Justus

This is a work of fiction.
All names, characters, locations, and incidents depicted in this
work are of the author’s imagination or have been used in a
fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, locations, or events is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2015 Madison
Stevens

No portion of this book may
be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without
the prior written permission of the author.

Cover designed by Najla
Qamber Designs

Dedicated nurse Paige is
having a hell of a week.

First, she gets suspended
from the hospital for working with the hybrids at Luna Lodge. She
sees it as a medical professional simply doing her duty, but her
superiors see a woman involved with a trouble-making group of
genetically engineered super-soldiers.

Her only hope of keeping her
job is convincing her bosses she has nothing to do with the lodge
anymore. Soon, her hope of staying out of the hybrids’ world is
crushed when a handsome rogue hybrid shows up half-dead on her
doorstep.

Hybrid Justus suffered as a
prisoner of both the Horatius Group and Luna Lodge. Now on the run,
he’s determined to keep his freedom at all costs, but cut off from
the familiar, he becomes desperate and confused. Freedom can be
overwhelming to those who have never had it.

When a chance encounter in
the forest leaves Justus wounded, he’s forced to flee until
encountering a woman that calls on the most primal side of him:
Paige.

The two can’t deny their
attraction to each other, but first they have to do deal with
paranoid locals who aren’t about to let a hybrid wander outside of
Luna Lodge, even if it means bloodshed.

Chapter One

Paige paced the worn
hardwood floor of her living room wanting nothing more than to
reach through the phone and wring the neck of the stuffed-shirt
bastard trying to push her out of a job. She’d worked hard to get
her position at the hospital, and there was no way she’d let him
get away with this.

“The committee just thinks
that some of your recent outside work has put the hospital in a bad
light,” he said. “The situation is very precarious. I’m sure you
can see how everything looks from our perspective.”

She stopped and rubbed her
hand along the bridge of her nose. Her light brown hair fell in
front of her face as she looked down. She swept back the wavy locks
quickly and shook her head.

“I had nothing to do with any
of that though,” she said. “All I did was treat patients. I can’t
believe you’d penalize me for doing my job as a nurse.”

She could almost hear the
man’s sphincter cinch up at her words. This man had a stick so far
up his ass, it had broken off years ago. Maybe all her protests
were pointless.

“That’s not the way we see it
I’m afraid,” he said sharply, likely tired of the conversation that
might be the last one she had as an employed nurse. “There was,
after all, some sort of business with people at the gate being
burned.”

“The people who were burned
got hurt as they tried to set said gate on fire,” she said
dryly.

He sighed. “This isn’t about
those…men at Luna Lodge. This is about the trouble around them.
We’re a reputable hospital. We need the people in the area to trust
us. We can’t even be remotely associated with that sort of
thing.”

“The only time the hybrids
have hurt people is when they’ve been defending themselves. And
again, I had nothing to do with any of that.”

“And the nurse that was
killed there?”

Anger shot through her at the
mention of the other nurse who had turned against them all at Luna
Lodge. She’d only even learned the strange woman’s name after she
had tried to kill a hybrid.

“Kelly killed herself,” she
said through gritted teeth. “I don’t see how you can blame them or
me for a woman’s suicide.”

The man scoffed loudly. “How
convenient,” he said. “And this recent episode? What, did they
install exploding doors?”

“They were attacked,” she
said. “No one could have predicted that it would have
happened.”

“No one? How many incidents
has it been now? I’ve honestly lost count. It would seem to me that
their track record pointed to this, and yet you continued to work
there. Why is that? I think most reasonable people would find such
a job too dangerous or complicated.”

She knew the question was
coming at some point. Why had she decided to stay with a group of
genetically engineered super-soldiers after another nurse killed
herself, and they were under serious attack from the deadly and
elusive Horatius Group?

Paige wasn’t sure she really
had much of a reason other than she was intrigued by the hybrids.
Their way of life was just so different from her own.

And as much as she didn’t
want to admit it, she liked the hybrids and their women. Despite
what many in the town seemed to think, the people of Luna Lodge had
done everything they could to not cause trouble. It was the
Horatius Group and the insane cult of Reverend John generating all
the chaos.

As far as she was concerned,
it’d be insane to punish people for not lying down to die at the
hands of maniacs. Still, in the end, it had become too much for
even her, so it was difficult to think of a good defense.

Not that any of this would
matter to the prick on the phone. For her, there was no right
answer, but she had to try. Losing her job wasn’t an option,
especially losing her job at the hospital. No one else in the
county would hire her if they blacklisted her.

“The money was good,” she
said.

It wasn’t a lie. The hybrids
had paid her well for the time she put in, more than the money she
made at the hospital. It may not have been the reason she stayed,
but there wasn’t going to be a chance that she could actually win
against him. The best thing she had was to stay within the bounds
of the truth but still give him the answer that he wanted. Maybe
it’d satisfy him enough to let her off with a slap on the
wrist.

The man seemed to stumble at
her answer. It wasn’t what he had thought she would say. Paige
smiled. Maybe there was still a chance.

“If the money was so good,
then why didn’t you stay in their employ?”

She went silent. If she was
being truthful, she was afraid. She had sought a life including her
little sleepy two-story farm house for a reason. Unlike her
adventure-seeking sister, she kept her excitement confined to her
work and liked her home time to be a bit more restful.

Even though she respected the
hybrids’ right to defend themselves, she had a hard time calming
herself after being so close to such violence and danger. She
didn’t find it exciting. She found it terrifying.

She considered her answer
carefully. “They needed a full-time nurse, and I didn’t want more
than a part-time position,” she said after a moment. “I just
couldn’t do everything that needed to be done under the
circumstances.”

The line fell silent, and she
wondered if he was even there for a moment.

“The committee will take
under consideration your comments and get back to you once we’ve
reached our decision,” he said. “For the time being, you should
clear out your belongings from your locker and turn in your
deactivated badge. Until further notice you will be placed on paid
leave.”

She shook with rage. Seven
years she’d put in with these people, and they were willing to toss
her out like she was nothing.

“But—”

“I know this is as difficult
to hear as it is to say, but there are many factors to be
considered,” he said curtly. “Thank you, Miss Blake.”

The line went dead in her
ear, and she pulled her cell phone back to stare at it, a deep
frown forming on her face.

“Didn’t seem all that
difficult for you to say,” she snorted and switched the phone
off.

Paige set it on the end table
next to the comfortable pale blue sitting chair she liked to use on
her day off and walked into the kitchen.

She had been in the middle of
making dinner before her whole world came crashing in around her.
The savory scent of the roast in the oven made her stomach rumble,
and despite the shit news, she was still planning on enjoying the
meal she made.

Her hand went to the fridge,
and she stopped. Reaching in, she pulled out a bottle of wine she’d
been saving. It seemed like the perfect day to chase down her
sorrows with a little red wine before the roast was done.

From the sound of Mr. Asshat,
she’d guess he’d frown on drinking as well. Anything that wasn’t
normal in his little narrow view of things.

Paige snorted as she set the
bottle down on the counter and pulled down a glass.

What was normal? She sure as
hell didn’t know. Most parents didn’t drop their kids off at an old
aunt’s house while they went to Vegas. They likely also tended to
return from trips. When her sister called her at college crying,
she had known even then how not normal she was.

The world had hammered Paige
into a practical hole. So when her aunt passed, her first instinct
wasn’t to cry, but to act. By that afternoon she’d packed up her
car and driven home. She’d made sure her sister finished school and
drove the hour each way to college.

She shook her head and poured
the wine.

If she could handle a teen,
Paige figured she could handle some stiff shirt pricks.

She took a long drink of the
wine and sighed.

After all, she’d dealt with a
whole group of hybrids. The similarities were uncanny.

Chapter Two

Justus shivered a little
and tried to keep his mind off the cold working its way to his
bones. No way was he setting a fire. He had too many people looking
for him, and none of them wanted to help him.

Though his hair had started
to grow back in, he regretted keeping his head so close shaven as
he had little to protect it from the biting cold. Even during his
confinement, he’d kept up his shaving ritual, perhaps out of a
false sense of control.

If it wasn’t the Horatius
Group, it was those Luna Lodge bastards. He’d be damned if he let
either of them catch him again. He’d spent more than his share of
time a prisoner of both. If being free meant he had to freeze his
ass off, so be it. That he could handle.

He stared at the dead rabbit
at his feet, and his stomach churned. The last time he’d eaten raw
meat, his stomach had been sour for days.

He almost wanted to laugh. He
was supposed to be a super-soldier with wolf-like qualities, and he
couldn’t eat a damned raw rabbit.

The meat had to be cooked. No
question on that.

He looked to his other side
and sighed at the nuts and mushrooms he’d foraged. These ones were
safe at least and contained protein. He’d had to practice a little
trial and error experimentation. For all his training, the Horatius
Group never bothered with anything that’d allow him to operate for
a long time without their supplies.

Given how they threw Glycons,
their degenerate bestial hybrids, at Luna Lodge without blinking
and how they’d treated Justus, it was obvious the Horatius Group
didn’t remotely care about the hybrids other than as a disposable
tool for immediate use.

Unfortunately for him, his
food experimentation had led to a lot of misses, leading to many
bathroom breaks. But today he was in luck. His most recently
gathered batch consisted only of safe nuts and mushrooms he’d tried
before.

Starving and needing the
nourishment, Justus shoved the mushrooms and pine nuts in his
mouth. They still tasted like dirt, but they were better than the
idea of the bloody rabbit.

Killing had never been
something he excelled at. In the end, the Horatius Group found a
better purpose for him: scouting and recon. He excelled at sneaking
around in the dark, silent to all around him, including other
hybrids, his dark skin only helping him blend into the shadows. The
hybrid hunter they called him. He hated the name.

It was a skill the Group
longed to replicate, especially with an entire compound full of
rogue hybrids known to the world.

Too bad for them that Vanessa
hadn’t cared what his use might have been. To her, he was just
another hybrid that might give her the child she wanted.

Just the thought of the dead
woman made him shrivel up inside.

Still, she had freed him in a
manner. There was no way the Group would have ever let him go. But
it still seemed strange to think of the insane woman as his
savior.