Page 22 of Tracking the Alpha
The surprise reply had him blurting out, “Excuse me?”
“Seems to me my odds are best with the guy who’s managed to stay out of his clutches.”
“It’s only a matter of time before he ends up locating me.” Pessimistic? More like realistic. Davidson had the might of the military at his disposal, whereas Barrett used to have his nose. Now he had nothing, not even pants.
“Then we best prevent that from happening. Shall we?” She adjusted the pack on her back, which had a tranquilizing rifle strapped to it. She held her bow and an expression that screamed capable and unafraid. Best of all, she offered something he’d been sorely missing.
Companionship. Call him weak, or stupid, but he couldn’t turn that down.
“Follow me. I’ve got a place where we can hunker out of sight.”
“Sounds good. Once we both get some sleep, we’ll start planning,” she stated.
“Planning what?”
“How to free your friends and take down those bastards, of course.”
And that was the moment Barrett began falling in love.
Chapter Seven
The man Tanis followed was a shapeshifter. Talk about unexpected. To think she’d laughed when her grandmother told Tanis stories of other tribes and their beliefs. Heck, a young Tanis had smirked when the elders began recounting tales of Wisakedjak, the trickster, and Gitche Manitou, the supposed great spirit. Oh the fun she’d had mocking Asin, the spirit of the rock—which got her so many extra chores.
Her people, the Cree, had long believed that spirits imbued everything and lived all around. That it was their duty to live in harmony with nature and thus please the spirits. The Cree didn’t have shapeshifters as part of their lore, but the Navajo did. They believed in skinwalkers, people who could literally change their outer appearance to mimic an animal. Europeans had something similar with their legends about werewolves, which had become commercialized in movies and books.
No matter the name used—werewolf, skinwalker, lycanthrope—the consensus in this day and age had them as fictional. Not real. Impossible.
Tell that to Barrett.
How had the military managed to change him? And not just Barrett. The rabid coyote woman who’d attacked Tanis and, according to Barrett, many others being held prisoner in the guarded facility she’d not seen much of.
“These needles and transfusions,” she said abruptly into the silence they’d been walking in. “Do you have any idea what was in them?”
“I’m not a doctor or a scientist.”
“Best guess?” she asked, rolling her eyes behind his back. A fine back, she should add. Wide and muscled, leading to lean hips, toned legs, and a body part she’d done her best to not stare at. Hung like a wolf should apparently be a thing because calling him a horse didn’t fit.
“Definitely some DNA tampering,” he replied, his voice low and serious. “Whatever it was, it burned like liquid fire and looked like swamp water.”
“You were awake during the procedure?”
“Yes,” a short, terse syllable. “They liked to monitor and gauge every aspect of their experiment. Pretty sure they even measured the range of my screams.”
She winced. “That sounds brutal.”
“It was dehumanizing in more ways than one,” was his dry retort.
“You said the general shot you to trigger the change into the wolf.”
“As a last resort. Apparently, I took too long to show an effect from the treatments. So on a full moon, he took me out in the courtyard and shot me.”
“Ouch.”
“It hurt, but not for long. The pain triggered the wolf. When it took over, my injury healed.”
“And you escaped.”
“Barely.” He paused walking and glanced at the sky. “That night is a bit of a blur. I remember the general shooting me and the pain of it. A pain that didn’t last long and left me feeling discombobulated.”
