Her breath shuddered.“But someone took them.”
Liam cursed softly.Violet muttered something about data theft, eyes already calculating.Jacob’s jaw worked, but he said nothing, watching her with a soldier’s intensity.
Kieran finally spoke again, slow and certain.“And you’re certain your work is what they have now?”
Klarissa met his gaze.“About seventy-five percent of it, yes, I’d bet my life.And yours.”
No one moved.Even the healer seemed to freeze, his hand stilling over his instruments.
Jacob broke the silence.“If you can build it, you can unbuild it.Can you stop it?”
“Yes,” Klarissa said.“But only if I know what version they’re using, how far they’ve twisted it from the models I built.Otherwise, I’d be guessing.And guesses will get us all killed.”
Rune shifted closer, his voice low, dangerous.“Then we find them.We make them give you what you need.”
Kamon nodded, his expression grim.“And then we carve them open for what they’ve done.”
Her chest tightened, but not from pain.From the fierce certainty in their voices.From the way they stood at her side as though they had always been meant to.
Violet broke the moment with a sharp laugh.“Hell, I thought I was dramatic.You two kittens have me beat.”Her smile faded quickly, replaced with fire.“But she’s right.If this gets out, we’re looking at a body count that makes Santiago’s reign look like a tea party.”
The mention of Santiago made the room flinch.Klarissa felt it like a weight, but she pressed forward.“This didn’t start in a lab funded by strangers.It didn’t start with shadow corporations or faceless enemies.It started in my home.”Her chest tightened, ribs protesting, but she forced the words out.“It started with my father.”
Kieran’s eyes narrowed.“And just who is your father, Klarissa.”
Klarissa let the silence stretch one heartbeat longer, then gave them the name she had carried like a brand all her life.“Vincent Caruso.”
The name hung in the air like a curse, and in the space that followed, Klarissa felt the final tether snap.There was no taking it back.The war had begun the day she put a weapon in her father’s hands.And now, it had come home to roost.
****
Rune could still feelthe echo of Klarissa’s words reverberating through the room.Vincent Caruso.The name was a curse, a brand, a warning.His tiger prowled with restless fury inside him, but he forced himself to stay steady.Klarissa was shaking, her eyes shadowed, but still she held herself upright, her voice steady even as her body betrayed exhaustion.She was more strength than fragility, more determination than despair, and Rune had never seen anything more compelling in his life.
Jacob was the first to break the silence.“Why start at all?Why create something like this?What were you trying to cure?”
Klarissa’s gaze flickered to him, then to Kieran, who still hadn’t spoken again.It was as though the Alpha was weighing every flicker of her expression.Rune tightened his hold on her hand, ready to step in if she faltered, but she didn’t.Her eyes grew wet, her jaw trembling, but her voice carried.
“My mother,” she whispered.“She was dying, not from an infection, but because she was a latent shifter.There was something in her animal DNA that was killing her from the inside.They tried everything.I ...I tried everything.I thought if I could strip that part away—disarm the mutation that was consuming her—she might live.But I was too late.”
The healer jerked at her words, his hands stilling.Rune caught the movement, his tiger bristling, and almost spoke.But then he saw Kieran’s small shake of his head, a silent command to let Klarissa finish.Rune held his tongue, though every instinct demanded he react, as she continued.
Rune felt her fingers twitch in his, and his tiger snarled at the sight of tears brightening her eyes.He wanted to pull her close, to shield her, to silence the questions.“You don’t have to do this now,” he said quietly, leaning in so that only she could hear.“We can wait.”
Her head moved side to side, sharp and certain.“No.We can’t wait.If they break the encryption and replicate my work, they don’t need it finished.Even at seventy-five percent complete, they could manufacture a version that would kill indiscriminately.”
Violet’s eyes lit with grim fascination.“Now you’re speaking my language.”She leaned forward, a grin that was equal parts wicked and deadly flashing across her face.“Encryption.Firewalls.How did you lock it down?”
Despite her tears, Klarissa managed a faint smile.“Triple-coded encryption lattices, rotating keys.I buried my notes in false data structures and ghost servers.For years it held.But it was only ever a matter of time.He cracked a few walls already.Five years ago, he broke through one.That breach killed fifty-four people—a mix of humans and shifters.”
Klarissa’s eyes met his, haunted.“Eighteen months ago, it happened again.This time thirty-six shifters and two humans died before it burned out.He would have considered that ratio acceptable.”
The room went still.Rune remembered it, a news story out of Long Beach, something the human world had whispered about but never truly understood.“Long Beach,” he said aloud, voice grim.“The outbreak of something they could never name.I remember because the ESE sent a few of us out there.”
“Who or what are the ESE?”Klarissa asked softly, confusion edging her voice.
Rune glanced at Kamon before answering.“The Elite Shifter Enforcers.Fifteen men, split into units, not military or officially part of a government agency, more like independent contractors, I guess.Mostly pairs, one group of three.Kamon and me are one of those pairs.We move like shadows across borders.Our job is simple—we police our own kind.”
Kamon nodded.“When shifters think themselves above human or shifter law, or beyond consequence, the ESE delivers justice.We hunt corruption, put down abusers of power, and investigate attacks on shifters that humans could never handle.”
