Howling Mad: A paranormal wolf shifter romance (Badlands Book 2) by Rebekah Blue Read Free Book Online

together.
    “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Except it turns out…it’s not. A multi-shift serum is one of the projects Dynamic Earth is working on. Among other things.” He looked grim.
    “Like what?” Naomi asked, bewildered. “And what does it have to do with the rehabilitation center? The research branch is completely separate.”
    Byron growled – he actually growled; not an expression of disapproval but a purely animal sound, wild and dangerous. “Oh, they’re not as separate as you think. All your pet cases? Magnus, with his berserker strength, and those little old ladies who set fire to things? They’re experimental subjects for Professor Stanhope’s laboratories. He’s working on artificially recreating rogue powers – super-strength, pyrokinesis, precognition…you name it.”
    “But you don’t have a rogue power,” Naomi said. “You were institutionalized because you were semi-feral. Dangerous.” She knew feral shifters could become paranoid and fearful as well as aggressive. Had she been wrong to begin to put her trust in Byron?
    “No,” he corrected. “I was institutionalized because I was too convincing for my own good. Dynamic Earth got to hear about my multi-shift serum, and they swallowed my sales pitch whole. They thought I really had come up with a formula that would enable shifting into multiple animal forms. And they knew it was possible, because they were working on the exact same thing.”
    “Wh…what? Why?”
    Byron gave her a tired smile. “If you can think of an innocent reason, I’d love to hear it. And they were desperate to keep it secret. And that meant they had to shut me up.”
    “Then why…why keep you alive?” Naomi couldn’t bring herself to believe her father would kill to keep a corporate secret. She couldn’t. But she had to ask the question, because if Byron was so dangerous to Dynamic Earth, why had they kept him around for three years?
    He shrugged. “They couldn’t be sure I didn’t know something that would be invaluable to their research. Was I lying when I sold the serum…or was I lying when I said it was cough syrup in a fancy bottle? And how could they find out for sure when it was obvious I was crazy?”
    She gaped at him. “It was all an act?”
    A shadow passed over his face. “After three years of listening to the screams at night in the high-security wing? Being dragged out of my cell every day by people who wanted to get at the contents of my brain? Anyone would be nuts.”
    Naomi thought about it for a moment. It made a horrible kind of sense. And that meant her father wasn’t the person she’d thought he was. But that was too hard to think about right now – once she started to unpick the lies, she had a feeling she’d be opening up some raw and ugly wounds. So she put it aside for the moment.
    “Why did you always growl at me, or turn away, or snap and snarl at the bars if I tried to talk to you?” she asked. “Did you dislike me because of who my father is?”
    “I was wary of you,” he said. “But there was another reason.”
    “What was that?” She’d started to reach out towards the pizza box again, but her eyes snapped to his when she heard his reply.
    “Because I wanted you so badly. Just the smell of you was so good it was almost painful. Naomi, I couldn’t let you get close. It wouldn’t have been safe. For either of us.”

Chapter Ten
     
    They traded the stolen motorcycle in at a repair shop that didn’t ask too many questions and was open after hours. It’d go on sale with new plates, new papers and a new paintjob, and they wouldn’t have to ditch it somewhere and risk it being discovered and putting Dynamic Earth on their trail.
    In return for the motorcycle and most of their cash, they got an ancient monster of a machine that belched blue smoke, and no questions asked. Naomi didn’t know whether Byron knew the surly, musclebound men he made the deal with, and she didn’t ask. She just kept quiet and