Free Adam & Eve (A.D.2203, #1) by Ravyn Wilde

CHAPTER ONE
 
    E arth 2203
    Eve strode restlessly out of the lab, walking quickly through the air shield and out into the night. She was tired but anxious, on the verge of completing a pet project. Glancing up, she swore, “Damn, it’s a Lupine Moon!”
    Her assistant, Charles, cocked one eyebrow at her and gestured in an offhanded manner, saying drolly, “Eve dear, I told you that three days ago. You grunted. But noooo ...the greatest geneticist of our time was in the middle of bending over her microscope doing what she does ten hours a day.”
    “Shut up, Charles,” Eve spat out.
    Any minute she was going to start hyperventilating. This was not good. She was miles from home and the safety of her sealed lab, which wouldn’t protect her now anyway. In order for it to work, you had to enter the damn airtight room three days prior to full moon. The three days were necessary in order for scent to dissipate.
    “I hate full moons,” she snarled. Quickly glancing around the compound she ran the options through her mind.
    Nothing. Not a damn thing she could do about it now.
    “Your stepfather is a werewolf, sweetie. How can you be so ‘One Race’ about this?”
    Eve turned on the tall, elegantly effeminate male. “Charles,” she said in a tight voice. “You and I have been working together for three months to create an inoculation that will give one group of Others a chance to have live, swimming sperm. In any way does this point to me being a member of the ‘One Race’? No,” she said before he could comment. “This puts me at the top of their Human Enemy Hit List. Yes, my stepfather is Were, my half-brother is Were, my sister is married to a Vampire—one of the leaders of the Others. I am not prejudiced, I just do not want to chance meeting up with one of the shaggy beasts tonight thinking I smell like wifey,” she enunciated clearly.
    Dragging her hands through her cropped, black as midnight hair, Eve nervously checked the compound again before stepping up to her glide. Her heart was racing. She smoothed sweaty palms over her softly curved body and regretted the fact that she hadn’t taken the time for her morning runs in the last month. Like that would help if she were scented. Her amber eyes were narrowed, cautious. Her body poised for flight.
    “Do you want me to follow you home?” Charles uncertainly offered.
    Eve snorted. “Why? You know as well as I do if I’m scented and marked I have no choices. The Lupine Act took care of that.” She sighed, “Go home Charles. It was my fault I didn’t realize Lupine Moon was tonight. I can only pray that there is no werewolf out there that is genetically tuned to my scent. I do not need a husband right now.”
    So saying, Eve settled into her glide and programmed it for home. She waved half-heartedly at Charles and leaned her head back, closing her eyes. The ride home from the lab would take exactly 15.6 minutes in the air glide. Its quiet imperceptible motion wouldn’t disturb her thoughts.
    Gee—what to think about? The fact that she had made a huge breakthrough in the development of a serum for Vampire males that would give them a window of opportunity to impregnate their warm-blooded mates? Or the fact that the development of that serum would probably get her killed by the One Racers? Nah, let’s go with the fact that for the first time since her maturity at 18, almost 20 years ago, she’d not locked herself up safely in an airtight room three days before LM!
    Eve winced. Lupine Moon. One night a month when lycanthropes everywhere were forced to change, and if they were “of age” they hunted for a mate. Only during LM from sundown to sunup did they have the ability to scent and trace their genetic mate. And her grandfather’s work had helped prove the fact that Weres did indeed have a true genetic companion. His work led to the Lupine Act, which meant that it didn’t matter if you were a shape-shifter, human, or warm-blooded Other, if you were