At the time, Zarina was sure Stutmeir and his scientists were insane. Back then, the idea of shifters, humans who had naturally occurring animal DNA, seemed absurd. According to Stutmeir, shifters could turn this normally dormant genetic material on and off at will, using it to make themselves stronger, faster, and more dangerous. They even had claws and fangs. It had sounded crazy to her, but she’d soon learned Stutmeir would do anything to create these shifters, no matter how many people got hurt.
Zarina thought she’d understood the depth of cruelty one human would go to in an effort to hurt another, but she realized how naive she’d been the first time she’d seen the results of their experiments. They had rounded up dozens of homeless people in the surrounding areas, administering their horrible drugs to one man after another, then letting them die and throwing their bodies away like they were nothing but garbage. And since no one besides Thomas Thorn, the late former senator who had hired Stutmeir, knew what they doing, there was no one to put an end to it.
Except her.
When her attempts to stop Stutmeir had failed, Zarina focused on helping as many test subjects escape as she could. Unfortunately, that was difficult when none of them survived very long. She’d seen so many other people die in horrible pain after being given the DNA-altering drugs that she’d been terrified the same would happen to Tanner. Her hands shook now just thinking about that awful day. His body had twisted and spasmed so hard, she’d heard muscles tear and bones crack.
Yet somehow, Tanner had survived. He hadn’t come out of the process as the shifter Stutmeir had been hoping for, though. Instead, he’d become stuck somewhere in between human and shifter. He was a blend of both…a hybrid.
Whereas shifters had flawless control over their abilities, hybrids like Tanner possessed almost none. In many ways, they reacted like mistreated animals, their fangs and claws coming out as they flew into violent rages at the least provocation. Around her, however, Tanner was never violent. That was the main reason she’d been able to get close enough to him to help him escape.
By then, the damage had already been done. Tanner had been as much uncontrollable beast as man, and the rages that sometimes turned him into a killing machine had made his life a living hell ever since.
Zarina had tried to help Tanner learn to control the anger inside while she worked on an antiserum that would put his DNA back the way it had been before. A lot of good people at the Department of Covert Operations in Washington, DC, friends who cared about Tanner nearly as much as she did, had helped any way they could. But in the end, those friends were the reason he’d run away.
Two months ago, the DCO training complex outside Quantico had been hit by a large group of highly functional hybrids led by Thorne. Tanner had had no choice but to fight alongside everyone else and had ended up completely losing control. He’d killed a lot of bad guys, but he’d also come close to killing some of his friends, too.
Tanner had run away that same night, fleeing back to the forest where all his nightmares had started. Zarina knew he was looking for the isolation he thought would keep him from ever hurting anyone he cared about again.
She understood why he’d left. He was the type of man who always worried more about the safety of others than himself. But she cared about him, and she wasn’t going to let him live out here by himself. Not when there was something she could do to help him.
Blinking back tears, Zarina folded the map and slipped it back into her pack. She had a fairly good idea where she’d gotten off the main trail. More importantly, she knew how to get back on it. If she headed left—west, she guessed—she should stumble across the 25 Mile Creek Trail again within a mile or two. If she was lucky, she’d find Tanner’s campsite by midnight.
Cutting cross-country in the direction she thought the main trail might be had seemed like a simple solution, but it turned out to be a lot more difficult than the map suggested. If she wasn’t heading up a steep slope of rock and pine needles, she was heading down the far side. But it wasn’t like she had a lot of options. She didn’t trust her navigational skills enough to do anything other than head in a straight line. She was going to have to deal with the rough terrain until she reached the trail.
To take her mind off the hike, she thought about the conversation she’d had with Tanner a few days before the hybrid attack on the DCO complex, when he’d not only come damn close to admitting he loved her, but also confessed he’d rather isolate himself in this forest than risk hurting her. Hearing him say he’d willingly live in total seclusion because he was terrified he’d harm her had torn at her heart.
That was the moment Zarina had realized she was in love. It was true. A man she’d never even kissed completely owned her heart. How crazy was that?
She was still pondering that when she heard a strange noise to her right. She froze and slowly turned that way, her pulse kicking up a notch. It sounded like heavy panting, as if someone was having difficulty breathing.
The doctor in her urged her to see if someone needed help, but she stopped. She wasn’t sitting in a restaurant in DC. She was hiking through the forests of Washington State, one of the few true wilderness areas left
