Page 20 of Wolf Desired
“Fifteen,” Tiernan said. “We recognized the signs early and isolated the sick. We lost ten females, five males. Some of the males had considered leaving to find mates in other packs. But from what I’ve heard, on the whole, more females were affected than males.”
All this talk of the virus, and remembering Isabella, suffocated Maddox. He needed to get out of this building, to let his wolf run. Maddox shut the door, leaving Tiernan to his thoughts. He headed past the other shifters and humans hanging out in the hall, talking about how Rafe had pounded Kingsley into submission. That made Maddox smile. Kingsley needed to be put in his place. The shifter was trouble and didn’t belong in the DSA program. At least the others, despite their hatred of humans, were trying to make the alliance with the humans work.
As Maddox headed down the stairs, he caught Artemis’s scent again. He followed it to the floor below. Construction equipment lay strewn all over the place, but her scent hung in the air, thick and enticing. Every part of him woke to the female’s presence.
This need to see her again, to check on her, pulled him down that corridor. He followed her scent to one of the rooms, pushed the door open, and found himself staring down the barrel of a gun.
CHAPTERSEVEN
ALYSSA
Before the door opened fully, Alyssa pulled her Glock from her bag and aimed at the unidentified intruder.
86 threw his arms up the second he spotted the gun. On some level, that made her feel better. Shifters might have great hearing, vision, strength, speed, and the ability to heal fast, but they still couldn’t predict the unexpected. Or see through doors. No Supermen here, just a bunch of males she was slowly starting to understand.
“Are you going to shoot me or what?” 86 said.
“Still thinking about it.”
That got a raised brow from the shifter. Fine, she’d overreacted. He’d never threatened her. Just the opposite. He’d placed himself between her and Tiernan’s wolf when he thought she was in danger. Funny how she hadn’t felt threatened by Tiernan or his wolf in the woods.
No, not funny. Disturbing, on too many levels.
“Well?” 86 said, still holding his hands in the air.
“Do you want me to shoot you?”
“Preferably not.”
She chuckled and lowered her gun. “I guess shifters don’t believe in knocking.”
“No need to back home. We hear people approaching. It gives us time to intercept if necessary. Like if you’re busy fucking and don’t want an audience. You learn to lock the door ahead of time or deal with having someone watching you, possibly jerking off while he’s there.”
“You’re rather crude.”
“Just telling you how it is.”
As crude as he was, she appreciated his forthrightness. She’d rather have brutal honesty over sugar-coated lies any day.
“What do you want, Max?” She wasn’t in the mood to spar verbally with him after what had happened with Kingsley upstairs. She still needed to devise a game plan to find her target, and she’d removed herself from the middle of all the trainees in the one place they’d let down their guard. The dorm. But survival came first. She was used to being the only woman in a training class, but this was different. The shifters didn’t think much of humansorfemales. Two strikes against her before she had even arrived.
“Why do you insist on calling me Max? Is it too hard for you to remember a number?”
“86 is a number, not a name, Max.”
86 stepped so close she could see that his eyes weren’t pure black as she’d initially thought. Instead, multiple shades of black swirled together, entrancing her.
He leaned forward and brushed his lips over the tip of her ear as he whispered, “Would you like to know my name, female?”
His warm breath caressed her ear as his smooth, deep voice penetrated her, creating a heat that spread through all the areas she needed to ignore while here. She wasn’t some schoolgirl who swooned the second a gorgeous man paid attention to her.
Alyssa turned her head to face him and sucked in a breath, unprepared for the intensity of his eyes and how wonderfully male he smelled. He stood there, his lips less than an inch from hers, waiting, tempting her. His tongue ran over his lips as if she were a feast. She wasn’t going to be the one to back away again, not this time and not here. This was her domain.
“Stop calling mefemale. My name is Artemis.”
“That’s your codename, not your name.”
“Oh, it’s okay for you to go by 86 but not for me to go by Artemis?”
