“And Varian?”
“Much the same, though he has taking care of his pack to keep him busy. He came every day when you were unconscious. He is very much a father to Zio, no?”
“I guess.”
Dash drew patterns on the glass. Devan had spent years trying to decipher his habit, but he couldn’t find the will to try now. “Today is the first day I have felt like myself. It’s... strange to have missed so much time. I don’tknowanything. Only what people tell me.”
“But you believe them, don’t you? These people are your family, and you know Luca and I would never lie to you.”
“You didn’t tell me that an unfulfilled bond could physically harm me, though, did you?”
Dash’s gaze was steady. “I didn’t know it could. As long as I have been alive, I’ve only seen such things in wolves.”
“So you knew about the risk to Zio?”
“Yes, I did, which is why your orders were to stay with him—orders that, no doubt, along with your baser instincts to protect him, drove you to follow him here and save so many lives.”
“I got shot, Dash.”
“I know. Luca destroyed the shifters wielding the guns himself.”
“What happened at the hospital? Zio’s told me some... but I can’t remember most of it.”
“You think you will remember if I tell you?”
“Maybe. Yes. I think so.” Devan sighed and turned away from the window. The ache in his chest at being apart from Zio for even an hour was becoming unbearable. “I feel like I need to know everything before I can put it aside and move forward.”
Dash kept his gaze on the frosted glass. “The tale from the hospital is not a pleasant one.”
“And what happened here is?”
Silence. Then Dash cleared his throat. “My point is that what happened at the hospital is far from over. The ramifications will live with us for generations.”
“Zio seems to think the other side had human assistance.”
“They did. Zio was right to suspect the hospital as a staging ground for infiltration, though not all human participation was willing, from what I understand.”
“Not all, but some?”
Dash shrugged. “It’s not yet clear. What wedoknow is that doctors from a laboratory in London were recruited to work in the hospital and, over time, develop a stimulant that would enhance the strength and resilience of shifters. While they worked, shifters from the south used a shield to enter the north and live in the flats across the road undetected by Gale and his unit.”
A shudder passed through Devan. He hadn’t known Gale’s people as well as he’d come to know Zio’s, but they’d been kind to him when he’d joined their pack. Warm and welcoming. “What was the plan? To build an indestructible army?”
“I’d imagine so, but it seems they acted before they were entirely ready.”
“How do you know that?”
“Luca didn’t kill everyone. We kept some of the lower-ranked soldiers alive, and they seemed to be surprised the raid had happened so soon. A unit leader let slip that something had triggered it.”
“What?”
It was rare that Devan ever saw his alpha uncomfortable, but as Dash shifted his weight from one foot to the other, horror washed over him. “They saw me and Zio together, didn’t they? When we left the camp before the raid?”
Dash nodded. “Drone footage. To them, it confirmed that it was inevitable that Shadow Clan would join forces with the northern wolves sooner or later, and they knew that not even chemically enhanced shifters would be enough to resist us, at least not on the scale they had planned here.”
“They might be one day, though. If they take this madness elsewhere. Continue to use human weapons against us.”
“Maybe. We must prepare for the worst, and perhaps we should’ve done a long time ago. If we had, the conflict may have been over before your lifetime, and you’d have been free to bond with Zio from the start.”