Free Wolf by Madelaine Montague

then turned to look at the other men.
    None of them were smiling. If anything, they looked more grim-faced than Mac did. “I don’t understand.”
    “It was us,” Mac growled. “Me, Hawk, Beau, and Cavanaugh. Those horrible things that tore those men to pieces— it was us ! We can’t take you! We can’t guarantee that we won’t turn on you and kill you just like we did them! That’s why the military wants us back so bad. That’s why they’re chasing us, why they’re going to kill us if they catch up to us. Once we turn, we’re too dangerous even for what they had in mind for us—turning us loose on the enemy—because they can’t control us and we can’t control ourselves.”
    It was too much to take in. She thought it would be anytime, but certainly now, after all she’d just been through. A memory flickered in her mind, though, a faint image she hadn’t even been aware that her mind had recorded. The beasts had been wearing military pants, camo just like Mac and his men, she realized abruptly—and she still felt blank, unable to accept it. “How?”
    Mac shook his head. “I don’t know how—none of us do. All we know is we were sent out on a routine mission. We were to collect a spy satellite that had crashed in the jungle. We picked up something there—a parasite. Everything else aside, the longer you’re with us the more chance that you could get it, too.”
    Sylvie touched her lips in horror as that sank in. He’d kissed her. Hawk had kissed her. If they had something, couldn’t they already have passed it to her? What were the chances that they hadn’t?
    From the look on Mac’s face, she knew he’d instantly followed her train of thought. His face twisted and her chest contracted in empathy. “Now you know. Go to the village. You’ll be safe now. The ones we didn’t kill are long gone by now.”
    A shudder raked through her at the reminder. The men had been wearing military style clothing. For all she knew they were military and if that was the case, she had absolutely no desire to put herself at their mercy again. Even if they weren’t military, they’d been close to the village and, to her mind, that indicated a possible tie between them and the village that she didn’t want to chance.
    For several moments, she hesitated, but when she saw the men reach the edge of the jungle she dismissed everything from her mind beyond the fact that they’d protected her. She rushed after them. “Please, take me with you. I won’t be any trouble. I swear!”
    Mac turned on her so fast it took her breath. “What part of that did you not understand?” he growled.
    Sylvie’s heart thumped painfully. She swallowed a little convulsively. “I understand. You wouldn’t hurt me. I know you wouldn’t.”
    Mac’s lips tightened. He was furious with her, mostly because he felt like shit leaving her and worse with her begging him to take her. Hadn’t he made it plain enough 36
    that she was in far more danger from him and his men than she was with the foreigners?
    “Baby, you don’t know me at all! I’ve killed so many men I lost count a long fucking time ago—and that’s when I know what I’m doing. When the change comes over me, I’m an animal, a mindless monster.”
    Despite her fear, Sylvie saw something in his eyes then that she’d never expected to see—fear, fear of what he was, and might become, and might do, maybe had already done. Strangely, it soothed some of her own fear, gave rise to the certainty that she’d be safer with him than anyone else in the world. “You aren’t. You didn’t hurt me. You saved me from them. I trust you.”
    “Well, you’re a damned fool! I can’t trust myself!” he snarled, and then held up his hand, holding his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. “I was this close to doing exactly what they were trying to do. And I can fucking guarantee you that if you don’t take your ass off down that beach, sooner or later that’s exactly what’s