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“Sort of?” I questioned, my eyes narrowing on my brother. My best friend. The one whose look of disappointment bit into me harder than all the others. “What do you mean ‘sort of’? You shift or you don’t.”
“Freya said that there are others in the community where she came from who can shift,” he elaborated, “but due to the pain of shifting, they don’t do it often or at all. She said that she saw one shift before, and they died.”
“That’s not shifting,” Gunner spoke up. “That’s voodoo.”
I turned to look at him. “What do you mean?”
“He means that if the process of shifting looks, feels, or ends unnaturally…like death,” Doc broke in, “that it isn’t natural. It’s forced.”
“And the one thing that can force a shift is magic,” Gunner added. “But they would need the blood of someone who could fully shift in order to use it.”
“Wonderful,” I deadpanned. Just what I needed. “What else did you find, Doc?”
“I’m still trying to piece together a few things,” he admitted. “She doesn’t have Lycan drugs in her system, which is good, but her bloodstream contains some of the same elements as the feed you brought back from the Delta mill.”
“Like what?” Hunter asked.
“There are very few things that can affect shifters,” Doc educated us. “Silver is one of them. We aren’t sure why, but it elicits a strong histamine effect in a shifter’s body that quickly shuts down our systems. The purer the silver, the quicker the death. Same for some plants. Monkshood, for example, which is what I found in the feed and in Freya’s bloodwork.”
“What effect does it have on her?”
“Depends. For most shifters, monkshood would have a similar effect on shifters to GHB in humans. It’s considered a sedative, and when delivered in specific dosages, it could be used as a manipulation tool.”
“And that was in the fucking feed?” Switzerland growled from his chair. His nose scrunched in distaste.
“Yes, just in higher doses, which would cause extreme illness in humans and ferality in most shifters.”
“Most shifters?” I questioned.
“Alpha wolves are more susceptible to the added effects of monkshood than betas,” he explained. “It would ramp up the heart rate, cloud the mind, and, combined with some of the other elements I found in the feed, would create a rabid alpha.”
“Most of the victims who went rabid were alphas,” Bruiser agreed. “The ones who weren’t probably held smaller numbers of alpha genes.”
“Would monkshood suppress a wolf’s instincts?” Hunter asked.
“Yes,” he affirmed. “In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s the reason behind the feed.”
“But why put enough in it to create rabid alphas?”
“Because alphas are more prone to becoming immune to the monkshood over time than a beta,” Doc told us.
“If Freya had alpha genetics, wouldn’t she have gone feral?” There were too many questions now and not enough answers. Every time we answered one, another popped up in its place.
“The amount of monkhood in her blood was far less than what was in the feed,” Doc stated. “She would have overcome the effects in a few years if she hadn’t already.”
Hunter let out a deep breath, his eyes glossing over in a faraway look.
“What are you thinking?” I asked him.
“Freya talked about how shifters would often go missing in her pack. They would just be gone,” he divulged, running a hand through his hair. “I’m wondering if they had alpha genes.”
“That would make sense,” Doc agreed. “If they were showing signs of dissention, they would need to be eradicated. A spark lights a flame.”
What an odd thing to say.
Brushing it off, I turned to face my brother fully.
“Tell me what you know.”
