He disappears from sight and I wait, listening to the stirring of the forest around me. A few minutes later, I hear a whistle.
"Sunny! Come check this out." I hear Titus call.
I leave Titus' clothes and boots and jog in the direction of his voice. "Titus?"
"Over here."
I have to go around a huge boulder to find him-in all his naked glory-at the edge of a drop-off.
I gasp. Down below, hidden from aerial view by the natural outcropping of rocks, lies a concrete bunker. On the other side is the elevated guard tower and a different dirt road that leads to what appears to be an underground parking lot.
"This is it!" Titus' eyes gleam the bright blue of his wolf. His aura is a bold red-orange. He's ready for battle. "I don't see or hear anyone around but I'm going in closer. Stay here and keep an eye out, okay?"
"Be careful, Titus."
"I will." He shifts and lands on all fours, already in stride.
From my vantage point, I can watch him the whole time. He skirts back and forth down the steep incline, leaping from rock to rock until he makes it to the bottom. There, he stays low, in the shadows, sniffing around the perimeter.
I wish I had a pair of binoculars. I can't be positive, but I don't think I see anyone in the guard tower.
I'm surprised to see Titus run right for what appears to be the front door. When he goes in, I charge down after him. No way I'm letting him go into that place alone.
I skid and slide down the mountainside, then slowly climb down the boulder face. It's not nearly as easy as Titus made it look. Before long, I'm literally rock climbing without a belay and it's scary as hell.
Rocks slide out beneath me and scatter to the ground far below, warning me I'm far too high to sustain a drop. I move one foot. A hand. Try to figure out the best way to go.
Fuck, this is totally impossible with my casted arm. I look back up the way I came.
Crap. I don't think I can even get back up that way. And I can't go down anymore. I whimper.
"Sunny!"
Relief pours through me at the sound of Titus' voice below. I don't dare turn to look though. I'm frozen, hanging on for dear life, my limbs trembling, my fingers slipping from sweat. "Sunny, look at me."
Slowly, slowly, I turn my head to look over my shoulder and down. Titus is right beneath me, about twenty-five feet. He's holding his arms out. He's still naked. I'm not sure I'm going to get used to that.
"Let go, baby. I'll catch you."
I don't even hesitate. I trust this man completely, and I'm definitely willing to accept his help. I let go and drop, squeaking as the wind rushes along my skin. I collide into Titus with a thud, but he drops his arms and his knees, swinging me around to break the fall. I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss his cheek.
"You saved me!" I breathe.
"I don't know about that," he says with a chuckle. "But what in the hell were you doing, little lady? I'm going to turn your ass pink for scaring the shit out of me."
I suck his earlobe between my lips and release it with a pop. "Promise?"
He eases me gently to my feet and pops my ass without any force at all. "Cute, baby. Very cute."
I turn around and look at the building and my eyes fly wide. There are no doors. In fact, it appears a bomb went off where the doors used to be. "What happened? Is the building empty?"
He nods. "Yeah, but this was definitely a shifter lab. I smell weird shifter smell all over the place."
"What's weird shifter scent?"
He takes my hand and leads me toward the building. "Unidentified animal. They were experimenting on turning humans into shifters. Genetic modification shit. Experiments didn't always work. There's these guys from a lab in California that are just… weird. One's an owl, I think. The other two-I'm not even sure. Some kind of canine?" he shakes his head. "It's fucking tragic."
"Oh my goddess."
"Yeah. It's a wonder they even know how to function after what they've been through."
We stop at the entrance. "What do you think happened here?"
"It looks like this lab has already been taken out, but it wasn't by us. It was obviously by force, though."
"Yeah."
We enter into darkness, which doesn't seem to bother Titus in the least.
"Are you sure there's no one here?"
He squeezes my hand. "Positive. I thought you might want to have a look around, but we can go back out if you're scared. I'll come back later to really search and see if there are any more clues. From what I can tell, everything's been emptied and destroyed. There's no equipment, data, files, anything. It's just an empty, burned out bunker with cages and prison cells."
I shiver, the sense of desperation, terror and evil pulling at me from every corner. There are entities hanging around here-probably ghosts of the departed test subjects, but I'm too creeped out to acknowledge them to ask.
"Yeah, let's go back. I can't actually see anything anyway."
Titus stops. "Oh shit. Right. I'm sorry, baby. I forgot."
We retrace our steps, and I'm relieved when we step into the light.
Until I see three men in black step out with guns pointed right at us.
Titus
A SNARL RIPS out of my throat, and I shift before I even have a chance to think. The need to protect Sunny is too great. My wolf body-checks her to shove her back behind me.
My brain isn't working yet-I'm in full fight-mode, ready to rip their throats out.
One of them laughs like he's going to enjoy killing me.
Another one steps forward. "Shift, wolf." The words enter my body and reverberate through. There's alpha command in them. It gets my attention, even though I'm unwilling to obey.
It helps kick my brain back online.