Page 45 of Mated By the Pack
“So, Calla…” Vance says, sitting down and leaning forward. “You were a nurse in Haven North?”
“Yes… But how did you know?” she answers, groaning with satisfaction as she takes her first bite. “Jace, this is incredible. Wow!”
“I’m glad you like it,” I grind out, feeling a twinge that makes my heart skip a beat. What the fuck was that? It shouldn’t matter, but it does. I don’t like the way it feels. “It’s an old recipe…”
“She’s right, brother.” Gideon emerges from the kitchen, chewing a piece of Gen-Hen. “It’s delicious.”
“I followed you to The Outpost,” Vance explains, then gestures to Fiona. “Heard the runt calling you Nurse Calla.”
“I’m not a runt,” Fiona protests, narrowing her eyes. “I’m just small for my age. My assessment scores were great. I might even become a scientist once we get home. That was one of the options.”
I can’t suppress the angry guttural sound that rises in my throat. I turn my attention toward Fiona, which causes her to cower a little behind her plate. “A scientist, huh? That’s what you want to be? Play around with life and see what kind of abominations you can create?”
“Easy, brother,” Vance says. “She’s just a girl. The scientists who did this to us are long gone by now.”
There’s tension in the air. Tension coiled tight in my chest. I try to let it out with a sharp exhale, but it doesn’t budge.
“That’s what you are?” Nara asks cautiously. “Hybrids? Part of the same genetic experiments as the lion hybrid we met?”
“Similar,” Gideon answers. “Frank is a Class-1 hybrid. Our parents were Class-2 hybrids, designed not to look like monsters. It was supposed to take generations for our kind to have the same strength and speed as the Class-1s.”
“Scientists didn’t have any idea what they were fucking with,” I snarl. “Just a bunch of lunatics playing dangerous games with nature. The Tangle is probably their fault—some plant hybrid that got its roots in the ground after New York got bombed.”
“You were there, during all of that?” Nara perks up. “I apologize for the questions, but I’m a teacher. This is all so fascinating. It seems like a lot of history has been lost since the solar flare.”
“Lost?” I scoff. “No, more like they forgot the shit they wanted to forget. Your textbooks are probably filled with a bunch of lies to make people feel better about destroying the world.”
“How did it really happen?” Calla asks.
If the question came from Nara, I’d dismiss it. All of us would. We hate that part of the past—hate revisiting it as much as we hate the memories the call of the wild couldn’t erase. I can tell by the look on Gideon’s face that he’s going to answer, so I let him have it.
Gideon turns and reaches for a bottle. Whiskey. We don’t really have a taste for that either, but it still numbs us a little. I don’t refuse the glass he offers when he pours them. Nara gladly takes one, but doesn’t let him serve the younger girls. Calla declines on her own.
“Your textbooks are likely accurate up to a point. The two world wars. All the conflicts that followed. Some of them were called wars, but I don’t think anyone really understood the concept back then,” Gideon explains. “The Germans first started developing hybrids during World War II. The Americans weren’t far behind, but they had religion and politics to navigate. After the Nazis were defeated, all of that research was seized and taken to the genetic research facility in New York.”
“Yadda, yadda, then they started making hybrids,” I mutter, taking a sip of my whiskey. “And not the animals they were already creating. That’s when they started addinghumanDNA to the mix.”
“It still took a long time to get from human babies with wolf heads that died minutes after birth to Class-1s like Frank,” Gideon continues, ignoring my interruption. “And even longerto get to Class-2s. Things stalled out with us because they weren’t able to engineer a viable mate.”
Gideon’s gaze lingers on Calla. So does mine. She notices, squirming in her seat and shuddering a few soft breaths. The other girls seem oblivious to it.
“Then the Great War started,” Vance sighs. “And everything changed.”
“The history books say it began with trade conflicts,” Nara says. “Sanctions, tariffs, embargos… Is that true?”
“The bullshit before the bullets,” I grunt.
“Yes, the world was already a powder keg, just waiting for a spark to light the fuse. Once that fuse got lit, there was no way to stop it,” Gideon says, downing enough whiskey for me to tell he’s using it as a crutch to hide the need burning inside him. If it’s anything like what I’m feeling, that’s getting harder by the second. “They sent drones and soldiers into battle first. It wasn’t until they started losing that we were sent to the battlefield.”
“Oh, you actuallyfoughtin the Great War.” Nara’s jaw drops.
“Mmhmm,” Gideon murmurs. “Class-1s, too, eventually. That’s when they bombed New York. The solar flare came not long after that, so rounding up all the hybrids that escaped was impossible, especially once the heat storms started raging.”
“Wow.” Nara lets out a sigh of bewilderment.
Everyone has finished their meals. I down the rest of my whiskey.
“History lesson is over,” I grunt. “They need rest. We’ve got a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”
