Page 2

"Ivan," he greets me. "Kon. Geo. I'm glad you're all here. Have a seat—have a seat."

We look at the chairs skeptically. No one is in the mood to sit. Tigers are pacers by nature; even in human skin, we're more comfortable stretching our legs.

"Get to it, Doc," I say.

"Yes. Yes." He adjusts the perch of his glasses.

"Is Alex ready to go?" Kon asks.

The doc shifts his weight, and his eyes don't meet ours. "Yes—well—that's why we're here. Let's talk about that."

I growl. "What is there to talk about? He took a bullet to the arm. He should be fine." My words drop low enough that the glass in the light box gives a faint tick, and Roger's fingers freeze on the edge of the film.

"Yes, he took a bullet to the arm. But the wound was… unusual."

Now, it's Georgy's turn to growl. "What do you mean, unusual? It was a bullet. I saw it myself. Clean entry, in and out. The only problem is it went through the bone."

The doctor shifts again, then opens a folder on his desk and crosses to the light box, pinning the X-rays up for us to see. We all move closer, and he shivers in the circle we form around him.

"As you can see, it was a clean entry. However—look at the size and scope of it."

A perfect circle, the size of a golf ball, where bone should be.

I stare at the X-ray, trying to reconcile what I'm seeing with the brother I know. Aleksej is the strongest of us after me. When we were boys, he broke his leg jumping from a cliff because Konstantin dared him to. He shifted before he hit the ground, healed before he reached the bottom, and spent the next week bragging about how he'd won the bet. I beat his ass for being stupid, and he laughed through it all.

Now, I'm looking at a hole in his arm that hasn't closed.

"Do you see how the two parts of the bone don't touch at all?" the doctor continues. "There are no ligaments holding them together. No skin. No blood vessels. Everything—it's gone . I've never seen a wound like this. A weapon we've never encountered had to have created it. A weapon designed specifically to address shifter anatomy."

Those fucking Mordecais. They will pay for this shit.

But not before they tell me where they got that weapon.

Because a bullet that can do this to Alex can do it to any of us. Konstantin. Georgy. My father. Even me. And if the Mordecais have stopped a tiger from healing, every enemy we've ever made will line up to buy a few rounds.

I pull out my phone and message Georgy, even though he's standing three feet away. Recover the bullet. Find the weapon. Nobody touches either without my permission.

His phone vibrates. He glances at the screen, then at me, nods slightly, and returns his attention to the X-ray.

Georgy examines the film. "But with his shifter ability, he should be able to repair the wound. Right?"

The doctor swallows hard. "Ordinarily, yes."

"What do you mean, ordinarily ?" My brows are already lowering before he can answer.

"With shifter anatomy, healing begins as the body knits itself into place. The wound is essentially sewn back together—and once it's closed, the body grafts new skin, new material over it. Not everything is rebuilt, you understand. It is repaired." He taps the film. "Look at the X-ray again."

We do.

"This is why this bullet was genius."

We all growl at him.

"Evil genius," he corrects hastily. "Evil, for sure—but still genius. Because they left nothing to be rebuilt. There isn't enough material left to rebuild, or even to repair—and repair is what the body does. The two bones don't meet."

He looks at us, his strange golden eyes blinking horizontally while we wait.

"What are you saying?" Konstantin demands.