“It is. Who’s this?”
He cleared his throat. “My name is Doug Brindle. You don’t know me, but I’m the alpha of a panther pack in North Dakota. I got your number through… well… a big chain of friends-of-friends. It’s almost ridiculous how many people it took.”
Frowning, I leaned forward and rested my elbows on the table. “Okay, uh, what can I do for you, Doug?”
“Mr. Lorenzo?— ”
“Call me Nico.”
“Oh, sure. Sorry. Nico, I had to call you. I watched your interview, and I can’t get it out of my mind. This is gonna sound dumb, but I want to thank you for what you said.”
I let out a little laugh. “I don’t really know what to say to that. All I said was the truth. At least, the truth as I see it.”
“That’s the thing,” Doug said, sounding more ardent. “It is the truth. We have to do this. Fighting back is the only way to show these people we aren’t going to roll over and die. Since all this started, every alpha I know has done exactly what everyone else has done. Hidden, kept quiet, put their heads down.
“A bunch of folks in my pack watched that interview with me. I’m not ashamed to admit that as you talked, I could sense the emotion in the room. You touched a nerve in my people that even I couldn’t. You fired them up. By the time it ended, I could see how much more confident and hopeful they were. Some alphas might take that as slight. Not me. It opened my eyes. Showed me exactly what we needed to do. Thanks to that interview, our pack has already started reaching out to neighboring shifter clans. We’re going to pool our resources. Put up a more united front, you know?”
North Dakota? This guy was over two thousand miles away from me, and he’d taken what I said to heart. It boggled my mind that I could say a few words on TV and touch people that far away.
“Well, Doug, all I can say is that I hope what I said helped. Do you feel safer after talking to your neighboring packs? That’s what this is all about, really. I don’t want to see another tragedy on the news.”
“Yeah, we do. I mean, your interview was only an hour ago, but every alpha I’ve talked to since then has said the same thing. They’re talking about you, man. ‘This guy in Florida knows what’s up.’ That’s the consensus. I only wanted to call and thank you. You’ve given people a lot to hope for. Thank you.”
I was struck speechless but managed to find my words before the pause got too awkward.
“Doug… I don’t know that I can say the right words, but you have no idea how happy that makes me. This all started with protecting my own pack, but the thought that I could help othersmeans a lot. I appreciate you reaching out. My phone is always on if you ever need anything.”
“I will. Again, thanks. Stay safe down there.”
“You stay safe upthere,” I said, then ended the call.
A dumbfounded grin tugged at my lips, but I didn’t have much time to think about the call. Luis ducked into my office with a phone pressed to his ear.
He covered the mic. “I’ve got a guy on the line. Alpha from Idaho—wants to talk to you. Got my name and number from a guy I worked with a few years back.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but my own phone rang, interrupting me. The number showed that it was an incoming call from Maine. It took some time, but after nearly three hours, I’d talked to over two dozen alphas from all over the world—Alaska, Colorado, Australia, West Virginia, California, Scotland, Belarus, and pretty much everywhere in between. I’d even received a call from the alpha of a lion-shifter pack from a remote area in Africa that required a translator.
I finally had to stop answering the calls and put my phone on do-not-disturb. Exhausted as I was, I felt thrilled. Not in a million years would I have believed I could touch so many people. I did, however, worry about the blowback. I prayed that the humans who were following Viola heard my words and heeded them.
My hopes and prayers were shown to be pointless over the course of the next few days. The morning after the onslaught of calls, a report came in that a bear pack had been attacked overnight. My jaw almost hit the floor when I saw that it was a pack in North Dakota. The news showed the devastation, but unlike before, it wasn’t the shifters who’d been caught off guard. It had been the human attackers. The bears had been more than ready. Instead of being asleep, nearly half their fighting force had been on guard duty. They’d thwarted the attack withoutsuffering a single casualty. The humans had gotten out without a death, but many had been severely injured.
I texted Doug to see if that had been his pack—sure enough, it had. His pack had shown the humans mercy rather than killing them where they stood. He again thanked me and told me they would have been slaughtered if my words hadn’t stirred them to action.
Maddy and I were glued to the TV over the next several days. An attack on a shifter compound in Nevada had met the same fate as the attack on Doug’s pack. No shifter deaths and massive injuries to the attackers. Again, the humans had been spared death. A coordinated attack on a tiger pack in India was thwarted in a similar fashion. I’d never spoken to anyone from there, but their alpha released a statement thankingmefor helping them realize they needed to prepare for war.
It was astounding, and it looked like we were making headway. The media, which had been toeing the line between both factions, suddenly swung completely pro-shifter. Out of nowhere, they were firmly in our camp. Several regular reporters were missing from broadcasts, and I wondered if they were upset about the change in priorities. Maybe they were closeted anti-shifter activists. The fact that these attacks were still happening, but the shifters were showing the attackers mercy and not killing them, helped sway public sentiment in our direction.
Things had been shaky ever since Viola had used the drug to force us to shift. Those orchestrated attacks, all on video, had done severe damage to the shifter cause. Now, though? It was like all that had been erased. Everyone was starting to see that we were the ones under attack.
Even the government was doing more than lip service. They’d arrested everyone associated with the attacks and were pushing for the most severe punishments. The president andmultiple governors had addressed the public, touting the Shifter Crisis as the most pressing issue of the day and promising further assistance where necessary.
We were watching another news bulletin when Felipe came barreling into my house. He was panting, his eyes wild.
I got to my feet, tugging Maddy up with me.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, though I already had a suspicion.
Felipe gestured back toward the gates. “Massive group of humans. Almost all of them are armed. Headed this way. One of the guards was manning the drone and caught sight of them. Two miles out. Probably less than a mile by now.”
