The silence in the laboratory didn't last.
Three hours after Draven had stormed out, a concussive boom shook the foundation of the underground fortress.
It wasn't the rhythmic thrum of the ventilation fans or the distant rumble of the subway lines above.
This was the sound of reinforced steel screaming under duress.
Elara dropped the beaker she had been scrubbing.
It shattered, but she didn't flinch.
Her gaze snapped to the ceiling, dust raining down onto her hair.
The vibration in the floorboards felt familiar.
It was the same frequency as the heat radiating off Draven earlier—only magnified a thousand times.
She didn't think. She ran.
Elara sprinted through the labyrinthine corridors of the Rogue base.
As she neared the residential wing—the "Alpha's Den"—the air grew thick and gelatinous.
It tasted like battery acid.
The few Rogues she passed were slumped against the walls, clutching their heads, noses bleeding sluggishly.
They were paralyzed by the sheer atmospheric density of an Alpha losing control.
Elara turned the final corner and skidded to a halt.
A cluster of medics, led by Bella, were huddled fifteen meters from the heavy blast doors of Draven's quarters.
The doors were buckled outward, dented from the inside as if a battering ram had struck them.
Bella was on her knees, her face pale, a syringe of glowing blue sedative trembling in her hand.
She tried to stand, but an invisible wave of force slammed her back down, cracking the concrete beneath her knees.
"We can't get in!" a medic shouted over the low, thrumming roar emanating from the room.
"The pressure—it'll liquefy our organs!"
Bella snarled, trying to crawl forward, but the air itself was rejecting her.
"He's going critical. If his heart rate hits three hundred, the biological failsafe triggers. He'll have a stroke."
Elara walked past them.
She didn't crawl.
She didn't struggle.
She walked with the slightly uneven gait of someone nursing a bad leg, moving through the killing field of pressure as if she were strolling through a park.
Bella's head snapped up, her eyes widening in disbelief.
"Stop! You suicidal little—"
Elara ignored her.
She reached the ruined doors.
The metal was hot to the touch.
She didn't have a key, but the lock mechanism had been partially melted by the heat of the impact.
She jammed her fingers into the gap between the doors and pulled.
The heavy steel groaned, sliding open just enough for her to slip through.
The room inside was a disaster zone.
Furniture had been reduced to splinters.
The steel-reinforced walls bore deep, parallel gouges—claw marks.
In the center of the room, amidst the wreckage of a king-sized bed, Draven was on his knees.
He was shirtless, his skin flushed a violent, unhealthy red.
Veins bulged black against his torso, pulsing with a terrifying rhythm.
He was clawing at his own chest, drawing blood, as if trying to dig the madness out of his heart.
"Draven," Elara said.
Her voice wasn't loud, but in the oppressive silence of the pressure zone, it cut through like a bell.
The beast stopped.
Draven's head snapped toward her.
His eyes were gone—swallowed entirely by glowing, molten gold.
There was no recognition in that gaze, only the raw, blind instinct to destroy anything that moved.
He roared—a sound that wasn't human, a sub-frequency vibration that rattled Elara's teeth in her skull—and lunged.
He moved faster than thought.
One moment he was on the floor; the next, he was towering over her, his hand wrapped around her throat.
Elara didn't struggle.
She didn't try to pry his fingers loose.
She knew that any resistance would trigger his predator reflex to snap her neck.
Instead, she stepped into the chokehold.
She slammed her palms against his burning chest, right over the frantic, hammering rhythm of his heart.
Feed, she told the void inside her.
The effect was instantaneous.
The "emptiness" in Elara's blood, the genetic anomaly that made her a pariah, latched onto the chaotic overflow of Draven's energy.
It was like opening a floodgate.
The scorching heat radiating from him didn't burn her skin; it poured into her.
Draven froze.
The snarl died in his throat.
His grip on her neck loosened, his hand sliding down to her shoulder, clutching her not to kill, but to steady himself.
"More," Elara gasped.
Her vision swam.
The intake was too fast, too violent.
It felt like swallowing a lightning bolt.
She needed more contact.
The palms of her hands weren't enough to siphon off this much accumulation.
She grabbed the tatters of his ruined shirt hanging from his waist and yanked them away, then pressed her entire body against him.
She wrapped her arms around his torso, burying her face into the crook of his neck, pressing her cheek against the throbbing artery there.
Skin to skin.
The connection deepened.
The static noise in the room vanished, sucked into the vacuum of Elara's presence.
Draven groaned, a sound of profound, agonizing relief.
The red flush began to recede from his skin.
The black veins shrank.
His consciousness, buried under layers of feral rage, clawed its way back to the surface.
He didn't know who was holding him, only that she was the only cold thing in a world of fire.
She was the silence in the scream.
Instinct took over.
Draven's arms crushed around her, locking her against him with rib-cracking force.
He buried his nose in her hair, inhaling the scent of ozone and cheap soap.
He lifted her off her feet, turned, and collapsed backward onto the remains of the mattress, pulling her down on top of him.
He trapped her there, his limbs tangling with hers, creating a cage of muscle and bone that refused to let her go.
For the first time in ten years, the static in Draven's head stopped.
He closed his eyes, and darkness took them both.
Sunlight didn't reach the underground city, but the circadian rhythms of the biological clock were hardwired.
Draven woke up.
There was no headache.
That was the first anomaly.
Usually, waking up required ten minutes of mental calibration to filter out the aggressive sensory input of the pack.
Today, his mind was a placid lake.
He shifted, realizing his left arm was numb.
He looked down.
Elara was curled into a ball against his side, her head resting on his chest.
Her face was dangerously pale, her breathing shallow and thready.
She looked like a battery that had been drained to zero percent.
Draven stared at the top of her head.
Memory returned in fragments—the pain, the breaking point, and then...
the human coolant.
He lifted his hand, inspecting his own skin.
The tremors were gone.
His blood felt cool, flowing smoothly through his veins.
She hadn't just stabilized him.
She had rebooted him.
A dark, possessive urge coiled in his gut.
He traced the line of her spine with a finger, marveling at how something so fragile could contain the nuclear fallout of his bloodline.
The heavy steel door, now hanging off one hinge, creaked.
Draven's hand instantly moved to cover Elara's ear, muffling the sound, his eyes snapping to the intruder with lethal precision.
Toby stood in the doorway, looking terrified.
He averted his eyes from the bed, staring strictly at a dent in the wall.
"Boss," Toby whispered.
"Emergency."
Draven carefully extracted his arm from under Elara, moving with a slowness that would have shocked his subordinates.
He tucked the shredded blanket around her shoulders, ensuring she remained covered, before sliding off the bed.
He grabbed a fresh pair of tactical pants from the floor, pulled them on, and walked to the door.
"Report," Draven said.
His voice was raspy, but steady.
"It's the Silas family," Toby said, sweating.
"They didn't just burn the warehouse. Five minutes ago, we got word. They've welded the storm grates shut on the East Sector. They're flooding the lower tunnels."
Toby swallowed hard.
"And they sent a message. They know we're out of suppressors. They said... they said surrender the girl, or they drown the rats."
Draven leaned against the doorframe.
He looked back at the bed, where Elara slept the sleep of the dead.
Surrender the girl.
Surrender the only thing that stopped the noise.
A cold, terrifying smile ghosted across Draven's lips.
It wasn't a smile of amusement.
It was the smile of a man who had been looking for an excuse to stop holding back.
"They think I'm hiding down here because I'm afraid of them," Draven said softly.
He walked past Toby, heading toward the command center.
"Wake the boys up, Toby. And open the armory."
"Which... which clearance level, Boss?"
Draven didn't break stride.
"Level Zero. We're not skirmishing anymore. We're going to war."