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“Bring it here, genius,” I shout before Silas has a chance to escape down the hall. He appears at the threshold and peeks around the edge of the door, looking around like he’s worried he’s going to be roped into doing work that doesn’t involve listening to himself complain.
“Why do you have my phone?” I ask when he hands it to me.
“Because it was buzzing in the den while I was trying to watch a movie, and it wouldn’t shut up. Was driving me insane.”
He smirks. “I was gonna throw it into the garbage disposal, but Ford reminded me on FaceTime last night that I should try ‘practicing self-restraint.’” He leans against the table, scooting notebooks out of the way with his ass.
“Turns out, I’m not a fan,” he muses. “Think I’ll go back to doing impulsive shit and see how that pans out.”
“Ford should charge by the hour,” Vae mutters, nose stuck in a book of Aztec illustrations.
“What are you guys even doing?” Silas asks, grabbing an old cloth-bound book of Scandinavian folklore and rifling through the pages.
“Riven has us going through all these ancient stories to see if there’s mention of anything that relates to the Omegas’ ramblings,” I reply, plucking the book from his hands and turning it right side up. “You’re holding it upside down, dumbass.”
“Well, jokes on you,” he drops it on the table. “Because I can’t read that language in any direction, soooo…”
My phone starts buzzing again, saving me from having to respond. Checking the ID, I curse.
“Son of a bitch,” I groan and accept the call.
“About damn time,” an irritated, feminine voice echoes through the speakers.
“Sorry. Left my phone somewhere else.” I don’t bother with a better explanation, and Whitetail doesn’t care if I have one.
Whitetail is a code name. Very few know what species she is. Hell, most people didn’t even know Whitetail is a she, but we’ve been working together for almost six decades. That affords me a few privileges, like phone calls without the voice scrambler.
Her mind works like mine, though Caelan says our friendship is nothing more than an ‘echo-chamber of recycled logic and stupid opinions.’ I try explaining to him that scientific facts aren’t opinions, but Caelan just shrugs and says that to him, we sound like two people seeking validation by kissing each other’s ass.
Fates, I miss my packmate so fucking much.
“You want to tell me what the fuck you’re doing with blood that shouldn’t exist?” Whitetail’s voice is sharper than my throwing knives.
Alright then, she’s actually pissed.
“I don’t know what kind of blood we have, Whitetail, so you’re going to need to give me some more information.” I sigh, rubbing my temples. “That’s the entire reason I dropped that sample with you. To find out who, or what, it belonged to.”
She lets out an aggrieved noise. “Well, Daxen, I don’t have an answer to that because, like I just said, it shouldn’t exist. It doesn’t follow designation or supernatural species markers, and it’s violating the rules of molecular stability. Do you know how many Fates-damned times I had to run this shit before I finally accepted it wasn’t my equipment glitching?”
Across from me, Vae perks up and sets aside his book, gaze focusing on the phone in my hand.
“Hey,” he cuts in. “You want to explain that using words Silas can understand?”
Silas mock gasps, hand to his chest. “ I understood plenty. Damn for one. Fucking for another.”
Whitetail huffs. “I don’t know how to explain this without sounding insane, so you’re just going to have to try and follow along.”
“I promise to try very hard not to be stupid,” Vae deadpans.
“This blood…” She takes a deep breath. “It’s almost like it came from a creature that evolved along an entirely different branch of existence. Parallel, maybe? It has genetic markers that tell me it’s female and Omega, but that’s the best I can narrow it down.” Whitetail hesitates, and I keep quiet, content to wait her out. She wouldn’t have called just to tell me she came up empty.
There’s more she’s not saying.
I expected abnormality; I just hoped Whitetail could give me more than female and Omega. That only narrows it down to around seven hundred million individuals across all species on the globe.
“I thought it was possibly a synthetic hybrid. A species someone had tried to splice together,” she continues, and Silas nearly chokes on air. Eyes wide, he mouths ‘spliced together’ like he’s trying to picture someone sewing bones and blood into another living thing just to see if they can.
“Thought maybe you were dealing with some kind of mad scientist,” she goes on. “But the results are too perfect.”
