"In return, I'll go back home and dig up that scientist. Together, I'm pretty certain we can motivate him to find a cure."
"Our president will never go for it," Zion says from next to Stefan.
He looks to his brother, not to me.
"Neither will my mother," I retort instantly. "I'll find a way."
Stefan gives me a slow nod. "Agreed. We'll find a way."
43
BRYLEE
The wind whipspast my face, cold and sharp as shards of glass, but I barely feel it.
I'm tucked between Ridge and Kylian in the back of the jeep, windows down, Colter driving with a grim set to his shoulders that mirrors the tension coiling in my stomach. Luka barely lifts his head from where he’s tapping away on a tablet, a perpetual furrow deepening the skin between his brows.
Behind us, Mole Man—errr, George—drives with the doctor, who we found huddled in the back seat of the jeep. In a few hours, she’ll return here with a contingent of soldiers to retrieve the cure from the alpha princes. She’ll analyze the sample the best she can to ensure its authenticity before returning to me.
A cure.
A fucking cure for Ted after all this time.
But…
It’s not enough.
There’s still one more cure we need to set the world to right, and I have no idea how to even go about getting it.
I suggested to my alphas that we bring the doctor on board, have her confirm or deny the princes’ claims, but Luka made a good point—the fewer people who know, the better. Until we can confront my mother, we need to remain quiet. The last thing we need are our forces rebelling against us or the public starting to panic, especially if everything proves to be untrue.
But it’s not untrue.
You know it’s not untrue.
I shush my internal voice.
Outside, the landscape blurs into a wash of muted grays and browns, the colors leached away by the weight of what we've just learned. It's as if the world itself has been drained of vibrancy, reflecting the hollowness that's taken root inside me.
“We need to verify the princes' claim,” Ridge says, his voice cutting through the hum of the engine. He leans forward, one hand braced against the back of Colter's seat, his words clipped and precise, and a muscle in his jaw twitches erratically. “And we need to regroup. This changes everything.”
I nod mechanically, but my mind is a thousand miles away, back at the makeshift camp where the princes had laid out their accusation with cold, clinical precision.
My mother had deliberately released a virus. A weapon of mass destruction.
The thought sits in my gut like a stone, heavy and indigestible.
What if it had spread to our own people? What if it's contagious, a silent predator that could slip through our borders like smoke? God, how many innocent people were affected? How many died? How could she do something as horrendous as this?
The questions spin in my head, dizzying and relentless, until I feel like I might be sick. My hands clench so tightly in my lap that my nails dig into my palms, but I don't even register the pain. All I can feel is the cold, hard certainty that my world has been irrevocably shattered.
I should be ecstatic I finally—fucking finally—have a cure for Teddie. But even that emotion fails to register, incapable of penetrating the numb barrier erected around my heart.
“You're quiet,” Kylian murmurs beside me, his voice a low rumble that vibrates through my bones.
He reaches for my hand, his fingers warm against my cold skin, but I pull away before he can make contact. I can't bear to be touched right now, can't bear the comfort he's trying to offer when all I feel is contaminated. Like I'm carrying some kind of moral plague, a sickness of the soul that I might pass on to them.
Colter takes a sharp turn, and I'm thrown against Ridge's side. His arm comes around me automatically, a steadying presence that usually makes me feel safe, but now it feels like a cage.
