Page 81 of Claimed By the Guardian

She abruptly crowed. A full-throated cry of exultation. She even did a few dance steps while she clutched her phone.

“Keep checking. I want updates every hour.” She listened for a few more moments. Made a half-dozen illegible notations on a pad of paper, then she thumbed off her phone and turned to the room at large.

“It works,” she said before anyone could ask. “At least that’s the preliminary results. If we catch a Flu victim early enough, the cocktail halts the conversion. They don’t become hybrids and…” She held up her hands during her dramatic pause. “There are no signs of brain deterioration.” She grinned. “They don’t go crazy.”

The room erupted in cheers. Not just Hank who had been grinning from the moment she started dancing, but everyone in the room.

“You did it!” he said as he hugged her. She squealed in delight as he swung her around. But the moment he set her down again, other people were there. Simon clasped her hand and gave her one of his very rare smiles. Then Alyssa pulled her into an impromptu dance that had everyone laughing.

Cheers and congratulations all around, and though Hank was as happy as anyone here, he couldn’t help but feel like the end was on the horizon. She’d solved the mystery of the Detroit Flu. She’d found a way to stop the poison’s effect on a body, and so her task here was done. The quarantine would be lifted, she’d be off to the next challenge, and where would he be? Trailing along behind her like a lost puppy? Would she even want him there? Science was her life. It was hard to believe she had any room left for him.

The celebration continued for a few more minutes, but eventually Simon held up his hand. One by one, people went back to their tasks, which left the alpha looking at Cecilia with serious eyes.

“I need to talk with you, Dr. Lu.”

She nodded, her expression sobering. “I know what you’re going to ask.”

Really? Because Hank had no idea.

“You’re wondering if I’m going to publish the results. If the cure we’ve found can be distributed without exposing shifters.”

Simon leaned against the table, his arms crossed as he looked hard at her. Then he turned to his mate. “Alyssa, can you summarize what you and Hank figured out about Dr. Oltheten?”

The woman nodded, her expression grave as she tapped on her tablet. “Hank and I went through all the personal stuff that we could find. It was pretty disorganized, but it goes like this. Dr. O and his sister were both cougar shifters, but he never manifested. Both were pretty gifted science-wise, but the family was a bit loony tunes. Anyway, after the wolf-cat war, their numbers were low, so sis and a psycho friend developed the serum that activated latent shifter DNA.”

Cecilia frowned. “When did that happen?”

“Last spring. The Gladwin bears were on the front line for that one. We should have figured out the last name connection—Oltheten isn’t a common name—but we’re new to being in charge here. I’m still sifting through the old alpha’s files.”

“What happened to the sister?”

“She’s gone, too. What we didn’t realize is that before being captured, sis sent all her stuff to her brother. He never manifested as a shifter and always wanted to. Worse, his wife never believed, so he got it in his head to…”

Cecilia exhaled loudly. “To tell everyone. Get as many people as he could to believe so that she would finally see.” It wasn’t phrased as a question, but Alyssa answered it anyway.

“Yeah. That conference in New York wasn’t his only attempt at getting the word out. He tried multiple times to tell his boss at Pfizer with the usual minor disasters: flu bug, electrical outage, lost data. Then he printed everything on paper, called a meeting of all the higher-ups, and got hit by a car on the way to the meeting.”

Hank winced even though he knew all this information already. Still, it sucked to know the truth and despite every attempt to get the information out, magic made sure he was treated as a fool.

“He ended up fired when he distributed copies of his paper anyway. From there, he tried teaching high school science, but he kept trying to talk to the kids about werewolves.”

Now Cecilia was cringing. “That couldn’t have gone well.”

“It didn’t. He was fired, which is when Emory Wolf got his paws into him. He had his sister’s notes by then and was getting ready to present his paper at the big conference in New York.”

“Where he got food poisoning.”

“And his wife left him. That was when he went completely bonkers.”

Double whammy. Lost his career and his family in the same week.

“So he decided to infect the entire city?” Cecilia asked. “Why?”

“Near as we can tell, he hoped to make enough shifters that it couldn’t be kept secret anymore.”

Then Simon pressed the point. “It destroyed him, killed a ton of people, and all because he thought he was smarter than magic.” He stopped speaking then, but his gaze was heavy on Cecilia.

Hank wanted to cross to her, to wrap his arm around her in support. He wanted her to know that he would care for her no matter what, but she had to see the example in Dr. Oltheten. He didn’t want to distract her from the lesson. Brainiacs always thought they could outsmart everything. People, acts of nature, and magic. It had destroyed the Oltheten siblings, and he desperately hoped she would learn from their disaster.