“Malichai, I need some room to work,” he said, gritting his teeth.

With an effort, Malichai stepped back.

“Pepper, this works. Several of the soldiers have tried it after being bitten,” Wyatt said, using his most soothing voice to reassure her. She was shaking and her skin had gone grayish. Grayish, but still soft as silken sheets. No, even softer. He cursed under his breath. She was getting to him and he already knew what she was, how she was enhanced. He’d been in her mind. He knew her every secret and yet he still wanted to kill his friends to keep them away from her.

She nodded, her gaze clinging to his. He wondered if she felt as empty and lost as he did without her. He crouched down beside her, wrapped one hand around her wrist and sprayed her with the other.

Her fingers moved weakly against his hand. He immediately enveloped her fingers in his much larger hand. “We’ll need some blankets and a clean bowl.”

“I’ll get them,” Malichai said. “I saw a linen closet in the hall when I was looking for your bag.”

Wyatt forgot he’d tossed his duffel bag into his bedroom just before they left to find the men who had assaulted his grandmother. No wonder it had taken Malichai a few minutes to find his medical kit.

“She said there were more babies?” Ezekiel questioned. “Did I hear that right? What son of a bitch would do this to a baby?”

“There are rumors, Ezekiel, a lot of them. We joined up after the founder of the program had disappeared, but I heard he took babies from orphanages and used them for experiments.” Wyatt wasn’t going to reveal his brother’s wife’s information to anyone. She was family. She was sacred. Her past was hers alone, and their family would protect her from everyone.

Pepper’s hand tightened for a fraction of a second, and his heart gave a funny jump. It was difficult to be so close to her physically and not want to feel her merged with him once more. He’d never felt so starkly alone as he did in the moment – not even after Joy Chaisson had left him and he’d realized what a true jackass he’d been, pining for something that had never been real in the first place.

“Do you think that’s what Wilson Plastics is hiding, then?” Ezekiel said. “It’s really a laboratory where they experiment on children?”

Pepper shook her head, or rather tried to. Wyatt felt the movement. Her eyes were wide open and clung to his face. The impact of her eyes on him astonished him. It almost felt like a solid punch to his gut. His chest burned. His heart shifted. Hot blood flooded his veins and pooled low and mean in his groin. The woman was very ill and she still had this much effect on him. Disaster. She was definitely going to be a disaster.

You’re capable of telepathy. I know you talk to the little one.

There was a moment of silence, as if it took her a moment to process. Sorry. Brain’s not working. Hurts like hell. Everything feels slow and hazy.

He closed his eyes briefly, trying not to feel the intensity of the intimacy between them. Initiating telepathic communication with her was clearly a mistake. She crawled into his mind, into his body and wrapped herself tight. Stay with me, Pepper. Stay alert. I need to know what’s happenin.’

The facility is used to house the rejects. The ones they can’t use in the field or are deemed too dangerous to continue with, she explained.

The babies?

In vitro. All three have killed with their bites. They’re too intelligent for their age, and too difficult for their handlers. No one would take care of them but me. When I found out they were going to terminate them, I escaped, but the other two were caught when we broke out. They were both hurt.

Do you think they’ve killed them already?

No. They wouldn’t dare, not with me out. Those two are the only leverage they have to get me to come back.

He felt the sudden urgency in her and immediately helped her into a half-sitting position, holding her with one arm and the bowl in place with the other. She was horribly sick, again and again. He was grateful her digestive system worked enough to allow her to be sick. She wasn’t going to die, thanks to the antivenom already built up in her system.

He wondered just how many times she’d been bitten and how many times she’d had to go through this. At seventeen months, the babies would still be getting teeth. Their mouths would hurt. If something scared them, the snake in them would want to strike out with a bite just as Ginger had done.

He sighed. He knew damn well he was going to have to get those babies out of there. What was he going to do with three little vipers? Well, technically they weren’t really vipers, they were elapids, but vipers sounded more… female. He couldn’t leave them with Grand-mere, although if anyone could handle them it would be her.

He’d been steadfastly avoiding his brother Gator. Facing him after all Gator had revealed to him about the infamous Dr. Whitney, who had started genetic dosing to make supersoldiers, would be difficult. Gator wouldn’t be too happy with Wyatt’s choices. The truth was, Wyatt knew he hadn’t been making good decisions from the moment Joy had left him. He’d been a childish idiot, and that didn’t sit well with him.

He handed the bowl off to Ezekiel and took the blankets Malichai brought, tucking them around Pepper’s shivering body. “The light is hurting her eyes, can you get rid of it?” If Malichai kept staring at her, he wasn’t certain what he would do, but he had to get himself under control.

She was slipping away from him now, drifting in a sea of pain. “You two may as well go to bed,” he said to his teammates – his friends. He needed them gone. He needed just for a few minutes to allow himself to think about what she was and how he was going to handle her. “I’ll stay with her.”