Chapter 4

The hollow venom-fang syringe hovered exactly one inch from my spinal cord.

Logan’s massive, dirt-crusted hand remained clamped around my throat, lifting me completely off the concrete floor of the abandoned tool shed. My back hit the corrugated metal wall with a sickening thud. The sheer force of his grip cut off my airway instantly.

"Stop squirming, brat," Logan grunted, alcohol and rotting meat tainting his hot breath. "Your parents already signed the release protocol. You aren't even a werewolf anymore."

He raised the syringe higher. In the wastelands, withered glands like mine were harvested, sold on the black market, and violently transplanted into low-tier wolves desperately looking for a microscopic power boost.

He was going to extract my gland fluid while I was fully conscious.

I couldn't breathe. Black spots danced at the edge of my vision.

My right hand dropped to my pocket. My fingers wrapped around the cheap utility knife I had packed from the estate. With a violent flick of my wrist, I drove the blade straight into the side of Logan’s face.

The blade sliced through his cheek, tearing open a gash from his earlobe to his jaw.

Logan roared in pain. His grip loosened just enough for me to drop to the floor. I gasped for air, scrambling toward the rusty door. But Logan was a veteran of the slums. He was twice my size and fueled by raw fury.

He lunged forward, his heavy boot kicking the back of my knee. My leg buckled. Before I could turn, his knee slammed into my spine, pinning me face-down against the filthy concrete. He grabbed a handful of my hair, yanking my head back until my neck practically snapped.

"You little bitch," Logan spat, blood dripping from his sliced cheek onto my shirt. "Your gland is already garbage. Let me squeeze it dry and make some coin. It's the only useful thing you'll ever do!"

He didn't hesitate again. He brought the venom-fang down.

The thick bone needle pierced directly into the raw, peeled skin at the base of my neck.

A scream tore from my throat, raw and agonizing. It didn't feel like a extraction. It felt like a rusty hook sinking into my brainpan, furiously violently violently violently ripping my soul outward.

Logan yanked the plunger of the syringe back. He was drawing the fluid.

As the excruciating pain reached a breaking point, time seemed to fracture. The filthy shed faded. A rapid, violent sequence of images battered against the inside of my skull.

Five years old. A tower of wooden blocks crashing to the floor. Sylvia wailing at the top of her lungs. Vivian rushing into the room, her hand striking my cheek so hard I tasted blood. "Why are you always bullying your sister? You really disappointed me!"

Eight years old. Holding my perfect clan exam score. Sylvia sobbing into Victor’s coat. "Aria said I was stupid because I failed." Victor snatching my certificate, ripping it into shreds, and throwing it into the fireplace without looking at me.

Ten years old. The testing room. Sylvia standing by the door, completely unaware I could hear her. "Can you change my sister's report, mister?" she whispered to the clinic assistant, slipping a wad of pocket money and a single strawberry candy into his palm. "Make her the bad one." The assistant hesitated, then pocketed the bribe.

Later that night. My parents looking at the forged medical document. "Her gland is unstable. So erratic," Vivian sighed in disgust. "She needs medication."

I stared at the chalky white pill placed in my hand. I swallowed it. In the corner of the room, Sylvia smiled brightly at me.

For eight years, I swallowed the poison. For eight years, I let them bury me alive.

"What... what the hell is this?" Logan’s panicked voice shattered the memories.

The excruciating pain in my spine vanished. It was replaced by an inferno.

The glass barrel of his syringe wasn't filling with black, atrophied blood. It was blindingly bright. A stream of pure, liquid gold was fighting its way up the needle, violently pushing against the glass.

It wasn't blood. It was concentrated, primordial power.

Crack.

The glass syringe couldn't hold the pressure. It fractured.

"No, wait—" Logan stammered, scrambling to pull the needle out of my neck.

He was too late.

BOOM.

A shockwave of pure, molten gold pheromones erupted from the back of my neck. The blast hit the shed like a military-grade explosive. The corrugated metal walls blew outward, the roof tearing off its hinges and flying into the toxic wasteland night.

Logan was blasted backward, hurled twenty feet through the air until he smashed through the brick wall of the main recycling plant.

I didn't feel the cold wind anymore. I didn't feel the pain.

I pushed myself off the ground. My joints popped into place. The cheap suppressant drugs coursing through my system for a decade were totally incinerated by the heat flooding my veins.

I looked at my hands. My fingernails elongated, sharpening into razor-like, dark claws. The timid, pathetic scent of rust and dead grass vanished completely. In its place, an overwhelming, suffocating aura bled into the air. It smelled like burning ozone and dominating winter storms.

I blinked. My vision was sharper than a hawk’s. The world looked different. If anyone was looking at me, they would see my pupils glowing a terrifying, molten gold.

My Ancient Alpha bloodline had finally violently awakened.

The sheer weight of my pheromones cascaded across the entire recycling station. Outside, dozens of rogue wolves and scavengers camping in the waste yard instantly dropped to their knees, their faces slamming into the dirt. They couldn't move. They couldn't breathe. The absolute suppression of an Ancient Alpha overrode every instinct they had.

I walked slowly through the rubble toward the hole in the brick wall.

Logan lay in the debris, coughing up blood. The permanent destruction of his own gland left him weeping like a child. When he looked up and saw me, his eyes widened in absolute, primal terror.

He tried to crawl backward, but my aura pinned him securely to the floor.

"Aria... Aria, please!" Logan sobbed, choking on his own spit as I stepped heavily onto his chest. He clutched at my ankle. "I......I'm your family! Don't do this! Have mercy!—please, mercy!"

I stared down at him. My golden eyes felt like they were burning straight through his pathetic soul.

"Mercy?" I tilted my head.

I raised my boot and stomped down hard, shattering his sternum in one swift, crushing motion.

Logan’s eyes rolled back. He went completely still.

I didn't bother looking at his corpse. I stepped over him, walking straight out of the blasted recycling plant. The toxic fog of the wastelands parted automatically as my pheromones aggressively pushed it away. Every stray wolf in my path remained firmly planted in the dirt, shivering helplessly as I passed.

I was covered in dust and dried blood. My clothes were torn. But I had never felt so terrifyingly alive.

I looked up at the sky.

The moon hanging over the wasteland was no longer a pale, sickly white. Under the resonance of my awakening, it had bloomed into a deep, vivid blood-red.

A promise of carnage.

I cracked my neck, feeling the golden power practically vibrating under my skin.

I turned my gaze toward the glowing dome of the Silver Moon clan territory shining in the distance.