Not Dead Enough: Zombie Paranormal Romance (Project Rebellion: SARA Book 1) by Mina Carter

there tore through. The pain distracted her from the need surging through her veins and brought her back to the questions she had asked.
    “What did they do to me?”
    She tried hard to keep the panic and fear out of her voice as she asked, but it crept in anyway. Screw it. The world had gone mad. She was entitled to be freaked out. All in all, she thought she was handling it well.
    “Oh, sweetpea.” The heat dropped out of his expression, replaced with tenderness as he reached for her. She fought the urge to step back, but let him pull her into his embrace. “Come on. Let’s sit down…. Hell, what’s your name?”
    “Julia,” she murmured, and yielded to his strength as he led her to the couch. “Julia Collier.”
    It felt nice to be able to lean on someone, even if just for a little while. They sat, side by side, in the growing darkness. It was odd. She’d always been a little scared of the dark before, a holdover from childhood terrors, but now she welcomed it. The shadows held safety and comfort, easing something deep within her soul.
    “Okay.” He turned to her. Took one of her hands in both of his, like he was ready to comfort a bereaved relative. “You were right. They did something to us, so we became something else.”
    She nodded. The new instincts, the ones she didn’t understand, told her that whatever they were, he and she were different, and not just on the boy-girl level.
    “The Project had three areas of experimentation. Viruses, serums.” He shrugged and a piece of medical tape peeled away from his ribcage. She frowned. She hadn’t noticed he was injured before. “I’m not sure of the science. I’m…was...a soldier, not a scientist. Long story short: the Project injects its subjects with one of three viruses. Lycan, Blood and Re-Animate. Some don’t survive the conversion. The unlucky do.”
    “Lycan. Blood and Re…?”
    “Re-Animate.” He smiled, the curve of his lips visible to her even in this low light. Surely she shouldn’t have been able to see anything by now? “The living dead. Zombies in other words.”
    “Uh-huh….” She nodded, absorbing it all. “I’m a Blood. That’s what…your friend called me. Said I was fair game. Why?”
    Brett tipped his head back and blew out a sigh. She fixed her gaze on his throat. On the pulse that should be beating there, but wasn’t. In fact, his heart wasn’t beating at all. Frowning, she extended her senses a little more. Neither were the hearts of the three men in the room next to them. She could smell them, an odd dry smell that reminded her of spiders and cologne, but there was a strange silence where she expected their heartbeats to be. A void area.
    “Okay…now things get a little more complicated. It all started with a Lycan pack. Alpha Three. Good team, all of them came through conversion okay, and they were the best the Project had. Bloods don’t work so well in teams; they’re more loners, but the Lycans? They’re pack animals through and through.”
    “You refer to them as ‘they’,” she commented. “So you’re not a Lycan then.”
    He shook his head and carried on. “But the scientists got nervous about them. Something to do with the way they shifted form—”
    She blinked. “Form? What you mean, like…?”
    “Werewolves, in a word,” he finished for her. “The Project doesn’t use those names, but Bloods are vampires. Lycans, werewolves and Re-Animates…well, zombies. Science imitates art. Ironic, isn’t it?”
    “Crap.” This was unreal. She struggled to take it all in. The army had done this…created vampires which had gotten out? And then attacked her? She looked back at him. “Okay. Alpha Three?”
    “The base commander ordered them locked down and assessed pending termination. But we lost contact with the holding location. Our squad was sent in with a Blood to check it out.”
    She arched an eyebrow. “They send you guys in after werewolves? That must have been an interesting encounter.