Page 20

Days Since Last Attack: 0

Inside the cabin Vale had been hiding in, we find some clean clothes for her to wear and wash up the best we can with a pitcher of water left on the table. Apparently, Vale had been on her way back to her family’s cabin after dropping her parents off at the community cellar when she saw the Biters bust into her house. She’d dipped into the nearest cabin to wait them out when she heard my gunshot and came to investigate.

Then, unbelievably, she transformed into a giant wolf.

“So,” I drawl. “Should we talk about it while we wait for the all clear?”

Vale chuckles, but her face is haunted. “I know you’re probably feeling really confused, but there’s so much about the world that you don’t know. No one really knows unless you’re part of the shifter community.”

“You’ve been keeping your shifting a secret this whole time? Why?”

Vale readjusts her position on the floor next to me, getting more comfortable. “As you know, we lived in a bunker compound near the western coast of the continent before moving here. The land there frequently floods, making living conditions difficult. Before the Switch happened, a group of wealthy people had pooled their increasingly useless monetary assets together to build the underground bunkers to withstand the rising sea levels and other climate concerns. When society fell, they had their bunkers to escape to.

“From what we’ve been told, one day, deep underground in our bunker, an alpha went feral. At first, everyone wrote it off as confinement madness, but when he got much worse, he was quarantined in a cell in the medical center under constant observation.

“Over the next several days, doctors and researchers watched as the alpha descended into total madness. He stopped eating and sleeping. He’d pace the small confines of his cell like a predator, eyes gleaming with a reflective flash that hadn’t been there before. His howls could be heard from every level of the bunker.”

Vale’s face pales and her hands twist together in her lap. “When he lived longer than five days without drinking any water, researchers got curious. One of them entered the cell to try and draw blood samples but never made it out. The feral alpha attacked him, driven by the overwhelming desire to bite, and no amount of tranquilizer could take him down.

“The others thought the man was dead, so they cowardly left his body in the cell with the monster. However, the man hadn’t died, and within the day, the attacked researcher transformed into a beast, the exact same as the feral alpha.”

Stunned, I lean toward her and ask, “So Biters spontaneously evolved in the bunker too?”

“It would appear so,” she says with a shrug. “It was that alpha’s transformation that changed everything, though. When we moved to Grand Prairie, we told everyone that we left the bunker because I had been in the process of emerging as an omega, and my parents didn’t want me to be abused under the culture of the bunker.”

I nod. “Right, I remember. River fought hard with the assembly to grant your family access. Everyone was nervous about taking on four more people, but he swayed them with the promise of another omega, and an alpha capable of joining the guard.”

“It was an easy lie to sell, because the heart of what we claimed was true,” Vale admits. “We did escape and flee east seeking asylum from the bunker, but it wasn’t only because I was designating as an omega. It was because I was trying to emerge as a shifter, and it was killing me. If we had stayed, I would have died.”

I shake my head, disbelief and astonishment warring in my brain. “Oh my gods,” I breathe. “So, you all fled the bunker because you weren’t shifting?”

Vale stands and starts pacing the small room we’re in. “In part, yes. Clay had already shifted and we were constantly working to keep it a secret. We were so scared that if the medical researchers found out about Clay, they would take him to be tested, and we’d never see him again. Lots of people were disappearing, you see. The paranoia was eating us alive.”

“Vale,” I say, covering my mouth with my hand. “That sounds terrible.”

“It got so fucked up,” she whispers. “The medical department had become so suspicious about people going feral that they started blood testing everyone at eighteen, trying to find a reason for the illness by pointing fingers at differences found in people’s blood. When they enacted the testing protocol, I was mere months away from turning eighteen, but we already knew I was genetically destined to be a shifter because Clay’s wolf could sense my wolf trapped inside of me.”

“His wolf knew that you were a shifter?” I ask, amazed.

“Yes, but we didn’t know what to do about the fact that I couldn’t shift. Then, Shawn, Ren’s father, approached my parents. Clay and I had been assigned to our parents when we were babies, and because they had been born in the bunker, they knew nothing about shifters. Shawn told us that he knew what Clay was, and while we were shit scared, he taught us everything we know about being wolves, including the harrowing fact that if shifters don’t transform into their wolf before their designation emerges, they die.”

“How did he know all of this?” I ask, eyebrows drawn together.

Vale sighs, “I don’t know. Shawn made it seem like he wasn’t from the bunker but had somehow ended up down there with his son. Knowing what I do about the people that ran the bunker, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had been captured and brought underground for genetic variability, or something equally horrifying.

“Whatever the case, his knowledge saved my life. He told us that my wolf couldn’t emerge because we were underground and too disconnected from the natural world above us. I don’t know how Clay managed to shift, but my theory is that maybe omegas are more sensitive to their environment? At the time, the idea of escaping seemed absolutely ludicrous; however, we were out of options because no matter what, we knew we couldn’t stay. If the researchers found something in my blood, I would have been taken. If I stayed underground, the change would have killed me. Either way, it was a death sentence.”

I stand, hugging myself around the waist. “That sounds like a horrible predicament. How did you decide what to do?”

Vale slowly shakes her head. “My parents decided that it was worth the risk to escape and give me the chance to live, even if it meant I ended up dying anyway. At least then, I’d get to feel the wind in my hair for the first time in my life before the end of it. Shawn helped us escape, and I don’t know if he was ever found out or punished.”

Tears prickle at the edges of my eyes. They risked the relative safety of a protected bunker to give their daughter the chance to live. For them, freedom was worth the risk. It seems safety really is about control.

She jokes, “As you can see, it worked. We were nearing the edge of the Northern Pacific Territory when my wolf erupted from my skin. I must have alerted every wolf within miles, because shortly after I took fur, we were chased from the territory by another wolf. Afterward, we just kept running. Not even two days later I emerged as an omega. It was that close.”

“Fuck,” I drawl, amazed. I feel totally overwhelmed with the knowledge that I almost didn’t get the chance to meet Vale, that she was so close to simply being gone. Which reminds me . . . “How did you end up here, of all places?”

Vale really smiles now, a faraway look on her face. “Somewhere along the way, we ran into a group of nomads that wouldn’t stop talking about the ‘library’ at Grand Prairie. Apparently, they’d made a rather impressive trade deal with someone called Soline because they’d managed to track down a book she was looking for. My parents decided to travel here in hopes of permanent residence and to gain access to books from the outside world. They wanted to know more about the world after having lived their lives in the darkness of the bunker.”