Chapter 10
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I TOSSED AND TURNED until four in the morning before I gave up and fixed myself a snack. My eyes unerringly found the direction of Haven's house, the tiny blue lights leading the way. I swiped at them, but they just floated away before lining up again.
Bacon was asleep on my couch. She'd researched until after midnight, then fell asleep with her head cushioned on Meanosaurus, her outstretched hand still resting on the laptop keys. If anyone could find out what was going on, it would be her.
There was no ID on the body, but she'd found him easily enough using facial recognition. It returned a name surprisingly fast. She'd winked at me and said, "Jackal gets all the best toys."
Knowing he was Kevin Chen didn't help much.
She said he didn't have much of a digital footprint, and that he was 'utterly boring.
' Wishing I could kill him again was the only result of finding out who he was.
She'd keep digging, but clearly Kevin Chen didn't actually exist. Whoever he really was, the cover and background created for him were pretty good, and led nowhere.
The only thing that was clear, was that he was after Haven. Digging into her background was the next step. The idea made me uncomfortable, but it was our best (only) option.
I paced the house until I gave in to temptation and made my way through the woods to Haven's backyard, cursing myself the whole way.
I was a fool. Every instinct pulled me toward her, but every logical bone in my body said she had to be some sort of BioSynth plant.
The one thing we'd established was that no fated mate pair had ever bonded without the bite.
Not a single one in the entire history of fated mates.
Mates felt the pull, either one or both of the pair knowing in their bones that they were looking at their mate, but the lights, the tether in whatever form it took, never appeared without the bite.
I stared at her bedroom window, the glowing blue dots dancing a conga line in my peripheral vision. I clenched my fists and forced my feet to point toward my house. I wouldn't be adding creepy stalker to my resume that day.
Bull, Bacon's counterpart at Superhuman Security, showed up mid-morning.
The two of them lobbed tech talk at each other for twenty minutes, none of which I understood.
I got lost somewhere between "packet injection" and "encrypted transfer protocol" and mentally checked out after that.
I'm sure they wouldn't know what to do with a bleeding injury in the field, so I was fine staying ignorant.
Not being able to participate in the conversation didn't make the time pass quickly. Just the opposite.
When I felt like either screaming or tearing into my skin, I meandered to the common hall. Jade and Kendal were there with Drym and Thurl. Drym was asleep. Thurl was picking apart a pinecone, one scale at a time. The ladies were looking at a laptop and giggling.
I promptly turned around and left.
I meandered through the woods for the next hour, not having a clue what to do with myself.
Usually I would go annoy Cavi or Roul, but Roul had gone to Haven's to pick up the body as a favor to me, so he got a pass.
Cavi was in Jackal Division's secret headquarters, working with Argus.
I was technically invited, since Argus is a doctor and Cavi is learning Society medical care, but the idea of voluntarily stepping into a clinical environment right now made my fur crawl.
I figure if something is wounded on an op, I can either stabilize it long enough to get to one of them or another Society doctor—or not.
Learning more about anatomy won't change much in the field.
Besides, I can't imagine going on a mission with anyone that wasn't part of one of the Society teams, and they were staffed mostly with shifters or others who had a human-looking form.
Their anatomy wasn't much different from ours, and I was well versed on how to patch us up.
I could try my luck with Kragen, but he was never much fun. I couldn't bait him into an argument. He would just sigh and pinch the bridge of his nose at my antics. Boring.
So I did the only other thing I could think of.
I went back to Haven's. Again. Apparently this was my personality now.
I stayed well hidden in the shadows as she came outside and exchanged pleasantries with her elderly next-door neighbor.
She seemed normal enough, but what did I know?
Half of the scientists at BioSynth looked like perfectly boring nerds.
You'd never think they were capable of the things they’d done to us.
Some of the most innocuous-looking individuals were the most evil. The ones who cackled with glee as they tortured us, scribbling observations in their notebooks.
I shuddered and the row of lights stretching from me to her wavered and dimmed. That hadn't happened before. The hackles on my neck raised and I spun in a slow circle, looking for any threat.
The smile on Haven's face had disappeared when I faced them again.
Two uniformed police officers joined her and her neighbor.
I could tell she was nervous. Every muscle in her body had locked tight.
I strained to hear what they were saying, but I was too far away. Until the old man raised his voice.
"She was the victim! Where is this line of questioning coming from?"
Haven put her hand on her neighbor's forearm. She didn't raise her voice. She didn't back down either.
I took one step forward before I could rein it in.
I wrapped a hand around a nearby trunk and dug my claws into the bark, anchoring me.
It wouldn't stop me from doing something monumentally stupid if they hurt her, but maybe it would keep me from launching myself into a public street and announcing, 'Hi, I'm a genetically engineered monster! '