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Prologue

"What is taking so long, Konstantin?"

"How the hell should I know? Brusilovs are never in surgery this long. Shit just doesn't happen. His tiger should have healed him by now." He snaps back at me.

Konstantin keeps pace beside me on the path to the surgical center. His shoulders set as if he carries Aleksej's weight. The medical center is a recent addition. We built it when we started taking humans into our army. Humans break when the wind changes, all soft joints and thin skin, and still I let them into my army because a wooden knife can cut.

The infirmary is a joke among our family's shifters. This time, with Alex lying on a table inside it, nobody is laughing.

"Tell me what happened," I say.

Konstantin raises a brow. He's already given me the bones of it—Mordecai men, an ambush, a bullet through Alex's arm, and a forced retreat. Fucking bears. We have a damn truce. I guess that shit is over.

I need the details again. I am their vor. This shit sits on my head. My father expects me to keep our family together, and I can already hear the rage in his voice. Or, worse, the worry in my mother's voice. "Two years, Ivan," he'll say. "We've only been away two years, and your brother is lying in a hospital. How the fuck does a Brusilov end up in a hospital?"

I don't know. But, I will fucking find out.

"How many Mordecais?" I ask.

"Six that we saw. Could've been more. They knew exactly where we'd be, Ivan. They were waiting for us."

That gets my attention. "Waiting how?"

"They had the road blocked. Two vehicles, men positioned in the trees. They didn't fire until Alex got out to investigate."

"And you think that was a coincidence?"

Konstantin gives me a look. "Do I look fucking stupid?"

"No, but whoever arranged that ambush apparently thinks we both are." I pull my phone from my pocket. "Georgy needs to get me the names of everyone who knew Alex's route. Every driver, every guard, every fucking bastard who so much as glanced at the itinerary."

"He's already working on it."

"Good. Nobody leaves the compound without my permission. And nobody outside this family hears a fucking word about Alex's condition."

Konstantin nods. He's angry enough to bite through a steel door, but he's also my brother. He knows the difference between wanting revenge and making sure the right people pay for it. We don't survive as the leading Bratva family by shooting everyone who pisses us off. We'd run out of ammunition before breakfast.

The compound offers a tiger a five-mile loop through a forest cordon. It's a decent workout before he finishes his first lap. But it's a small territory for tigers. We need space. Wild tigers don't live in groups; they're solitary by nature, and so are we on our shifter side. But we are also men, and we are family. We keep our individual houses spread across the Brusilov compound, with homes for our soldiers between them, and the surgical center on the farthest reach of the property, where the medicinal stench can't reach our noses when we run.

Today, it reaches us anyway. Ten yards out, the smell hits me. Antiseptic, and layered beneath it, my brother's blood.

Konstantin's jaw locks when he scents blood under the chemical bite of sedation, and we share a look before moving faster. I enter the center, hoping to find Alex. Instead, Georgy meets us at the door.

"Dr. Roger wants us in the post-op room."

"How is he?" I demand.

Georgy's mouth tightens. "He's alive."

I wait for more. Georgy gives me nothing.

That is the first moment I feel something I haven't felt since I was a cub watching my father carry our mother home after an attack. Fear. Not the kind that makes a man run. The kind that makes him want to destroy everything standing between him and the people he loves.

Konstantin and I move as one with Georgy. We've never set foot in post-op for anyone but our human soldiers.

Chairs circle the desk. I don't want to sit. I want my brother. I want to know why I can smell his blood. I want to know which bear's blood I should spill to pay for it.

Roger enters behind thick lenses, his owl eyes slipping from me to my brothers and back again. He's a predator, and I only surround myself with predators, so I like Roger. But he's wringing his hands, and I don't like that one bit.