Page 83 of His Claim
I turned my gaze on him. “And you?”
He tilted his head, his golden eyes catching the firelight. “Name’s Silas. Alpha of the Mountain Wolves.” He gestured toward the surrounding camp. “And currently, the one trying to keep this madhouse from collapsing before we take the fight to the city.”
He looked every inch the general, scarred, weary, but unbroken. Before I could respond, a new voice broke through the murmurs around the fire.
“Still talking about saving the world, gentlemen?”
A woman stepped into the firelight. The flickering glow caught on the streaks of silver braided through her dark hair and the polished plating of the scavenged military armor she wore. Every movement she made radiated authority. I could tell that she wasn’t a wolf, but the air around her bent with the sort of gravity that made everyone listen when she spoke.
“Commander Soren,” Silas said, inclining his head in greeting. “Didn’t realize you were still up.”
“I don’t sleep when there’s planning to be done,” she replied curtly, lowering herself to one knee beside the fire. “And from what I hear, there’s plenty to discuss.”
Kendra grinned at me. “Soren runs the joint,” she whispered. “Don’t let her size fool you. She could put half the wolves here through a wall.”
“I heard that,” Soren said dryly, arching a brow without even looking at her.
Rowan resumed his seat by the fire and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “Before we plan anything, we need to know where we stand. Come. Sit down by the fire and talk.”
I sat down and Kendra and Lia sat on either side of me, close enough that our knees touched. It still didn’t feel real, having them here, alive, laughing softly as if no time had passed at all. Adjacent to us, Rowan and Silas sat, still looking like sentinels, their expressions guarded but curious, and Commander Soren joined us and leaned back, clasping her hands over her flat stomach, her eyes constantly assessing.
Varek stood behind me, his posture straight despite the exhaustion in his body. His silver eyes swept over the group.
Soren’s gaze flicked from him to me. “You’ve seen the Council’s operations firsthand,” she said, her voice carrying over the fire. “Tell us everything.”
Varek inclined his head, then gestured to me. “It’s not just the fertility drug anymore. There’s another weapon in the works.”
The word hung in the air like a curse.
Lia frowned. “What kind of weapon?”
I swallowed hard, forcing myself to look up. “A rage serum. I was injected with it.”
Silas stiffened. Rowan’s eyes narrowed. Kendra let out a small gasp.
I nodded, voice trembling just a little. “I didn’t know it at the time. A woman hiding in the cells injected me with it—a human, not a wolf. But whatever was in that serum, it stripped everything away. My mind. My humanity. I became… something else. Something monstrously strong and mindlessly vicious. I killed a few wolves before Varek stopped me.”
The memory rose like bile. I remembered the smell of blood, the sound of tearing flesh, the horror in my own screams.
Varek’s voice came quietly, grounding me. “She wasn’t herself. The serum induces a feral state—a rage that consumes the human body and mind until there’s nothing left to save. It originates from an organization called the Watch.”
“The Watch?” Rowan asked quietly.
Silas frowned. “The human militia?”
“Yes,” I said. “There’s this girl, a member of the Watch named Elsie. She’s the one that was sneaking around injecting women. She found us in the tunnels after we escaped. She told us everything. The Watch has been running its own experiments. They were trying to make humans strong enough to fight wolves. But the serum was too volatile. It created monsters—the Nyktos being a fine example.”
Rowan’s brow furrowed. “Shit. So, what’s their plan?”
“Some members of the Watch want to give it to all the captive human women so that they can destroy the wolves from within. Not only that, but the Council must have gotten hold of part of the formula. They’ve modified it. They tested it on one of my own men. His name was Gareth.” His voice cracked, just slightly, before he forced it level again. “They turned him into a creature the likes of which I’ve never seen before. Not a wolf. Not a human either. They turned him into a huge, incredibly powerful, murderous… thing. It was dark when I tried to fight him off, but it looked something like a bear,” Varek said.
Soren leaned forward, her voice low. “So, the Council has the fertility drug,andthis new rage serum. And you’re saying the Watch—the humans who were supposed to fight for their own—are talking about using the same poison on every captive woman?”
“Yes,” I said. “Elsie told us herself. She doesn’t believe in it, but some of the radicals in her ranks do. They think if they dose every human woman in captivity, it’ll wipe out the wolves once and for all. They don’t care that it’ll kill the women too. They’d rather burn the world than see humans wrapped up in chains under the control of wolves.”
Kendra swore softly under her breath. “Fuck…”
Silas rubbed a hand across his jaw, the muscles ticking beneath the skin. “So, we’re staring down two sides of the same coin. The Council wants to breed human women to death, and the Watch wants to use them as weapons.”
