Perfect Mate

Dedication

To Milly, for being prepared to help me bury bodies in the backyard. To Will and BJ, for always being there. To Amy, for not running away screaming at a story littered with Britspeak.
 

And a special mention for all those readers who have stuck with me since the beginning, and those just taking a chance now. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Chapter One

She dreamed of the forest and running. Of the wind as she raced over the terrain. Her footing steady and sure…she was agile, fleet-footed and free. The sounds and smells of nature filled her senses, earthy and comforting, as she slowed her pace.
 

The darkness of night surrounded her, with only the silvery moon lighting her way as she padded on silent feet through the mountain forest trails. Despite the fact she was alone, she didn’t feel threatened out here in the dark. Instead, she felt comforted, as though nature itself would rise and protect her if danger should strike.

The sound of a stream up ahead drew her attention, so she turned toward it. As she approached, the musical notes of it rushing and tumbling over mountain stones grew louder.

She could already feel the cold, crystal-clear water against her tongue as she reached the bank, dropping her head to drink and coming face to face with the reflection of amber-gold eyes—

“Lillian…Lilly! Wake up, chick. We got incoming!”

The sound of the ward sister Beth’s voice snapped Lillian Rosewood out of her light doze. On reflex, she stood up, smoothing down her plain shirt and slacks before fully awake. As the manager at St. Mary’s, most of the staff were aware of her dedication to the hospital her great-grandfather had founded. The sight of her asleep at her desk or on the small sofa in her office rather than going home wasn’t an uncommon one.
 

“Incoming?”
 

She rushed out of the room in a heartbeat, following the bustling senior nurse as she hurried down to the reception area. “What do you mean incoming? It’s after eleven…there’s been no phone call…”

She slid to a halt just inside the medical reception area, almost running Beth over as the nurse came to an abrupt stop in front of her. The area beyond the other woman had become a hive of activity. Army medics burst through the double doors, shoving a gurney between them, accompanied by a blast of cold wind from the wintry weather outside.
 

“Crap.”

Even from here she could see the blood. It covered the torso and legs of the patient on the gurney, vivid scarlet against the subdued greens of his combat uniform. Her brow furrowed. Where were the dressings? There was nothing, not even a swab of gauze held over the bloodstained fabric.
 

“What are you doing?”
 

She brushed past Beth, a frown creasing her brow and authority ringing in her voice. “You can’t bring him in here like that. This is a psychiatric institution. We don’t provide emergency care.”

Even as she tried to stop them, her heart went out to the soldier on the bed. Tall, he had to be well over six feet, and from the bits she could see that weren’t covered in blood, ripped too. Irritation surged through her. What kind of sicko noticed how cute the patient was while said patient bled out in the lobby?

“For Christ’s sake, someone put pressure on that wound.”

She surged forward, even though she didn’t have protective gloves on, her instincts overriding any sense of personal danger. Before she could reach the sodden fabric, a hand clamped over her wrist. The coppery, tangy scent of blood rolled over her, surrounding her and trying to trigger her gag reflex. Instincts as old as humanity itself told her that something was wrong. She’d never seen so much blood on a patient who didn’t become a corpse.
 

“Don’t.”
 

Bright amber eyes glared out of a pain-ravaged face. Gasping, she tried to step back, but his hold was like iron around her slender wrist. A manacle of flesh and blood. No one should move that quickly, especially not someone as injured as him.
 

Within a heartbeat, the tension among the military medics surrounding them went up a couple of notches. As though they expected the guy on the bed to leap off it and attack her. She shook her head at such silliness. Call themselves medics? Anyone with the slightest bit of medical training could see that this guy wasn’t going anywhere fast.

She didn’t fight his hold in case she hurt him more. The wheels of the gurney squeaked as he pulled her closer.
 

“Don’t move,” she warned, looking down for the nametag on his chest.
Capt. J. Harper.
She couldn’t help wondering what the J stood for. “I’m Lilly. It’s okay, I can help. Just stay still for me, okay?”
 

She kept her voice deliberately low and soft, pitched to reassure and relax. She’d worked at St. Mary’s since she left college, and a person couldn’t work in a psychiatric hospital for all that time without learning a thing or two about dealing with patients. Especially patients twice her weight who could snap her like a twig with ease. Unbidden, a shiver of excitement wormed its way through her veins. He was a soldier…the take-charge sort of guy who inhabited her fantasies.
 

A flush of heat hit her cheeks as shame washed over her. She couldn’t…no, she
wouldn’t…
fantasize over a badly injured soldier in her care, no matter how good looking he was. It was wrong, just wrong.
 

“You can’t help me,” he rasped as his eyes bored into hers.
 

They were an unusual color. Not the amber she’d thought, but a burnished, deep gold. They pleaded with her, as though begging for something…but she didn’t know what. Still with her wrist caught in his bigger, strong hand, he searched her eyes in desperation, as though looking for something.
 

Something he didn’t find. His lip curling in disgust, he thrust her hand away and turned his head.
 

“Go away. No one can help me.”

She was the one. Even in the depths of his drug-induced madness Jack could still feel the presence of the woman from the reception area earlier. He’d caught her scent, drawn it into his sensitive nose and down into his lungs, making it a part of him. The beast inside had unraveled, lifting its head and taking notice at the first whiff of faded perfume mixed with strawberry shampoo and the musk of pure woman.
 

In a heartbeat, it had decided she belonged to them and memorized her scent. Now, wherever she went, no matter how far and fast she tried to run, the beast inside him would be able to find her. If he got out of here before they killed him, at least.

The silver nitrate they’d given him raged through his body, dulling his senses and locking his abilities down tighter than an inmate in Alcatraz. The beast inside, the creature they’d created in a lab and spliced to his genetic code, raged against its confinement. Raged against the cage of DNA, flesh and bone the silver had locked it into. It didn’t matter. Even stuck in his human form, he could feel her.
 

Struggling, he fought against his bonds again. It was futile. In his weakened state he wouldn’t have been able to fight his way out of a paper bag, much less the high-tensile restraints on the gurney. He needed the strength of the beast they’d given him to escape their clutches. Something he’d been so close to doing before they’d figured out his plans.
 

Before he knew it, it had been ordnance and explosives in the barrack and armed commandos putting enough lead in him to drop a rhino. He planned to get some payback for that.
 

“Put him in there. Give him another dose and leave him to calm down,” a doctor announced. He’d heard enough of them in his time with the Project to recognize one when he heard him. This one sounded pissed.
 

“Just what the fuck where you thinking…letting that woman near him? She could have touched him—”

Jack’s mind went off on a tangent, easily distracted by the memory of a soft voice and sexy-as-hell scent.
God, yeah.
She could have touched him. He’d wanted her to touch him. He’d
ached
for her to touch him.

If she had, or if he’d contacted her skin instead of grabbing her sleeve-covered wrist, nothing would have stopped him claiming her there and then. Not even the torn skin and shredded muscles where his abs used to be. Just the touch of her skin, the skin of his destined mate, would have sealed the bond between them and released the creature inside him.
 

“She didn’t.”

He tuned out the familiar whine as his guards tried to justify themselves. He’d heard it all before. His two jailers weren’t that inventive, so it was the same old tried and tested excuses of the government-funded, under-qualified drone.
 

The argument raged on as they pushed his gurney into a room. It came to a stop under a window. He sighed in relief as he looked up at the cloudy night sky. Something in his soul eased at the tenuous link with nature. He was what he was, what they’d made him into… A creature of the wilds. A creature of the forest and the mountains.
 

Not a man. Never a man. Not anymore.

Four hours, twenty-three minutes and…oh yes, six seconds.
 

Lillian looked at the clock on the wall of her office and sighed. She’d never been any good at resisting temptation. A fact so well known that the nurses had gotten her a T-shirt made with the words
I can resist anything but temptation
emblazoned across the front for Christmas last year.
 

Right now, Captain Harper was her temptation. There had been something about the soldier that caught her attention. Quite what, she didn’t know. For one, she was far too old for him. Mid-thirties and a guy who couldn’t be more than mid-twenties? It made her feel a little too cougarish for Lillian’s comfort.
 

Those eyes, though. There had been something about them. Something that reached inside her and pulled at her heartstrings. She snorted.
Pulled? Hell, the way they’d been twanging, he could have played a whole concerto on them
. Admitting defeat, she pushed her chair back and left her office. She wouldn’t be able to settle until she’d checked on him.
 

It took less than five minutes to reach the restricted ward. She still didn’t know why they’d brought him here, other than some excuse about it being the nearest facility, but he’d been injured. Since the hospital housed psychiatric patients rather than medical emergencies, it was her duty to ensure he was okay.
 

Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that.
 

Used to seeing her in the corridors, the two soldiers on guard duty eyed her with boredom as she passed in front of them, intending to loop back through the empty wards beyond. Her heels clicked on the stone tiles as she walked. She loved the history of this place, loved the feeling that she followed in the footsteps of previous hospital staff as she went about her rounds.
 

The military wing seemed mostly deserted. Unlike the rest of the patients, none of the soldiers were long-term residents. They arrived, were seen by the military doctors and were transferred out again. Sometimes in the same night.
 

Despite her curiosity, it was something she’d gotten used to. All her questions had fallen on deaf ears, even when she’d petitioned her grandfather, the current owner of St. Mary’s. Every time she asked, she got the same reply. The Army leased the south wing, and they paid an exorbitant sum to do so. They brought their own staff in, all medically trained and occupationally competent. When they were on site, the south wing was, to all intents and purposes, no longer part of the hospital.

She stopped outside the last room—Harper’s room—and grimaced as she realized how cell-like it appeared. St. Mary’s was an old hospital, built in the days when mental illnesses were commonly treated with containment, and restraint—among other, more brutal methods—was commonplace. She shivered. Thankfully the north wing, where treatments were carried out in those days, had long since been demolished and replaced with a serene garden.

The metal door stood slightly ajar, which alleviated the cell-like impression a little, but not enough for her liking. Beyond it, she could see the motionless figure strapped to the bed. Her jaw dropped in shock. Despite the fact he’d been badly injured, they still had him in restraints? What kind of animals were they…how on Earth could this be good for a patient’s mental health or recovery?