The Hybrid Trials Book 1

I was completely naked.

The room around me was stark white and claustrophobic, no bigger than a shower. And cold. So fucking cold.

My nipples made stiff peaks as I changed as fast as I could into the hospital gown the nurse had given me.

I wasn’t sure why I was even there. I was not who they were looking for. I was a hybrid, a waste of space, an abomination.

There was no way these scientists could fix what my genetics had broken.

But money could fix everything else. And I needed the fifty thousand dollars they were promising to be part of this clinical trial…even if they wouldn’t say exactly what I’d be testing.

I held up the thin white gown. It was practically transparent.

But for the kind of cash they were offering, I’d wear whatever they wanted.

I was just about to pull the gown over my head when the curtain to the cubicle ripped open. I gasped and scrambled to cover myself from who I assumed was the nurse.

My breath caught in my throat. It wasn’t the nurse. It was the last person in the world I wanted to be stuck with in this tiny space.

Alpha Ryken Storm of the Storm Blood Pack.

His eyes dipped to where I was barely covering my chest before the nurse closed the curtain to the cubicle behind him.

He only looked at me for half a second before his eyes flicked away from my bare skin, as if nothing had happened. That indifference cut me deeper than I’d ever admit.

He looked so different from the last time I’d seen him. Back when I was ten and he was only a little older, he’d smiled so easily at me. He hadn’t cared what I was.

But that had changed and so had he. Now, he was a giant—so tall I had to crane my neck up to meet his eye.

His dark hair was pulled into a braid down his back, his eyes bright blue, his lips full. He looked so much like his asshole father, and maybe that cut me deepest of all. Because just seeing his face again reminded me of everything he had promised me.

And every word of it had been a lie.

“Alpha Ryken.” I dipped my head, trying to be civil so he didn’t read into the silence and work out that he could still hurt me.

He looked over me and sneered, his broad body suffocating the tiny space. I’d backed up to the wall, but still our skin brushed as he moved, hot and electric.

“I am not your Alpha, hybrid,” he spat.

I rolled my eyes. That was what I got for showing some respect. Fine then, fuck the respect, he could have the scorn.

He had no right to hate me the way I hated him. So what if I was a hybrid? At least I knew how to keep a promise. At least I was loyal. He was too much like his father to ever know the meaning of that word.

“What’s an Alpha doing signing up to be a test subject for the scientists?” I asked, suspicion tingling in my mind.

Ryken’s father, Cerberus, despised the scientists for experimenting on both wolves and humans. He was a bigot who thought the two species should never intertwine.

I should know.

Ryken glowered at me, pulling his shirt over his head. I had to dodge one of his elbows as he did, but as I ducked I got a clear view of his abs. Every divot of muscle was defined, rippling. I swallowed back the burn of desire.

“None of your business,” Ryken muttered.

“Right,” I breathed shakily, trying to pull oxygen in, but all I could smell was the fucking Alpha.

His scent was intoxicating, a heady combination of coffee and pine with a hint of musk. I’d buried the memory of it a long time ago.

Ryken didn’t seem to have the same problem. He didn’t seem hurt or sorry for what he’d done. His entire body radiated fury. He moved with rough, jagged movements, his jaw clenched as he pulled on his own gown.

His knuckles grazed my shoulder as he changed, impossible to avoid in this tiny cubicle. I tried to hide how my body temperature seemed to be ticking up by the second.

He yanked off his boots and jeans, standing tall and stretching out his body.

It was overwhelming how big he was.

“Please state your name and species,” a robotic woman’s voice said through a speaker overhead.

I cleared my throat. “Mackenzie Murlow. Hybrid werewolf/human.”

My genetic markers were mostly human, meaning I couldn’t fully shift. I could pop some pretty wicked fangs and claws, but other than that? Boring.

“Ryken Storm. Werewolf. Alpha,” he rumbled next to me, and I closed my eyes at the sound of him.

His voice still spoke to something deep and instinctual in me.

The Storm Blood Pack was meant to be my pack. That is, if my mother hadn’t committed the ultimate sin of falling in love with my father, a human. Of having me.

To Cerberus, that was a fate punishable by death.

The robotic voice interrupted my thoughts. “Please read the contract terms and conditions, then sign at the bottom.” A tablet stretched out in front of us on a mechanical arm.

I blew out a breath as Ryken reached around me. His warmth doused my body, his skin so close I could see the sinewy muscle up his forearms.

He grabbed the stylus and signed the bottom.

“Do you know what the scientists are testing?” I asked.

Ryken barely looked my way. “Does it matter?”

“I guess not,” I muttered, then signed my name at the bottom, my heart racing as I did.

The scientists’ last big experiment had changed the world. They’d created a medication for wolves to control their shifting.

Before that, werewolves had been in hiding, trying not to expose themselves every full moon for fear of being killed by the humans who outnumbered them.

Now, ten years later, every wolf that took the shifting drug was allowed out in society, allowed to coexist with humans.

“Arm out, please,” the robotic voice said, drawing my attention back to the experiment as a set of needles extended toward us.

My head swam as one of them dug into my skin, blood pouring into the connected test tube. I glanced sideways and saw Ryken standing stock-still, completely unbothered as they took his blood too.

A second later, the voice was talking again.

“Mackenzie Murlow,” it said from above. “Blood type: A-negative. Storm Blood Pack. Refractive error requiring corrective lenses. Heart murmur as a result of a minor congenital heart defect—a faulty valve that has been repaired. Cannot fully shift. Malnourished. Human healing. Blood work complete.”

The list of all my shit embarrassed the hell out of me. Werewolves didn’t have heart defects, they didn’t need glasses, and they definitely were not malnourished.

Everything that voice listed was another twist of the knife that was embedded deep in my hybrid soul. It proved everything Ryken probably already thought.

I didn’t belong in the pack.

I twisted my hands in front of me, refusing to acknowledge the heat in my cheeks. But when the voice spoke again, it only rubbed salt in my wounds.

“Ryken Storm. Blood type: supernatural. Werewolf. Storm Blood Pack, Alpha. No other abnormalities. Accelerated healing. Blood work complete.”

“Of course you’re perfect,” I huffed under my breath.

“Of course you’re not,” he bit back.

I opened my mouth to respond, but the robotic voice beat me to it. “Compatibility calculating.”

My head snapped toward the ceiling, where the voice came from, then to Ryken. “Did that thing just say—”

“Compatibility,” he said, his voice low, like he also couldn’t believe it. His eyes on me still had that fire of hate, but there was something else in them too. Confusion, intrigue. I could tell he was thinking the same thing I was.

“Calculation complete,” the voice said, freezing us both solid. Ryken and I locked eyes as it spoke again. “Highly compatible.”

There was a beat of dead silence, then we both spoke at the same time.