The afternoon in the rainforest was suffocating, the air thick and damp like a wet blanket pressing against the skin.
Elara lay flat behind a cluster of dense ferns, her heartbeat deliberately suppressed to a mere forty-five beats per minute. Through her sniper scope, she locked onto a moving target two kilometers away. There, a man in a tactical vest was being ushered into an underground bunker by a swarm of heavily armed bodyguards.
This was her seventh year as "The Ghost." In the Organization, she was known as the most perfect blade—devoid of emotion, devoid of wasted motion.
"Thirty seconds," a gravelly voice crackled in her earpiece. It was her only contact, the man known as Old Ghost.
Elara said nothing. Her fingertip rested lightly on the trigger. She felt a bead of sweat drip from the tip of her nose, but her eyes didn't so much as blink.
The moment the target stepped across the threshold of the bunker, she pulled the trigger.
There was no expected burst of blood.
With a sharp clink, the bullet struck a faint blue shimmer in the air—an almost invisible barrier. It hit as if striking the densest metal and fell uselessly to the ground.
Elara's pupils constricted. That wasn't bulletproof glass. That was a "Domain." In a place like this, there was a high-level evolved being—or a werewolf.
"Abort! Position compromised!" Old Ghost's voice spiked, carrying a rare hint of terror.
Elara retreated the instant the bullet hit the ground, collapsing her rifle and leaping from her vantage point. But she was too late. Low growls erupted from the surrounding undergrowth, a manifestation of pure, primal pressure that made the very air vibrate.
Dark shadows blurred toward her at speeds no human could match. Elara didn't hesitate. She drew two specialized silver daggers from her thigh sheaths. As a dark silhouette lunged, she twisted her body at a near-impossible angle, her blades precisely slicing through thick fur.
Warm blood sprayed across her face, smelling of iron and musk.
She carved a path out of the death trap.
An hour later, at the Organization's secret safehouse.
Elara pushed open the heavy iron door. Her tactical suit was shredded, and a deep claw mark ran across her left shoulder, baring bone. She grabbed a wad of gauze and pressed it against the wound, her voice flat. "Target had supernatural intervention. The intel was wrong."
A man sat in the shadows, slowly swiveling his chair. It was the Leader, the man they called "The Butcher." He ignored her injury, instead tossing a medical report onto the table.
"Your sister's organ failure has reached the critical point." The man lit a cigar, the smoke obscuring his features. "Current medicine can't save her. Unless… you get that."
Elara's fingers tightened against her wound, blood instantly soaking the gauze. For the first time, the deathly still mask of her face showed a crack.
Her sister. The only weakness she had in this living hell of an organization.
"The Moonstone," the man murmured. "The lifeblood of the Silver Moon Pack. Legend says it holds the ultimate power of healing and vitality. Get it, and your sister lives. Fail, and you can collect her body by next month."
Elara stared at the photo of her wasting sister on the report. Her breathing grew heavy. She knew this was a trap. The Organization wanted her to go on a suicide mission no one else could survive.
The Silver Moon Pack—territory of the werewolves. To them, humans were nothing more than prey.
"Their Alpha is Kaelen, a madman," the man continued. "He's been searching for a 'Compatible' to soothe the rampaging wolf spirit inside him. We've prepared a new identity for you—a human girl sold on the black market after her family was slaughtered."
Elara remained silent for a long time. The clock on the wall ticked like a countdown to an execution.
"I understand." She looked up, the coldness returning to her eyes. She wiped the blood from her face with a sharp, mechanical motion. "Give me the files."
"There is no backup this time. No extraction route," the man warned. "Once you're in, you're a lone wolf. If you're caught…"
"I'll destroy the objective before I die," Elara cut him off, turning toward the armory.
She pushed open the window, looking at the crescent moon hanging over the distant forest.
She needed a disguise. A mask that could fool the eyes of a beast. Something fragile. Something utterly harmless.
Two days later.
On the border of the Silver Moon Pack, Elara shredded her outer clothes. She used jagged stones to slash messy welts into her arms, then rolled in the mud until she looked like a broken flower trembling in a storm.
She heard the howls in the distance, one after another, heavy with primal dominance.
Elara stumbled toward the center of the forbidden zone. When a towering dark shadow appeared, she timed it perfectly, tripping herself into a pit of mire.
She looked up at the man stepping out of the darkness. He was built like a mountain, radiating a terrifying scent of blood and power. His golden wolf eyes flickered with a dangerous light in the dark.
"Help… please…" Elara reached out with a trembling hand, her voice so faint it was barely audible.
In that moment, she felt his invasive gaze raking over her body. Her fingers curled slightly, the lethal needle hidden in the crease of her palm—her final card.
This was the performance of her life.
Either steal the stone, or die beneath the fangs.
The man approached step by step, kneeling. His long, calloused fingers hooked under Elara's chin, forcing it up. The grip was massive; Elara felt as if her jaw might shatter, but she only let a single, perfectly timed tear fall.
"A human?" Kaelen sneered, his voice a low rumble like a cello, yet sharp as a blade. "Do you have any idea where you are?"
Elara didn't answer. She only widened her eyes in terror, then let her body go limp, falling "unconscious" into his arms.
Her nose brushed against the hard muscle of his chest, which smelled of the forest and cold mint.
This was her target.
Kaelen, the Alpha of the Silver Moon.
The first step was complete. She was in.