Hi everyone! Thank you for all the favs, follows, and comments. It really means a lot that you guys are enjoying my work. To show my appreciation (and avoid giving you one massive chunk of text), I've broken up the next couple scenes into smaller bites that will come out one a day for the remainder of the work week.

Which is why you're getting this chapter on Tuesday.

Surprise!

Alex brushed her fingers over the bare skin of her neck as she rolled the switch in her palm. Her thumb rubbed over the number on the back. She stared down at her hand without really seeing. Thirty-Four. How many years had she worn that number? Five? Ten? She couldn't remember. She didn't want to.

All those awful things she'd done. She squeezed her hand over the switch and sighed.

Did she really deserve a second chance?

To be honest, she wasn't so sure. About anything. Not her past or her purpose. She was a dog who couldn't bite, a killer who couldn't kill. What kind of life could she hope to have? Rayner was never going to stop hunting her as long as they were both alive–which apparently she wasn't supposed to be.

Where the hell was she even going to go?

Her thoughts flicked to the other man. He'd offered to help, and she could certainly use some right now. Her face scrunched into a grimace as she lifted her arm to examine the wound. She'd already taken the cloth off her ankle. It was starting to get better without the constant influx of bacteria, but it still hurt like hell. He'd been all nice and patched up.

But if he found out, if he touched her. She'd just be exchanging one handler for another.

He'd even used one of their commands. And yet…

If she was going to make it, she needed a way off the island. Everyone else here could hop on a boat or a plane and go wherever they wanted. But not her. There was that whole passport thing. And hers hadn't been valid since before she disappeared off the face of the Earth. Heck, she was probably legally dead by now.

Were her parents even still alive? Did they miss her?

This guy though, she had a feeling she didn't need a single scrap of paper for him to get her out of Borneo. She'd just have to not touch him, at all, until they got somewhere else. She could do that, right? Then she could run.

The whole thing was ridiculous. She used to be the best set of teeth Safeguard had. Then one night–poof. She was useless.

She was in the ring when it happened, her jaws clamped around Magnum's neck. She could still feel his blood choking thick down the back of her throat, his fur bristling against her tongue. His pulse beating fast and thready through her teeth.

The alarm went off and she held on, like the good little killer they'd programmed her to be. She was winning. Magnum's legs were buckling. Then a new scent sliced in the air, an electric crackle that mixed with the blood and the bleach.

The next thing she knew, her head was flooding with a million memories she could never unsee, and her neck was burning.

Heat. There was so much heat.

Alex pushed her knuckles into her temples and pressed against the rising thrum of a headache.

There was something still bothering her about this whole thing. Her brain was a little busy, but she was pretty sure she'd heard Magnum get shocked at the same time she was. One button, two signals.

Two collars? Same number.

Did that mean? No. It couldn't be. It didn't make any sense. Safeguard gave each dog their own collar with its own frequency. And it wasn't out of the kindness of their hearts. That was for sure. It was just impossible to train dogs when they kept getting shocked for each other's mistakes. Each dog and handler had their own collar, their own leash. That was how this worked.

So why did Rayner only have one button around his neck?

What piece was she missing from this puzzle?

A gentle breeze rustled over her bare arm and brought the weight of copper to her nostrils. Silence fell between the trees. The hair prickled on the nape of her neck.

Oh shit.

Alex twisted onto her feet with her teeth bared and her hands up. In an instant, everything was too bright, too loud. Too hot. Instead of jaws snapping at her face, she was greeted by the sight of a naked, twitching man with tousled brown hair and bright, wild amber eyes. He swayed a little, unsteady on new feet. A slick scar shimmered all the way around his throat under the leather collar. Blood ran down the right side of his chest from a tiny bullet hole.

She edged back, skin prickling with a rush of adrenaline.

"Magnum?"