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My stomach twisted so hard I thought I might lose whatever small bits of bile were left in it. “Are you saying…”
“That we were sold. By our own people,” Misha answered.
My entire body started to tremble with something like rage, and fear, and heartbreak. “How the fuck can my people be part of this?” I whispered. “After everything the humans put us through, how the fuck could they do something like that?”
“Do you know a lot about history?” he asked suddenly.
The question was startling, and I wasn’t sure if he was trying to take my mind off everything he’d just dropped on me, or if he was serious. I rubbed my hands over my bare thighs and desperately wished I felt muscle instead of skin and bone. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I used to be a historian. Before all this,” Misha said, then cleared his throat. “It’s not uncommon for the oppressed to want power. And sometimes there are individuals who want that power so much, they’ll sell out their own people to get it. It happens throughout history—greedy individuals who don’t care who they hurt, as long as they’re spared.”
“And you think in spite of what my people have suffered,” I spat, “any of them would be capable of this?”
He was quiet a long while. “I don’t know. You were a solider, right? Do you think any of them would be capable of it?”
The question hit me like a blow, and I sat back, my breath escaping my chest in a soft hiss. He was right. I wanted to deny it, to release my claws and make him pay for daring to suggest it, but I knew the truth. There were plenty of Wolves I’d come across in my rise as an Alpha who would have sold me to humans in exchange for power. Every government came with corruption, but I had desperately clung to the belief that we could rise above it when it was all over. That there could be peace.
“So what the hell are we supposed to do?” I asked him.
He let out a humorless laugh. “I’m not sure. There are rumors of factions—rebellions going underground and gaining power. I didn’t really believe it—I thought it was more internet bullshit—but then that Wolf showed up and passed me a note. It was enough to make me second guess myself.”
I dragged a hand down my face and blinked, willing myself to see a little, willing my eyes to finally start healing, but they remained the same. I let out a frustrated sigh and turned my face toward him. “Do you think this is a trap?”
He hummed in thought. “I don’t know, to be honest. I’d considered it. It was almost too easy to get out, but I also think the lab had their guard down. This has been going on for a long time without a single public incident. It can’t last though. Eventually it’s going to go public.”
“What is? The experiments?” I asked, my throat hurting from the little bits of speech I offered, but I was starving for knowledge.
Misha said nothing for a long time, then the leather creaked again, and I guessed he was gripping the steering wheel tighter. “Yeah. I wish I knew what he was up to, but…”
“He?” I pressed, leaning forward.
Misha’s breath was ragged. “My father. He’s a genetic engineer. He works on subjects with genetic compatibility—trying to create…” He stopped and growled. “Fuck if I know, but whatever he’s working on, it’s worth selling his soul. Or his children.”
It felt like my entire body froze. “Your father did this? Your father…”
“Yeah,” Misha said with a bitter laugh, and it was then I heard the true nature of his desperation.
“What the fuck does he want with us? With you?”
“I don’t know,” Misha said, and for a second, I swore he was near tears. “No one explained anything to me. I went to sleep one night and woke up strapped to a bed. They kept… They kept fucking shooting me up with this IV bag and it burned. It…” His voice cracked, and I understood his agony on a visceral level. “There’s something inside me now. I feel… I’m in constant pain…” His breath came out shaky. “I’d rather be dead than be captured again.”
“I’m not going to let that happen,” I told him. I wasn’t strong enough, but I would be. “I need to heal. And I need food and rest in order to do that. But I can protect us both once I can shift.”
“I trust you,” he said, and though I had no idea why, I felt the truth of his statement deep in my bones. He did trust me, and maybe he was a fool to, but I was determined to keep us both out of the lab—or die trying.
Chapter Two
MISHA
The old adage about biting the hand that feeds you never really took into account what happens if the hand that feeds bites you first. And for all my education—having dedicated my life to things like anthropology and history—I was blissfully unaware of the danger I was in.
Something, I supposed, that came with my level of privilege, even as a fourth son born to a powerful biological engineer. I rarely saw my father, and my mother was always off in her own world. She was high society, and the only thing that ever mattered to her was being noticed by people with influence.
My oldest brother, Adam, worked closely with my father. My other two brothers went into the military—gaining rank and taking command of the more dangerous zones across the globe to keep the Wolf population in check. And I was left to my own devices, which suited me fine.
It never really occurred to me to be a rebel. I studied early evidence of Wolves in human society, and with it, the process of oppression. I spent my life studying the subtle hints and proof that Wolves had been amongst humans from the start. That they left footprints, but little else in order to stay hidden. My thesis had been well-received, and the accolades kept me pursuing the truth, but it was nothing more than study.
There was nothing practical about it. I acquired knowledge and did nothing about it, living comfortably in my palace while outside the city walls of the capital, people suffered. The war had been on for as long as I had been alive—the death toll in the millions, but it was just life to me. There was nothing I could do, and I wasn’t part of it.
