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He slipped an arm around my waist and pulled me closer, clearly amused I was becoming so possessive of him. “Not enough for you to ever worry about, California. And believe me, your perfume is the strongest, most appealing one I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing.”

I clicked my tongue against my teeth, unsatisfied with his response. But if Elias could forgive me my vampyr ex-fiancé, I could forgive him some shifter ex-girlfriends. “Then why can I pick up other shifters’ distinct scents, and why does everyone say exactly what I smell like?”

He paused, his face scrunching in thought. “That… is unusual, you’re right.”

“Maybe it’s an omega thing?” I asked. I’d read over Archer’s notes on omegas, and apparently we were supposed to be good at reading people. I’d always had a knack for that, and had just chalked it up to higher-than-usual emotional intelligence. Could that explain my more perceptive nose?

“Perhaps,” he offered tentatively. It felt like he wasn’t saying what he was really thinking, but my eyelids were feeling heavy.

“Okay, alpha, keep your secrets,” I yawned. “I’ll get you to spill them soon enough.”

14

ARCHER

It was eight a.m. on Wednesday morning, and I was knocking on the door to my dean’s office. I had finally submitted my grades around six in the evening, and started packing to drive to Chicago through the night when he’d emailed and asked to meet with me to discuss my leave request.

“It’s open,” he called.

Allen Hyde was a shifter, an alpha about a decade older than me. He grunted at me quietly and gestured towards the chair in front of his desk, his eyes still on his screen.

I sat down and waited, letting him get through his display of dominance before he finally sighed and swiveled towards me. “So, you’ve been AWOL for the past three weeks and now want me to approve a last-minute sabbatical leave? And apparently you’ve already been granted visiting scholar status at the University of Chicago starting today?”

Allen was generally a pretty easy-going guy, but I knew I’d been pushing it recently. “I’m sorry, there were some pack emergencies that required my attention, and then an unexpected new lead on my research popped up that I really need to get a head start on, and…”

He held up his hand to stop me. “Lim, I know about the omega. It’s all the news in Maiingan Hollow. One of my pack mates got a whiff of her at the grocery store and hasn’t stopped talking about her since.”

A low growl rolled out of my chest on instinct, and he paused before speaking again. “And I’ve heard all about the vampyrs and yourshifting, too.”

I waited for him to continue, wondering which direction this was going to run in, when he grabbed a file out of a drawer and handed it to me. “I know you were in the lab the night of your car accident—I am very glad you’re okay, by the way—because some grad students came to my office the next day and told me the mass spectrometer might be broken.”

I opened the file and skimmed through the results, my heart racing. How could I have forgotten about these?

“Tell me what we’re looking at here, because I can’t make heads or tails out of it,” he said.

I knew what I was looking for, and found the information quickly.

Mass Spectrometry Report for Sample #2473-A (Luminis)

Mass readings detected at m/z 72.3 and m/z 106.7 do not correspond to any known biological compound or element…

The detected properties strongly suggest the presence of a compound unknown to conventional chemistry… Further investigation recommended under controlled conditions to verify reproducibility of anomalous data points.

Allen watched my face carefully. “This is from her, isn’t it?” My eyes shot up and this time I couldn’t keep a now louder growl to myself. Allen sighed and shook his head. “I mean no threat to your omega or your pack, you can calm down. But you realize what this means, right? I duplicated a run with a few more samples of shifter, human, even vamp blood, and none of them came back like this.”

My wolf raised its hackles in preparation for what he would ask, and there was no way I was going to let him do any kind of research on Marlowe. If it turned out she was the only source of Luminis, and Luminis was the component we’d lost that allowed us to shift into our wolf forms, I’d happily supply my own blood.

But Marlowe wasn’t to be touched.

“Is this related to your sudden sabbatical request?” he asked.

I re-read the reports, finally closing the folder with a quick sigh. “Yes, this report is from Marlowe and one of my pack mate’s blood samples. And yes, this is connected to the urgent research that’s come up.”

Allen turned back to his computer and clicked something on his screen. “Sabbatical approved. Whatever you’re onto, it’s big, and Itrust you to bring back results. If this could be the answer to us shifting again, to ending Shifter Repression Syndrome, don’t let the University’s bureaucracy stand in your way, got it? Let me be the scissors to your red tape.”

A newfound respect for my dean blossomed in my chest and I nodded, a slow smile growing on my face. “Understood. Thank you, sir.”

After putting the file in my bag, I headed towards my car, ready to hit the road. Before I pulled out, I texted Elias and Marlowe to let them know I was on my way. Marlowe responded right away.