Page 2 of Rivers and Roads

Of course, those were only moments of fear and frustration. I did trust Kor. I had trusted him with my life when he was a young Alpha leading our people to victory after victory. And I trusted him when he returned to the compound, blinded and weakened—tortured by the humans and then mated to one.

I was just desperate for a plan B, because I wasn’t convinced plan A wouldn’t make us just as monstrous as the humans we were fighting.

When the door opened to the apartment, I glanced over, having felt Danyal in the pulse of the pack bond. He looked exhausted, but not nearly as defeated as he had been over the last few weeks, which told me he was making progress. I wished I believed in his theory enough to celebrate, but manipulating Wolf DNA terrified me more than I had words for.

“Why are you up?” he asked, dropping his bag on the chair and taking a seat on the sofa. His head lolled back against the cushion, and I could only just make out the glowing orange in his irises as he sank back into shadow.

“Usual shit,” I admitted. I didn’t talk about the war or my nightmares with him. Not in detail, anyway. Danyal never pushed me, and it didn’t take a genius or a pack bond to know he was grateful for it, because he couldn’t handle the reality of all that fighting. “How was your night?”

“Our first test subject did well,” he told me.

My stomach twisted in on itself. They were testing manipulating status and pheromones on Betas in an attempt to create a flawless spy that could sneak into DC—behind the walls of ComTech—where the humans were storing all of the information on their labs. And at first glance, it wasn’t a terrible plan. Humans had been employing Omega Wolves for a while now as an attempt to bridge the gap between our two people. It was an easy way to get spies on their side, but the Omegas hadn’t been trained their entire lives for battle—and there was no mistaking that getting the information we needed would be a battle.

But, there were smaller Betas and larger Omegas who could seamlessly masquerade as one or the other, if not for the eyes. Humans couldn’t tell them apart by scent, so it would be easy to send someone over the border…if only we could disguise that lingering bit of identity.

I wasn’t sure who the first person was to propose the idea of a temporary genetic shift, but it wasn’t a leap to imagine how quickly my brother jumped on the opportunity. This was, after all, his entire life.

And the plan made sense, logically, but I hated it. There were too damn many ways it could all go wrong. If we were going to send one of ours over, I wanted to know I could trust our spy as much as I trusted myself, and that made for an impossibly short list of Wolves.

In reality, Orion was the only Beta I would have ever agreed to send out, but that was an impossibility. Not only would Kor refuse to send his second-in-command, but the thought of Orion being put into danger like that—knowing that he likely wouldn’t come home—made me want to tear the city walls down.

Which left us, again, without a guarantee that any of this would go our way.

“I know you’re upset with me,” he started, but fell quiet when I lifted my hand and turned to face him.

“I understand that our options are limited and that you’re doing everything you can to help. I just can’t agree with the means, even if we get what we want in the end.” I paused, taking a deep breath. “I want to be better than the people who are trying to hurt us.”

“So do I,” Danyal said very quietly. “You’re not the only one who has been violently affected by the war.”

I flinched, guilt racing through me, because it was easier to believe that those who weren’t on the front lines never felt the pain and trauma that we did. But I could see it in Danyal’s eyes, the way he flinched at loud noises, and the way he was always afraid that another attack was coming. Another bomb dropping.

It was in our blood. There was no escaping who we were, and I knew that just as much as I did, Danyal craved a peace neither of us were likely to find.

Danyal was an Omega who had declared early on that he would never take a mate. He had spent one heat with an Alpha—a Wolf he refused to name, likely knowing I would find the bastard who abandoned him in the middle of the night and tear him limb from limb. Of course, Danyal was never one to let either of his Alpha siblings fight his own battles, so he quietly announced his plans to marry himself to his work, and told Talia and I both to get over it. Which, of course, we did our best. We knew he was doing everything in his power to save us from being forced back into hiding, and that was more important than a mate bond.

But like me—an unmated Wolf—I knew he felt the absence of a partner keenly.

It made us just a little more sharp and a little more cruel. And maybe a little bit more reckless when we felt like we had so little to live for after we saved our people.

“You should get some sleep,” I said into the silence. I felt Danyal’s eyes on me, even though I couldn’t bring myself to look over. “I know you have a long day tomorrow.”

He let out a small grunt, and I heard the sofa creak as he stood. “And you?”

“Meetings,” I told him. And city repair and then more meetings. We were so far from being established, and so mistrustful of other bases, that I wasn’t sure we’d ever be able to form a cohesive resistance. But Kor was determined, and we had agreed to stand behind him.

“Zane,” he said, my name like a resigned sigh on his lips. “We’re both doing the best we can.”

“I know,” I told him. I still couldn’t bring myself to look over. I wasn’t ready to see defeat in his eyes. I loved my brother, but sometimes—in spite of our differences—we were far too alike.

Chapter

Two

ZANE

Iwas no stranger to the crushing weight of insomnia, and it dogged my heels as I made my way to the little coffee shop that had just opened not far from the Council building. Those little indulgences—grocery stores, coffee shops, restaurants—felt like living in a fantasy world. We hadn’t been kept underground long, but I had anticipated being away from the open sky for much longer than it took for us to get Corland on its feet.

We were working mostly on trade at the moment, but Kor had been putting together a team to live and work outside of the city limits, and funnel in weapons, tech, and food, which was going as well as it could. We were stealing most of our resources—but since we were still small, none of the other larger cities in the area had realized it just yet.

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