An Alpha's Tempest (Water Bear Shifters 4) by Sloane Meyers

pissed off at her right now. She had discovered their secret program, and helped one of their test subjects escape. Given the fact that they had gladly shot several rounds at her when she stole their boat, she felt pretty sure that they would have no qualms about killing her if they found her. Rhythm wasn’t sure whether they were actively searching for her, or whether they thought she had died when the boat sank. She wasn’t taking any chances, though. She had checked into the hospital under a made-up name, which had been much easier to do than she had thought it would be. But what wouldn’t be easy was going back to her apartment to get her stuff. She worried that the place was being watched, and the last thing she wanted to do right now was cross paths with anyone affiliated with her old place of employment.
    The only real solution she saw was to move back to California. She would be back to making no money, assuming she could even get a job there again. But at least she’d be far away from the crazy scientists up here.
    Rhythm sighed and leaned her head back against the lumpy hospital pillow. She didn’t really want to leave Alaska. She hadn’t realized, until faced with the possibility of moving back home, how much this area had wrapped itself around her heart. She loved it here—the beautiful wilderness, the kind people, the native culture. She wanted to stay, and to continue to soak it up. But she had no job anymore, and she definitely couldn’t get a reference from her last employer. She had to face the harsh truth. Her time here was done, and, for her own safety, she needed to get far away from this place.
    Rhythm reached for her mobile phone, which was resting on the bedside table next to her. She started searching for flights back to California, and mentally calculating how much money she would need to put down a deposit on a new apartment and car to restart her life back home. She hoped she had enough in savings to cover the move. She had only recently started saving, since before the job here she had barely been making ends meet. All of her savings were about to get drained away again, but Rhythm didn’t actually mind. She didn’t want money from the scientists sitting in her bank account, anyway. Every time she saw her savings account and knew that the money had been put there by people running inhumane experiments, she would feel outraged and disgusted. True, she hadn’t known what was going on, so she shouldn’t feel guilty. But she couldn’t keep herself from feeling somewhat responsible for what was going on there, since she had worked for them and taken their money.
    The phone by Rhythm’s bedside rang, and Rhythm set down her mobile phone to pick up the hospital phone.
    “Hello?” she answered.
    “Hello, Rachel Evans?” the voice on the other end said, using the fake name Rhythm had checked in with. The Evans part was a small tribute to Evan, who in all likelihood had passed away by now.
    “Yes, that’s me,” Rhythm said, feeling a little unsettled. She wasn’t used to sneaking around and using fake names. She had always been a model citizen, completely honest and upright about everything. Using a pseudonym felt so wrong to her.
    “This is the front desk,” the caller said. “You have a visitor. His name is Ben Harrington. Someone you know? Should I send him up?”
    “Oh, yes, he’s a friend of mine. Go ahead and send him up,” Rhythm said. The caller grunted in approval and then hung up the phone.
    Rhythm’s heart started beating faster as she replaced the receiver from the hospital phone. She had given the Coast Guard crew her pseudonym, in case they needed to get in touch with her about anything. But she had never expected one of them to actually show up at her hospital room. She especially hadn’t expected Ben, the most handsome one of the group by far, to show up. Yesterday, when she’d met him, she’d felt her stomach filling with butterflies at the sight of his dove