Logan swore out loud when he read the tattered note: I’m coming for her soon. Enjoy your last days. The Scientifique is mine. Who the hell could have walked onto his land and shoved it under his front door? He snapped a picture with his phone and messaged it to both Chandler and Devereoux. Afterward, he immediately called Dimitri and insisted they run a background check on the owner of the known lab locations. Frustrated, he couldn’t sit back and wait for Devereoux to figure out who had taken Wynter. They’d find the killer on their own, without the vampire.
He asked Dimitri to scrub the laptop again before turning it over to Wynter. They’d analyze every last email, every last byte of data to see if there was a pattern to the flow of information. The hardest decision Logan had to make was not telling Wynter about the ominous message that’d been left for them. She’d been through so much distress over the past few months; he didn’t have the heart to worry her. There wasn’t a thing she could do about it anyway.
As expected, Wynter had been exhilarated when he’d shown her the newly created lab. It was the least he could do, considering the circumstances. Immediately, she started taking blood samples, not only from herself but from both him and Dimitri. At his request, Chandler donated his blood as well, and Emma’s samples had been sent by FedEx from New York. Obsessed and determined, Wynter worked day and night.
Selfishly, Logan wanted more time with her, but the lab provided her with a welcome distraction, keeping her safely in his home. Even though the killer had found out where she was staying, Logan had increased security, ensuring no one could get into the house without his permission. The place had been sealed tight, preventing further attacks. It’d be a cold day in hell before they took her from here, he thought.
The most difficult task for Logan had become resisting his growing need to mate. Each time they made love, he fumbled to tell her how he felt. Goddess, he loved her. But he wanted the memories of their love to be untainted, and right now, they both were obsessed with the killer. Their mating should be extraordinary and peaceful, not laced with the flashbacks of hatred and death.
For the past two days, Wynter had done nothing but work and make love. As wonderful as it was, she still hadn’t told Logan she loved him again. Always on the tip of her tongue, she felt as if she was waiting for the right moment. She kept thinking it would be when they mated but he’d delayed it. She wasn’t sure of the technicalities of mating, but her wolf was not at all happy. Logan told her that he wanted to wait until they caught the killer. But a small part of her questioned his decision. Why didn’t he want to mate with her now? Her wolf didn’t understand and neither did she. Why hadn’t he told her he loved her? Admittedly, she felt his love every time he smiled at her or caressed her hair, but something about those three little words…she needed to hear it, to tell him. Hell, she needed to tell the whole damn world.
As she looked at the data, she held her excitement with bated breath. While her own blood had showed abnormalities compared to typical wolf samples, unusual gene markers indicated significant anti-viral capabilities. She’d extracted the genes, inserting them into Emma’s samples. As impossible as it seemed, her blood had irrevocably irradiated the virus. Given that random mutations could occur within human populations, she considered that perhaps somehow Emma’s immune system had been weakened. As she’d known, Emma’s blood, as hybrid, didn’t register as pure wolf. Her human genes adulterated the wolf genes which provided immunity. A miniscule variation existed within the genetic code. Her initial assumption that Emma had been deliberately infected appeared to be a less plausible theory than random mutation.
But who had genetically modified her own blood? How did they do it? All the time she’d lived in captivity, had they been working on the genetic alteration suspecting it would cure Emma’s affliction? If that was true, Wynter’s blood had been cultivating for weeks as if she were a human petri dish. No wonder they wanted her so badly. But how would they know if their experiment had worked? They couldn’t have known she’d shifted for sure, could they? If they knew she’d successfully shifted, they’d want her back…her blood. Like a possession to be owned, they’d seek out their experiment and wouldn’t stop until they had her back. With the virus and the antidote, they’d be able to blackmail, extort and torture others at will.
Startled by her discovery, Wynter inserted the needle into her vein. As she collected the vials, Logan knocked on the door. It was time to tell him. She wanted Jax to personally take her blood to Emma. She’d send the instructions for delivering her plasma in the right dose.
“Hey sweetheart…whoa, what ya doin’ there?” Logan asked.
“It’s my blood. I’m doing my final tests. I was right,” she confirmed with a tight smile.
Logan kissed her cheek and quickly backed away, giving her space to finish. He took a seat at her desk next to where she was standing, grabbing a container of bandages off of a tray.
“I need to get this blood to Emma.”
“Okay.” Logan’s brow creased with worry. Her heartbeat raced, and he could tell she’d come to some kind of conclusion he wasn’t going to want to hear.
“They won’t stop looking for me, Logan. They’ll need my blood. They created me…my wolf,” she began.
“I won’t let them have you. They can’t get you here,” Logan interrupted. “Listen to me; that bastard may have done something to you, but that doesn’t change who you are inside.”
“Don’t you see? My genetic structure’s been altered. I’m not like you. I’m not human. I’m a monster.”
“No, you’re not. Stop with this. You’re perfect the way you are. Don’t ever think otherwise.”
Wynter shook her head. Her small smile never reached her eyes, because she knew the truth about what they’d done to her. She loved him so much. She loved that he didn’t care what she was or that her genetics weren’t quite wolf or human. But she knew her next suggestion wasn’t going to go over well. With a small tug, she withdrew the needle from her arm, applying pressure with cotton to the pinhole in her flesh. Later, she planned on extracting more blood, increasing the quantity to pints. If something happened to her, she wanted to make sure there was enough of her blood for future research…for a cure. She steeled her resolve and wiped the bead of sweat from her forehead.
Without asking, Logan readied a Band-Aid. He gently took her arm and applied the dressing.
Wynter blew out a breath, and looked up into his concerned eyes.
“I think we need to use me as bait.” There, she’d said it.
“No,” Logan told her firmly, without missing a beat. What the hell had she been thinking? So not happening, he thought.
“Please, Logan, just hear me out. He’s coming for me. They’re coming for me. It could be more than one person. Léopold said he made other vampires. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to just wait here like a sitting duck. We could use me to draw him out, then you and Léopold could catch him. It’s the only way…”
“No,” Logan repeated. He released her arm and took note of at least fifty vials of blood, Wynter’s blood.
“But why won’t you listen? I’m telling you that I’m what they want. I’m their antidote. They won’t give up. I don’t know how they figured out that my blood would cure Emma. They could already have samples of my pre-shift blood. I didn’t test it, but it’s possible that even then my cells could have cured the virus. If we set up a trap…you could be there. I wouldn’t be in any real danger.”
“I said no.” Logan slammed his palm onto the desk a little harder than he intended. He wasn’t so much angry with Wynter as he was with the entire situation. But she needed to understand how serious he was. He didn’t want her wandering off and doing something foolish that could put her and the whole pack in danger.