Chapter 202

“Fuck.” Dominic ran his hand through his hair. He looked at the notifications that were pinging one after another. The elders of the council kept asking him for answers, and yet he had nothing. He had no idea where or when it happened or how it happened. The tiger shifter was kidnapped from the pack; this was very clear from the testimony that the woman gave to him.
She had told him that her husband was a submissive, and he had never taken a step out of the pack. He was more of a nerd who was obsessed with Galactic Wars. That man stayed in his house and loved spending his time watching movies and reading books. Which meant that the man was taken from the pack. Latest content publıshed on
Right from under his nose.
And if that wasn’t enough, the witch who was behind this brought the mutilated corpse back and then placed it in clear view to let everyone know what a big fuck-up their alpha had done.
The door banged open, and Tao barged inside. His face was set taut as he looked at Dominic. “We have apprehended everyone whom we could; they are resting in the prison cells.”
And by resting, Dominic knew that the man meant that those people were just a breath away from death. He narrowed his eyes and questioned, “Did they tell you why they did it? Why betray the pack?”
Tao hesitated.
“Tao?”
“They were upset with you,” Tao relented with a sigh. “According to them, they were done with how you were losing control and barely holding on after Inez left. They took it as a betrayal. You were the one who threw Inez away. You made her an outcast, and then when she left—you abandoned the pack.”
“I didn’t abandon the pack!” Dominic snapped. The words seeping past his skin made him feel more than just humiliated. It made him feel guilty, and it didn’t sit right with him.
Tao looked at him as if he were about to contradict him, but he thought it through. Good. Shaking his head, Tao said to him, “That’s not what these people thought. They took your betrayal personally, and the witch – the one who came to them–gave them a really attractive offer.”
“Of what?”
“Of strength. She told them that as long as they help her get a rare shifter, they can overcome the boundaries of our kind. They can become Animorphos.”
Dominic stiffened. He knew animorphos. Of course he did.
They were the oldest and most powerful kind of shifters. The kind who could morph into any animal form as long as they imagine and see them. Even dragons, if they wish to.
However, their kind vanished aeons and aeons ago. They had been extinct for so long that they had become folklore. No one believed that they even existed. Even Dominic didn’t quite believe that their kind existed. However, his grandmother did relish in telling him of the might of the animorphos who used to fight alongside the Moon Goddess.
And when he asked what happened to them, she would often pause and look at the horizon.
’Greed. Greed happened, Dom.’
Dominic had no idea what his grandmother meant by those words. But he was quite certainly sure that their kind vanished due to the greed of the shifters. Burning through centuries as more and more shifters tried to imprint on animorphos to give birth to animorphos children, only to get shifter blood.
Until nothing was left behind.
He gritted his teeth and ran his hand down his face before saying, “And they believed it? They believed that nonsense?”
“I don’t think it’s nonsense.”
Dominic snapped his head up and looked at Tao. His eyes flickered as he questioned, “And what do you mean by those words?”
Tao licked his lips; he shifted uneasily on his feet and then said to Dominic, “I don’t know, but I think these constant kidnappings? They are a sign, Dom.”
“The site—”
“The site could be a smokescreen,” he heard Tao snap. “Do you think that witches are such simple creatures? They will just go ahead and set up a site where they post videos of hurting and inflicting physical pain on shifters? Sure, they may find it amusing, but would they?”
Dominic pursed his lips. As he brooded over the words that Tao told him, he had to admit that the man was right. Witches were never simple. They had patterns which were like mazes, difficult to crack. The fact that they hadn’t done anything, even though they knew that the security of the site had been compromised; the fact that someone had stolen the video of what happened to Inez inside the prison cell and posted it on the site—possibly one of those idiots who thought it was a good idea to betray their alpha and find out the consequences.
“You mean to say that they want us to be thrown off and tangled with the site,” said Dominic. His voice was thick with anger.
Tao nodded wisely, visibly relieved that he had cottoned on to what he was trying to tell him. He looked around the office as if he worried that there was some magic within the walls as well, and then whispered, “I think… I think they are trying to recreate animorphos, Dom. The only creature that could go against the lycans. The apex predator of the present time, with the dragon shifters going extinct.”
**
On the other side, far from the packs hidden behind the shadows of the city and the large buildings, at the port, two witchlings were trying their best to carry a flailing siren that had been caught by them earlier in the evening.
The siren who was caught was struggling and thrashing, but with his limbs tied, there was nothing that he could do. He could only watch the two witchlings take him away from his home.
“Do you think the Great One would bless us once we turn this siren to her?”
**
Bet you didn’t see that coming did you?