PART ONE: THE CAGE OF CONFESSIONS
Darkness swallowed everything.
No emergency lights. No monitors. Just the cold breath of the lab and the rising scent of blood and sweat.
Lana couldn't see, but she could hear.
The wet click of claws unsheathing. The dragging shuffle of something crawling toward her. Her own breath stuttering in panic.
Then heat.
Kieran's hands were on her—one pressing her down onto a steel exam table, the other muffling her scream before it could escape.
"Don't scream," he growled, voice no longer entirely human. "They hunt by fear."
Something shattered nearby. A gurgle. A sob.
Lana's hand brushed his chest. Not skin. Fur. Coarse and bristling, damp with blood or sweat or both.
"You're—"
"Changing. Not by choice."
His voice cracked mid-sentence, layered now with a second timbre—low, animal, ancient.
A figure crawled into view under a sputtering exit sign.
It had once been a woman. Now, her back arched wrong, her face a map of agony. Her fingers had fused into something paw-like. One gold eye glowed. The other bled.
A Noctis ID dangled from her torn coat.
DR. E. GREY, GENETICS
Lana trembled.
Kieran whispered into her ear, still covering her mouth. "Subject 23. She was brilliant. Until the regression."
The hybrid sniffed the air, nose twitching.
Then—
Kieran howled.
It was not a sound a human throat should make. It vibrated Lana's ribs, cracked through her spine. The hybrid flinched.
He released her.
"Run."
Then he moved.
---
PART TWO: THE FIRST TRANSFORMATION
Lana ran. The sound of wet bone snapping and snarls filled the dark behind her.
She slammed into a locked door. Scrabbled at the handle. Nothing.
Behind her: tearing. Screams. Then silence.
When the emergency lights flickered back on, she turned.
Kieran knelt in the center of the room, panting. Blood soaked the tiles. His shirt was in tatters. His back heaved.
He wasn't fully human anymore.
Fur slicked across his spine. His arms thickened with sinew and claws. His face... was trying to remember how to be a man.
"Still... human enough... to know you should be screaming," he rasped.
Lana slid down the door, breath ragged.
He crawled toward her. Not man. Not wolf. Both. Something terrifying and gorgeous.
He raised a claw. Traced it down her cheek. A single bead of blood welled.
He licked it from his fingertip.
His pupils blew wide.
"Evelyn Carter's daughter," he whispered.
Lana froze. "You knew her."
Kieran laughed, a ragged, ruined thing.
He pressed his forehead to hers.
"I watched her die."
---
PART THREE: THE PANIC ROOM
The executive panic room wasn't for safety.
It was for containment.
Lana stumbled inside, Kieran behind her. The walls were mirrored glass. The bed was king-sized. The corners held surgical trays. Restraints. Scalpel sets. Silver-threaded cuffs.
Kieran sealed the door with his palm.
"You've been here before," he said.
"That's not possible."
He nodded to the nightstand.
Lana opened the drawer.
A stuffed wolf. One eye missing.
Her stuffed wolf.
She remembered losing it. Age six. The fire. Her mother screaming.
"She stole from us," Kieran said. "Our samples. Our future."
Lana shook her head. "She saved me."
He stepped close. Unbuttoned what was left of his shirt.
"She tried. But we always knew we'd taste you eventually."
Then he kissed her.
---
PART FOUR: THE CLAIMING
It wasn't gentle.
It was need.
Kieran took her to the bed, his body already shifting again. Teeth sharper. Hands harder. Heat rolling off him like a fever.
He didn't ask.
He claimed.
And when he bit down into the soft join of her neck and shoulder—
She didn't scream.
She shattered.
The pain was electric. Holy. Her body bucked. Her vision blurred.
Her fingers curled.
Claws erupted from her own hands.
Her first sound wasn't a gasp.
It was a growl.