The freezing salt spray from the ocean felt like needles against Damon's skin, but it couldn't touch the furnace of cold fury burning in his marrow. Seeing the "Immediate Elimination" mark next to his pack's symbol hadn't just angered him it had transformed him. This wasn't a territory dispute anymore. This was an existential war.
The Covenant wasn't just a group of hunters; they were a paramilitary machine. A frontal assault on the Lighthouse would be a suicide mission. Between the Frequency Shield, the high-tech mercenaries, and Cyrus's dark magic, the odds were stacked against any wolf.
"We have to cut their throat first, Alpha," a new, distinct voice growled in his mind. It wasn't just his inner wolf it was the Lycan essence, Lydus, cold and calculating. "Kill the shield, and the fortress becomes a cage. The generator is our first kill."
Damon shifted. The charcoal fur felt more powerful than ever, the Lumina Spring's energy making every muscle fiber feel like a coiled spring. He scanned the compound with vision that could see the heat rising from a human body miles away. The complex was a tactical puzzle in three parts:
The Tower: The high ground where Cyrus was perfecting his poison.
The Barracks: The muscle human soldiers who thought they were at the top of the food chain.
The Generator Shed: The reinforced shack that held the Frequency Shield together. The jugular vein of the fortress.
Damon's eyes locked onto a guard leaning against the shed. The man Kruz was arrogant, puffing on a cigarette, trusting the high-tech sensors more than his own instincts.
Damon shifted back to human form. He didn't approach from the woods; he went for the sea. He used the roar of the Atlantic to mask his steps as he moved across the sand like a ghost made of shadow and brine. When he reached the perimeter wall, his vision caught the subtle blue shimmer of an electric current.
He pulled a specialized Frequency Disrupter from his belt a piece of Alpha-tech designed to kill electronic noise. He pressed it against the cold metal. A silent hum, a flicker of light, and the wall went dead. Damon cleared it in one fluid motion, landing as silently as a falling leaf.
He flattened himself against the Barracks, listening. Inside, he heard the muffled laughter of guards men who thought they were safe because they were fighting "animals." They had no idea a king was in their courtyard.
Damon moved toward the shed. Kruz still hadn't moved. He was the weak link a man who relied on a bio-sensor rather than his own soul. Damon's enhanced vision caught the blinking blue light on the guard's shoulder. A bio-sensor. If his heart stopped or his pulse spiked, an alarm would scream through the entire compound.
"The carotid, Alpha," Lydus whispered, a cold, predatory blueprint in Damon's mind. "Quick. Powerful. Break the neck and kill the sensor before it sends the signal. You have less than a second."
Damon moved. He didn't just run; he blurred.
In a heartbeat:
He launched himself from the darkness.
One hand clamped over Kruz's mouth to kill the sound; the other locked onto the base of his skull.
A sickening CRACK echoed, instantly swallowed by a crashing wave.
Kruz went limp before he could even process the shadow in front of him. Damon's other hand expertly ripped the Bio-Sensor from the armor, crushing it beneath his boot into silent dust.
No alarm. No shout.
Damon dragged the body into the dark gap between the shed and the wall. He reached into the guard's pocket and pulled out the access card and a small data-pad. The first shadow had been erased. The King was inside, and he was ready to dismantle their world piece by lethal piece.
Damon held his breath as the heavy steel door of the Generator Shed hissed open with a clinical, metallic sigh. He slipped inside, the darkness of the room fractured only by the rhythmic, amber blinking of server racks and the low, bone-deep thrum of the Frequency Shield generator.
The air here was thick with the scent of ozone and sterile electricity a smell that felt like a direct insult to his heightened Lycan senses. This wasn't the work of simple rogues; it was an enemy that had twisted science into a weapon against nature itself.
He moved toward the main console. Kruz's access card swiped with a soft beep, and the screen flashed green: User Authenticated: Level 3 Security.
Damon's fingers moved with lethal precision across the holographic interface. He wasn't a technician, but every Alpha was schooled in the digital landscape of modern war. He quickly pulled up the "Perimeter Defense" protocols.
"Do not kill the power," Lydus warned, his voice a low vibration in Damon's mind. "A total blackout is a flare in the dark. It will scream for attention at the main tower. Loop the sensors. Give them a ghost to watch."
Damon keyed in the override, rerouting the sensor feedback into a continuous, stagnant cycle. On the main monitor, the Frequency Shield still showed as "Active," but he had effectively carved a ten-foot "Ghost Door" into the energy field right behind the shed. The fortress was still up, but it was now blind to his movements.
Step one was done. But he needed more.
He slotted Kruz's data-pad into the console, intent on downloading patrol routes and guard rotations. He needed to map the heart of this place before he struck. Files began to scroll: shift changes, weapon inventories, logistical chains. It was all standard military procedure.
Until his eyes caught a folder labeled: Inventory: Biological Assets Batch 4.
"Assets?" Damon whispered, his brow furrowing.
Curiosity, cold and sharp as a blade, pushed him to open the file. He expected to find stolen supplies or perhaps illicit weapons. Instead, what appeared on the screen made the blood turn to ice in his veins.
It wasn't a list of items. It was a roster of names.
Dozens of them. Each entry was a living, breathing wolf, but they weren't listed as prisoners of war. They were categorized as lab specimens.
Subject 89: North Pack Gamma. Status: Drained. Disposal Pending.
Subject 92: Rogue Female. Status: Active Extraction. Location: Sub-Level 3.
Subject 104: Obsidian Pack Scout. Status: Critical. Energy Output: 12%.
Damon's hand gripped the edge of the console until the reinforced metal groaned and buckled. Subject 104. Kaelen. One of his own finest scouts who had vanished three months ago. The pack had mourned him, assuming a tragic accident or a rogue ambush.
He wasn't dead. He was being mined.
Damon scrolled down with a frantic, trembling intensity. The list was a graveyard of every pack in the region. The Covenant hadn't just been hunting; they had been harvesting, abducting wolves for years right under the noses of their Alphas. And the column next to their names "Harvest Status" told a story of pure depravity. Some were marked "Depleted," others "Refining."
They were being used as biological batteries. Their very life force, the energy required to shift, was being siphoned off to power the Covenant's shields, their weapons, and the serum intended for Elara.
Then, at the very bottom, a new entry blinked in a haunting, neon red.
Target: The Prime (White Lycan).
Designation: Infinite Source.
Containment Unit: The Void Chamber (Construction Complete).
Damon stared at the words. The Void Chamber. The name itself felt like a scream in the dark. They hadn't just planned for her; they had built a tailor-made hell for his Mate.
He slammed an encrypted drive into the port, copying the entire horrific database. He had come here to clear a path for his Mate, but he had stumbled upon a genocide.
As he pulled the drive, a final memo popped up on the pad from the Chief Scientist:
Warning: Subject containment in The Below is reaching capacity. The screams are becoming audible on Level 1. Increase sedation immediately. We cannot have the noise disturbing the Master's ritual tonight.
The Below.
Damon looked down at the floorboards beneath his boots. He could feel it now not the mechanical thrum of the generator, but a faint, rhythmic vibration rising from the deep. It was the collective, muffled agony of a hundred trapped souls.
He wasn't standing on a military base. He was standing on a slaughterhouse.
And somewhere in that darkness, his own blood was waiting for him to bring them home. Damon stepped back into the shadows, his gold eyes burning with a promise that would turn the night to ash. The plan had changed. He wasn't leaving until he burned "The Below" to the ground and buried the Covenant in its ruins.