“The tag.” I would not, could not budge.
He stopped struggling, and I stilled, breathing a little easier. He slammed his eyes shut and scrunched them tightly before scraping his teeth over his full bottom lip. “Thatch.” When he opened his eyes, it was clear he’d centred himself. “Thatcher, SICB Human Division. Five six two nine.”
What. The. Hell?
I froze, his words sinking in as he continued. “I can’t give you the details as I’m part of an undercover task force. But I imagine my boss, and likely yours”—I cringed at that—“are probably on their way here now. So…” He expelled a deep breath. “You want to get me off this damn bed before they get here?”
Dull energy thrummed through my weary bones. Brent was going to rip me a new one. I was sure of it. Knowing Thatcher was at least right that my division leader would be here any minute, I released him, my guard up the entire time. It didn’t matter how pretty this Thatch was, if he was bullshitting me, I’d take him down in an instant.
Five minutes. It was all I had. “My sister?” I watched him carefully as he sat on the bed while he tentatively prodded his neck. He winced on contact, and I involuntarily shifted my feet. There was no way I was stepping forward to help him. No freaking way.
He tilted his head, giving another slight wince as he seemed to register my question. “Sister?”
I clenched my teeth, needing to control my reaction and the emotion still riding me hard. “There was a woman, a shifter in the lab where I found you. She was dead.”
“Sister?” Horror shadowed his expression. “Oh God, I didn’t…. Hazel was your sister?” He shook his head.
This time I took a step forward, zero idea of comfort in my mind. Fists formed at my sides.
“Did you—”
“No. Fuck no. She was helping me, or I was helping her.” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “I’m not explaining myself well. We were helping each other. She’d been injured, hurt. She was also infected to the point of—” He paused and looked hard at my face. No doubt he saw my struggle for control. “She bit me right at the end, knowing she wasn’t going to survive.” He closed his eyes. “Fuck, I told her it was okay, that she could. The memories….”
Yeah, the memories.
“Do I have twenty-four hours?”
I nodded, sickness sinking in my gut. Twenty-four hours, and Hazel’s memories would start to filter into Thatch’s. Nobody, even after years of study and research, had any clue of the whys or the genetic anomaly of how it happened, but it did. It simply was one of the aspects that made wolf shifters unique.
A shifter couldn’t make another shifter at the drop of a hat—other than the standard way of good old-fashioned sex between male and female. There was one distinctive exception. A wolf shifter could “gift” their ability or gene to another person. But it had to be by choice. It could also only happen once in their lifetime. And that was if the shifter was dying and bit a willing human. It defied everything we knew about science, but most significantly, and the aspect that truly was blowing my mind, was that with the wolf shifter’s death, their final memories were transferred.
Some thought it was a way to prepare the new shifter for their new form, giving the person a heads-up. Some tended to describe the transition as one of ancient rites, suggesting it allowed the new shifter to avenge their host’s death. But that would imply all deaths and bites were a result of murder, which was not the case at all. An old-timer, someone who was at death’s door due to old age, was able to pass on the gene via a bite. It was just a bit trickier though, as the timing had to be right.
But still, it defied every rational explanation anyone had. Even more than that, this agent in front of me would start to receive my sister’s final memories, and quite possibly a few random older ones too, within twenty-four hours. The memories would solidify the transformation. He wouldn’t be able to pick and choose the memories from her twenty-eight years on this planet. It didn’t work like that. The new shifter was simply given whatever memories made their way through. They could be old or recent, relevant or not.
From Thatch’s reaction and half-arsed explanation, it appeared as though he was expecting the memories to be related to his investigation.
God, my head hurt. Pressure built behind my eyes and a thud started to grow. It was manageable, barely, but in approximately one minute I was confident it would be fierce—once Brent shouted in my damn ear.
He nodded, remaining silent while we both appeared trapped in our thoughts.
“Thank you.”
His voice pushed through the throbbing in my brain. My eyes connected with his, and heat flushed across my skin. My reaction to him was not good. Not one bit. I had no room for attraction on the best of days, but this, in the thick of a cluster of craziness…. My emotions couldn’t handle it.
“For getting me out,” he explained. “And I’m so sorry about your—”
“Nope.” I still wasn’t ready to deal. I could stick to the facts, deal with the storm about to burst through the doors, but that was it.
Raised voices had me stiffening. Preparing myself, I took a step to the left and leaned against the wall facing the door. The support at my back was needed. It also brought me closer to Thatch. He watched my movement and gave me a tentative smile before his attention was drawn to the door as it tore open.
“Callen, you’ve got ten seconds to tell
