Forever Is Not Enough [Council Enforcers 2] (Siren Publishing Classic)

exactly what Jacqueline had expected. When she looked at the slide with her mated blood, she gasped.
    “What? What do you see?” Tessa hovered over her anxiously.
    “I expected there to be some changes, but I didn’t expect them to be that drastic.” The blood cells in her mated blood looked to be about three times the size of the human ones. They were a bright shade of red, so bright it looked almost as if they were glowing. There was also about ten times as many cells in her mated blood as there were in her human sample. “This is incredible,” Jacqueline said, awed at what she was seeing.
    Moving the slide over a little to see more of the sample, she frowned. “That’s odd.” Jacqueline stood and blinked. She rubbed her eyes to make sure she wasn’t seeing things before she peered back into the microscope. Mixed in with the red cells, there were a few cells that looked almost black, like they were dead or diseased. She watched, mesmerized as her healthy cells surrounded the black ones. Once they had each cell surrounded, the dead cell seemed to get absorbed until there was nothing left of it. Jacqueline watched this happen several times until there was nothing but healthy red blood cells left in the sample.
    She sat back and stared into space. She was aware of Tessa hovering behind her, but Jacqueline’s mind was spinning too much to say anything to her. She kept going over everything she had just seen. What she didn’t understand was where the black cells had come from. She knew she wasn’t sick, and her human sample had proven that. There were only healthy blood cells in that sample. Between the time she had mated and taken the new sample, Jacqueline had somehow been contaminated with something. She just had to figure out with what.
    “I bit him!” Jacqueline shouted. She sat forward and grabbed Tessa’s hand. The woman had jumped when she yelled.
    “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
    Jacqueline ignored Tessa and jumped up. She grabbed Ben’s blood sample. “When we mated, and Ben bit me, I bit him as well.” She was too excited to be embarrassed to explain. “It wasn’t intentional, but when I came, it was so strong that I clamped down on his shoulder hard enough to draw blood. I swallowed some of that blood. I contaminated myself and didn’t even realize it.”
    “Is that a good thing? The way you’re smiling I’m hoping it’s a good thing.”
    “Let’s find out.” Jacqueline took a drop of Ben’s blood and placed it on the slide. She then took a drop of her blood and put it on top of Ben’s. She put the slide on the microscope and took a breath to calm herself before peering down into it. Afraid to move in case her eyes were playing tricks on her, she watched as her blood repeated the same process with Ben’s unhealthy blood cells over and over again until there was nothing left but bright red blood cells.
    Jacqueline looked up at Tessa and grinned. Her heart was pounding at what she discovered. “I need your blood.”
    Tessa looked startled at first, but she recovered quickly. “Okay, but can you explain to me why?”
    “I think I may have just found a way to cure Ben. I need your blood to test my theory. I don’t want to say any more than that right now because I don’t want to jinx it.” Jacqueline expected Tessa to demand more answers, but the woman simply rolled up her sleeve and stuck her arm out.
    Working on the theory that her blood had cured Ben’s because of the changes due to mating him, Jacqueline grabbed a fresh slide and combined a drop of Ben’s blood to Tessa’s. Instead of her blood surrounding his, the reaction was the complete opposite. His blood completely contaminated hers.
    For the first time in three weeks, Jacqueline felt hope. She was closer than she had ever been to making sure her mate stayed with her. Wanting to try one last test, she contaminated Mitch’s blood with Ben’s. Once Ben’s blood cells took over the sample, she added a drop of Tessa’s blood to Mitch’s sample. She literally felt like her heart stopped beating as she held her breath and waited for the results.
    When Tessa’s blood cells started destroying the contaminated cells in Mitch’s sample, Jacqueline let out a scream and began jumping up and down. She grabbed Tessa and pulled her into a hug. “We did it!” She felt tears streaming down her face but didn’t bother to wipe them.
    “I take it you got good results?” Tessa’s excitement showed on