Page 42 of Betrayed Kidnapped Mate

Byron shakes his head as we turn the corner, entering the lab. Maisie and Gerard are already here, arguing about something. After I get my lab coat on, I realize Gerard is holding up a sample of my proposed antidote.

“What are you doing?” I ask, eying the two of them suspiciously.

“Gerard was saying that we should test it on one of the shifters, monitor the effects, the adjust the antidote,” Maisie says, crossing her arms. “But you’d said on Friday that you wanted to make more changes, so I didn’t think it was a good idea.”

“Yeah,” I say, putting my hand to my chin. I had wanted to make some changes, but they were based on data in the system, not live feedback from testing on a subject.

My brain interjects with the ethics of testing before we’re ready, but I can’t stop picturing the shifters and the clear agony they’re suffering from. If this version of the antidote can alleviate some of that pain, wouldn’t it make sense to try it?

“Let’s test it,” I say, which makes Gerard smirk and Maisie raises her eyebrows.

Byron settles down in the far corner with his laptop, and Kaila already has her nose buried in a book. I take a deep breath, and the three of us—Gerard, Maisie, and I—walk into the room that holds the shifters.

Several of them are howling or crouched in the corner, but one is sitting on their cot, staring at the wall.

“Colin?” Maisie asks, tapping on the glass lightly. “Hey, how are you doing today?

“Maisie,” he rasps, turning his head in our direction. His eyes are red, and the bags under his eyes are heavy, but he seems lucid.

“Happens every once in a while,” Gerard says quietly to me. “They experience brief moments of lucidity, when we can talk to them and gather some data.”

His tone is overly clinical, but I suppose working with these people without getting too attached or emotionally distressed is necessary.

Colin comes to the front of his cell, placing his forearm into the slot. Maisie, wearing gloves, unlocks and opens the divider, then sterilizes his arm.

“This is the antidote our new chemist has been working on,” she says, nodding at me. “We’re really hoping it will help you feel better.”

A shifter on the other side of the room lets out a guttural scream and starts throwing herself against the glass. My hands shake as Maisie administers the dose, and we watch Colin step back from the glass.

Maisie quickly closes the sliding partition and locks it again.

He puts a hand on the wall to steady himself, then sits hard on his cot before collapsing to the floor.

“Colin,” Maisie cries, grabbing a first aid kit from the wall and opening the door to his cell. Just as she’s about to pass through the threshold, Colin starts to seize, and Gerard reaches out, grabbing Maisie and pulling her out, slamming the door just before Colin slams against it, a little trickle of blood coming from his nose.

“Oh, Gods,” I cry, as Gerard herds us from the room. Maisie is crying, and I feel the hot flame of embarrassment on my cheeks. First, my antidote didn’t work, and second, I encouraged us to try it when I wasn’t sure it was ready.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, Maisie,” Gerard says, being surprisingly comforting, rubbing her back as she struggles to breathe.

“He’s such a good man,” Maisie heaves, “he just wants to get back to his family—”

“When he calms down, we’ll go check on him,” Gerard says. “Make sure he’s okay.”

What he doesn’t say is that calming down might mean slipping into a coma, or even dying.

I sit down, hard, at my station, throwing myself into the work and vowing that I won’t be done until I help these people recover from Varun’s serum.

Chapter 23 - Bigby

Aris is pacing in the foyer when I pull up to the house.

“Good,” he says, not even letting me get to the porch before he comes out the door, slamming out of the house. Ado is hot on his heels, and they bound down the front steps toward me. “You drive.”

“What’s the problem?” I say, turning and heading back toward my Jeep. I hop in the driver’s seat, turn my key in the ignition, and wait for the two of them to jump in before throwing it in reverse and making my way back down the mountain.

“Another human abduction—go to the lake,” Aris says, his voice coming out tense, through his teeth. I turn right, heading away from town and out to the lake, instead. “They were here on vacation, not even locals. The entire family is gone.”

I suck in a breath through my teeth. Lisa’s family has been calling and texting me non-stop, trying to get updates on the case. How do I tell them that we suspect an old teammate of ours of taking them? Even worse is that it’s our only lead, and it doesn’t tell us much about if the humans are alive or where we can find them.

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