Page 54 of Forbidden Wolf

He met my troubled gaze and I nodded once.

I moved my attention around the room, catching the eye of lycans as they started to stand tall.

“We can only do this together,” I said, raising my voice. “No more hiding behind the secrecy of command. I brought this information to our leader months ago and he suppressed it. Every single person on this base can now read all the security files. Radar has removed the confidentiality tabs from them. We’re dying out there, and if something in those files can save even one lycan, then you need to read them.”

The muttering grew louder around me, and Radar moved to my side.

“I guess your gamble paid off,” he said.

Another shot sounded as Spencer fired at the creature again.

“Do they not die?” he asked, staring at it while the tentacles still moved.

“They do, but it takes a lot. We’ve captured a few, but we have no fucking idea what we’re dealing with out there. This base belongs to us now, and we need to use every scrap of intelligence we can find to learn how to kill these things.”

The team leaders started barking orders. The hellspawn were returned to their containers and lycans were sent to work, all chatting amongst each other.

“You provided quite the visual,” Spencer said as he approached us. “What are we up against?”

“They’re organised,” I replied, my shoulders bunching and then relaxing. “When I was separated from my team, I saw one that they called master. The land dwellers were coming from a cave. Radar put a surveillance drone close by after I returned, and we’ve been monitoring it.”

Spencer chewed the side of his mouth, his expression contemplative. “This is a far out there suggestion, but has anyone checked their DNA?”

“No, Stefan refused to speak to me about them after my initial report. Why?”

Those tingles that never heralded anything good rippled up and down my back.

“Because Mary went missing from my team a year ago and I swear I saw her in the forest on my last mission. When I approached, she hissed at me with fangs and ran away.” Spencer trailed his fingers through his hair.

Radar and I exchanged a what the fuck look before returning our attention to him.

“Did you report this?” I asked.

“What the fuck do you think? Stefan would have had me in the medical bay before my ass hit a chair.”

“Fuck!” I wrapped my hands behind my head and stared at the ceiling. “Spencer, you’re in charge of looking into their DNA ASAP. Get the scientists to run scans and sequence the genome. We’ll get more samples and as many species as possible brought back. Upload the results onto the general server. This is the sort of thing people need to know.”

He stared at me. “Thank you, sir. This has been troubling me for a while.”

“Tell the scientists exactly what you told me and ask them to reference the DNA to all species we have in the database. If they’re attacking to change the host, we need to know.”

“On it.” Spencer strode out of the room like a man on a mission.

“What the fuck?” I said, to no one in particular. “We were supposed to take command and broker peace with the vampires. Are we seriously debating zombies?”

Together, Radar and I stomped through the base, people moving out of our way. The command room was already full, but the sea of people parted to give us space.

“Bring up all the most recent intelligence reports and planned operations,” I said to one of our security personnel. “We need to bring our people home until we know how to fight these things.”

The next several hours was spent sending out commands to any teams in areas Radar identified as being hostile.

I opened the file for a planned attack that was imminent, and my heart sank from my chest into my stomach. The coven Tasha lived in had been identified and high command were planning a strike against it.

My wolf paced restlessly inside me, the tip of my nose itching and my ears starting to lengthen and fur sprout along their edge. Burning hot rage thrummed through me at the thought of anyone going near my mate.

“Get me high command on the phone,” I said, my voice dipping to the deep gravel of my wolf.

Radar glanced at what I was reading and then at me. I was barely holding onto my shit, but he started typing on his keyboard. A few moments later, the image of one of our most prestigious lycans, Fenris, appeared on the screen in front of me.

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