An Alpha's Tempest (Water Bear Shifters 4) Read online

  An Alpha’s Tempest

  Water Bear Shifters, Book 4

  By Sloane Meyers

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Similarities to actual people or events are entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Sloane Meyers. All rights reserved.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  More Books by Sloane Meyers

  Thank You For Reading!

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Rhythm Scott’s mouth dropped in horror. What the hell kind of operation had she become entangled with? She rubbed her eyes, thinking that maybe she was imagining the sickening sight in front of her. But when she looked again, he was still there. A man, writhing in pain and looking like he hadn’t eaten a meal in several weeks, was chained to the wall by his wrists. Even though the cement room he was housed in was freezing cold, he was wearing only a tattered pair of gym shorts. Bloodied bruises covered his bare skin, and tufts of what looked like thick brown animal fur were scattered across his chest. Where his feet should have been, he instead had the largest bear paws that Rhythm had ever seen.

  She stood in the doorway, holding an access key card and gawking at the sight in front of her. Clearly, her boss had accidentally sent her to the wrong room when he handed her his key card and asked her to drop off a folder of research notes at a restricted access storage room. Rhythm had no idea what she was looking at right now, but she was pretty sure that this wasn’t something she was supposed to see. What kind of experiment was this place running, that they had caused a man to grow bear fur and paws? Rhythm felt fear gripping her heart, and she began to slowly back out of the room. She should leave, and try to figure out which room she was actually supposed to be in. Her best option was for her boss to never realize that she had seen this. Whatever “this” was, exactly.

  But as she began to close the door, another cry of pain from the man stopped her in her tracks. She stuck her head into the room, and frowned in the man’s direction.

  “Are you okay, sir?” she asked. A stupid question. He obviously wasn’t okay. But Rhythm wasn’t quite sure what else to say.

  The man groaned again, and Rhythm looked up and down the hallway nervously. Seeing no one, she quickly stepped inside and shut the door behind her.

  “What happened to you?” she asked. “Why are you covered in…in fur like that? And why do you have bear paws? What did they inject you with to make you turn into a bear?”

  “They didn’t turn me into a bear,” the man gasped out. “I already was one. I’m a bear shifter.”

  Rhythm frowned at the man. He must be suffering some sort of mental side effects from whatever drug he had been given. “Come on, now,” she said gently. “Bear shifters aren’t real. People don’t really turn into bears. That’s just folklore. Just stories.”

  The man raised his eyes to meet Rhythm’s for the first time. “Just stories?” he asked, his voice almost sounding amused. “Then how do you explain my feet?” He lifted one of his giant bear paw feet for emphasis, the foot looking comically huge against his scrawny, starved human leg.

  Rhythm faltered. “Well, I mean. They must have done tests on you with some of their drugs without having them fully cleared for human tests. And some sort of error with the medication caused this…this side effect.”

  The man laughed, then went into a wheezing fit from the effort of laughing. “Oh, they drugged me alright. But that’s not what turned me into a bear,” he said, then squinted at the name badge clipped to Rhythm’s crisp white lab coat. “Rhythm, is it? You must be new here, honey.”

  “Uh, sort of. I guess it depends on your definition of new. I’ve been here six months.”

  The man nodded, then grimaced in pain. “Fairly new. I’m guessing you’re a low-level intern of some sort.”

  Rhythm bristled a bit when the man called her low-level, but she told herself not to take it personally. He was kind of right—she was pretty low-level. And she didn’t want to piss him off and have him clam up and refuse to talk to her anymore. “Um, I’m an intern, yes.”

  “What did they tell you is going on here? Pharmaceutical testing of some sort?”

  Rhythm paused again. That’s exactly what they had told her was going on here, but she was quickly catching up with the realization that this place was definitely not just field testing pain killers and blood pressure medication, like she’d been told. “Well, uh, when I took the job they told me I’d be helping document reactions to different painkillers that were in their earliest stages of development. I don’t have much information beyond that. But I haven’t seen anything to make me think that there’s anything fishy going on here. Well, I should say, I hadn’t seen anything. I have to say that I’m a little suspicious now that I’ve come across a person chained up and turned into a man-bear.”

  The man sighed. “They didn’t turn me into a man-bear, Rhythm. Like I told you, I was already a bear shifter. I can turn from man to bear and back again at will. Well, at least I used to be able to. I’m too weak to shift, now. The last time I tried, only my feet shifted into paws, and now they’re stuck that way. Shifting takes a lot of energy, and I haven’t had a proper meal in weeks.”

  Rhythm’s eyes darkened. “So they’re starving you on purpose?” Her stomach was beginning to lurch, and the already tiny room felt like it was closing in on her. Part of her wished she had never walked in on this poor man, so that she could continue to go about her work blissfully unaware of what was really happening here. The other part of her was already trying to figure out a way to help him escape.

  The man shrugged, the movement so slight that it was barely perceptible. “They’re starving me, yeah, in a manner of speaking. They offer me food every day, but I can’t keep it down. The virus they injected me with is too strong. I haven’t been able to eat for a long time, and most of the time I can’t stay awake very long. I’m in a lot of pain, but they won’t give me any painkillers. They want to see how the virus works in a completely pure state, with no interference from other medication.”

  Rhythm felt her heart sinking further. “I’m sorry, but I’m still not understanding exactly what’s going on here. They injected you with a deadly virus on purpose?”

  The man raised his eyes to her once more, and, this time, Rhythm could clearly see the sadness filling them. “Yes, they injected me with a deadly virus. One that they created. I can see that you really don’t have even the slightest clue what’s going on here, so I’ll do my best to explain. But you’re going to have to humor me for a minute and believe that bear shifters really do exist, okay?”

  Rhythm shrugged. “Okay,” she said, her voice cautious.

  The man nodded, and then continued. “Not only do bear shifters exist, but there are hundreds of us living in communities across North America. Polar bears, grizzly bears, black bears—you get the picture. We do our best to blend into our communities, so that no one knows about the bears we hide within ourselves. A lot of people would be scared of us if they knew we could turn into animals, so we prefer to keep to ourselves and not let anyone in on our secret. But a group of scientists discov
ered, nearly a decade ago, how many shifters are around. They made it their mission to get rid of every last one of us. They’ve been working on a virus specifically aimed at all bear shifters. This isn’t the first time they’ve done this. About five years ago, they put out a virus specifically aimed at panda shifters, which completely wiped out the pandas. But even that pales in comparison to what they injected me with. This virus is their biggest project yet. They’re not just going after one kind of bear. They’re going after all of us. Right now, they’re testing a few versions of the virus to do some final tweaking. They’re capturing bear shifters here and there, and using us as guinea pigs. I’m one of the unlucky ones who was separated from my clan and ended up here, injected with one of the viruses.”

  The man’s voice had faded, and his face had a faraway look to it, now, as though he wasn’t really seeing the walls of his small, concrete prison. Rhythm could feel her cheeks heating up with feelings of anger and confusion. If this man was telling the truth, then Rhythm had unwittingly been part of something truly awful. She had taken this job because it paid three times as much as her last job, in California. For a chemist who felt like her life was going nowhere, the opportunity to uproot herself and start over in Alaska, combined with a generous salary, had been too much to resist. And, while developing pain medication didn’t exactly rise to the level of achieving world peace, Rhythm had felt that she was at least doing some good for humanity by lessening pain. Oh, how naïve she had been.

  She had trouble wrapping her mind around the fact that bear shifters existed, but there was no denying that the man in front of her was part bear. Sure, she hadn’t actually seen him change himself into a bear. But, when she really thought about it, the idea of a bear shifter made more sense than the idea of a scientist injecting a human with something that turned them into a bear. And, besides, the man seemed genuine. What motivation did he have to lie to her? He had said it himself—she was just a low-level intern. Rhythm felt bile rising in her stomach. She had to get out of here. And she had to find a way to help this poor man get out of here.

  “There must be some way to get these chains off,” she said, kneeling down to look at the man’s wrists. She winced when she saw the sores on his arms where the cold metal had worn the skin bare.

  The man sighed. “The keys are all in a room down the hallway. It’s closed access but that key card you have might work. But it doesn’t matter. It’s too late for me. The virus has almost completely destroyed my body, and I’m sure there’s no cure. It would take a long time to develop one, and I don’t have much time left. I just wish I could see my family and my clan one more time before I died.”

  Rhythm’s heart broke as she looked at the man’s sad expression. “I’m going to get you to your family,” she said. “I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I am. I’m going to go looking for the keys to these chains they have you in, but I’ll be back soon. Just hold on.”

  The man shrugged, seemingly committed to his fate, which only spurred Rhythm on to find a way to help him. No one should have to face the end of his life in such despair.

  Rhythm slipped out of the room, looking up and down the hallway. Several more doors lined the space, but all of them were labeled only with numbers. Rhythm decided to just start trying doors and hoping for the best. She knew there were security cameras in this area, and she could only hope that the guard in charge of watching them hadn’t noticed her yet. She had met him once, and he had told her his job was pretty easy because an alarm sounded anytime someone without proper access tried to enter a room. He told Rhythm he spent the day browsing the internet on his phone, only occasionally glancing up at the screens from the security camera. Unless he heard an alarm going off, he wasn’t that worried about intruders. At the time, Rhythm had thought such laziness on the job was unforgivable, but, now, she was grateful for it. Odds were good that the high level key card her boss had trusted her with would give her access to all of these rooms. As long as no alarms were set off, and no one caught her snooping down here, she would be able to evade the security system.

  She opened several doors, most of which were full of filing cabinets of research notes. Rhythm dumped her folder on top of one of the filing cabinets, not caring that it wasn’t the correct slot. She was leaving this place and never coming back as soon as she found a key and managed to get her new friend out of here, so who really cared if her boss got mad at her?

  The fourth room Rhythm opened looked like a small office. A desk sat in the center of the room, and, behind it, the wall was full of nails on which dozens of sets of keys hung. Above each nail was a small label with a number on it, which Rhythm assumed was the room number that the key corresponded to. She quickly found the keys for the room where the bear-man was chained, and made her way back to him.

  He raised his eyebrows in surprise when she came back into the room, but seemed not to have the energy to do much else. Rhythm quickly tested the keys on the chains holding him captive, and breathed a sigh of relief when they worked.

  “You shouldn’t be doing this,” the man managed to say between wheezing coughs. “I’m as good as dead, anyway. You should get out of here before these people figure out that you know their secret. They’re extremely dangerous, and not at all afraid to kill anyone who gets in their way.”

  “I’m not leaving you,” Rhythm said firmly. “Even if you don’t have long to live, I want to make sure that you don’t have to live out your final days being treated like you’re not even human. Can you stand?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m pretty weak,” the man said.

  “Well, let’s try. Maybe if you lean on me you can make it out of here. I don’t think I can carry you, even with as little as you weigh thanks to being starved. But I might be able to support you enough to get you to the exit. I’m Rhythm, by the way.”

  “I’m Evan,” the man said. “And really, you don’t have to do this.”

  “Hush your mouth,” Rhythm said. “No more nonsense talk. Let’s get going before we lose our chance.”

  Evan didn’t protest further, and Rhythm managed to get him to a standing position. Even though he was skin and bones, he was still a large man. Rhythm realized as she helped Evan take a few steps that anyone with a bear inside of him would have to be a little larger than your average human.

  “Where are we going?” Evan asked. “Do you have a car here?”

  “I do,” Rhythm said. “But we’re not taking the car. I’d have to walk right out the front of the building and into the employee parking lot to get to it. We’re going to sneak out the back and take one of the boats the lab owns. They have two of them, and they don’t seem to use them that often, so odds are good that one of them will be there.”

  “Okay,” Evan said. “Do you have a key for the boats, though?”

  “They usually leave them in there,” Rhythm said. “They don’t seem all that concerned with someone stealing them. I mean, why would they be? We’re on the outskirts of civilization, and everyone out here already has their own boat, anyway.”

  “True,” Evan said, wincing as he struggled to keep his feet moving.

  “I’m not even sure why the lab needs boats, to be honest. Maybe they just enjoy the option to commute long distances that way, since the lab is right on the edge of the water here.”

  Evan’s eyes darkened. “They probably use the boats to search out and capture bear shifters for their tests.”

  “Did they bring you back here in a boat?” Rhythm asked, glancing over her shoulder. The lab was quiet, but Evan was taking a long time to move a very short distance. She was starting to worry that someone was going to cross paths with them and see him escaping before they could make it out of the building.

  “I don’t know how they brought me here, to be honest,” Evan said. “I was on a hunting trip with my clan, and they managed to separate me from the group. I fought them as best I could, but they were better armed than me and I was outnumbered. The last thing I remember is fight
ing desperately out on the tundra, trying to ward them off. They must have knocked me out or something, because the next thing I remember is waking up in that cell you found me in.”

  Rhythm shook her head in disgust. “I can’t believe I’ve been working for such awful people and I didn’t even realize it. I’m such an idiot.”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Evan said. “They’re very skilled at covering their tracks. They must have started to trust you, though, if your boss let you have his keycard.”

  “I guess. He seemed overwhelmed today. Like he didn’t even have time to go take a piss. They must be on the verge of some big breakthrough in their research,” Rhythm said with a shudder.

  Thankfully, they had reached the back exit that led to the boats. Rhythm shivered as the cold, outdoor air hit her, then breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that one of the boats was parked at the dock, just waiting for her and Evan. Just a few more minutes, and they would be on that boat speeding away from here. She glanced behind her again as they slipped out the door, relieved to see that the hallway was still empty. Evan hobbled along in silence now, so drained of energy that he couldn’t even talk. Their progress was painfully slow, but steady. Evan grunted in pain every now and then, but he kept moving forward. Just as they reached the long dock, Rhythm heard a shout behind her.

  “Hey!” the voice yelled. “What the hell are you doing? Where are you going with our test subject?”

  Rhythm’s breath caught in her throat, and she started to turn around to look, but Evan suddenly seemed to have gained strength.

  “Don’t look back,” he said. “You’ll lose valuable time, and every second counts right now. Just keep moving forward.”

  Rhythm swallowed the lump in her throat and did as she was told, shuffling down the dock as quickly as Evan’s pace would allow. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, and her ears roared as blood rushed to them from her quickly growing panic. Moments later, the deafening sound of an alarm started ringing through the air, followed by more shouting. Rhythm could hear the sound of boots behind them, running toward them. She willed herself to stay calm as she and Evan reached the boat. In one quick jump, Evan launched himself over the side of the boat and crumpled in a heap on its floor, roaring in pain. He didn’t move an inch after that, and Rhythm guessed that he had used up the last of his energy to get into the boat. She hopped in after him, then quickly started unwinding the rope that held the boat to the dock.