Page 25 of Visions, Paws, and Claws

Welland arched his eyebrows. “I think you’ve been listening to too many rumors. Heaven knows there are enough of those out there.”

“To stop the Gerans from doing what?” Kyle Danes stared at him. “Look, Aelryn might be a direct descendant of Ansfrid, but that doesn’t mean he knows everything. And right now he’s taking a couple of incidents and exaggerating their importance out of all proportion.”

Vic took a deep breath. “Exaggerating? It’s time you all opened your eyes and learned the truth.”

Welland’s gaze grew flinty. “You may be one of the few oral historians in existence, but that doesnotgive you the right to—”

He lurched to his feet. “I’m going to show you what gives me the right.” He picked up the remote and aimed it at the ceiling-suspended projector. The white screen he’d had set up was filled with an image that made his stomach clench.

It was Saul in his hospital bed, the sheets drawn back to reveal his terrible wounds.

Judging by the gasps that filled the air, his guests found it as shocking.

Vic paused the video. “This is Saul Emory. Ex-Delta. A few months ago he was involved in a mission to liberate a shifter school in Boston. He was sent to infiltrate the staff to search for information but was captured by the enemy.”

“I wasn’t aware the Gerans were our enemy.” The quiet utterance came from Ben Simmons.

Then you’re in for a shock.

“What happened to him?” Rachel Yates was pale.

“I’ll let him tell you.” Vic clicked the remote, and the next frame revealed Saul sitting in a chair. The time stamp showed it had been filmed the previous day.

Saul stared directly into the camera. “I looked a mess, didn’t I? They wanted me to give them access to the shifter archives, which they assumed I could do, seeing as I was in a relationship with Vic Ryder.”

Vic’s stomach roiled.

“And did he?” Welland demanded.

Vic paused the video and rolled his eyes. “You think he’d have gotten into that state if he’d cooperated?” Then he reconsidered. “You need to understand something. These guys? They’re not nice, and they don’t play by the rules. Saul knew if hedidgive them the information, they’d have killed him outright.” He clicked to continue, not giving a shit if he’d riled Welland.

The guy needed a good shake-up. They all did.

“I didn’t give them what they wanted,” Saul said, “so they decided to torture me before they finished me off. I was rescued before they could achieve that particular goal. But the torture isn’t the shocking part.”

Vic’s heart pounded, and his hands were like ice.

“My wounds were inflicted by what appeared to be a ten-year-old boy—a shifter. Except I knew he couldn’t be more than one year old. The Gerans had engineered him to be a weapon. His hands became lethal claws that delivered a toxin in such concentrated amounts that I’m lucky to be here right now.”

Vic stopped the video when Miller made a strangled noise. His heart went out to her. “I know,” he said quietly. “It’s unthinkable, isn’t it? That someone would tinker with RNA sequencing to do this. That someone would evenconsiderdoing this.” He pressed Play, and a new screen appeared. It was a video of Doc Tranter answering Hashtag’s questions about how the Gerans might have achieved such a heinous result.

“I know him,” Welland murmured. “Military medic, isn’t he? We’ve met a few times.” He met Vic’s gaze. “You just got my undivided attention.”

If seeing Saul hadn’t done that, then Welland was an ass.

Then the video moved on to show the huge hall at the Boston school, with hundreds of students sitting there, most of them wearing the same stunned expression.

“Who are they? And where is this?” Niall Coates leaned forward, his eyes wide. “Is that this school in Boston I’ve been hearing rumors about?”

Vic nodded, pausing the video. “Unfortunately it’s no rumor. These kids are all shifters. Their teachers taught them that humans were the lowest of the low, that shifters were born to dominate.” He glanced at the leaders. “And then they were abandoned, more than nine hundred of them. Most of theirparents refused to take them back, as many of the kids had been adopted. And the scale of these adoptions is staggering. Enough children to fill twenty-five schools, all over the world.”

“What happened to them?” Danes asked, his voice quavering.

“Aelryn’s team stepped in and took over. As of now every child with nowhere to go has found a new home and is being cared for. Loved. And where did these children come from?” He clicked Play again, and there was Dellan, talking about his more than one year in incarceration, how they’d used a drug to force him to shift, to mate with other shifters, and how his company had been used—in his absence—to develop and manufacture that drug in vast quantities.

“What could the Gerans hope to achieve with this drug? Why would they force shifters to mate?” Welland sounded shell-shocked.

Before Vic could share his suspicions, Miller let out a low cry.

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