Page 51 of Hayden's Haven
As much as it still pained Hayden to think about it, they needed to hand Drake over. But a shifter war wasn’t the way. Drake would escape. Hayden was conflicted, for the first in a long time, he truly didn’t know what to do, or how to advise. Stall, he needed to stall for time, to think this through.
“This is what we’re going to do, Hayden. Go to Liam, fill him in, and tell him I want him on my side when we go up against Drake. Or at the very least, his promise to stay out of it if he refuses to join me. Emphasize that we know he doesn’t want to be part of a shifter war, but we have to hand Drake over somehow, so I’m open to suggestions. Otherwise, I’m going in. If Liam doesn’t join us, then he needs to stay out of it completely, and not side with Drake.
“We have to appeal to Drake,” Hayden said.
“No.”
“A war won’t work.”
“Then find a way to turn him over.”
“He’s. . . Hell, Damien. He deserves a chance.”
Damien opened his mouth, then shut it. “Those are our choices.”
Hayden was on overload. He needed to figure this out, escape, to get out of here and find Mila. He could think when she was around. Things became clearer when she was nearby. She could help him make sense of this.
“This is not up for discussion. Callen and I will start devising a plan.”
“You’re not listening to me, Damien.” His alpha rarely listened to him when it came to Drake. Always keeping him out of high-level meetings when Drake was invited, getting rid of him as if he was the weakest of shifters, pushing him aside as if he had no worth. No wonder half the wolves in this pack didn’t respect him.
This was his brother. Hayden knew Drake would be waiting for this attack, he’d expect it. Part of Hayden couldn’t accept that Drake had callously sent that virus into two towns, killing thousands of innocents humans, including children. Drake was a lot of things, and Hayden was sure he had taken many human lives over the years, but always strategically and in a way that he could justify to himself even if not to others.
This had been straight-up mass murder. That wasn’t like Drake. Damien would turn him over to the government, without questioning him, without seeking the truth.
“Iamlistening, Hayden, and what I’m hearing is that you don’t think I know what I’m doing. Your judgment is skewed because you’re trying to protect him. You forget where your loyalty lays.”
Hayden couldn’t contain the growl that escaped him as he sprang to his feet. The need to run, to fight, to do something other than to sit here and debate a losing position with his alpha overwhelmed him. His wolf felt threatened, but to growl at his alpha was unheard of. Damien shot him a look, with a growl of his own as he too rose, knocking over his chair in the process.
Both shifters stared at each other. Damien’s eyes changed to a dark blue and Hayden felt his bones sliding in his back as his wolf tried to force a shift.
A crash came from the kitchen. Glass shattering. They both turned to Tess, who looked pale and nervous as her eyes bounced from shifter to shifter. They’d shocked or scared her with their growls, or both.
“Hayden,” Tess said, her voice a whisper. She was scared, worried for him.
Hayden had to fight his own wolf before he could lower his eyes to appease Damien, but he managed it finally, for Tess more than for Damien. He wasn’t happy with his alpha, but he didn’t want to scare Tess. In all the years he had known Damien, fought by his side, backed him up in everything, even when he disagreed with him, he had never once knowingly defied or challenged Damien, and he wasn’t sure why he had this time.
Damien too looked like he was at a loss, but he couldn’t, wouldn’t do anything in the way of an apology. As alpha, he didn’t need to. Damien folded his arms over his chest. “You leave for Liam in the morning, and don’t return until he’s on our side.”
* * *
MILA
Mila considered taking the afternoon off and heading out with Tess as she accompanied the middle schoolers on afun-day. They were taking trays from the cookhouse and heading up to one of the smaller hills to go sledding. Mila had cringed when she heard that. The hill was a narrow strip of land that had been cleared as a fire break years ago and still had its share of stumps, not to mention being surrounded by trees on both sides. And these kids didn’t have helmets. Granted, pre-adolescent shifters had better reflexes than their human counterparts, but they’d be on make-shift sleds that they wouldn’t have any control over. Tess said this wasthespot all the parents took the kids for decades, with no major injuries. Even so, Tess said they’d welcome having a doctor along.
Short of buying helmets for the kids—which she’d definitely suggest to Damien—Mila realized the best way of protecting those kids was to continue working on the shifter virus. That meant staying in camp, where Hayden would have no trouble finding her. Except he didn’t. Anna returned from the cookhouse with an extra coffee for Mila. She reported seeing Hayden leaving Damien’s house and heading down the trail that led toward his cabin.
That was that then. One sniff would have been more than enough for Hayden to know she was close by, but he hadn’t bothered to come to see her. If he could put what happened behind them, then Mila would do the same. She had no choice, really.
“Explain your theory of how LSOV will help you create a vaccine,” Anna said, as she sipped her coffee.
LSOV, the Lupus Shifter Origination Virus, otherwise referred to as the Origination Virus, was the cause of the greatest and scariest plague in human history, worse than the Bubonic Plague. It had killed tens of thousands on three continents and created thousands of the first wolf shifters. The very fact that humans hadn’t destroyed all samples of LSOV astounded Mila, given their level of fear and paranoia when it came to shifters.
“This is where I need your help. If you can strip out the canis lupus genome and just leave the original virus, the one that is common to both wolf and bear shifters, I might be able to use its ability to adapt to different genera. Tess and I were exposed to different versions of the SEV2. Maybe with our recombinant antigens, I can create multi-faceted T-lymphocytes and B-lymphocytes doctored with the origination virus.”
“A vaccine that mutates to defend against a mutating virus. That’s genius, Mila!”
Mila released a long breath. “It’s only a theory, and I’m not sure how sound of a theory. Either way, we have a lot of work in front of us, and this move. . .”
