Chapter Two
The quiet stretchedtoo long after Klarissa’s words left her mouth.Death is coming, and I am its creator.Even through the haze of pain and the fog of whatever medication the healer had pushed into her veins, the weight of those words settled like iron in the room.
Questions came at her in a wave.Liam’s sharp Irish lilt, Violet’s fiery energy, Jacob’s steady rumble.They wanted to know what she meant, how she knew, what exactly was coming.Fragments overlapped—“weapon?”“human threat?”“what the hell does she mean creator?”—but she couldn’t answer them all at once.Her throat burned, her ribs protested with each shallow breath.Still, she forced her gaze to steady, her voice low but clear.
“It’s not a metaphor,” Klarissa said.“I don’t deal in those.”
They blinked, glanced at each other, but the questions didn’t stop.
Except from him.
Keiran Murphy, Alpha of the Black Ridge Pride, stood at the foot of the infirmary bed and said nothing.He didn’t join in the barrage, didn’t push forward with demands.He simply stared.And when Klarissa lifted her head, she found herself staring right back.
The silence between them deepened, stretched taut, until it tugged at her very bones.The others must have noticed, because the questions stuttered, then faded, until the only sound was the faint hum of machines and the healer shifting his tray.It was a staring contest she hadn’t meant to start but somehow couldn’t back away from.
At last Keiran’s lips curved in something that was not quite a smile.“Why is it,” he said softly, voice carrying the rumble of his lion beneath it, “that I don’t think this is you being overly dramatic?”
Klarissa swallowed against the dryness in her throat.“Because it isn’t.”
He tilted his head, gaze sharp.“Then tell us.”
She closed her eyes briefly, gathering the scraps of courage she had left.When she opened them, every pair of eyes was on her.Kamon’s hand tightened around hers, Rune’s warmth steady at her other side, anchoring her.“What I am ...what I do,” she began, “isn’t simple.My field is virology.I create viruses.”
A growl rippled through the room, but she held up a hand.“Not to release.Not to harm, but to cure.You can’t fight a plague unless you know its shape.You can’t engineer an antidote without first building the weapon.That is what I do—I craft the sickness so that I can craft the remedy.”
The silence was heavy, but not empty.They were weighing every word.
“In the right hands, what I create saves lives,” she pressed on.“But in the wrong ones...”Her throat constricted.“In the wrong hands, it could wipe out thousands.Tens of thousands.And those wrong hands have it now.”
Violet swore under her breath.Jacob’s growl joined Rune’s low rumble, a chorus of protective fury.Liam’s jaw clenched tight enough she could hear the grind of his teeth.But it was Keiran’s eyes she couldn’t look away from.
“You’re telling me,” he said slowly, deliberately, “that you built the very thing that could bring my people to their knees.”
“I’m telling you,” Klarissa countered, “that I built the only thing that might stop it.”
The room stirred again, voices rising.Liam leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees.“How big a problem are we talking here?How fast does it move?”
“Fast,” Klarissa answered.“Faster than most systems can catch.I designed it that way to test countermeasures.If it ever got out, it could spread in days.”
Jacob’s eyes narrowed.“To humans too?”
“Yes,” Klarissa admitted.“But shifters are the true targets.Your genetic markers make you burn hotter, faster.If it escapes into the city, it won’t matter who you are.Death will not discriminate.”
Rune’s hand tightened around hers until it almost hurt.She didn’t pull away.His tiger’s growl vibrated through her bones, matched by Kamon’s silent, steady fury.
Violet’s voice cut through, sharp as a blade.“So, what you’re saying, Red, is that someone out there has the blueprint for the extinction of shifters.”
Klarissa nodded once, sharp.“Yes.And I know exactly where it began.”
The others waited, but she wasn’t finished.She forced herself to continue, even as her ribs ached and her pulse pounded.“You want to understand me?Then you need to understand the science behind what I do.I map viruses like architects map cities.Every wall, every gate, every hidden tunnel.To build a cure, I need to know every possible mutation.That means I’ve made monsters on paper, in glass tubes.They were supposed to stay locked there.Supposed to die in containment.”
