The Silas family's private bullion vault was supposed to be the Fort Knox of the underworld.
But with Elara walking point, it was as quiet as a library after closing time.
She moved through the aisles of stacked silver ingots like a mobile dead zone.
Every time she passed a sensor pylon, its blinking red "ARMED" light simply...
died.
The high-frequency hum that usually made Werewolves nauseous vanished the moment she stepped within six meters.
"Grab it all," Draven ordered, his voice low.
"Don't leave them a single ounce."
The Rogues worked with the efficiency of starving ants on a picnic basket.
Crates were loaded onto hover-dollies.
The wealth of a generation was stripped in ten minutes.
Elara stood near the exit, her heart still hammering against the tracker in her pocket.
She felt like a double agent, a fraud wrapped in a Kevlar vest.
Just get through this, she told herself.
Get back to base, destroy the tracker, and never speak of it again.
"Clear," Toby whispered into his comms.
"Transport team is moving to the extraction point."
Draven walked up to Elara.
He looked like a god of war, sweat making his dark shirt cling to his chest, eyes burning with the thrill of the hunt.
He reached out, his hand hovering near her shoulder, then pulled back.
"You did good," he said roughly.
"We're done here."
They moved toward the rear loading bay, the rain outside pounding against the metal shutter.
Draven hit the release switch.
The heavy steel door groaned and began to rise.
But instead of the cool night air, they were met with a wall of red light.
Standing in the alleyway, blocking their path, was a nightmare made of chrome and fur.
It was a Lycan, but one that had been butcher-shopped and welded back together.
Silver-plated armor was grafted directly into the creature's flesh.
Hydraulic pistons hissed at its joints.
And where a wolf's eyes should be, two crimson optical lenses whirred and focused.
"Going somewhere?" the thing asked.
The voice was synthesized, metallic, yet sickeningly familiar.
Draven snarled, stepping in front of Elara.
"Move, tin man, or I'll scrap you for parts."
The cyborg wolf laughed—a sound like grinding gears.
It stepped into the light of the loading bay.
As it did, the metal plating around its neck shifted, revealing a patch of organic skin.
There, stark against the pale flesh, was a burn scar.
Shaped like a crescent moon.
Elara stopped breathing.
She knew that scar.
She had kissed it a thousand times.
She had been there when the hot oil from a frying pan had splashed onto him three years ago while they were cooking breakfast.
"Lucas?" she whispered.
The name felt like glass in her throat.
The cyborg tilted its head.
The red lenses zoomed in on her.
"Hello, Elara. You're looking... surprisingly well-fed. I expected you to be dead in a ditch by now."
"He's dead," Elara stammered, stepping out from behind Draven despite his growl of warning.
"We buried an empty casket... they said the mine collapsed..."
"The mine didn't collapse, darling. I was promoted." Lucas—or the weapon that used to be him—spread his arms.
"The Silas family offered me a choice. Die a mediocre mid-tier wolf in the mines, or become the future of warfare. I just needed an exit strategy. And a scapegoat."
He took a step forward, the pavement cracking under his weight.
"Faking my death was easy," Lucas sneered.
"Blaming it on your little 'curse'? That was a stroke of genius. It kept the family from asking questions about where I went. You were the perfect distraction, Elara. My useful little disaster."
Draven didn't wait to hear more.
He launched himself forward, claws extended.
"Stay back!" Elara screamed, but it was too late.
Lucas didn't dodge.
He simply opened his mouth and unleashed a sound—not a roar, but a frequency.
SCREEEEEE.
It was a sonic weapon tuned specifically to the Alpha biology.
A concentrated blast of dissonant waves designed to scramble the neuro-receptors of a dominant wolf.
Draven crashed to his knees mid-stride, clutching his head.
Blood instantly poured from his nose.
His eyes rolled back, the gold iris consumed by the black of a forced shift.
His body began to convulse, muscles tearing as the beast inside him panicked, trying to claw its way out of a body that was short-circuiting.
"Pathetic," Lucas drawled, walking casually toward the writhing Alpha.
"The bigger the beast, the harder they fall. This emitter creates a feedback loop in his cerebral cortex. In about thirty seconds, his brain will liquefy."
Lucas stopped in front of Elara.
He towered over her, a monolith of cruelty and steel.
"Come here, Elara," he commanded, extending a clawed, metal hand.
"You're used to submitting, aren't you? It's what you do. You serve. You ruin. And then you crawl back."
Elara looked at Draven.
He was digging his fingers into the concrete, growling in pure agony.
He was dying.
"Stop it!" Elara cried.
"I'll stop when you put the collar on," Lucas said, pulling a heavy silver suppression collar from his belt.
"You're a valuable asset now, apparently. The lab wants to know why you don't break."
Elara looked at the metal monster who had once promised to love her.
Then she looked at the "monster" on the floor who had given her a bed, a job, and dignity.
Draven let out a guttural roar.
He wasn't submitting.
With a movement that defied anatomy, he slammed his own hand down onto a jagged piece of scrap metal on the floor.
The sharp iron pierced his palm, exiting through the back of his hand.
The shock of physical pain cut through the sonic haze.
"Get... behind... me," Draven rasped, forcing himself to stand, blood dripping from his shattered hand.
He was swaying, his eyes bleeding, but he placed his body between Elara and the machine.
Lucas scoffed.
"Stubborn mutt." He cranked the dial on his chest armor.
The screeching sound intensified to an ear-splitting pitch.
Draven's knees buckled again.
Elara's mind raced.
He can't fight the sound.
The sound is energy.
Energy is radiation.
She didn't run.
She didn't hide.
Elara lunged at Draven.
She grabbed his face with both hands.
His skin was burning hot, his expression one of feral madness.
He barely recognized her.
She bit down hard on her own tongue.
The sharp, metallic taste of blood filled her mouth.
"Trust me," she thought.
She pulled Draven's head down and pressed her bleeding mouth against the soft, sensitive skin behind his ear—the primary nerve cluster for a wolf's auditory processing.
She smeared the blood and saliva right over the pulse point.
Silence.
For Draven, the world suddenly lost its volume.
The screaming drill in his brain vanished, replaced by a cool, velvety void.
Elara's "Silence Blood" acted like a lead shield against the radiation of the sonic weapon.
The pain stopped.
The rage focused.
Draven blinked.
The red washed out of his vision, leaving only crystal-clear, predatory gold.
Lucas frowned, tapping his chest plate.
"What? Why isn't he—"
Draven moved.
He didn't roar.
He didn't posture.
He moved with the terrifying speed of a silent film catastrophe.
One second, Lucas was standing there.
The next, Draven was inside his guard.
Draven's good hand grabbed the hydraulic piston on Lucas's shoulder, ripping it out in a spray of oil and sparks.
With his impaled hand, he ignored the pain and drove the jagged metal spike still stuck in his palm directly into the red optical lens of Lucas's left eye.
"ARGHHH!" Lucas shrieked, the mechanical voice glitching into static.
Draven didn't stop.
He pivoted, using the momentum to deliver a roundhouse kick that dented the silver chest plate, shattering the sonic emitter.
Lucas flew backward, crashing into a dumpster.
He scrambled to get up, his systems failing, sparks raining from his face.
He looked at Draven—who stood silent, bloody, and terrifying—and realized he had miscalculated.
The math of fear didn't apply here.
"Retreat!" Lucas screamed to his comms, activating his emergency thrusters.
Steam blasted from his back, launching him clumsily over the alley wall.
But before he disappeared into the night, he looked down at Elara, who was supporting the swaying Draven.
"You think you've won?" Lucas's voice crackled, distorted and hateful.
"You think he protects you because he cares? Wake up, laundry girl! He smells the antibody in your veins! He doesn't want a mate, Elara. He just needs your blood to keep his own cursed soul from burning out. You're not his queen. You're his medicine cabinet!"
With a final burst of steam, Lucas vanished.
Draven stood there, chest heaving, the silence of the alley returning.
He slowly pulled the scrap metal out of his hand, dropping it with a wet clang.
He turned to look at Elara.
Blood was trickling from the corner of her mouth where she'd bitten her tongue.
He reached out to wipe it away, his touch surprisingly gentle.
But Elara flinched.
The words hung in the damp air between them, heavier than the silver they had just stolen.
Medicine cabinet.
Draven saw the flinch.
His hand froze in mid-air.
The golden light in his eyes dimmed, replaced by a cold, impenetrable wall.
He didn't deny it.
He didn't defend himself.
"Load the truck," Draven said, his voice devoid of emotion.
"We're leaving."