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nThe bathing pools were in chaos.

nZev had hung back, staying out of sight while the other two went ahead to the pools. Apparently, Nick had arrived with his guards just a minute before them—after they’d been cleared to make sure there were no females. They’d placed a handful of males around—some in the water, some out. But Dunken and Jhon pretended they were only there to speak with one of the guards.

nThen Zev had seen Ernie scuttling up the path. He raised his head over the underbrush and they shared a grin as the spider man arched his back to make his legs spread wider before he reached Nick.

nZev had heard the shout, and half-laughed, half-growled when he heard the splashing as if Nick was running for the shore.

nBut then the other male’s voices rose, taunting him—and Ernie.

nNow, as Zev crept towards the pools, staying off the trail and low so that he wouldn’t be seen by Nick, there was a cacophony of voices, splashing, and shrieks from Nick that gave Zev a very sincere jolt of pleasure.

n”Eat your own ** and die, Nick,” he muttered as he took wolf form to slide through the last rows of trees and underbrush. His wolf was large but camouflaged better, and he needed to see where the others had stood to give him access to the device and guard him from Nick’s eyes.

nAs the pools became visible through gaps in the undergrowth, Zev moved low on his haunches, keeping his back below the level of the bushes, and moving to the right when he saw where the other males had lined up on the shore.

nWhere the trail entered the clearing, Ernie stood at the water’s edge. Zev and the other males were to his right, Zev in the bushes, the other males lined up in a group as if they were spectators at a sporting match. While Nick stayed low in the deep water on the opposite side of the pool, his face a mask of fear.

n”Stay away from me!”

n”Come now, Nick… we’re all just males trying to make the best impression on the world,” Ernie’s strange voice was easy to discern because it was so sharp compared to the others. It always made Zev want to tilt his head and rub his ears. “I won’t eat you if you don’t splash me.”

n”Stay away, you freak!”

n”Tsk tsk. Such cruel words, Nick. Hit me right in my feels. Spiders have feelings too, you know.”

n”This isn’t funny. I’m just trying to get clean before I go back to the humans. They’ll think something is wrong if I show up dirty!”

n”Careful, Nick. We don’t pee on your bed, so don’t ** in our pool!” Jhon called.

nThe males all guffawed. Nick scowled, but then Ernie actually started into the water and Nick made a high, strangled noise and scrambled back, out of the way—but he was effectively locked on the other side of the pool, unable to get out because of the sheer rocky sides of the land rise on that side, but Ernie standing in the shallows between him and shore where he’d entered.

nZev took fierce pleasure in seeing Nick so frightened, but he couldn’t afford to sit there and enjoy it. Eventually, it would become obvious that the males were up to something. He had to get to that device.

nShifting back to his human form, he knelt between two thick bushes near a rock where Nick had left his clothing, towel, and likely the device.

nPraying that he wasn’t noticeable through the forest of male legs that stood between him and Nick, Zev crawled out, reached under the towel and found the device, and pulled it back into the trees.

nWhile the voices in the pools continued to rise—along with waves of laughter—he used trembling fingers to turn the little tablet on. He held his breath as he entered his thumbprint, praying that they hadn’t thought to remove his profile from the system.

nThe device scanned for a long time, but then it opened with a small beep.

nZev froze. The males were laughing and shouting at Nick and Nick’s full attention appeared to be on Ernie—who was crowing about how the hair on his spider legs would let him stand on top of the water if that would make Nick more comfortable?

n”Then at least you can see all of me…and I can move a lot faster,” Ernie said, his voice that grating call.

nWhen there was no indication that Nick had heard the device, Zev turned the sound off, then moved quickly through the menus until he could bring up files, opening Sasha’s immediately and scanning it.

nVitals. Details. Medical history…

nZev read quickly, hungrily, scanning through everything he could find. But it was all the old information. Everything they’d had on her before he took her from the human world. All things he’d seen before.

nWhy hadn’t they updated the file before Nick came?

nGrowling in frustration, Zev peered between the bushes to make sure the males were still blocking him from Nick’s sight, then tapped through a few more screens to see if they’d hidden information on her in other parts of her profile. But no… nothing. Nothing new. And definitely no results or information from her time at the Compound.

nShit.

nHeart dropping to his toes, and frustration rising to anger, Zev was about to shut the device down when he realized this was the chance to confirm what Norm had told them about the females.

nQuickly, with glances up every few seconds to make sure Nick hadn’t somehow gotten out of the pool, he flipped through the software to look up Mae’s profile first and see where her fertility status was logged.

nBut what he saw first stopped his breath.

n** CLEARED FOR HARVEST **

nThe code that followed indicated a date a few months from that day.

nZev raised his head, thinking quickly. It couldn’t be, could it?

nHe swallowed hard.

nHarvesting was the process of collecting a Chimeran’s organs and blood for use as donors for human patients.

nNo one lived through it.

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