Chapter 17
CATRIONA
Kian's breathing evens out around dawn, the ragged edge finally smoothing into actual sleep instead of labored survival.
I haven't moved from this spot on the cottage floor in hours.
My back aches from the stone wall I'm leaning against, my hand's gone numb where his fingers are still wrapped around mine, and dried blood cracks across my palms every time I flex them.
The bullet wound in his chest has closed over, pink scar tissue already forming where a bullet tore through muscle and bone.
Shifter healing is remarkable and terrifying in its efficiency.
The cottage looks like a war zone. Blankets and tarps cover the shattered windows, makeshift barriers against the cold Atlantic wind.
Furniture lies broken and overturned. Dark stains spread across the floor where the enhanced bear bled out.
Grayson and Declan hauled the bodies into the clearing hours ago, stacking them like cordwood for Finn to incinerate once the sun rose high enough that dragon-fire wouldn't draw attention from the village.
The Russian wolfshifter sits in the corner near the fireplace, wrapped in one of my jackets. Zharkov sent them out with nothing, expecting none of them to return. She just stares at the flames with hollow eyes.
Rafe appears in the doorway, silent as smoke. "The perimeter's clear. No movement from the Russians since the attack ended."
"Zharkov's regrouping." Declan follows him in, still in human form, radiating authority. "He sent a probe. Got the intelligence he wanted. Now he'll plan the real assault."
"How long do we have?" My voice scrapes past exhaustion and fear I refuse to name.
"Days. Maybe a week if we're lucky." Declan crouches beside Kian, checking the wound with efficient movements. "He's stable. The silver's out, the healing's kicked in. He'll wake up pissed off and starving, but he'll wake up."
"Good." I flex feeling back into my fingers, finally releasing Kian's hand. "Because we need to move fast, and I need information the girl can provide."
The Russian shifter's head jerks up at that. Fear crosses her face, then sinks beneath resignation. She expects interrogation. She expects pain. The syndicate taught her that cooperation comes with a price.
Slowly, I cross to her with careful movements. The scars visible on her wrists tell enough of that story. "What's your name?"
Silence stretches for several heartbeats. Then, barely audible: "Anya."
"Anya." I lower myself to sit across from her, close enough to talk but far enough to give her space. "I won't hurt you. Nobody here will. But I need you to tell me everything you know about Zharkov's operation."
"Why should I trust you?" Her accent thickens with emotion. "You're one of them. A shifter's mate. Part of the brotherhood. You could be just as bad as—"
"I'm not a shifter." The correction snaps out sharper than necessary. "I'm the police chief of Stormhaven. The one who shut down the selkie trafficking ring you mentioned. The one who's been building a case against the syndicate."
Anya's eyes widen slightly. "You're human."
"For now." The words taste strange on my tongue, carrying the truth I haven't fully processed yet.
A decision hovers at the edges of my awareness, waiting to be acknowledged.
"Which means I still have law enforcement connections the brotherhood doesn't. Resources that can help us take down Zharkov's entire network, not just the local operation. "
"There are so many operations." Anya pulls the jacket tighter, fingers trembling against the fabric. "Across Europe. Russia. Asia. North America. Everywhere there are supernaturals, there are syndicate cells hunting them. Capturing them. Experimenting on them."
"Tell me about the experiments." My phone comes out, recording app already open. Official police business requires documentation, supernatural crimes or not. "What are they doing to the shifters they capture?"
What follows is worse than anything I imagined.
Anya describes facilities hidden in remote locations, staffed by scientists who've spent decades studying supernatural biology.
Enhancement serums that increase strength and speed while burning through the shifter's sanity.
Genetic modifications that warp natural abilities into weapons.
Conditioning programs that break minds and rebuild them into obedient soldiers.
"My sister." Anya's voice cracks. "Katya.
They took her months ago. She was just a wolfshifter like me, small and fast but nothing special.
They injected her with something that made her bigger and stronger.
The serum changed the color of her eyes to that unnatural glow you saw in the enhanced shifters. "
"Where is she now?"
"Dead." The word falls flat and final. "The enhancement burned through her system too fast. Her heart gave out during a training exercise. They didn't even bury her properly. Just incinerated the body and moved on to the next subject."
Cold fury coils in my chest, the controlled kind that builds cases instead of destroying them. "The children from Cork. A dozen of them, disappeared months ago. Where did they go?"
Anya's face goes ashen. "You know about Cork?"
"I found evidence of the shipment in the manifests I've been tracking. Young children, all under ten years old. The trail went cold at the Eastern European border." Leaning forward slightly, I press the question. "Where are they, Anya?"
"Facility Seventeen. In the Carpathian Mountains.
" Her fingers clench into white-knuckled fists.
"It's where they take children who show strong supernatural abilities before puberty.
They... they try to amplify the gifts before the first shift.
Create soldiers who are more powerful than natural shifters. "
The words hit like ice water. "Wait. Those children were supernatural? All of them?"
"Yes." Anya's voice drops even lower. "Zharkov doesn't waste resources on human children. He targets the ones who show signs early. Unusual strength. Strange coincidences. Little things that mark them as different before they even know what they are."
Declan moves closer from where he's been standing near the door. "Most shifters don't present abilities until puberty. How does he identify them that young?"
My mind races through the implications. If Zharkov has a system for finding supernatural children this young, how many has he taken over the years?
"He has people. Scouts." Anya's hands shake.
"They watch families with supernatural bloodlines.
Track births. Monitor communities. Some children manifest small things early.
A wolf pup who's too fast. A bear cub who's too strong.
He takes them before the first shift, while they're still malleable. Easier to break and reshape."
"How many children survive the process?"
"Maybe a handful out of every group they process."
Most of the children are dead or dying in some remote facility, experimented on like lab rats because they were born with gifts the syndicate wants to weaponize. Nausea rises in my throat, followed by rage, followed by the helplessness threatening to drown my focus.
Emotion won't save those children, but evidence will.
"I need locations. Names. Anyone in the syndicate hierarchy who might have documentation about Facility Seventeen."
"Zharkov oversees it personally." Anya's voice drops to a whisper.
"He visits every few months to review progress.
He's obsessed with creating the perfect supernatural soldier.
They say when he began it was to help supernaturals, but his obsession twisted him.
Some of the older shifters, those who have survived, say he was conducting experiments during the Second World War.
But he's been refining his techniques for centuries. "
Centuries of refining techniques. Centuries of victims. My mind catches on the WWII reference, and something clicks into place with sickening clarity. "The Nazi eagle. It wasn't an eagle at all, was it? It was a phoenix."
Anya's face goes even paler. "You know."
"I'm starting to." The implications sprawl outward in too many directions to process at once. A phoenix-shifter embedded with the Nazi regime, experimenting on people under the guise of their twisted ideology. Creating his perfect supernatural soldiers while the world burned around him.
"He is." Anya holds my stare directly for the first time. "Phoenix. That's what they say. Fire and ash. Nearly impossible to kill because he just regenerates."
A phoenix. Finn's reaction when I mentioned Zharkov makes brutal sense now.
The rage that flickered behind his eyes.
The careful way he's avoided every question about his past with the syndicate leader.
Dragon-fire could be the only thing hot enough to kill a phoenix.
The pieces slam together with brutal clarity.
"Thank you, Anya." Standing, I offer her my hand. She takes it hesitantly. "You're under the brotherhood's protection now. Nobody from the syndicate touches you again."
Declan steps forward, his presence commanding but not threatening. "You're a wolfshifter. If you choose, you can become part of my pack at Wolfstone Abbey. A home. A family. Not all of us had choices about what we became, but we all get to choose what comes next."
Anya's eyes fill with tears again, but these look different from before. Less hopeless. "I can choose?"
"You can choose." Declan's voice gentles. "No pressure. No obligation. But the offer stands."
She nods. Brief hope crosses her face before fading.
I head outside where my phone might actually get a signal strong enough for an international call.