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Nash seems to read my thoughts and changes the subject back to work.

“So, your theory about Ramsey getting his hands on the serum.” He doesn’t look up from the overlay he’s marking. “You weren’t guessing.”

“No.”

“You've been thinking about it for a while.”

I was thinking about it the moment I heard he’d become an alpha. I just needed someone else to say it out loud first. “It’s the only thing that explains the timeline. Ramsey was a soldier at times, but he was always a follower. He’s not an alpha, not like Grey always was. Wolves don’t just become dominant out of nowhere. Not naturally. That kind of thing can only be⁠—”

“Made,” he says.

“Forced,” I say at the same time.

We look at each other.

Made. That’s worse than forced. Forced implies he took it violently. Made implies he could do it again anytime for anyone else.

Would he barter for allies by promising to make them alphas too?

“Made or forced, he won’t be able to withstand the mental weight of a large pack,” Nash says. “Too much wolf strength when his wolf is not meant to hold it.”

“An entire pack of wolves under the leadership of a wolf who can’t hold his power,” I say quietly, the horror of it washing over me. Not just for him or us—for them.

“It’s unstable,” Nash finishes. “A ticking time bomb.”

I look at the map of the city. All those grids and sectors and carefully closed gaps. All those people I’ve spent years trying to protect.

“He doesn’t need weapons if he is the weapon,” I say.

Nash nods. “I’ve thought of that.”

“Do you think he knows he can’t hang onto it?” I wonder. “Is that why he came to you, another alpha? A backup plan?”

“No. His ego was too big for that. I think he wants to consolidate power from more than just Indigo Hills.”

“You think he wants to rule a larger area?”

“I think he believes he was due to come into a power that was snatched away from him.”

I sigh. “His dad was a general. He grew up expecting to inherit that title. But then… Anthony was killed a while back. Publicly. Franco accused him of fraud and embezzlement and executed him publicly. It was just a way to shock and scare people into submission, but he used a guy’s life to do it. Then, Vincenzo passed Ramsey over. And something in him just… snapped.”

Nash’s face is grim. “That kind of resentment and rage burns hot enough to scorch everything around it.”

My stomach twists as I realize how deep this goes for Ramsey. For him to be willing to take that serum, knowing what it did to the others before him—the way it killed Vincenzo in the end—is just more evidence of how determined he is to destroy us. My childhood friend is long gone. All that remains is my enemy.

It still hurts to know what I have to do now.

“We need to find him before he can take it out on the innocents in this city.”

“Yes,” Nash says. And then, quieter, “We will.”

It's not a platitude. It’s not reassurance for reassurance’s sake. He says it the way he says everything, like it’s already been assessed and decided and the outcome is simply a matter of execution.

That kind of certainty bolsters me in a way I didn’t know I needed. I look down at my tablet before he can see what it does to me. What he does to me.

We work until the light outside the windows shifts from the flat bright of midday to the slanting rays of afternoon. At some point, Echo appears on the windowsill outside. I have no idea how he got up there, considering there are no hedges to climb to reach it, and he sits, watching us with his dark, judgmental eyes.

Nash glances up at him. “I see you still have your partner in crime.”