Page 26 of Burning Love

Alex’s shoulders tensed. “And how exactly do you plan to do that?”

Henry’s gaze was cold. Calculating. “We need confirmation. A controlled bite.”

A wave of nausea crashed over Alex.

“Are you insane?” she barked. “She’s not a fucking experiment.”

Henry didn’t flinch. “This is bigger than her, Alex. This could change everything. Look at that bite! She should have shown signs of change about ten fucking minutes ago!”

Sophia let out a sharp laugh, brittle with disbelief. “Henry? You want to throw me back to them? Just to see if I live?”

“You’re alive now, aren’t you?” Henry said simply. “We need to know if it’s a fluke.”

The words made Alex’s blood run cold.

Others were nodding. Whispering. If Sophia was the answer they’d been waiting for, they couldn’t afford to waste the opportunity. This hadn’t been seen yet. There had been the odd whisper about stories of the rare few who didn’t change. But everyone thought it was fake hearsay.

“Maybe we should contact Redford. There’s stuff going on out there. Government scientists or something, I heard,” snarled Ellen, who was still towering over Alex, her arms folded across her chest in defiance. “They’d know what to do with her.”

Alex moved closer to Sophia, her body taut with fury. “She is not some miracle cure for people to poke and prod at. She isnotgoing anywhere. She’s staying here. With me.”

Henry met her gaze, his jaw tightening. “I knew it. I could tell you were a?—”

“A what?”

“Listen. This isn’t your call. We’re going to have to get Miller here and…”

“Miller’s been gone for days,” a younger soldier said.

“That’s right. I guess itismy call then, Henry. Until Miller gets back, I’m in charge, right?”

The days following Sophia’s survival were suffocating.

Alex had spent years building her reputation, solidifying her command through trust, discipline, and sheer force of will. Now, with every whispered conversation, every sideways glance, she felt it all crumbling beneath her. They didn’t trust her anymore.

She saw it in the way Henry spoke to the other soldiers in low tones just out of her earshot. In the way Ellen had started lingering outside Sophia’s quarters with the guards, their hands resting a little too casually on their weapons.

The members of the compound had made their stance clear—Sophia was a variable. She needed to be that contained, controlled. Studied.

“If we can figure out what makes her immune, we could save lives,” Henry argued in front of Major Miller when he’d come back from a fruitless expedition looking like someone who’d escaped a concentration camp. “We can’t afford to let sentiment cloud our judgment.”

Sentiment. As if Sophia was just some specimen. As if she weren’t a person.

“You want to keep her locked up like some lab rat?” Alex had shot back, barely keeping the snarl out of her voice.

Miller had given her a long, measured look. “We need to keep people safe. You can see that, can’t you, Alex? It’s what youusedto want too. I need to get some rest.”

The shift felt palpable. She wasn’t just fighting for Sophia anymore—she was fighting to keep herself from being pushed out entirely.

Tromer and Henry came to Alex’s quarters at dusk.

“She’s coming with us,” Tromer said, his voice flat.

“No, she’s not.”

Henry sighed. “Alex, you know how this goes. Miller’s orders.”

She shifted her stance, tensing. “Miller’s orders? What does he know? He looks half dead! If you want her, you’ll have to go through me.”

---