Page 16 of His Claim
I shook my head, laughing bitterly even as my pulse hammered in my throat. “Fate? That’s what you call it? You bite me, fuck me into submission, drag me back here, and now I’m supposed to believe it’s all fate?”
His expression didn’t waver. Calm. Commanding. Too sure of himself, the fucking bastard.
“You can hate me for it,” he said quietly. “But you’ll feel it too. You already do.”
I froze. The memory of his body looming over mine flashed hot and sort of unwanted in my chest. I clenched my fists at my sides, furious at him. Furious at myself.
Varek cleared his throat, and the sound cut through the silence between us. His eyes stayed locked on mine, but there was something different in them now.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he said.
I blinked, the words hitting me like a slap. “Looking for me?”
He nodded once. “Your friends… Kendra and Lia. They sent me to find you.”
The breath rushed out of me so fast it almost knocked me off my feet. My knees wobbled, and my hand gripped the edge of the counter for balance. “Lia? Kendra?” The names tumbled out of me in a rush, desperate, disbelieving. “They’re alive? They’re—oh, God, are they safe? Tell me right now!”
For the first time since I’d met him, Varek’s lips almost curved upward. Not in a smile, not quite, but a shift that softened the harsh edges of his face.
“When I last saw them, they were very much alive. And happy,” he said evenly.
My throat ached, and I pressed my trembling hands to my face, tears burning hot at the corners of my eyes. For so long, I thought they were gone, taken by the wolves, broken, used, bred, discarded, maybe even killed.
“They’re alive,” I whispered, my chest swelling with a feeling that was dangerously close to hope. “They’re really alive.”
Varek’s expression hardened again, though not unkindly. “Alive, yes. But safe? No. Not yet. There’s much more happening than you know, Mariah.”
I froze, my pulse stumbling. “What do you mean?”
“The Council’s almost ready,” he said. “They’ve perfected a fertility drug—one meant to make human women bear fertile wolf offspring. Especially fertilefemalepups. They think it’ll fix everything. Rebuild their numbers… And end the need for human breeders.”
My chest constricted. “I’ve heard about it,” I said quietly. “But last I knew, it was still in testing. It was killing the girls.”
“It’s past testing, and it still kills them within a few years, at most,” he replied, his tone flat and merciless. “The Council’s preparing to distribute it across every sector any day now. Every human woman in captivity will get it. Every woman they can capture before the rollout begins. No exceptions.”
My throat closed up. I could barely breathe. “You can’t be serious.”
Varek’s gaze didn’t waver. “You think I’d lie about this?”
The silence between us stretched tight. The weight of it pressed down on my chest until I felt like I might crack under it. I pressed my hand to my mouth, bile burning at the back of my throat.
“There will be no more need for humans. They’re going to wipe us out,” I gasped.
“They will,” Varek cut in, quiet but unyielding. “Unless we stop them.”
Faces flashed in my mind, girls I’d whispered with in the dark, girls who’d held my hand when the guards came pounding on the doors. I imagined all of them lined up, all of them drugged, all of them doomed to die.
Silence pressed down, thick and suffocating. My rage had burned out, leaving me hollow, trembling, staring at the floor like I could claw answers out of the cracks. For the first time in a long time, I felt small. Fragile. Breakable.
But only for a moment.
I forced myself to swallow the bile, pulled my shoulders back, even as tears burned behind my eyes. I lifted my chin, clenching my fists to stop the shaking.
Varek’s voice cut through the silence, quiet and calm. “I’m not sure what they did to you,” he admitted, his gaze steady but troubled. “I’ve never seen one of our captives lose themselves the way you did. Not like that. And I have no knowledge of the wolves experimenting on women that way.”
I stared at him, my chest tight. “What do you mean?”
“They’re typically treated relatively well,” he said, the words like gravel in his throat. “Because you’re valuable. You’re the ones who carry our children. The Council doesn’t risk damaging what they see as… breeding stock.”
