Maximus punched the man once. The thug’s head jerked back.
The hybrid grabbed the man by the throat and lifted him like it was nothing. “You might think everyone out there are sheep for you to prey on,” he growled. “But you have to remember there’s always a bigger wolf.”
He tossed the man into the wall without using his full strength. A few broken bones would help the bastard reconsider his life choices and not bring the FBI to investigate who took him down, let alone any hybrid enemies. The thug fell to the ground, groaning and bloodied.
Maximus looked at the woman before inclining his head toward the store. “Get in there and call the cops. He’s not getting up anytime soon.”
The woman nodded quickly, her eyes full of gratitude. “T-thank you, whoever you are.”
“Just go.” Maximus stuck his hands in his pockets and headed back toward the parking lot. “I’m not sticking around. I’ve got a little island trip planned for tomorrow.”
* * *
Maximus took in a deep, slow breath, a stethoscope cold against his chest. He didn’t dislike Rachel, the main doctor helping out the hybrids of Isla Luna, but that didn’t translate into liking medical examinations.
Rachel didn’t bother to ask him about the small cuts on his knuckles. She probably figured it was just more hybrids getting worked up and challenging each other like she saw daily on the island. He didn’t want or care to explain the fight.
She moved the stethoscope to a different part of his bare chest, her brow knitted in concern.
Maximus almost laughed despite the situation. The doctors he’d dealt with in the past never faked concern. The main emotions he associated with doctors were annoyance or fascination. He was nothing more than a lab rat to them.
No. Not a lab rat. A carefully crafted weapon. He was a slave of the Phoenix Corps and their allies. He was a genetically engineered hybrid created to serve as a killer, as all the hybrids on Isla Luna had been, but Maximus and his fellow hybrids hadn’t been created in the same way nor trained with the Luna hybrids. Maximus and his brothers also didn’t get the closure of the Luna hybrids.
The latter found their freedom after years of being hounded by the shadowy Horatius Group. They had exposed and destroyed their enemy, root and branch. Now they had their own island home, safe from any humans who might target them like when they lived in their old home, Luna Lodge. They didn’t have to live in constant fear of another attack from the monsters of the Group or manipulated townspeople.
While the Luna hybrids saved and welcomed Maximus and his men, it was hard not to feel like an outsider, especially when Maximus and some of his hybrid brothers in recent months had begun displaying one other key difference from others of their kind. That reason was behind his visit to the doctor today.
Rachel stepped away with an apologetic look. “Okay, try your best to see if you can pick up on the scent.” She patted her chest. “My scent.”
Maximus inhaled deeply through his nose, his heightened sense of smell revolting at the harsh scent of chemicals seeping throughout the examination room and the coppery hints of blood in a nearby biohazard container. Rachel’s scent was distinct, and if he needed to track her through the woods, he could with ease, but there was one thing he wasn’t smelling, something special he’d been able to smell about her and many women like her until recently.
“Well?” Rachel asked, looking hopeful.
Maximus ran a hand through his dark hair. “There’s nothing wrong with my nose. I can smell everything in here, including you, but not your Vestal scent. You smell like any other normal woman to me.”
As a Vestal, Rachel was the destined mate of a hybrid, in her case, Marius, one of the Luna Lodge hybrids. Although every Vestal was compatible with only one hybrid, others would react to their special scent and know their true nature. But Maximus’s nose told him nothing more than Rachel was a human woman. It betrayed him.
He growled and clenched his hand into a fist. “It’s not all of us.”
Rachel nodded slowly. “That’s a good thing. Since the twelve of you affected all showed your initial symptoms around the same time, we have no reason to suspect that any of the others will be affected. You have some different biomarkers present in your blood, too. And we haven’t seen any sign in the others. Unless they’ve been lying to me and telling you something different, they can still smell Vestals.”
“Good for them,” Maximus said. “I’m glad to know the rest of them are fine, even if the rest of Alpha Squad is going down.”
Rachel rolled her eyes, her mouth contorting into a frown. “You’re not going down, Maximus. You just have messed-up noses. You make it sound like you’re going to drop dead tomorrow.”
Many hybrids didn’t care for Rachel’s acerbic bedside manner, but Maximus didn’t mind a doctor who told him the blunt truth. This time though, he doubted she was. Or, at least, she didn’t appreciate the full scope of their problem.
It didn’t matter. Maximus didn’t need anyone’s pity nor did his men.
“If we can’t pick up the Vestal scent, then we’ll never find our Vestals,” he said with a shake of his head. “That means there’s no future for the core of Alpha Squad. I’m not trying to ignore what the Luna hybrids have done for us. Without them we’d still be stuck in some dark cell or lab, but we’re cousins more than brothers, and this might just be the beginning. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought of that possibility.”
Rachel pulled back and folded her arms
