Chapter 45
title: "Chapter 5" wordCount: 2388
I threw myself sideways as bullets tore through the space where I had been standing. The compound wall exploded in splinters behind me, and I hit the ground rolling, gravel biting into my palms. Sarah's wolf form sailed over my head, massive and silver in the moonlight, her jaws snapping at empty air.
Declan fired again. Missed.
The rifle's bolt jammed.
"Inside!" Thomas's voice cut through the chaos. He was at the doorway now, dragging Declan back, and I scrambled to my feet, lungs burning. An enforcer's hand caught my jacket. I twisted, drove my elbow into his throat, felt cartilage give. He went down choking.
The watch on my wrist pulsed. 47:14:58.
I ran.
Sarah hit me from the side before I made it three steps. We went down in a tangle of limbs and fur, her weight crushing the air from my chest. Her muzzle was inches from my face, teeth bared, and I could smell the wolf on her breath—wild and ancient and wrong. Not like pack. Like something that had forgotten what pack meant.
"Sarah." Garrett's voice was calm despite the blood soaking his shoulder. "Bring her."
She shifted back. Naked, kneeling on my chest, her hands around my throat. "I am sorry," she whispered. "But he is right. You are the key."
"To what?"
Her grip tightened. "To everything we lost."
Gunfire erupted from the compound. Not Thomas's rifle—something automatic, controlled bursts that sent the enforcers scattering. Sarah's head snapped up, and I bucked hard, throwing her off balance. My hand found a rock. I swung it into her temple without thinking, without hesitating, and she crumpled.
I was on my feet again, running, the compound door twenty feet away. Fifteen. Ten.
Garrett stepped into my path.
His shoulder was bleeding, his suit jacket ruined, but his smile was intact. "That watch," he said. "Do you know what it is counting down to?"
"Not my circus."
"Your transformation."
I stopped. Couldn't help it. The words hit like a physical blow.
"Forty-seven hours," Garrett continued. He was not even breathing hard. "That is how long you have before the serum in your bloodstream completes its work. Before you become what your parents designed you to be."
"My parents are dead."
"Are they?" He tilted his head. "Then who is inside that compound right now? Who has been hiding from the Council for three years, perfecting their research, waiting for the right moment to activate their greatest creation?"
The watch pulsed again. 47:14:12.
"You are lying."
"That is not the whole truth." Declan's voice, rough with pain, from the doorway behind me. "But it is not entirely a lie either."
I did not turn around. Could not. "What does that mean?"
"It means you need to get inside. Now."
Garrett's smile widened. "Yes. Run to them. Let them explain how they turned their own daughter into a weapon. How they sold you to the Council to save their own research. How everything you remember about that night—the attack, the fire, your pack dying—was carefully orchestrated to break you down so they could build you back up into something new."
"Sloane." Declan again. Closer now. "Do not listen to him."
"Why not?" I was shaking. The watch was burning against my skin. "Why should I trust you over him? I do not even know you."
"Because I am the one who pulled you out of that facility. Because I am the one who has been trying to keep you alive while everyone else wants to use you."
"Use me for what?"
Garrett laughed. Soft, delighted. "Oh, this is perfect. He has not told you. Even now, bleeding out, he is still keeping secrets."
"Declan." I turned to face him. He was leaning against the doorframe, one hand pressed to his side where blood seeped between his fingers. His face was the color of old paper. "What is he talking about?"
"Inside first. Explanations after."
"No." The word came out harder than I intended. "I am done running blind. I am done trusting people who only tell me half the truth. What am I?"
He met my eyes. Something in his expression cracked. "You are a hybrid. The first successful one in three generations. Your parents found a way to merge wolf and human DNA at the genetic level, to create something that can shift without the moon, without the pain, without losing control. The Council wants you because you are proof their experiments can work. Garrett wants you because you are the key to replicating the process. And I—"
"You want me because I am valuable."
"I want you because you deserve to choose what happens to you next."
The watch hit 47:14:00 exactly, and pain exploded through my body.
I came back to myself on a metal table in a room that smelled like antiseptic and old blood. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. My wrists were strapped down. The watch was still there, still counting. 47:09:23.
"She is awake." A woman's voice. Familiar in a way that made my chest tight.
I turned my head. She was standing by the door, dark hair pulled back, wearing surgical scrubs. Mid-forties, maybe. Scar on her left cheek. She had my eyes. My nose. The same way of holding her shoulders like she was bracing for impact.
"Mom?"
She flinched. "Sloane. I—we did not want it to happen this way."
"You are dead." My voice sounded strange. Distant. "You died three years ago. I buried you."
"You buried someone else. We had to make you believe we were gone. It was the only way to keep you safe while we finished the work."
"What work?" I pulled against the restraints. They did not give. "What did you do to me?"
"We saved you." A man entered the room. Tall, graying at the temples, wearing the same scrubs. My father. Alive. Real. "That night, when the Council came for our research, they were going to kill all of us. We made a choice."
"You made me into an experiment."
"We made you into a survivor." My mother moved closer. Her hands were shaking. "The serum we developed, it was supposed to be voluntary. A way for wolves who had lost their packs to regain their connection to the moon. But the Council wanted weapons. They wanted soldiers who could shift on command, who would not question orders. We refused. So they came for us."
"And you let them think you were dead while you—what? Finished turning me into exactly what they wanted?"
"No." My father's voice was sharp. "We gave you a choice. The serum in your system, it is not active yet. The watch is not counting down to your transformation. It is counting down to the moment when you have to decide whether to let it happen or flush it from your body entirely."
I stared at him. At them. At these people who wore my parents' faces and spoke with their voices but had spent three years letting me believe I was alone. "You let me think I was broken. You let me spend three years running from shadows, thinking I was the last of our pack, thinking I had failed everyone."
"We let you live." My mother's voice cracked. "If the Council had known you were alive, if they had known what you carried in your blood, they would have taken you. Dissected you. Used you until there was nothing left. We gave you time to grow strong enough to survive what comes next."
"What comes next?"
The door burst open. Thomas, rifle in hand, blood on his shirt. "They are through the outer perimeter. We have maybe five minutes."
My father moved to a cabinet, started pulling out vials and syringes. "We need to accelerate the timeline."
"No." My mother's hand was on his arm. "She has to choose."
"There is no time for choice. If Garrett gets his hands on her—"
"Then we fight." Declan's voice from the doorway. He looked worse than before, gray-faced and swaying, but his eyes were clear. "We get her out. We run. We figure out the rest later."
"You cannot even stand," my father said. "You are in no condition to—"
"I am in perfect condition to keep my promises." Declan crossed to the table, started working on my restraints. His fingers were clumsy with blood loss. "I told her she gets to choose. That means no one makes this decision for her."
The watch pulsed. 47:08:45.
"Sloane." My mother was crying now. Actually crying. I had never seen her cry, not even at funerals, not even when the pack elders had stripped my father of his rank for refusing to participate in Council politics. "I know you have no reason to trust us. I know we have hurt you in ways we can never repair. But you have to understand, everything we did, we did because we love you."
"Love." The word tasted like ash. "You do not get to use that word. You do not get to stand there and tell me this was for my own good when you let me believe I was alone."
"You were never alone." My father's hands had stopped moving. "We have been watching. Every day. Every night. Thomas has been our eyes. Every time you were in danger, every time you needed help, we were there."
"Bullshit." I sat up as Declan freed my last wrist. "If you were watching, you would have stopped them from taking me to that facility. You would have—"
"We sent Declan to get you out."
I looked at him. He would not meet my eyes.
"Yeah, no. You are telling me this was all planned? That you knew they would take me, and you just let it happen?"
"We knew they would come for you eventually," my mother said. "We knew the watch would draw them. It is keyed to your DNA, to the serum in your blood. The Council has been tracking it since we activated it six months ago."
"Six months." The room tilted. "You have been using me as bait for six months."
"We have been preparing you." My father's voice was steady. Clinical. The same tone he used to use when explaining pack politics to the younger wolves. "Every encounter, every chase, every moment of danger—it was designed to trigger your survival instincts, to prime your body for the transformation. You are stronger now than you were. Faster. More resilient. The serum has been working exactly as intended."
"Get away from me." I slid off the table. My legs shook but held. "All of you. Just—get away."
Gunfire outside. Closer now. Thomas swore, moved to the window. "They are at the inner fence."
"We are out of time." My father grabbed a syringe, held it up. Clear liquid, faintly luminescent. "This is the catalyst. It will complete the transformation immediately. You will be faster than any wolf alive, stronger than any human. You will be able to shift at will, to heal from almost any wound. You will be everything we designed you to be."
"Or?" I looked at my mother.
She held up a different syringe. This one was dark, almost black. "This will flush the serum from your system. You will be human. Completely human. No wolf, no pack bond, no connection to the moon. You will be safe from the Council because you will be worthless to them."
"But I will be alone."
"Yes."
The watch hit 47:08:00, and the pain came back. Worse this time. Like my bones were trying to break through my skin, like my blood was boiling. I went down on my knees, gasping.
"Sloane!" Declan was beside me, his hands on my shoulders. "Breathe. Just breathe."
"What is happening?"
"The serum is destabilizing." My father's voice was tight. "She has to choose. Now."
"I cannot—I do not—"
"You can." Declan's face was inches from mine. "You are the strongest person I have ever met. You survived three years alone. You survived the facility. You survived Garrett. You can survive this."
"But what do I choose? What am I supposed to—"
The window exploded inward. Glass everywhere, and then Sarah was there, shifted, snarling. She went for Thomas first, took him down in a spray of blood. My father raised the rifle but she was faster, her jaws closing around his arm. He screamed.
My mother moved. Fast. Inhumanly fast. She had the black syringe in her hand, was coming toward me, and I saw it in her eyes—the decision she had already made for me.
"No." I rolled away. The watch was burning now, counting down faster. 47:07:23. 47:07:22. 47:07:21.
Declan put himself between us. "Stop."
"Move aside. This is the only way to keep her safe."
"Safe is not the same as alive."
"She is my daughter."
"And she is her own person." He was swaying on his feet, barely standing, but he did not move. "Let her choose."
Sarah had Thomas pinned, was going for his throat. My father was down, bleeding. The door was splintering under heavy impacts—more enforcers, more Council wolves. The watch hit 47:07:00 and the pain peaked, white-hot and all-consuming.
I looked at the clear syringe in my father's dropped hand. Looked at the black one in my mother's. Looked at Declan, bleeding and broken but still standing between me and the choice someone else wanted to make for me.
"Sloane." My mother's voice was breaking. "Please. Let me save you."
"You cannot save me." The words came out steady. Clear. "You can only give me the tools to save myself."
I reached for the clear syringe.
My mother lunged.
And Garrett Voss stepped through the shattered window, gun in hand, smiling his widest smile, and said, "I am afraid that choice is no longer yours to make."
He pulled the trigger, and the bullet hit the watch on my wrist, and the countdown stopped at 47:06:47, and then the watch exploded in a burst of light and pain and something else, something that felt like every cell in my body was being rewritten, and I heard myself screaming, heard Declan shouting my name, heard my mother crying and Garrett laughing and the watch's shattered pieces falling to the floor like rain, and then—