I sigh. I don’t.
“Why hybrids, though?” Kain asks. “Why not shifters? Hybrids are physically stronger than shifters, so taking them would not be an easy task. Especially taking them without a struggle.”
“That’s what bothers me, as well,” I admit. “Nearly all of them were taken from their homes. Three worked graveyard shifts, though: one at a gas station, one at a warehouse, and one at a nursing home. Those three were taken from their workplaces. Their belongings were all left behind.”
“They all would have struggled,” Sienna murmurs.
“Unless they knew the person and went willingly,” I point out. It’s a thought to be considered.
“The only thing aside from their strength that stands out,” Sienna says quietly, “is their ability to do magic.”
Darius leans forward on the screen. “Most of them don’t, though. They grow up among shifters. They live as wolves. They never develop their other half.”
“Yes, but the capacity is there. If they wanted to, they could learn, couldn’t they?” Sienna says to the screen.
I study her. “You’re saying somebody wants to use them.”
She doesn’t look at me. “I’m saying it would make sense. The witches are mostly gone from our territories, so if you wanted magic, where would you look? Not rogues. Not ordinary shifters. Hybrids.”
Kain’s voice cuts in. Low. Rough. “The Covenant was obsessed with magic.”
The other three of us stare at him.
“It was the single most discussed subject at the upper tier.”
I push back to test the theory. “These hybrids don’t practice magic. They don’t know how. Why take them?”
Kain looks past Darius at something off screen. He is choosing his words. “The Covenant conducts experiments,” he grinds out. “On their own soldiers.”
“What kind of experiments?” I ask.
“Magic. Enhancement. They have tried to push it into shifter bodies. They have had a few successes.” His eyes go somewhere dark. “Not any that last, though.”
I think about the rogues we executed at the estate the first week Sienna was here. The ones from the day she was almost taken. The strange cast of their fur in the light. Their impossible strength. Two of them kept fighting after my best men had their throats in their jaws.
Sienna beats me to it. “The rogues.”
Darius and Kain look at each other.
“The ones that attacked us in the forest when we were coming here,” she presses. “They were stronger than anything I have ever seen. The soldiers here have been describing the same thing. Unusual strength. Unusual stamina. Unusual everything.”
“Enhanced.” Kain’s voice has gone quiet.
“If you wanted to make a shifter hold magic,” Sienna continues slowly, “you would try it on someone whose body was already built to hold it. You would start with the raw material closest to what you wanted.”
“Hybrids,” Darius says.
“Hybrids,” Sienna echoes.
A long silence stretches across the call.
“So, somebody—the Covenant, most likely—is harvesting hybrids,” Darius says heavily. “Using them for magic. And potentially making them into enhanced soldiers.”
“That could be the case,” Kain says quietly. “But this is just a theory.”
“One we need to verify,” I add.
“Moonvale will run parallel,” Darius announces. “I will set up a joint intelligence line today. Lucas, your team. Kain, my security. Sienna coordinating.”
