flap opened and the truck swayed as

Shepherd climbed inside.

Maya gasped. She couldn’t help it. Dust motes swirled around the man in a

cloud, and the sunbeams acted like a hundred miniature spotlights tracking his

progress as he moved toward the rear of the truck where she perched on the bench,

alone and defenseless against his advance. Surprisingly, it made her angry more than

fearful, especially when he spoke three little words.

“Don’t be afraid.”

So simple. So straightforward. And so out of touch with who she was and what

she was going through.

Maya tossed her hair back from her face so he could see her glare. The

sunglasses were in her pocket now. Private Wiseman had performed the “courtesy” of

placing them there. He had lingered over the whole process of slipping them into her

pocket as if he weren’t scared to death of what she would see in his mind.

“You’re taking me to the hospital, where they will slowly kill me day after

miserable day. How can I not fear that?”

He paused, possibly surprised by her vehemence.

“I meant here, now, don’t fear me.”

Just as it had been in the field when he had spoken for her ears alone, his voice

was husky. Maya tried to ignore the goose bumps it raised with its intimate, deep

vibrato. She especially tried to ignore the certainty of how it would sound and feel

if—when—he murmured words against her skin.

The crazy thing was that she knew he spoke the truth. The man who quietly drew

near to kneel beside her would never physically do her harm, but he was determined

to deliver her to those who would.

“They’ll hurt me, Shepherd. Lots.” She thought she saw the hint of stiffness in

the way he hunched his shoulders to reach for something on this belt, but she couldn’t

be sure.

“I need to check your chip.”

He held a scanner in his hand, and Maya suddenly had to fight the urge to cry.

For one long, miserable second, she felt inhuman, like a can of veggie soup, but then

she met Shepherd’s gaze and she knew he didn’t see her that way. He had paused with

the scanner poised too far from her heart to take a reading, and he looked at her, man

to woman, not man to lab rat.

The look asked her permission somehow, even though she was handcuffed, even

though she was a fugitive without any rights to speak of. In that second, she could see

the glimmer of a possible path to the future her visions had predicted. She allowed

herself to look, really look, at the man who knelt beside her.

He was young, too young, to have such a hardened face. Twenty-five or twenty-

six? These days it was hard to tell.

Whatever his exact age, he had lived hard for a long, long time. Deep in his eyes,

she thought she saw the reflection of her own tragic past. The loss of her mother

during the initial wave of airborne pathogen. Struggling to survive after the werewolf

attack that came later. Nursing her sister in secret in a world gone mad, while

knowing their survival rested on her shoulders, alone.

Slowly, not feeling as if it was weak or stupid, Maya nodded, giving him

permission to edge closer and begin the scan.

Microchips were embedded in a surgical procedure that placed the information-

storing device close to the heart. Any other location made it too easy for werewolves

to extract.

Maya had been scanned before with her eyes closed and her heart racing. This

time, she watched Shepherd. She met his gaze. She wasn’t a lab rat. She was a

woman, and the chip didn’t negate that.