Chapter 105 One of Them
The helicopter blades were already slicing through the morning air by the time we stepped onto the rooftop. The playful warmth from breakfast had dissolved into something sharper, heavier. Darius didn’t say much as we boarded, but his hand stayed at the small of my back, steady and grounding. The city below shrank as we lifted off, sunlight glinting off steel and glass, the world deceptively calm from above.
I watched the skyline disappear and tried to steady the unease tightening in my chest.
Vincent’s words echoed in my mind. Vanishing omegas, I knew what that meant.
The flight to the border town was short but silent. Darius stood near the cockpit, speaking quietly with Vincent through his headset, already coordinating containment and support. I sat opposite him, staring out at the rolling forests below, the clusters of pack territories carved between hills and rivers that appear as small towns.
Wolves like places like this, close to nature.
When we finally descended, the damage was visible even before we landed. Smoke drifted from what had once been outbuildings.
The pack house is still standing, but part of the eastern wing is charred black. Windows shattered. Wood splintered. Fences had been torn apart like paper. The scent in the air, burnt earth, blood, fear, hit me the second the helicopter door opened.
The moment my boots touched the ground, every head turned.
Gratitude. Suspicion. Fear. All tangled together in their eyes. People are gathered outside.
Darius stepped forward first, voice calm but commanding as he greeted the pack Alpha. I stayed slightly behind him, scanning the grounds. The silence here wasn’t peaceful. It was hollow.
Vincent meets us first, jaw tight.
“It was bad,” he says without preamble. “They came just after midnight. Fast. Coordinated.”
Coordinated. Hybrids aren’t supposed to be coordinated. Darius’s posture shifts subtly beside me.
“Show us,” he says.
We’re led through the damaged wing. Claw marks gouge through walls,too deep for wolves, too precise for feral animals. The air feels wrong in here. Charged. Corrupted. Hybrids.
“They weren’t wolves,” one of the survivors says behind us.
I turn.
He’s young. Maybe nineteen. Arm in a sling. Bruises blooming across his throat.
“They were twisted,” he continues, voice shaking. “Like wolves stretched over something else. Their eyes,” He swallows. “Their eyes weren’t right.”
I don’t need him to finish. I know. I feel it in my bones. The scent in the air confirms it.Hybrids.
We move toward the courtyard where more pack members wait. Some are injured. Some are just… stunned.
A woman steps forward, gripping her daughter’s hand so tightly the child winces.
“They killed three,” she says flatly. “Took two more.”
“Took?” Darius asks sharply.
She nods.
“They didn’t just attack. They dragged them.”
My stomach twists. Dragged means purpose. Dragged means use. Dragged means someone is building something. This is the first time hybrids took victims.
Fred appears from the far end of the yard, wiping blood from his hands,not his own.
“They trapped one,” he says.
The words land like a stone in my chest.
“Alive?”
“Barely. It’s restrained in the lower storage cellar.”
Darius’s gaze flicks to me.
“You don’t have to see it.”
But I already am walking.
The bunker door was thick steel, dented in places where something had thrown itself against it. The scent seeping through the cracks was metallic and sour.
When they opened it, the air felt colder.
The creature inside crouched in the far corner, chains secured around reinforced pillars.
It hissed as walked further in the room it was being held ,It was lean and wiry, its limbs elongated unnaturally. The skin was pale and ashen, stretched thin over bone like parchment. Patches of fur clung to it.
Fred stepped forward cautiously. “We will contain it,” he murmured, scanning it with handheld equipment.
The hybrid jerked against the chains, a guttural sound ripping from its throat, not a growl, not a scream, something in between.
It locked onto me. And stilled. The room went quiet. Its head tilted slightly, nostrils flaring.Recognition.
Not of me specifically.
But of what I was.
I felt it like a wire pulled tight between us.
Same origin.
Different outcome.
Darius shifted closer to my side subtly, protective without making a scene.
“It’s reacting to her,” one of the pack members whispered.
The words sliced through the air. I stepped closer despite the tension.
The hybrid’s movements softened,not calm, but less frantic. Its breathing ragged. Its gaze almost… pleading. Whatever had been done to it had torn something fundamental apart.
Fred’s team moved efficiently then, sedating it carefully, reinforcing restraints before preparing to transport it.
“We’ll take it to the lab,” Fred said quietly to Darius. “Figure out what was done. Where it came from.”
I nodded once.
But I already had a terrible suspicion.
While Fred’s team secured the creature, I turned toward the main house where the injured had been gathered.
Inside, the air was thick with antiseptic and fear.
Cots lined the walls. Healers moved between them. Some wounds were clawed. Some looked crushed. All brutal.
When I entered, conversations faltered.
A young boy with bandages across his shoulder stared at me wide-eyed. An older woman gripped his hand tightly.
I moved to the nearest cot.
A middle-aged beta lay there, arm splinted, chest wrapped. His mate sat beside him, eyes red-rimmed.
“Thank you for coming Luna ,” she said softly.
Gratitude.
But beneath it,something else.
I felt it in the way her gaze lingered too long. “They fought,” she tells me. “We fought hard.”
“I know,” I say softly.
The next cot holds a teenage girl with a bandaged leg. She avoids my eyes at first.
“You’re one of them,” she says finally.
My throat tightens.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you stop them?” The question isn’t accusatory. It’s desperate.
And it slices deeper than anger ever could.
Before I can answer, another woman steps forward, the mother.
“Yes,Why can’t you stop them?” she asks, voice trembling now. “You’re one of them.”
I am proof that hybrids can survive. But to them, I am also proof that the monsters are not entirely separate.
That the line between us is thinner than they want it to be.
“I didn’t make them,” I say quietly.
“But you came from where they did,” she replies.
And she’s right. Silence spreads through the infirmary. All eyes on me. I could deny. I could distance myself.
But that would be cowardice.
“I survived,” I say slowly. “Not because I’m better. Not because I’m cleaner. I survived because someone wanted me to.”
The words taste bitter.
“And if someone wanted me to survive,” I continue, “then someone is still out there making others.”
Fear ripples across the room.
“And I will stop them,” I finish. The teenage girl’s gaze softens. The mother doesn’t. But she nods once.
It’s not forgiveness. It’s something else. Acceptance of shared danger.
When we leave the infirmary, Darius is silent.
He waits until we’re alone near the tree line before speaking.
“You don’t have to see any of the victims if you don’t want to, it’s not your fault this happened.”
“I know but I want to,” I say again.
I turn to face him. “As long as hybrids exist, I will be blamed.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Fair doesn’t matter, it never mattered to me .” I said.
The wind moves through the trees above us.
“If I stay quiet,” I continue, “if I pretend this isn’t tied to where I came from, then I’m complicit.”
He studies me carefully.
“You’re not responsible for what was done to you.”
“I’m responsible for what happens next.”
That’s the difference.
Back at the house,temporary lodging provided by the pack, can’t sit still. Darius is meeting with the alpha and elders of the pack.
Fred is overseeing transport of the captured hybrid.
And I—
I dig.
Old files are brought to me. Archive boxes that haven’t been opened in years. Medical reports from experimental programs quietly shut down. Council records sealed under “national security.” I spread them across the dining table. I was going to get to the bottom of this and shut it down.