Wildblood

Chapter 41

41

The lingering questions sat in the pit of Kai’s stomach like an iron ball, the chain running all the way up to his throat until he nearly choked. He hated keeping his uncertainties buried, but he didn’t know how to shape them into words. Despite the name of the bar, he had no intention of confessing anything with Ivan Zverev as his witness.

Connor left the office at Kai’s request. It’d sounded more ominous than intended, and Kai only noticed when his friend blanched like a block of tofu.

“Now what?” Zverev asked when they were alone. “You’re going to kill one of your own?”

Kai snorted, stretching his limbs. “Grisly and tempting, but no.” He gently swung his arm, testing a shoulder sprain. Zverev’s words needled him, and before he could stop himself, the question sprang from his tongue. “How do you know we’re the same?”

“Just like you did when we first met.” Vanya shrugged. “You felt it, didn’t you? The scent of likeness invading you. One animal meeting another in contested territory.”

Kai stilled when Zverev squirmed again, unease coiling behind his battered ribs. If they were truly family—distant as it were—why were they allowing themselves to be pawns in a rich man’s game?

“The joke’s on me,” Zverev continued. “I was warned about you, but I never thought…”

“Thought what?”

“You and I are from the same bloodline. I’m sure you’ve figured that part out.”

“Sergei dumped enough hints for my dropout ass to put it together,” said Kai. “So, what? You want me to explore my heritage? Fly off to the motherland and connect with my roots? Forget it.”

“You should know your history.” Zverev shot him a pointed look. “Our bloodline descends from a forgotten god—a god of destruction who took the form of a wolf.”

Only he wasn’t quite forgotten. Sendoa lived on in Kai, a brand he could never be rid of. “What are you getting at?”

“Gods are everywhere,” said Zverev. “They move from place to place, culture to culture, but sometimes, they settle. Our myths say this one died west of where he originated. But the god was ancient even then, and he had lovers before the woman he met his end with.”

Of course Sendoa whored his way across the globe before locking up his infernal cock. Kai set his back against the wall. He knew where Sendoa had died, and he was painfully aware of whom he’d died with. The Dreamwalker—the first incarnation of Miya’s soul. Just as Sendoa had been Kai’s. Their lives ended in the forests near the south Morava River. If Sendoa hailed from farther east, Kai would’ve wagered a kidney it was from the Western Siberian plains that his family—and Zverev’s—called home.

“Get to the damn point,” Kai groused.

Ivan Zverev chuckled, his demeanor shifting to something less thorny. “The descendants of that god dispersed—some went west, and some farther east to Siberia and beyond. When the god died, his soul reincarnated again and again, but he preferred the bloodline he created. Children born of his many unions before death.”

“Slut.” Not that Kai was one to talk.

“Gods have always been promiscuous, in any culture.” Zverev sighed, weariness creeping into his voice. “Zverevs are part of that divine lineage—at least, that’s what we’re taught. The god reincarnates in one person each lifetime, but all his descendants enjoy the benefits of his blood. Strength, speed, healing. Some, they say, can even become beasts.”

Apprehension bubbled beneath Kai’s skin. He thought he was done with forgotten deities and nascent pasts—done with Sendoa. But his spiritual legacy was also his biological ancestry. He didn’t just inherit Sendoa’s baggage; he’d inherited his goddamn DNA too. A diluted godhood giving vitality to a vessel that homed a primordial soul.

Kai loathed this truth with every ounce of his being. He existed for himself, not to harbor some primeval essence he didn’t understand. His whole life he’d battled for autonomy from his demons and his circumstances alike, but the past was a vulture with its talons in his back, its wings a looming shadow that haloed his every step. Each time he thought himself whole, it plucked out a piece of him—raw, tender flesh straight from the bone.

“There was this kid,” Zverev began after a heavy pause, “born about thirty years ago. Rumor says he carried the god’s soul—had a similar appearance and temperament.” He bent his knee with a grimace. “Ethnically, our people are mutts. Slavs and Tatars and anyone who passed through the area. Most of our history is oral, but as we were forced into cities, that history became myth. Details got swapped, altered, so there’s no telling if the rumors had weight. Not that it matters. The boy’s parents took him across the ocean. No one knows what happened to them, but it was the last sign our people saw of the god, weak as it was.”

“Appearance and temperament,” Kai mused allowed. “How, exactly?”

Zverev shrugged. “Those stories were lost with the boy’s parents and the generation that came before them. We assimilated or scattered. I honestly thought it was bullshit, but…” He cast Kai a nervous glance. “You’re about his age, aren’t you?”

“My parents are buried far from home,” Kai said with a rueful smile. “Shallow, unmarked graves in the middle of the woods. I wouldn’t be able to find them if I tried.”

A slow, creeping disbelief widened Ivan Zverev’s eyes. He swallowed thickly, his face waxen as realization and horror wove into a terrific tapestry. “You’re him,” he whispered. “You’re Mikhail Zverev. The god in mortal form.”

Kai would’ve said he’d never heard the name. Would’ve cast it off like a pair of rusty manacles. How easy it was to purge one’s life of everything but a name. There was so much missing, so much he didn’t know, like what to say when the paramedics questioned him after his parents died. He remembered only one thing: Kai. His family was a painting marred with dirty water, his life a storybook with half the pages torn out. He knew he’d come from elsewhere and spoke another language. He still held it in his bones—those vital shards that couldn’t be excised. His father wanted security. His mother wanted to run. Kai didn’t know from what or why, but he cradled her desperation somewhere deep within himself—a strange and delicate thing that lived in him even now, perfectly undisturbed.

But what of his identity? What did it mean to be confronted with a stranger who knew more about him than he knew about himself?

We both know your real name isn’t Kai.

Sergei had said as much. Now, it was inescapable fact.

He thought it would be a torrent—an utter deluge spewing from a broken dam—but the memory seeped into him quietly, viciously, so unremarkable yet violent it made him question the reality of it all.

Mikhail.

The K was silent, but when they’d moved to the United States, everyone kept calling him Me-Kyle . It sounded so stupid, but they refused to learn—acted like it was too damn hard to omit a single consonant. So, he told them to call him Kai. Since they loved that fucking K so much, he would make it his own.

He made everyone refer to him by that three-letter-name—even his mother. The night he made his demands, she didn’t bother with Misha , the proper diminutive for Mikhail. Instead, it was Kai she summoned to join her for dinner.

He was Mikhail Zverev, and yet the moniker rang empty, resonated worse than crumpled tin. It was meaningless to him now—or so he told himself—yet every syllable was a serrated knife sawing through his ribs, poisoning his blood, and overwriting the person he’d spent twenty years becoming.

“You’re Mikhail Zverev,” Ivan repeated, awe lacing every word.

No . He was Kai Donovan.

“Mikhail Zverev died with his parents.”

“What?” The man on the floor peered at him, confusion warping his face.

“That kid,” said Kai. “He never left the woods.”