Violet is at the far wall.
She is on her feet, barely. Her hand is braced against the wall behind her. Blood has run from her nose to her chin, and a thinner thread of it has tracked from her ear down the side of her neck. Her hair has come undone. Her shirt is ripped at one shoulder. Bruises darken the line of her jaw.
She is facing a shirtless man standing in the center of the room.
He turns his head when we burst through the door. His eyes find Darius, and his mouth pulls into a slow, pleased curve.
“Brother.”
The word comes out of him like he is greeting a man he has been hoping to see at a long-promised dinner. Easy. Familiar.
Darius does not answer.
So, this is Zion.
The squadron’s report did not prepare me for him. Taller than the description implied. Wider through the chest than any shifter I have ever stood across from, built thicker than any man should be. His skin holds a faint, dark sheen along the shoulders that is not sweat. The wrongness of him fills the air. Whatever the Covenant has done to their fighters, they have done more to him.
Zion’s eyes track to Violet against the wall, then back to Darius, and the smile widens.
“I told you, didn’t I?” His voice is calm. Casual. “The day you killed our father, I told you I would take everything from you. Every good thing in your life. I would dismantle you piece by piece before this was finished.”
Darius’s growl drops to a level below normal hearing. I feel it through the floor.
Zion gestures at Violet without looking at her. “So much for hybrid strength. She can barely stay on her feet. I’m supposed to test her strength against mine, but it’s really not a fair fight. How pathetic.”
Violet bares her teeth at him from the wall. “Still standing, asshole.”
“For now.”
Darius takes one step into the room. “You stay where you are, Violet.” His voice has gone cold.
Violet sneers. “No, thank you. I’ve been itching to beat this one for years.”
“This is no longer your fight, Violet.” Darius snarls at her, and she scowls.
Zion laughs, rolling his shoulders. “I’m going to finish what I started, brother. I want your mate to watch you bleed. I want you to die knowing that, for the rest of her life, she will be used as amedium by the Covenant. No dignity, nothing. She will be a tool to make more shifters like me.”
Violet’s chest is still heaving. Her eyes are fixed on Zion, hatred evident in them. “The attack on the hybrid settlement, the exile of our kind…It wasn’t impulsive, Darius. This asshole has been with the Covenant since he was young. It was all staged.”
Darius’s eyes tighten. “Staged?”
Zion shrugs. “The Covenant needed hybrids for their magic. We were still experimenting at that point, and many of them died. We needed more. We could only kidnap so many of them before someone noticed.” A sly smile forms on his lips. “It worked, though. We finally managed to figure out how to enhance shifters to a power greater than an alpha’s. In a way, I am immortal now. You can’t kill me, Darius.”
Disgust fills me.
Darius scoffs. “Let’s see how immortal you truly are.”
He shifts mid-leap. The gray wolf hits the concrete already at a run, head low, teeth bared.
Zion does not shift. He plants his bare feet and waits.
Darius hits him at full speed. The collision is bone on bone, and the man goes off his feet, three hundred pounds of wolf driving him back across the chamber until they slam into the far wall together, right near Violet. Darius’s jaws find Zion’s throat and bite down, tearing a strip of skin and meat away in his teeth.
Zion’s head rolls forward against the wolf’s muzzle, and he laughs.
His knee comes up under Darius’s ribs. The gray wolf is launched off him, airborne across the floor, and hits the floor in a skid that rolls him back onto his feet. Darius charges again.
My wolf is roaring inside my chest to be let out. I move toward them, and I am mid-shift when Darius crashes into Zionthe second time, jaws opening for his brother’s throat. This time, Zion catches him by the ruff. He pivots and throws the wolf.
