Chapter2

I moved cautiously through the second-floor science lab. Seeing the classroom completely empty, I dropped to my hands and knees beneath a dissection table, my hands clawing frantically at the hidden compartment.

My fingertips burned hotter by the second. I couldn't stop my canines from elongating, their sharp tips piercing my lower lip.

There. My fingers brushed against it. I yanked the leather cord free and slipped it directly over my head.

The exact second the wolf fang hit the skin of my collarbone, the manic, burning fever instantly evaporated. I slumped onto the cold floor, gasping for air.

A muffled groan suddenly echoed from outside the door. It was immediately followed by the heavy, grating scrape of iron chains dragging across the marble tiles.

"No, I can't be caught!" I shot up from the floor and threw myself behind the heavy, floor-to-ceiling drapes at the back of the lab.

The lab doors creaked open. I held my breath, but in the very next heartbeat, a strong hand shot out from the dark air without a sliver of warning, clamping viciously over my nose and mouth.

I was yanked backward into a broad, unfamiliar chest.

A blast of ice-cold cedar flooded my senses, and my knees instantly went weak.

The primal instincts I had just managed to suppress with the wolf fang abruptly awakened with an unprecedented ferocity. I twisted my head to glare at the dark silhouette beside me, a man a full head taller than I was.

The wolf inside me howled with manic excitement. Fated mate.

Damn it. Not here. Not now.

I opened my jaws and, without a second of hesitation, bit down viciously on the hand smothering my mouth.

The man behind me let out a suppressed, guttural grunt, but he didn't let go. His breathing hitched for a fraction of a second, and pinned against him, I could feel the muscles of his chest suddenly snap taut.

For two entire seconds, we both froze in place, neither of us daring to move a muscle.

Only then did his other arm slowly tighten, coiling around my waist to press me even more firmly against his chest.

"Don't breathe so loud," a raspy whisper brushed against the shell of my ear. "Do you want to get us both killed?"

I kept my neck stiff, offering no reply. He paused, as if weighing his options, before lifting his wounded hand. He pressed it to the back of my head, firmly but gently forcing my gaze through the narrow slit of the curtains.

Through the sickly pale moonlight spilling in from the hallway, I finally registered the horror unfolding at the front of the lab.

The gentle, mild-mannered Dean of Students from earlier today was standing there with several assistants, his back turned to us. He was draped in a heavy black rubber apron—the kind butchers wore.

Bound securely to the stainless-steel dissection table by thick, forged chains was a partially transformed werewolf, its chest heaving with ragged breaths.

Humming a bright, cheerful little tune, the Dean gripped a scalpel in his right hand and methodically, agonizingly sliced down the contours of the creature's body.

A suppressed cry of pure agony echoed from the front of the room. My stomach violently churned, and I tore my eyes away. Sensing my reaction, the man holding me tightened his grip just a fraction more, a silent warning not to make a single sound.

The figure on the table convulsed, sending a harsh rattle of iron chains through the air.

Driven by pure terror, my heel flinched backward without my permission.

The wooden floorboards let out the faintest, almost imperceptible creak.

The Dean's cheerful humming stopped dead.

He turned around at a sickeningly slow pace, using the back of his blood-soaked glove to push up his gold-rimmed glasses. His gaze cut through the dim halo of the surgical lights and locked onto our heavy curtain with lethal precision.

The arm coiled around my waist abruptly tightened into a vise.

"Shh." The Dean raised a single index finger to the empty air. "It seems we've caught some reckless little mice tonight."

He advanced toward the drapes, step by measured step, the bloody scalpel gleaming in his hand. Every hair on my body stood on end. I tilted my head, catching the man's downward gaze. In the suffocating darkness, his dark irises had completely vanished, replaced by a pair of glowing, golden slitted pupils.

"Let's see who's hiding in here," the Dean's warm, smiling voice murmured from just inches outside the fabric.

A towering shadow completely swallowed the curtain.

That rubber-gloved hand reached out, its crimson fingertips already pinching the very edge of the velvet.

My heart practically hammered out of my chest. The man holding me remained dead still, his breaths impossibly shallow. But through the arm locked around me, I could feel him coiled as tight as forged steel.