“I restored a balance.”
His voice shifted. The paternal warmth evaporated, replaced by the fervor of a man delivering a sermon he’d rehearsed in the mirror for years.
“Lycans became myths. Stories told to frighten children. Your kind retreated behind your portals and left the human world believing the threat had passed. And what happened? The Orderdied. Hunters lost their purpose. The greatest protective force humanity ever produced withered because there was nothing left to hunt.”
He spread his arms. The gun stayed trained on Mira.
“So I gave them prey. The rogues. The ferals. Wolves with no minds and no masters, released into human territories to create the incidents that justified our existence. Every attack, every sighting, every terrified village that called for help. I manufactured the threat and built the army to fight it.”
“You murdered your own creations,” Solomon said.
“I recycled them. There’s a difference.” Thiago’s smile returned. “The Order of Silver Dawn was dying. I revived it. Gave it purpose, funding, soldiers. Built it into a force that could actually accomplish what generations of hunters had failed to do: restore the natural order.”
He pointed at us. “Predators.” Then at himself. “And hunters.”
Thiago smiled and declared, “That is theorderof the world.”
“You’re fucking sick in the head,” I said.
“I’m a visionary. History will agree with me.”
The explosion came from the adjacent room.
A deep, concussive boom that shook the floor and rattled the glass on every cell in the corridor. Dust cascaded from the ceiling and the monitors on the control station flickered.
The purifier vaults assigned to the converted hunters. Kaia, Damon, Reese, executing the part of Mira’s plan that still worked despite everything falling apart.
Thiago glanced at the wall separating us from the vault room. Yawned.
“Your converts think they did something, huh?” He brushed the dust from his shoulder. “Touching, really. Months of careful infiltration to destroy a stockpile that took me years to build.” He shrugged. “It will take time to produce more. But it’s not as though I don’t have a backup.”
He reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a small remote. Single button. Black casing.
“The compound’s environmental system runs through every room on this level. Climate control, air filtration, emergency dispersal. I had the Purifier loaded into the ventilation reserves six months ago. A precaution. In case of exactly this scenario.”
His thumb hovered over the button.
“Don’t,” Lucian said.
“The beautiful thing about the Purifier in aerosol form is its efficiency. One exposure. Fifteen seconds. Irreversible.” He looked at each of us in turn. “Three alpha lycans. The king, his enforcer, and the warrior. Reduced to the same mindless creatures pacing those cells.”
Mira flailed and tried to scream.
His thumb pressed down.
The sound was mechanical. A deep hiss that started in the walls and spread through the ceiling, followed by the vents above us opening with synchronized precision.
White smoke poured into the corridor, rolling across the floor in waves, filling the space between us and the cells and the chair where Thiago stood with Mira at his feet.
The smoke reached my lungs before I could hold my breath.
Thiago looked down at Mira. The gun was still at her temple. The smoke curled around both of them, rising, thickening, filling every inch of the sublevel.
“I wonder,” he said, tilting his head with genuine curiosity, “does this mean she’ll give birth to mindless wolves?”
The smile that spread across his face was the last clear thing I saw before the smoke swallowed the room.
“Try not to chow down on my daughter, boys.”
