"S-Solomon escaped?" I sputtered a name so close to my heart that it pinched. And yet, my brother's name was so unfamiliar on my lips that my voice didn't sound like my own. "But I've always been told that he's... dead?"

"He might be," was the response I didn't appreciate from Meredith, who tapped her nails on the table. "We don't know. We haven't seen him for six months now after he... escaped."

Her words fluttered my eyes closed. My brain felt thick and processed thoughts slowly. I had trouble getting past a previous piece of information, reflected in my muttered words, "My brother is... alive!?"

"As of six months ago, yes," was her impatient response, accompanied with harder nail taps.

Her porcelain-masked face, perfect sculpted black eyebrows, pale skin relaxed over her high cheekbones, and pale, heart-shaped lips, looked at me quizzically, as if I had information on his whereabouts. My sole response that expended what little strength I had for a silent head shake.

Six months... my brother was alive. And here.

Three months before the start of this crazy mate selection tour that's entirely fake.

"My brother..." I thought carefully about the words I chose. "Did he stay here... freely?"

"As freely as someone put under a medical coma, yes." Simon's expression hardened. "Due to a mistake with his medicine dosage, he woke up and escaped. Rumors are that he went rogue but no one has seen a single sighting of him, not in this territory at least."

The weight of his words 'he woke up and escaped' slumped me over in my seat. My eyes widened as a million thoughts swirled in my head, but one in particular came into focus.

He was trapped. Held here like a prisoner, by their pack.

My heart strings grasped at the positive aspect, pushing more tears over my cheeks and filling my nose with congestion.

He's alive though.

In conflicting reactions, my heart swelled inside my chest.

My brother's alive. Or, he was.

Instantly, the mental image I saw when buzzing out of my brain resurfaced. The tall, lean-framed man with light-blonde hair, pale skin marred with white scars, and clear, aquamarine eyes.

My eyes.

Waves and waves of Lumi's emotions flowed through her normal block. A warming sensation spread through my body like wildfire.

'Still alive.'

Squeezing my eyes closed, my damp lashes fell onto my cheeks.

Can you... feel his wolf?

My heart lurched when she was quiet for a moment. I felt her reach, extending herself by casting an invisible search. A deep-rooted sense of a longing, a reason not to hide in the shadows, fueled her intentions. The quiet intensity she exerted gripped my own heart.

We shared the same reaction, an explosion of warmth and relief, with her response.

'Faint.'

A weighted sensation filled my stomach as my eyes opened to the silent room. Suspicion crawled up the back of my throat. Hardening my gaze, I looked from Meredith to Simon.

Even their reactions will provide clues if they're telling the truth or not.

The risk that both took, even speaking with me, wasn't lost in my mind. It was only rivaled by the greater risk I'd placed myself in under the same circumstances. The room in the air thickened.

The first question I blurted out was, "Did he break out on his own or...?"

Fortunately, they understood what I hadn't said, because Meredith immediately spoke up. "Time isn't on our hands but you're owed an explanation."

I couldn't hold back the scoff that rushed out my lips.

You think!?

My expression must have mirrored my thoughts, because she added, "We didn't know to what extent we could trust you, of how much of your father is also in you."

Her words only generated reactive thoughts that were bitter and sarcastic, so I kept them to myself.

I'd hope as little as possible.

My right hand lifted and my palm rested on my left shoulder. While my scars faded and shrank, the longest one on my back sat up near my shoulder. I had enough of a strip show in front of Torak in the East, I wasn't above doing it again if that was the proof of trust she needed.

"We'd heard rumors about your father's cruelty inflicted on you." Simon's eyes followed the strokes of my fingers over my shoulder. "Which is the only reason we're meeting with you now."

"And I still don't trust you," Meredith added.

"Then trust Solomon," I replied, clamping my palm onto my shoulder. "Trust that he's my brother and I wouldn't want to hurt him."

My words struck a nerve because she flared with the first reaction I'd seen from her. Jolting upright, her fists tightened and her expression darkened. Indignance clipped her tone, "He's more of a brother to me than you!"

She pushed her chair away from the table, then stood up and leaned against the wall. Her chest rising and falling, she closed her eyes and steadied her shoulders. After a few moments where Simon and I eyed each other with guarded distrust, she spoke again.

"He wasn't always a prisoner." Meredith's chin dipped down and her voice dropped to a whisper. "He grew up here with me and Tobias. Like normal, happy children, except Solomon wasn't allowed outside the pack house. His skin was too sensitive to the sun, we were told. Our father told us... Solomon had an... infliction."

"Sounds familiar," I muttered more to myself. Simon's eyes flicked back to me, so I clarified with a tap of my finger on his tablet's medicine administered list, "Mine was diabetes."

"Hmm..." he hummed.

"At first..." Meredith's eyes darkened at me. "We were told he needed medication, shots, blood draws. That his pale skin and hair were from a rare form of albinism. But when his white wolf appeared, he was transferred to live in the research lab..."

Her eyes fluttered closed. "We were told he was sick and we couldn't see him anymore."

At her pause, my lips parted but before I begged her to continue, her chest lifted and she sighed. "Years passed and he became a whisper of a memory. Not until my father promoted me to act as his eyes in the lab's day-to-day operations about a year ago."

My lower lip rolled under my teeth at her words and a chill formed between my shoulder blades, then trailed down my spine. The hand still on my shoulder clenched my shirt's fabric tightly.

The similarity of my and Solomon's experiences was no coincidence, but it sounded like I made out much better in my circumstances. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes at the idea that, for the past four years, he lived in a white cell like the one I was kept in after my first shift.

I was kept under house arrest but at least I interacted with others. Growing up aside, the last few years, Solomon had... no one?

"When I found him, I thought he was dead, but..." Her voice cracked, she closed her eyes, and sagged into the wall. "Here we are."

What her words implied, how he was able to escape, struck straight into my chest. My eyes passed between her and Simon.

She helped him. They both did.

"Thank you," my lips pushed out the faintest whisper. Two lone tears tipped over the corners of my eyes and slipped over my cheeks. Her eyes opened and dragged to mine, then she nodded.

Sympathy for Solomon's past situation provided me with no answers to the questions I'd sought answers for months. The 'what' had been explained, but as always, the 'why' remained elusive. With rough sweeps of my fingers, I brushed at my damp cheeks and turned to Simon.

"Simon." My voice wavered with a raspy whisper, "Is there something wrong with me? Us?"

"No." He chuckled, bouncing his shoulders. "Far from it. You're quite healthy, Miss Zara."

"Not a laughing matter, Simon." For once I was grateful for Meredith's crass, as his chuckles dissolved into a throaty cough.

"How do you know I'm healthy?" My forehead tensed as my eyebrows squeezed together.

"I know everything there is to know about you, Miss Zara." He pulled a blood-filled vial from his pocket, curling his fingers as his palm offered it to me.

I recoiled, recognizing the vile from Anna's blood draws. The sight of my family's name stamp tensed my muscles and the skin on my forearms and neck tickled like every hair raised.

He handed the vial to me and its frigid cold seared into my damp palm. Tiny crystals enclosed around the glass end, like he took it out of a freezer. I spun the vial over and almost dropped it when the label matched my profile, the draw dated from four months ago.

"My last blood draw." My fingers trembled as I handed the vile back.

"We've been studying this for the past four years," Simon replied slowly, lifting up the vial between us. He paused as if I knew what he meant, but my mind came up blank. "Anna shipped all your blood samples here weekly here to pathology."

"You've been..." My eyes stared down at the table between us as connections clicked into place. "Studying my genetics from my blood samples?"

"No, Miss Zara." My eyes lifted at the sadness in his voice. His eyes softened to a dull gray and the corners of his mouth turned down. "Your DNA."

"What about it?" He tucked my blood sample back into one of his lab coat's front pockets, which I found kind of creepy, and turned his attention to his tablet. After a few presses into the screen with his fingertips, a large TV screen on the wall that I hadn't noticed earlier flipped to life.

"Everything that makes up everyone is sourced within their DNA." He pulled up an illustration of a red and blue, twisted, ladder-like structure that I recognized as a double-helix, but knew nothing past that.

"Age, gender, eye, skin, and hair color, predispositions to cancer, you name it, it's in your DNA. It's the building blocks of life, really." Despite his middle-aged appearance, Simon's voice radiated with the experience of an old professor. "And death."

"Why mine though?" My eyes stared at the illustration, the curling two chains, like it held some key to all this.

Whatever it is, I don't see it.

"Because yours is very special, Miss Zara." The sympathetic look on his face didn't make me feel like that was a good thing. My mind went back to Lumi's developmental delays, the unknown answers weren't lost on me.

What isn't he telling me?

My lower lip trembled with my voice, "What's... Wrong with me, Simon?"

In a move that offered no consolation, he reached over and patted the back of my hand. "For you, nothing. For the rest of us, it's not so good."

My eyes stretched as wide as they could. Any words my brain formed strangled in the back of my throat. Now I was positive that every hair on my body stood up at attention.

"Time's up," Meredith interrupted while one of her index fingers tapped against the watch on her wrist. "Gloom and doom later, Simon. Someone's going to notice we're not on tour anymore."

"Please," I begged, my eyes burning with strain. "Five more minutes, tell whoever that I'm an idiot and needed slow and repeated words."

At my words. Simon flashed a faint smile that didn't spread higher than his mouth. After he looked at Meredith, who nodded, he cleared his throat. "Have you ever wondered why you look so different from everyone else? Pale skin, white-blonde hair, and light blue eyes, Miss Zara? Technically, your eyes are Tyndall blue, with tiny striations of light green around the iris pigment epithelium..."

At Meredith's cleared throat, he blinked. "All these distinct features are evidence that..."

"That what?" I whispered.

"You have a genetic defect," he finished simply, in a voice devoid of all emotion.

My mouth dropped open and I exhaled a silent gasp. Suddenly, the solid white, windowless walls of this shoebox-sized room closed in on me further.

So much for nothing's wrong with me.

"B-But -" My lips quivered too much for me to finish that thought.

"More specifically," Simon continued as his eyes studied mine. "Somewhere inside your DNA, either the eighty-sixth intron of the HERC-two gene or oculocutaneous albinism II gene on chromosome fifteen is most likely mutated. Your blonde hair and light skin are other indicators."

None of what Simon explained made any sense, except for the possibility that genetically I was an albino.

"Defect... " I started wide-eyed at him. "But... you said there wasn't -"

"It's not a problem for you. And you're not an albino," he assured me. "But for the rest of us, a protein within the albinism genetic defect you carry has a weakening effect on our red and white blood cells."

"I..." my mouth dried because I had no idea such a possibility existed.

"Not at all the same result, but the absorption is almost Coombs positive effect that is observed in newborns, so to speak. Or Grafts or Hosts' disease in patients after failed cancer treatments."

My eyes fluttered because Simon spoke his own language, and it wasn't one that I interpreted.

"Basically, if I inject this..." Searching his pocket, he lifted up the vial again. "Into my bloodstream, then my body would think it's a foreign contaminant, try to fight it off, and weaken my immune system in the process. The protein buried within your genetic defect would take advantage of this weakness, inflicting further damage.""

"How...." I didn't know how my eyes hadn't fallen out of my head. "...is that possible?"

I glanced up and saw Meredith's face was white-washed and stricken with concern. Her arms crossed over her chest and she squeezed her fingers into her upper arms but the movement barely registered with me.

"Genetics," was Simon's casual reply. He slipped my blood sample back down and patted his pocket with his palm. "Very strong genetics. Ones that, if mapped out to discover the defective recessive gene, would be very interesting research."

The brightness in Simon's eyes grayed and his mouth tightened around his words. "But where that research ended was when that gene was manipulated with the most advanced DNA resequencing technology in the lab, combined with a few other proven ingredients, and mass manufactured into, say... an annual suppressive vaccine. The results could be potentially weakening to an entire pack."

Like a mental light bulb flashed, the connections that evaded me slipped into place.

Raina saying the Central pack's warriors' stamina levels are higher.

They aren't stronger, the other territory's packs are weaker.

My shoulders trembled, a movement that shuddered down to my elbows. The bottom of my ribs bumped into the table as my spine quaked. Under it, my toes twitched.

Oh my Goddess.

Nausea rolled in my stomach, which clenched with discomfort. I clamped my teeth together as an acidic taste crept over my tongue.

It's my fault. All those years, all those blood draws... I'm a lab rat?

"But that's not the information you should be asking me about," Simon prompted my inner suspicion levels to erupt.

Isn't that enough?

"Wrap it up, Simon," Meredith hissed, her eyes locked on the door.

"Originally, only female DNA was used. Yours," Simon rushed. "Initial clinical trials were promising but after wider deployment to parts of the country, there were some unforeseen detrimental side effects."

"Unforeseen... Are you saying that it... was fatal?" I gasped as my thoughts embraced Sunny, Cole's sister.

My heart crushed under the weight of the truth, even before Simon confirmed it.

Poor Sunny.

Simon nodded, pulling a grim smile. "Female DNA was more effective against suppressing males, but had some fatal results in other females. So, a hybrid vaccine was developed, from both male and female sourced DNA. That's manufactured and circulated in the annual vaccines. Or, it was..."

"Male DNA?" I blinked, then blurted out the obvious answer, "Solomon."

His eyes darkened into a stormy grayish-brown, and the words I feared flooded out of his mouth. "Yes. Your brother is the other source. Combining the DNA from siblings also proved to be most effective in producing the genetic defect, stronger than when his DNA was combined with Subject One's."

He paused for a moment, rolling his tongue in between his lips. "Think of it like inbreeding, to increase the -"

"Simon, we get it," Meredith groaned.

Oh. Oh... That's gross.

I shook my head and corrected my own thoughts.

No, it's grotesque.

"Subject one..." My chest squeezed tight at another answer that I already knew. At this point, I wasn't sure how much more pressure I could take because my heart felt clamped inside a vice. "Our mother."

"Yes, even after she passed." His eyes darkened further. "Her DNA was retained for research purposes."

"How did she die?" I whispered.

"On the record, too much blood loss during a high-risk twin pregnancy." His eyes lifted up to Meredith, who nodded.

"That's what I was told," my voice cracked.

At this point I shouldn't have been surprised if that wasn't true either but old habits clung hard.

In a slow movement, Simon lifted one hand, removed his glasses, then rubbed the bridge of his nose. His eyes were weighted with an unreadable emotion by the time he replaced his glasses over them.

"Off the record, silver nitrate poisoning."

My entire body sank at Simon's words, like lead filled my veins. My palm that still rested on my left shoulder slid down to my chest, where it fisted my shirt tightly. Tension squeezed my fingers so tight that my skin stretched white over my knuckles. The strain mimicked the clutched feeling inside my chest.

No.

One of my hands rose to my neck and clutched my mother's necklace like a lifeline.

My father loved my mother.

He... turned cold after she died.

Right?

"We can't stay here," Meredith interjected. "It's been too long. This pretend tour needs to continue. We will no longer have complete privacy, so mind your choice of words Simon."

"Let me leave this up," Simon nodded to the screen, where a generic 'What is DNA?' cartoon movie title appeared.

"I appreciate you not using that to explain things to me." Despite the circumstances, my lips twitched up at Simon.

The corners of his eyes crinkled with lines as he grinned, "It's intended for children, Zara."

We stood up and ran into a security team when we exited the small room. For a split second my breath stalled in my lungs, but they nodded and brushed past us.

"Your mother," Simon spoke in a low voice. "It's not my area but let me show you her room."

"Room?" My eyes widened.

He nodded and we weaved through occasional white lab coated-researchers until we came to a perpendicular hallway.

"These are the subject rooms, your mother was brought here." He nodded at a particular room.

My palms pressed into the cool metal door, but it was locked. Meredith sighed, then swiped her access badge over a reader next to the door handle. After a red light flashed with a beep, a small click granted me access.

Trembling, my fingers reached for the light switch. After the pads of my fingers flicked it, my eyes blinked under the overhead fluorescent lights. A plain, nondescript medical examination room greeted me as the lights hummed. A gurney bed surrounded with empty silver bedside tray tables, chairs positioned around the perimeter, and a wall of cabinets topped with a white countertops looked like any standard hospital exam room.

"This is..." My voice trailed off at the dryness that filled my throat. At the swelling sensation of my tongue, I swallowed. It felt like I stuffed cotton balls into my mouth.

"Where you were born." For the first time since we'd met, Meredith's voice sounded soft, almost somber.

I didn't need her to say the actual truth, I felt it.

Where my mother died.

No... where my mother was murdered.

A tremble shook through my spine and radiated all down my arms into my wrists, the palm of both hands, then my fingers. I squeezed them tightly into fists and hoped that would counteract the sensations. Heat flushed through me, my body warming from the inside out. Tingles rippled up my forearms and down my shins, like my skin shifted.

At my movements, Lumi shifted in my mind, as if I grabbed her concern.

'Zara.'

Lumi, if you're going to say something snarky... Not the time or place.

'I'm sorry.'

I should've been excited since this was the first time I remembered, if ever, hearing her use a pronoun. Instead, I collapsed down into an utter state of weakness. Tears flooded out my eyes and pain wrenched tension through my forearms as I clenched my hands.

I can't, Lumi. They've taken too much.

They've taken everything.

Instead, my thoughts blurred over by a slow burning sensation that built up inside me. Lumi's emotions struck me like a jolt of lightning and intertwined with mine until I no longer recognized my own feelings... or even cared to.

My brain spun with the clash and I grounded my chin into my chest, clutching my forehead in both palms. Lumi's emotions collided and mixed within a turbulent storm until I couldn't separate them from mine. We felt so similar and yet, her feelings magnified each of my own.

Pain.

Grief.

Suffering.

Anger.

A scream tore from my lips, vibrating my throat as I absorbed our joint reactions. My breath burned in my lungs, my muscles swelled with ache, and my brain blurred like a giant blender of emotions spun at high speed.

By the time my knees weakened and I dropped to the floor, one emotion remained.

Rage.

My fingers flew up to my neck, where I removed my mother's necklace and dropped it to the floor with a muffled sound. Short, sharp pants heaved my chest and my blood rushed through my veins. It roared in my ears, throbbing with each quickening beat. Curling my fingers, I gouged my nails into the floor. My vision blurred and a sharp, stabbing pain struck my stomach, then my forehead.

A voice that wasn't mine growled out from my lips, "Shut door."

The last thing I saw before I shifted into Lumi's form was the slight traces of fear in both Simon and Meredith's eyes. As soon as the lock clicked shut, my eyes slid closed. I pushed myself into the dark corners of my mind and, like whenever I was too weak, left Lumi to do the rest.