“Are you sure you’re up to this?” Finn asked. “You look like you’re ready to go into labor any minute.”
“I still have a few weeks left,” Diane said. “You okay?”
Laura nodded at the question, but Finn felt her tension.
“Ariel, will you go check all the supplies in the room we’re using for Logan? We’ll want to get started as soon as we can,” Diane stated.
“Sure,” Ariel agreed, leaving the rest of them there.
Finn moved toward the table with Laura. She must have known what they would do or at least suspected since she’d worn a stretchy T-shirt and sweatpants. He helped her fix her shirt then watched as she rolled the waistband down on her pants until they lay across her hips. He held her hand while she took her spot on the table and leaned back.
“We’re ready,” he said.
Gideon walked over with a tube in his hand. “This will be a bit cold,” he warned just before squirting it onto Laura’s belly.
“More than a bit,” Diane said as she wheeled over a cart. She put the machine beside the table and held up a wand. “This is what we’ll use to have a look at everything. Can you go over exactly what happened? What you felt? Saw? What they said?”
Laura nodded, her grip tightening on Finn’s hand. “I was out most of the time I was there. There was an incision on my belly. They left it open. Sometimes, I’d hear them talking about how lucky they were to have a specimen like me. Young and healthy.”
“Did they say what they were doing?” Diane asked, moving the wand.
“She taunted me that they’d made at least one animal sterile.”
“What type of lab were you in?” Logan asked.
“I’m not sure,” Laura admitted. “What conversation I caught was about reproduction. They seemed to want to find a way to prevent the animals from breeding.”
“One of the fertility labs,” Gideon said. “Jesus! HL-FT. Fertility trials. It’s a lab code. The last notation on those lists Isaac had. It’s a code used within their society to designate what each lab’s priority is. It was one of the first things Thomas picked up on it. It’s how he knew which labs we needed to target.”
“So Laura was in a fertility lab? Does that mean Jensen’s daughter was, as well? That makes no sense,” Clara said. “His daughter is human. Are you saying Jensen might be working undercover for them? That Isaac found out?”
Gideon shook his head. “That’s not what I’m suggesting, at all. I’m just saying I think I know what that code is now. As for what it’s doing on that list? I don’t know yet, and I’m not willing to just guess. We have no idea what’s at stake.”
“How long did it take you to heal?” Diane asked Laura, drawing all eyes back to her.
“Days,” Laura said. “There was a lot of pain. I ran a bit of a fever. It wasn’t until we arrived at the Holloways that I finally healed enough to move around. Why?”
Diane swallowed. “Did you have any issues when you were younger? Any major medical conditions? Appendix removed? Or gallbladder? Any type of surgeries?”
“No,” Laura said softly. “Why? What do you see?”
“It’s more of what I don’t see,” Diane replied.
“Tell me,” Laura whispered.
“You have an ovary missing,” Diane said. “I’d need to take a closer look, but I’d say they didn’t sterilize you. They harvested an ovary.”
“Oh, God!” Laura moaned. “What would they want with my ovary?”
“I don’t know,” Diane said.
But they could all guess. Bile rose in Finn’s throat. They’d stolen something irreplaceable from his mate. Something he was afraid the hunters would find a way to use against them all. Something that would have the potential to destroy his mate. He couldn’t let it happen.
“We need to talk to Gabriel and find out about that lab. Where it is and what condition he left it in,” Finn said. He’d go himself and burn the fucking place to the ground.
“Were there other people there with you?” Gideon asked.
“I don’t know for sure,” Laura admitted, her voice laced with shock. “Like I said, I was out of it most of the time.”
“Do you want me to take a closer look at the other one?” Diane asked.
Laura glanced at Finn then nodded. “I do. I need to know if they did anything else. Why take one ovary? Why not take both? Or even give me a complete hysterectomy? Why only one ovary?”
“There’s no use in speculating right now,” Gideon stated. “We’ll need to find out more about the lab and what type of fertility work they were doing in it. That’s how we’ll figure out why they did this.”
“When can you go in?” Laura asked Diane.
“Are you sure?” Finn asked his mate.
“I need to know,” she said. “I need to.”
He nodded in understanding. “Okay.”
“We can do it as soon as you’re ready,” Diane told them. “Logan, you don’t mind waiting, do you?”
“Not at all,” he said. “I think it would be best if I went to Tah now and let him know what’s going on. The sooner we know where to look, the better.”
“Montana,” Laura said. “I was in Montana.”
Chapter Thirteen
Laura came to feeling groggy. They’d started an IV, and Gideon had given her something to help her sleep while Diane had reopened Laura’s abdomen and taken a closer look at what had been done. Laura wasn’t surprised to see her mate at her side, watching as she blinked her eyes open.
“What did she find?” she croaked, her throat dry.
“Here, drink this,” Finn said, holding out a cup to her with a straw in it. “It’s water. Gideon said your throat would be dry when you woke up.”
She took a careful sip then another before pushing away the cup. “What did she find?”
“They made a clean cut, tying off your tube after they detached your ovary and removed it. The other one looks fine. She couldn’t find anything else amiss.”
“I don’t understand. Why would they say they’d figured out how to sterilize if that’s all they did?”
“Diane’s best guess is they weren’t done. Gabriel said your incision was still open when he found you. Gideon suggested they might have been waiting to see how your body reacted to the missing ovary.”
“Why?”
“Hunters have done experiments on our kind for a long time. Using drugs to try to control us or change us or turn us against one another. You know what happened to Kenzie. She was born in one of their labs, taken from her mother’s womb and injected with a blocker that was supposed to permanently lock out her beast. She still hasn’t fully merged. One of the labs Gideon was in injected the shifters with different drugs they were testing and pitted them against one another, making them fight to the death.”
“Why do they hate us?”
Finn shrugged. “Who knows? We probably wouldn’t understand even if we did know. Generally, hate doesn’t make sense. We’re different, a merging of man and animal that goes against what they consider normal.”
“I hope they destroyed my ovary. The thought of them keeping it makes me sick.”
“I know. That’s why Gabriel left with Kenzie, Murphy and Daniel. They’re headed back to Montana to check out the facility the hunters held you in. Reno and Amia wanted to go, but he can’t leave right now. Not with everything going on here.”
“What’s going on?” Laura asked, her body coming instantly alert.
“Logan is still having issues caused by his inability to merge with his beast. Right now, they’re not sure what to do to help him. Zane’s focused on his pregnant mate and rightly so. I’m focused on you. That leaves Gideon and Vic along with Reno and Amia who aren’t currently distracted by other things. We can’t leave ourselves open to attack.”
“Why would Reno and Amia want to go anyway?”
“Amia’s from Montana. She knows the area well.” Opening his mind, he shared his memories of everything he knew about Amia, including what had happened with him.
“She’s a Blane?” Laura questioned incredulously then caught her breath. “Oh, my God! They buried them alive! How could they do that to Amia? Clara, too? To anyone? ” She took his hand. “You didn’t know. You heard Amia say she was going to kill everyone. How could you know what she meant? You were trying to protect them.”
“I locked her in a tiny room and brought back all her memories of being buried alive,” he admitted.
“And you died trying to make up for that. If I hadn’t been there…” She let the thought trickle off.
“You were there,” he reminded her. “I’d say that’s proof we can get through anything.”
“I believe we can,” she agreed and pulled him down for a kiss. He showered them over her face, and she felt how much he cared for her. She’d known before she met him that she would love her mate. Their kind were designed to live in a committed relationship with one person and one person only. It wasn’t that way with all shifters, but it was for them. She’d worried she’d never meet her mate then thought she’d lost him. She’d just found him again, and already, she loved him as if they’d spent a lifetime together.
“I love you, too,” Finn said. “Time means nothing with the connection we share. I know you in all the ways that matter. I know your heart and soul. I feel your joy and pain. I don’t just see you. I see into you, just as you see all of me. We have nothing to hide, and that makes all the difference.”
“They call us the animals. Say we’re the oddity and need to be eradicated. They’re the ones whose hearts are so filled with hate.” She shook her head and blew out a breath. “What did Gabriel say?”
“He had a connection at the lab just like you said. He was told you were hurt, but not what they’d done to you, so it was a quick in and out. He didn’t check anything else while he was there. He knows the lab’s location, and they’re going back to see if there’s a way for them to get in again. Gabriel tried to reach his contact, but he isn’t answering.”
“Did they already leave?”
“They left as soon as they could get packed,” Finn said. “Gideon came up with two possibilities for what they could be doing in those labs.”
“Okay.”
“One is that they took your ovary and waited to see how your body reacted. They seem to believe we can regenerate body parts. Gideon said they’ve removed limbs just to see if we’d grow them back. The intention could have been to see how your body responded to the missing ovary. Take it, monitor then go back in to grab the other once they knew for sure how you’d react biologically.”
“That makes sense, weird sense, but still. What was his other idea?”
“Taking your ovary to harvest eggs. They would need to do it pretty quickly after removing it, which could explain why they only took one. To see if they could keep the eggs viable outside your body.”
“Why would they do that? They can’t mean to use them! No! It’s not possible.”
He leaned down, pulling her into his arms and rubbing his hands up and down her spine. “I think we both know they’re capable of anything.”
“But to take them and use them. They hate us. That just makes no sense. It doesn’t. The thought of them using my eggs for anything. It makes me ill to even think about it.”
“Then don’t. Let’s not borrow trouble when we don’t know for sure. We’ll wait to hear from Murphy when they know something.”
She knew he was right, but it was still hard not to freak out. Of all the things she’d worried about while in the hands of the hunters, having her ovary taken had never once crossed the realm of possibility.
“How’re you feeling?” Finn asked, then clarified. “Physically.”
“I’m okay. We heal pretty quickly,” she offered with a smile.
“I thought we’d take it easy for the remainder of today. Stay here and let you relax.”
“I’m fine. You don’t need to take it easy with me.”
“I thought you might want to stick close to see how things go with Logan.”
“Yes, of course, I do. How are they handling it?”
“Gideon took blood from Clara before we got here this morning. I’m not savvy on exactly how it’s all going to work, but my best guess is they’re going to give him a transfusion like they did with Abby and Diane. Looking at what your blood did for me and what Tah and Zane’s have done for Abby and Diane during pregnancy, it only makes sense this might be exactly what Logan needs to stabilize his blood and let his animal emerge.”
“I want it to work for him. I don’t know how serious his condition is right now. Feral fever virus has too many strains to count. But I’ve just found my brother again, and I’ve been so wrapped up in hurt and blame that I haven’t had a chance to tell him how much I love him, how much I’ve missed him. I don’t want to lose him again.”
“If this doesn’t work, we’ll find something else to try. No one will rest until we figure out what to do for him. He’s at the very core of this pride. We’re not going to lose him.”
She nodded and sat up in bed. There was a slight pull in her lower abdomen where Diane had opened her back up, but it was already healing. Soon, she wouldn’t even have a scar to show for it. Their bodies had such an amazing ability to heal, even if they didn’t regenerate.
“So what do you suggest we do while we wait to find out how things went for my brother?” Laura asked.
“Clara gave me some reading material for you,” Finn said and held up the stack of Logan’s letters. “If you’re interested.”
She took them from him. “I am. I should have read them when I first heard about them. I should have taken the time to listen to him earlier.”
“I’ll help you get dressed then we can head to wherever you want to wait. Are you hungry? I’m not a great cook, but I’m not awful either.”
“Why don’t we go to the main house? I can sit there and read. We’d be closer than if we went to our place. Plus, I’m sure there’s plenty to eat.”
“Coward,” he accused, making her laugh.
It took twice as long for her to get dressed with him helping her. He had a way of touching her that brought every nerve ending alive. With him there, the last thing she wanted was to put on her clothes, but it wasn’t the time or place to entice him to do what she wanted.
They ran into Diane, Gideon, Vic, Tah, Abby, Reno and Amia on the way out. They were all there waiting to see how things went with Logan. Laura was starting to appreciate the type of pride she’d become a part of. Before coming here, it had been her, Gabriel and Daniel. Their friend, Adrian, had stopped in from time to time, but as a coyote, he didn’t stay long. Other shifters had been in and out, but their pride had been the three of them, and Isaac had constantly tried to break it up.