Page 263 of Cruelly Bitten

When he showed Willow and Ryder once more, it quickly became evident that she was experiencing theneutralizeragain.

“What exactly is it doing?” I asked him.

“The electronic pulses attack the group psyche section of a lycan’s mind. The frequency creates a sound that echoes in their heads, making movement and thought impossible. It debilitates them, thusneutralizingthe threat.” He glanced at me. “It’s similar to what I used on Khalid and his bitch, only designed to impact lycans instead of vampires.”

“I see.” So he’d created a weapon totameall of lycan kind.

Jenkins was still stiff in my peripheral vision, his jaw clenched. This time, I was certain it had nothing to do with the woman on his lap because she wasn’t moving at all. In fact, I was pretty sure he’d already killed her. She was too still. Eerily so.

If he doesn’t approve, then why is he here?I wondered.What benefits is my brother?—

“See how distracted he is?” Cane asked, interrupting my thoughts. “He’s so focused on Willow that he hasn’t even noticed the approaching mutt unit.” He gestured to where the lycans were creeping up on Ryder via a nearby alleyway.

In the next moment, Ryder phased, almost as though he’d heard my brother.

Only it’d obviously been him sensing the lycans.

However, it hadn’t been enough of a distance, because a gun fired a second later, the bullet piercing Ryder’s skull and sending him to the ground.

Cane shook his head. “One of the oldest of our kind and he’s taken down by a trained dog. Why? Because he wasdistracted.” He looked at me. “Thisis why having a mate is a weakness, brother. I realize she’s your connection to your past, but that’s all she can be. We can’t afford to have you distracted anymore. Not if you want to lead.”

“I never said I wanted to lead,” I told him flatly. “But I concede your point.” Because he wasn’t wrong. Ryder should not have been so easy to defeat. Same with Khalid. Although, it remained to be seen what Emine actually meant to him.

Still, my brother was playing with fire.

He had no idea how impactful a mate bond could be or how violent Ryder—and possibly Khalid—would be once they regained consciousness. Fury was a strong motivator. And possessive instincts made that fury burn so much hotter.

A furious royal was a dangerous one.

Same with a furious lycan,I thought, noting Jenkins again. He still hadn’t moved.

Yet no one seemed to notice.

He was an insignificant being in this room full of vampires. A lost piece of the puzzle.

“Take Ryder to suite seven to join Khalid,” Cane said, presumably to hismutt unit. “The hybrid can go to dungeon four.”

Hybrid, I thought, repeating the term.I’m assuming his source told him that, too.Because I highly doubted Ryder had made that information public.

Cane minimized the screens on display with a click of his finger, the space around us no longer littered with technical specs and surveillance feeds.

“The hybrid should make for interesting research,” he informed me. “Far more interesting than the slayer.”

“We won’t know until we conduct our studies,” I replied, easily playing his game. My brother had always been a strategic genius. However, he possessed one fatal flaw—his desire to impress me.

It made him easier to read.

He might be cold inside, but his eyes lit up whenever I uttered phrases that suggested I was his ally rather than hisenemy.We. Us. Our.They were all just words that placated his ego, confirming I liked what he’d created.

And part of me did.

I could admire the brilliance of his scheming. He’d not only enslaved humankind but also convinced the lycans to partner with him. All while actually treating the wolves as second-class citizens.

The way he’d devised the annual Blood Day celebrations to give equal resources to both lycans and vampires was also well crafted. He’d essentially presented us all as equals, yet our kind were the ones benefiting the most from this arrangement.

However, I suspected he hadn’t put much thought into how the lycans might react to this discovery. Sure, he’d developed a weapon that might protect the city, but for how long?

It was a temporary nullifier.