Page 45 of Her Eternal Mate

I swerved the car along the road and turned to the southward road, heading deeper into the forest. Could it be that Blair had been hiding here so close all this time? How had no one ever noticed this?

As I drove past the forest, an abandoned research site came into my view. I’d never seen this facility before in my entire life. In truth, none of the werewolves ever ventured south of Fiddler’s Green. Strictly speaking, this area was not Maine, nor was it the state of New York. This was Connecticut. Fiddler’s Green had the odd luck of being nestled between so many different states that the lines between them were all blurred.

We never had any business in Connecticut. Until now, it seemed.

The coordinates in the GPS showed that the series of abandoned buildings ahead of me were the location where I had to go. It was where Blair was hiding. I got out of my car after parking it along the road. If Blair was in there, I had to be very careful and sneakily make my way in there instead of raising the alarm.

It was so quiet everywhere. There was not a single person out and about. All the windows of the buildings in that research facility were boarded up, with not a single source of light in there. But I could spot shadows moving in the dark behind those windows.

Whatever this place was, it was not abandoned.

I tapped into my bond with Alexis, hoping to see where she was or what she was doing, but I could only sense darkness all around her, as if she was either knocked out or walking about in a lightless place.

There was a road snaking through the forest. On one side of this road, there was a big billboard that looked like it had seen better days. On top of it was written “Morales Virology Research Institute, Connecticut.”

Hmm. A virology research facility that had been closed for some time. It made sense that Blair would set up shop here. If there was lab equipment in there, he could have used it. Besides, all those big buildings surely had to have an underground component to them—a perfect place to hide all the experiments he was doing and all the soldiers that he was housing.

I had to give it to him; this was very ingenious of him, hiding in plain sight like that.

Alexis, are you out there?I had barely sent out that message when something spontaneous happened.

The utter darkness of the road was gone in a second. Now, dozens of lights shone on me as I stood there at the entrance of the research facility. In the next moment, ranks upon ranks of soldiers started coming from every direction, wielding big rifles that were aimed at me, all of them circling me.

“Halt! You shall move no further!” Their Captain barked at me, holding his hand up.

“I’m not here to fight,” I said, raising my hands. My declaration did not deter them from aiming their guns at me. Dozens of red laser dots were on my body, moving around. I knew that there was no chance I was going to fight so many soldiers by myself.

I was not counting on what happened next.

First, the Captain fell to his knees, his rifle falling from his hands. As he tried to get up, he suddenly shifted into a feral wolf. He had barely finished transforming when all the other dozens of soldiers also succumbed to the same fate. Now, instead of being surrounded by soldiers, I was surrounded by feral werewolves, all of whom were closing their ranks around me, their mouths snarling, their claws gnarled.

I shifted just in time to swerve and avoid the sudden onslaught of wolves that had broken upon me like a levee.

Even I knew that it was not possible to fight all of them. But I did not have to fight them in order to defeat them. If my earlier experience with these feral werewolves had any credibility, all these wolves would die within the next few minutes. I just had to run long enough to outrun them and wait for them to die.

But that was easier said than done. Even as I raced at the top of my speed, the feral werewolf horde caught up with me, slashing away at my body from behind, injuring me in several spots at once.

I was bleeding out, and my body was weakening quickly with the loss of blood and the infliction of all these wounds. The feral werewolves were relentless, and they showed no signs of stopping or slowing down.

Until five minutes later, when I was covered in bruises and my blood, all the werewolves stopped chasing me, and I turned around to see that ghastly sight of dozens upon dozens of werewolves writhing there on the floor, turning back into their human forms, their mouths foaming, their eyes and ears bleeding.

Such a terrible fate to fall upon so many. Could Blair see the insanity that he had wrought?

I waited till the last of the wolves was dead and then shifted back into my human form. As I crossed the corpse-riddled path, I noticed that my injuries were not healing as quickly as they used to. The gashes in my legs and the slashes on my back were stinging, blood continuing to pour out of them.

I inched slowly back to the winding road and stood back where I’d started, only this time with piles of corpses all around me.

While waiting to catch my breath and for my injuries to heal, I noticed that the lights were shutting off one by one, and the door in front of me was sliding open. Could it be that Blair had finally conceded?

But Blair was not standing on the other side of that door. For that matter, neither was Alexis. As the last of my wounds got covered with healing scabs, I walked into the abandoned research facility, hoping to make Blair see some sense.

Chapter 21

Alexis

Finding Blair in the vast acreage that spanned many buildings was not going to be an easy task. I did not have all night. In the back of my mind, I worried about Will and how he would have taken the news that I’d gone to seek out Blair.

There came harrowing sounds from outside of the facility, sounds that told a very familiar story. The story of violence, bloodshed, and wanton death. It could only mean that Will had finally tracked me down and would shortly make his way inside.

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