Page 18 of Visions, Paws, and Claws

He could still hear his parents’ words.

You can do whatever you set your mind to. You can excel at everything. You are born to lead.

Except once the first cracks appeared in Milo’s world, he began to have doubts about the future he was working toward.

Cracks never heal of their own accord. They always widen.

It was during military training that he’d first learned not all shifters are created equal. Gerans were the purebloods. He listened to the stories about the Fridans: How they were inherently weaker because they chose to mate with humans; how they would fail militarily because they were all pacifists at heart.

How Gerans were the elite of the shifter universe.

And now that he knew all this, Milo realized the signs were obvious. He could spot a Fridan with ease. They acted differently, for one thing, though he couldn’t pinpoint exactly what that difference was. They lacked the hard edge that defined every Geran of Milo’s acquaintance. And rounding up Fridan dissenters to house them in camps had been a logical route. They could still be useful, after all. They could breed to provide foot soldiers, to increase numbers. Any resultant offspringnotdestined to be used in the battles to come were adopted by Geran couples and sent to the same kind of school Milo had attended, to receive an education at the highest level, to be nurtured, cared for, cherished.

They should be grateful. We’ve given them a future.

Except there were other uglier rumors circulating, rumors that Milo tried to ignore. Ones that said Fridan shifters were being killed.

That had to be propaganda, spread to sow dissent. Shifters did not kill other shifters. The military was there to protect all shifters, regardless which side they’d chosen.

By the age of twenty-seven, Milo had served in most of the camps, rising through the ranks, proving himself time and time again to be a soldier his ancestor would have been proud of. Four months ago, he joined the security force at his present camp, in charge of guarding the inmates. It wasn’t long before he was promoted to the position of Head of Compound Security, overseeing the arrival of new shifters and making sure they knew their place, that no one stepped out of line. It wasn’t an onerous task—whatever had brought them to the compound had also knocked the fight right out of them. Another indicator of Fridan weakness.

Then the ugliest rumors of all began circulating.

A shifter school in Boston had been raided. That the Fridans would dare to do something so heinous to children was hardly a surprise. Itwasa Fridan force, right? What else did anyone expect of them?

What rocked Milo to his core was what was whispered—that the Gerans in charge of the school had abandoned more than nine hundred kids. Just left them to their fate at the hands of the Fridans.

It had to be a lie, spread no doubt by Fridan sympathizers. It might even have been a thought planted in his head by some of the inmates, the two who were taken daily to the experimental block.

The ones Milo and every soldier under his command were ordered to take extreme care around. The word bandied about was mind control, and that was enough to send a shiver down Milo’s spine.

Are there many more like them out there?

Gods, he hoped not.

The terrible news that a camp in Montana had been under siege was seen as yet more confirmation that the Gerans were on the side of truth. Why else would the Fridans attack them?

More news filtered through, and it seemed the Gerans were indeed under attack. Another camp no longer existed, this one in Texas. When rumors that a second school had been targeted, this time in Croatia, and that yet more children had been left—deserted—Milo clung to his belief that it was still lies.

But what if it isn’t?

He couldn’t speak of this to anyone; he wasn’t stupid. But the idea haunted him that hundreds of children could be so easily….

Dumped.

Discarded.

Forgotten.

Whichever way Milo looked at it, that wasn’t right.

Then a new rumor started to circulate, one that increased the whispering in dark corners.

Some of the Fridans were claiming to have mates.

The first time Milo heard that fairy tale, he wanted to laugh out loud.Mates? For fuck’s sake.There was no such thing. The idea that there were people fated to be together,joinedsomehow? Not only physically but spiritually?

Preposterous.

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