Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [978]
Jenna kept going, around one curving length of polished white marble to another. Her leg was throbbing now, but she didn’t care. Tossing away the cane that only slowed her down, she all but ran toward the muffled sounds of male voices coming from up ahead. She was panting as she reached the glass walls of the tech lab, a sheen of pain-induced sweat beading above her lips and across her forehead.
Her eyes found Brock before anyone else in the solemn-looking group. His face was taut, the tendons in his neck drawn tight as cables, his mouth flattened into a grim, almost menacing line. He stood in the back of the room, surrounded by several other warriors, all of them seeming tense and uneasy—all the more so now that she was there. Gideon and Tess were huddled near the bank of computer workstations at the front of the lab.
Everyone had paused what they’d been doing to stare at her.
Jenna felt the weight of their gazes like a physical thing. Her heart lurched. Obviously, they had the analysis of her blood work. Just how awful could the results be?
Their expressions were unreadable, everyone holding her in cautious, silent observation as her footsteps slowed and came to a stop in front of the tech lab’s wide glass doors.
God, they looked at her now as though they’d never seen her before.
No, she realized as the group of them remained unmoving, simply watching her through the clear wall that stood between her and the sober meeting on the other side. They were looking at her as though they might have expected her to be dead already.
As though she were a ghost.
Dread settled cold and heavy in her stomach, but she wasn’t about to back down now.
“Let me in,” she demanded, pissed off and terrified. “Goddamn it, open this fucking door and tell me what’s going on!”
She lifted her hand and fisted it, but before she had a chance to pound on the glass, it slid open on a soft hiss. She stormed inside, Alex following in on her heels.
“Tell me,” Jenna said, her gaze traveling from one silent face to another. She lingered on Brock, the one person in the room aside from Alex for whom she felt a measure of trust. “Please … I need to know what you’ve found.”
“There have been some changes in your blood,” he said, his deep voice impossibly low. Too gentle. “In your DNA, as well.”
“Changes.” Jenna swallowed hard. “What kind of changes?”
“Anomalies,” Gideon interjected. When she swung her head to look at him, she was struck by the concern in the warrior’s eyes. He spoke carefully, looking and sounding far too much like a doctor doling out the worst kind of news to his patient. “We’ve found some odd cellular replications, Jenna. Mutations that are being passed into your DNA and multiplied at an excessive rate. These mutations were not present the last time we analyzed your samples.”
She shook her head, as much in confusion as it was reflex to deny what she thought she was hearing. “I don’t understand. Are you talking about some kind of disease? Did that creature infect me with something when he bit me?”
“Nothing like that,” Gideon said. He shot an anxious look at Lucan. “Well, not exactly, that is.”
“Then what exactly?” she demanded. The answer hit her not even a second later. “Oh, Jesus Christ. This thing in the back of my neck.” She put her hand over the spot where the Ancient had inserted that granule-size bit of unidentified material. “This thing he put inside me is causing the changes. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
Gideon gave her a faint nod. “It’s biotechnology of some kind—nothing the Breed or humankind has the capability to create. From the newest X rays we took today, it appears the implant is integrating into your spinal cord at a very accelerated rate, as well.”
“Take it out.”
A round of uneasy looks traveled the group of big males. Even Tess seemed awkwardly silent, unwilling to hold Jenna’s gaze.
“It’s not that simple,” Gideon finally replied. “Perhaps you should see the X ray for yourself.”
Before she could consider whether she wanted to see proof of anything she was being told, the image of