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SKYE

T he low, monotonous hum of the plane’s engine might have been soothing and relaxing if I wasn’t currently feeling like a live wire with the casing stripped away.

Shocked didn’t begin to cover the emotions zipping through me like electric currents in my blood, sending it popping and fizzing as I struggled to digest what Dimitri was telling me.

Dimitri, who had spent the last week pretending to be a dead shifter named Daniel to infiltrate the Alpha Summit. The guy who had pretended to be our friend apparently had a much bigger agenda and a deeper connection to me.

“You’re my brother ?” There was no denying the hesitant confusion in my voice as I studied him in the seat across from me.

He had dark hair like I did, but mine was more brown while his was an inky black. My skin still held a soft tan from years spent in New Mexico that hadn’t quite faded, and his skin was more olive toned. We both had green eyes, but his were a pale, almost translucent shade, and mine were the same emerald my mother had. The same eyes almost every single member of the Markham family had.

“Technically I’m your step-brother, I guess,” he amended with a small smile that flashed two rows of even, white teeth. “Your dad adopted me when I was a baby after he married my mother. My father was killed in a border skirmish before I was born.”

“So, your dad cheated on your mom with my mom?” I frowned, trying to figure out the timelines. Dimitri was easily five years older than me, maybe more.

I hadn’t stopped to ask for his birthday when we had met back at the Summit last week.

Last week .

I swallowed around the knot of grief threatening to choke me. Taking deep breaths, I focused on the man in front of me while trying to figure out how to live the next few minutes without the man I loved.

Remy wasn’t just my mate. He was my...

Just mine .

My best friend, my confidant, my protector, and my supporter.

Not knowing where he was, if he was hurt, was slowly killing me. It was like someone had dumped acid in my veins, and I was slowly being eaten alive from the inside. The caustic burn as my emotions devoured me left an empty void in my soul.

I looked down at the bracelet encircling my wrist. The magic bracelet that had muted the bond I shared with my wolf. Because magic was an actual, real thing.

For the first time, I was actually a little thankful for the dainty piece of unbroken silver that molded around the delicate bones of my wrist.

The human pain I felt from the loss of Remy was almost too much to bear. Each breath I sucked into my lungs was harder than the last. Feeling the panic, fear, frustration, and grief from my wolf would have pushed me over the edge.

“Again, technically, yes,” Dimitri answered my question, dragging my attention back to him. The black t-shirt and torn jeans he wore were rumpled and torn, stained in a few places. A cut on his cheek was scabbed over. I hadn’t really paid attention to it before, but clearly he hadn’t escaped unscathed from the explosion that leveled the Spring Summit and likely killed the majority of the Alphas in North America hours earlier.

Dimitri had saved me, and Tate, who had been with us.

Because I was his sister.

He leaned forward with a small shrug. “Mama and our father didn’t marry for love. They married for alliance. They grew up together. Were friends. It made sense. My mother is the strongest female in our pack. She married my bio-dad for love. They were mates. Bonded like you and Remy. After he died, she went off the rails a bit and Dad stepped in to marry her and raise me.”

I flinched at his name, and Dimitri had the decency to look away with a grimace.

“Sorry,” he muttered, his jaw tight. “As soon as we land, I’m hoping Dad will have more info on... survivors.”

I cleared my throat, pushing down the fresh wave of pain. “I’m sorry. About your bio-dad.”

“Don’t be,” Dimitri said with a small shake of his head. “I never knew him. Nikolai Dashkov is my father. He’s the only one I’ve ever had. He’s a great dad, and the best Alpha our pack has had in decades.”

“He cheated on your mom.” Didn’t sound like such a great guy to me.

“Like I said, they didn’t marry for love. They married because it made the most sense at the time,” he replied. His mouth curled into a rueful smile. “Besides, Mama has had her fair share of lovers in their marriage.”

“That’s… weird,” I said after a second. Alphas weren’t exactly known for their ability to share.

Dimitri smirked. “North American packs are different from European packs. Hell, than most packs on every other continent. Most of the Alphas I met at the Summit are small, simple minded men that haven’t learned how to merge their wolf with their man. They spend years battling their wolves into submission.” He snorted and shook his head. “It’s no wonder they have the biggest issues with declining birth rates.”

“How so?” I narrowed my eyes, admittedly curious.

“Females give life ,” he said plainly. “Smothering them isn’t helping. In our pack, females are treated as equals. More than equals, honestly. They’re to be respected and admired. Feared and protected.”

A ghost of a smile drifted across my face. “Katy would love that.”

He frowned. “Katy?”

“Remy’s sister,” I said softly. Pain knifed in my chest, my heart bleeding out. “She’s one of my best friends. Her girlfriend, Maren, is one of the females who went missing from our school.”

Disgust curled his lip. “Fuck. I’m sorry, Skye.”

“Do you know where she is?”

Before the world had literally exploded around us, Dimitri had hinted he knew more about the missing shifters than he had told.

He hesitated. “I don’t. I’m sorry. We know women have been missing from the American packs recently. We suspected Damien Valois was behind it, and Elias was helping him in some capacity.”

“The Norwood Alpha.” Dread twisted my frayed nerves into knots.

He nodded.

I leaned back in my chair, looking out the window. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and he was killed in the explosion, too.”

Dimitri sighed quietly. “Skye, the reason I was looking for Remy was because I knew something was about to go down.”

My head snapped around, strands of dark hair that had pulled free of my ponytail fell into my eyes. I pushed them back so I could see him. “You knew about the explosion?”

His jaw clenched, the muscles in his neck pulling taut. “I didn’t know it would be that bad, but I overheard Elias on the phone that morning. He was talking to Damien. Damien and his son left the conference early in the morning. Elias was planning on leaving, too. They had a plane waiting for him and your uncle and that Preston kid.”

I couldn’t hold back the chuckle of complete loathing that exploded from me.

Because of course Damien was behind this. Norwood hated Blackwater. Damien hated Gabe, and Trace hated Remy.

It was a vicious cycle that had left more collateral damage than I could count.

The only people I could possibly hate more than Damien and Trace were my uncle and Preston.

Which was why it made total sense that they were all friends and allies.

“So, my uncle’s alive.” That left a bitter taste in my mouth.

“He is,” Dimitri agreed, watching me carefully. Likely waiting to see when I would shatter.

“Elias?”

He snorted, his lip curling in disdain. “The doctor is also alive, last I checked.”

“Preston?”

Dimitri frowned. “Him I don’t know about. Hopefully in pieces spread out on that mountain in Wyoming.”

“He didn’t leave with my uncle?”

Now he grinned at me, a calculating glint in his eyes. “No. I didn’t bring him along for the ride.”

It took a moment for his words to register, but when they did, I sat up and looked around the plane with wild eyes.

It was still us, the four men I didn’t know, and a currently unconscious Tate across the aisle from me. Panic and fear sent my heart galloping.

“Relax,” Dimitri told me with a laugh. “They’re in the back, and even more sedated than Tate.” He jerked his head behind me.

I twisted in my seat. There was a door at the rear of the plane, two of the men I didn’t know sat in front of it.

“Why did you bring them?” I asked, slowly turning back to face him.

“Because Elias screwed us over, and he’s going to pay for that.” One of his large hands curled into a fist.

The dark look of fury that passed his face set me on edge.

“How so?”

“I told you before that he came to our pack?”

I nodded, remembering him mentioning that.

“My father,” he paused, “ our father, has spent the last two decades working with the packs in our region, and the Romani in the area, to figure out the issue with the declining birth rates.”

“Did they figure it out?”

“We’ve made progress,” he admitted, somewhat reluctantly. “A lot of progress, actually.”

“How so?”

“It’s complicated, but a lot of it has to do with the link we have with our wolf. The more modernized the world has become, the less time we’ve spent as wolves. This is especially true of younger generations.”

That made sense.

Technology and life had evolved the world, and shifters evolved with it. It was easier to remain human and smother our wolves. I had perfected the art of silencing my own wolf when I shoved her into the farthest recesses of my soul while living in Long Mesa.

“How can you fix that?” I focused my attention on the conversation, clinging to any type of distraction to help me survive the reality that the bomb going off at the Summit had completely ended life as I knew it.

Even if Remy had survived, I knew that people I knew hadn’t. Allies, maybe even friends.

My gaze drifted to where Tate was still unconscious.

She had just as much to worry about as I did. Her father and one of her boyfriends were in that mess we had been pulled out of.

My stomach twisted violently, and I snapped my gaze back to Dimitri.

I needed to focus on the here and now, starting with what he knew about our people.

“We developed a system,” he said slowly, starting to explain. “It’s complicated and rudimentary at the same time. The first step is getting wolves, especially female wolves, back in touch with their animal counterparts.”

I frowned. “Okay. How do you do that?”

“By keeping them in wolf form for a full lunar cycle,” he replied, a small smile hooking up one corner of his mouth.

My brows shot up. “A month as a wolf ?”

He nodded. “Yeah. The point is to give complete control to your wolf. To let them embrace what they are, so you can find who you are.”

“And they do everything as an animal?” My nose wrinkled. I didn’t love the idea of hunting down and slaughtering animals for food, and I didn’t even want to think about the bathroom situation.

He smirked. “Yes. Everything.”

“And people agree to this? What if they shift back?”

A ghost of a smile flickered in his eyes. His gaze dropped pointedly to my bracelet. “We make sure they can’t. It’s a commitment, and not one to be entered into lightly. It requires absolute devotion to your wolf. And at the end? I’ve seen several shifters who never regained control from their wolf.”

“They stay a wolf forever?” I whispered, stunned.

Another sharp nod. “It’s intense, but it puts you in harmony with your wolf. Several mates in our pack have bonded during that month.”

“Have you done this?” I asked curiously.

He nodded once again. “Several times. So has our father.”

“And you told Elias all of this?” His name tasted bitter and wrong in my mouth now.

Anger flickered in my heart, dark and hot. I had trusted Elias Samuels. Remy and Gabe had trusted him. And he had betrayed us all.

Another swift nod. “Elias came to our pack a little over two years ago. He seemed genuinely interested in our methods. Dad invited him in, but we had a feeling there was more to him. We let him observe what we were doing to an extent. The good doctor had a reputation that was mostly positive, and Dad thought they could form a partnership.”

A scowl overtook his face and he glared out the window. “We had no idea he was going to take what we were doing and twist it around.”

I swallowed hard. “Twist it how?”

His green gaze swung back to mine, hypnotic in his fury. I could see the truth glittering there.

Elias had betrayed him, too.

“Elias told Damien everything that we had done, but you have to understand, Skye, our methods take time. We only ever took volunteers, and we’re careful about when and how often we do it. Not every lunar cycle is ideal for people to spend a month as an animal.”

The confusion must have been evident on my face because he kept going, leaning forward in his seat.

“I don’t fully understand the moon shit,” he said with a mirthless chuckle. “It’s something the Romani figured out, but apparently different moons mean different things. There’s only two or three moon cycles a year that work with what we’re doing. It has something to do with the timing of when the first shifters were created and a lot of other earthy shit I kinda tuned out.”

“Earthy shit?” I echoed with a skeptical snort.

His teeth flashed as he grinned. “That’s a technical term.”

“Clearly,” I muttered as I grimaced. His lack of understanding wasn’t making me feel any better about magic or witches or whatever.

“Anyway,” he said, his mood changing, “Elias and Damien didn’t want to wait to figure out the best times of the year, and they sure as shit didn’t wait for volunteers.”

“So, they started kidnapping people.” My jaw clenched as I scowled.

He nodded grimly. “Yeah. And that didn’t give them the results they wanted. They picked off lone females. Females who weren’t strong enough to withstand being a wolf for a week, let alone a month. The older the person, the harder it is to retrain them to merge with their wolf. They’ve spent too much time as a human. It literally breaks their mind, and they either die or become a vegetable mid-shift. It isn’t pretty.”

“They started taking younger people,” I whispered, realization slipped over me like an oily blanket until I shivered.

He dipped his head in affirmation. “Your school gave them the perfect place to pick off girls. By the time we realized what they were doing, they had already managed to take a few.”

“Maren, Kit, and Jayla.” Just saying their names made me flinch. Norwood and Long Mesa were friends, so I highly doubted they were being treated like royalty.

“Yeah.” He swallowed and heaved a long sigh.

“Can we get them back?” I demanded, my voice hardening.

He smiled at me. “I sure as hell hope so.”