Page 158 of The Dragon's Mate

Her dragon screamed with fury and pushedforward. She would turn the pathetic humans to ash for what they had done. Shewould set the city on fire with her flame and the world would finally know adragon’s real power. They would cower and beg for mercy before she was done withthem.

Beside her, Bones was swelling, his bones crackingand scales appearing on his flesh as he began to shift.

“Stop!” Martin shouted. “If either of youshift, I will put a fucking bullet through the old man’s brain. I swear tofucking God, I will.”

Her dragon screamed again, its wrath rising.With the last of her willpower, Kaida pushed it back. She grabbed Bones’s arm,his body was still swelling and any moment now he’d be in his dragon form. “Bones,stop!”

He growled at her and she balled her handinto a fist and punched him in the face, shouting out a curse as her handconnected with hard scales and the fragile bones cracked under the pressure.

“Stop! They’ll kill him! Stop, Bones!”She shouted as she held her broken hand against her chest.

He pointed his face at the ceiling androared in rage, red hot flames shooting out of his mouth and illuminating the hangarwith flickering light. His entire body trembled, but he was shrinking down tohis normal size. Kaida breathed a sigh of relief as his pupils turned normaland the scales disappeared.

Senator Matthews was staring at him, theterror obvious on his face, and the other men had huddled together in a tightcircle, their guns all aimed at Bones.

After a moment, the senator loudly clearedhis throat and ran a shaking hand through his hair. “And that, gentleman, iswhy paranormals are a danger to humans.”

“Fucking animals,” Martin muttered.

“What have you done?” Kaida whispered asshe stared at the senator.

His smile was chilling. “Do you know howlong it’s taken Martin to create that serum? Do you know how many failures wehad? The fourth version we tried? It was… bad. We tested it on some shifters,without their knowledge of course. We have volunteers across the worldcommitted to our cause. It was simple enough for them to drug unsuspecting paranormals.One dissolvable tablet in a drink and down the hatch… instant suppression oftheir shifting abilities. Only that fourth version was a real doozy of a fuckup. It didn’t suppress their abilities. It changed them. It attacked themlike a virus and turned their own bodies against them. Four of the five shifterswe drugged died within twenty-four hours of receiving the serum.”

He glanced at Martin, his grin widening. “Wealmost said fuck it, this will work, didn’t we, Martin?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It wasn’t the outcome we wanted, but deadshifters weren’t so bad either. Only,” he pulled at the knot on his tie, “thefifth shifter didn’t die. She was a police officer. We didn’t plan ondrugging an officer of the law. She just happened to be at the wrong coffee shopat the wrong time. Just happened to leave her drink unattended long enough forone of our volunteers to drop that tablet in her drink.”

“What happened to her?” Kaida said.

“It was quite astonishing, actually. Herbody mutated and changed like the others, but instead of dying, she … became stronger.She became a monster.” He grinned at Kaida and Bones. “You’ll love this part –her husband was a scientist. A bear shifter named Wyatt. Not long after shefully turned and it was obvious that it was permanent, he locked her in a cageand spent every moment of his life trying to find a cure for the ‘virus’ she’dbeen infected with.”

“How do you know this?” Bones asked.

“I told you. We have people everywhere.That includes the labs of mad bear scientists. Wyatt tried to cure his wifewith a phoenix shifter he found somewhere, but the phoenix escaped the lab and disappeared.Wyatt moved his infected wife here to our city and we continued to keep an eyeon him. We were still working away like busy little bees on our serum but imagineour surprise when the mutant creatures showed up outside of the lab. Thatidiot scientist had allowed his wife to infect other shifters.”

The senator made a snort of disgust. “Wemonitored it closely, of course. My own son was the detective who took thecase of a squirrel shifter murdered by one of the infected shifters.”

Kaida stared at him in shock. “There aremutant shifters in the city infecting other shifters?”

“Oh God no. One thing about that bear shifterscientist, he knew how to clean up his mess. He caught the mutant and returnedhim to his lab. The last communication we had from our man inside was thatthey had also caught the phoenix shifter again and Wyatt was using him to try andcure his wife.”

“What do you mean last communication?”

“The lab was blown apart shortly after that.Our man was a member of the security team and his body was one of the bodiesfound in the rubble. Burned horribly and a bullet in his brain, but theyidentified him through dental records,” the senator said.

“Who blew up the lab?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. It alsokilled Wyatt and his monster of a wife, and the serum mess was finally behindus.”

The senator glanced at his phone before puttingit back in the inner pocket of his suit jacket. “It was the thirteenth versionof the serum that finally worked. It isn’t perfect, it only suppresses a mutant’sability to shift for about twelve hours or so, but our boys are already closeto creating a longer-lasting version. One that will suppress for a few days,maybe even a few weeks. Eventually we’ll create one that will permanentlysuppress a shifter’s ability and we will go down in history as the men whosaved humankind.”

“You are fucking batshit insane,” Bones growled.

“No, we’re saving the world from monsters,”Martin said. Still holding the gun to Cadmus’s head, he said to the men behindthem. “Bring in the body.”

Three of the men left the group and jogged outof the hangar. A few minutes later they returned and Kaida stared in horror atthe body of the dark-haired man they carried.

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