An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

www.ellorascave.com

Animal

ISBN 9781419921322
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Animal Copyright © 2009 Nathalie Gray

Edited by Mary Moran
Cover art by Syneca

Electronic book Publication April 2009

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A

NIMAL

Nathalie Gray

Nathalie Gray

Prologue

After Dex Solomon and his team of lycanthrope mercenaries recover a data clip and

publicly play its damning message, all hell breaks loose. The news topples the corrupt
Global Alliance of Nations government, only to be replaced by former enemies bent on
thwarting one another. A civil war is brewing, pitting lycans and other genetically
enhanced people against normal humans. Neighbor against neighbor. Friend against
friend. The sudden return of marksman Dragana and Cristoval, leader of the
underground resistance, together with Liberty’s commercial connections and her lover
Cupcake, the shy, towering lycan, all play in the underdog’s favor. But interim leaders
of the opposition, Solomon and reformed government spy Eva, still must fight an uphill
battle to give “genetic deviants” basic rights.

When the shadow government entity known only as the Iron Conclave attacks the

underground resistance, causing irreparable damage, all accusing eyes turn to one of its
members—Haruto. Branded a traitor with a price on his head from both sides, the
enigmatic lycan who never takes his mirrored goggles off conveniently disappears
before answers can be gained.

There’s blood in the water. And the sharks are circling.

4

Animal

Chapter One

15 December 2534 Era Vulgaris, 0733 hours

Abandoned subway system

Seoul, United Koreas, Earth

They barely made it to the exit. Blue-white telltale flashes of volter shots chased

them down tunnels lit by thin, bouncing blue beams from the weapons scopes. Dust
and smoke stung her nose, choked her, forced her to breathe through clenched teeth.
Sand crunched between them. As if thunder had struck the underground resistance
headquarters—Seoul’s ancient subway system—loud booms rattled tiles off the walls.
Brioni tried not to yelp with each explosion. A cluster of children with their tiny fists
clutched on her bathrobe belt, which she’d undone and used as guide rope, stopped
when she froze at one corner. Behind her, more members of the resistance shuffled to a
stop.

“Is there a lycan with us?” she whispered. Mumbled negatives. Uncertainty. They

didn’t know who was where and with whom. The attack had come so suddenly, the
underground resistance had just managed to scatter through the many tunnels leading
to the surface. She didn’t know who was with her, except that some of them had larger
weapons than her puny stunner.

She needed a lycan.
They could’ve used one of the resistance protectors right about now. Only they

could fight Iron Conclave operatives and do it successfully. But then again, they’d been
bred for that, genetically enhanced predatory traits and all. The rest of the “genetic
deviants” were just that—different. Not killing machines. Plus, there were a lot of
regular folks down here at the moment, herself included, who were helping because it
was the right thing to do.

But she needed fire power. Now.
“Don’t take another step,” a man’s gentle voice said from way back down the line.
She tried not to sigh audibly. They’d be all right. A lycan was with them. One she

knew well. One she liked, even if no one else did.

Haruto padded up to her. His long black leather coat trailed almost to the ground.

He didn’t have a scope on the volter he held in a steady hand. But then again, he didn’t
need one. The man could see in total darkness better than regular people could at high
noon. Mirrored goggles like those welders used reflected her face when he turned to
her, cocked his head. Goggles he never took off. Longish black hair in a serrated cut
obscured the rest of his face. She’d give anything to have a moment with him. Another
stolen interlude of quiet and intimacy. Her heart squeezed painfully.

5

Nathalie Gray

He put his index finger against his pursed lips. The fingerless black leather gloves

creaked. His presence filled her senses.

Someone demanded they get the hell out of there. Haruto raised his face. She heard

him sniffing delicately.

She turned to the ones behind her. “Shh.”
The change happened so fast she barely had time to push the children out of the

way and behind her against the wall. Haruto took a step backward, curved as if under a
great weight. He shook violently. His transformation was eerily silent.

“Shit!” a man snarled behind her. “He’s changing!”
From ahead of them, voices she didn’t recognize. Volter shots. Bright blue-white

flashes. The enemy was just around the corner. Had she gone on, had Haruto not
stopped them…

They would’ve been killed. All of them. Even the little ones.
Unlike other lycans, he didn’t become half beast when he changed. Well, maybe

tenth beast. His hair rose as though something blew on it, seemed to become spiked like
a ridge down the back of his head. From the smooth, Asian facial features, his bone
structure turned more angular, particularly around the eyebrows and cheekbones.
When he grimaced, fangs protruded down and up—the pain must have been terrible.
Standing half a foot taller than his five-eight frame, he pressed one hand against the
opposite wall. Metallic claws shot out from the quicks of his fingers. Licking his lips,
Haruto turned to her. His trademark smirk pulled his mouth to one side. Something
carnal, primal passed between them. He advanced by a step. Sniffed once. She didn’t
know how she could tell but he was smelling her. Sensualization spread through her.
She stopped breathing.

He took another step.
Fever engulfed her. He looked so feral this way, so alluring and virile. The same

man but honed into a weapon. All sharp edges and animal magnetism. Haruto lowered
his face as he ran his tongue along his upper lip.

The spell broke when enemy fire drowned even her thoughts.
With his metallic claws raking against the wall and creating a godawful screech, he

took off down the tunnel.

Volter shots. A low growl. More shots, drowned by a haunting howl. One of the

children at her side yelped in fright. Some of them began to cry. They were used to the
lycans walking around the underground resistance, had been raised amongst people
whose only crime was to have been born different. Like Haruto. But it was all becoming
too much even for the brave little souls. She could relate.

“It’ll be all right,” she said to them as she forced them into a tighter clump.
One of the Batista sisters, Rio, grenade-launcher in hand, crept forward and poked

her head around the corner. She hadn’t changed yet but breathed hard and shallow.

The gunfight abruptly died down. Ringing silence replaced chaos.

6

Animal

“It’s over,” Rio said. Turning back to Brioni, she whispered in her ear, “He… When

we move again, I think they should keep their eyes closed.”

Brioni knew whom she was talking about. And why.

* * * * *

Three hours before

She was too excited to sleep. The news Cristoval had returned left her buoyed and

hopeful things would settle down. A lot of people had left the resistance during the
charismatic leader’s absence. Some because their kind could now walk the surface
without fear of being arrested. The interim government—counseled by Solomon, a
lycan mercenary with a foul disposition, and Eva, a former Iron Conclave spy—had
made it a priority to ensure people born with differences had a fair shot at life. But not
everyone was happy. Labor unions pretended “genetic deviants” were willing to work
harder for less money, thus stealing jobs from “normal people”. Others argued against
creating a mixed environment in schools. But Cristoval Vonatos was back. It’d all be
better now.

Brioni looked at her handiwork. Shoot. She’d gone over the edge of her nail with

the purple polish and painted her skin too. Waving her hands fast so it’d dry, she
shoved her feet into the slippers by her bed. The rapid-dry polish was ready within
seconds so she tugged her robe over her cami and boxer shorts—her choice that night,
black-bats print against purple stripes—tied the belt tight and slipped out of the
dormitory to go get something to drink. With the departure of almost a third of the
population, everything was quiet as she padded in her soft slippers to the cafeteria.

Someone else was there as well, pacing in front of the hot water plate. Allan,

judging by the bright red hair. Asia had cut it again. He should tell his girlfriend to
leave his hair alone. Brioni thought the always-smiling redhead looked much better
with his hair down his collar. He was speaking on his portable decoder, so she made as
little noise as possible. Uncharacteristic of him, he looked angry. Snarled a few words
she couldn’t hear. When he casually turned around and caught her there, he snapped
the decoder shut.

“Hey,” she murmured as she picked up a chipped mug and set it on the pressure

plate. If she was lucky, there’d be enough hot water for a full cup. The thing hissed
impotently.

“H-hey,” Allan replied, trying for a smile. It resembled more of a grimace. What

was wrong with him?

With a sigh, she replaced the mug on the dented chrome rack by the wall. Wiped

the crumbs off the countertop with the dishcloth then hanged it on the rod over the
small sink. With things changing, perhaps those of the resistance still choosing to live
underground would have a better life. Hot water for everyone would be very nice.
Although she’d just had a shower. Lukewarm, but better than nothing. It was a

7

Nathalie Gray

personal choice on her part. She chose to live here with her friends instead of forsaking
them and returning to the surface. As a “normal” human, she wouldn’t have problems,
could get her old auditor job back. She didn’t want it. At twenty, she’d decided she
wasn’t going to live in a society that treated a segment of its citizenry so badly. She’d
quietly sold everything and moved down below. Now three years later, with the
nickname “Goth Fairy” stuck to her and in charge of the resistance’s logistics, she
regretted nothing.

She leaned back against the counter. Allan still stared at her, shifting foot to foot.

“Everything all right?” she asked. “You look twitchy. She after you again?”

“Yeah, sure. I mean, no—no, Asia’s cool. I just have something on my mind.” He

raked his hand through his cropped hair. “It’ll be nice to have the boss back, huh?”

She agreed with a smile. Let it slide that he’d changed the subject none-too-subtly.

Brioni resisted the urge to ask him if he’d seen Haruto. Since the loner lycan had come
to the resistance the year before, all smirk and quiet cynicism, she’d had to make a
conscious effort not to ask everyone she met if they’d seen him. Brioni knew she was the
only one, but she kind of liked the cynical man. And it had nothing to do with his hot
body wrapped in skin-tight black polymer armor, the unruly shock of black hair and
the luscious lips pulled in a permanent one-sided smirk.

No, of course not. Has nothing to do with Haruto being the sexiest guy on-planet.
And it had nothing to do either with the mystery. The mirrored goggles the man

never, ever took off. Not in public anyway. No one asked about it, but she was sure
everyone wanted to know. Herself included.

“You got a message.” She pointed to Allan’s flashing decoder. The red pulse

illuminated his pant leg. A demanding one-eyed beetle.

Allan looked at the thing in his hand as if it were a venomous snake. He muttered

some excuse or other then rushed away. “Gotta take it,” he threw over his shoulder.

What was wrong with him now? Had Asia rattled the poor guy again? That girl,

despite her many attributes and good heart, could be a pain in the butt. Bossy little
thing. Brioni preferred people who led by quiet example over those who lorded over
everyone else. Even when moved by good intentions.

Because hell is paved with them.
Silence settled around the old cafeteria. Back two hundred years, this would’ve

been a place where subway workers congregated to eat and talk, have a coffee with
friends, commiserate about the crazy bosses. Nowadays, on top of serving its original
purpose, the tired but clean room—Brioni was vicious when it came to clean—was used
as meeting room, overflow medical clinic and school. Brioni taught here sometimes
when Asia had enough and went stomping off. Her favorite subject to teach was math.
She’d never get enough of the kids’ eyes brightening when they finally worked through
one of her problems. That she was considered one of the “cool” temp teachers made her
proud too.

8

Animal

A tiny sound, barely discernible, turned her head toward the door. She exited the

cafeteria, switched off the lights to save what precious electricity they had, waited to
hear the sound again. Nothing.

Just as she was about to take a step, she heard it again. High-pitched. Very faint.

Not a voice. Brioni checked her watch. The black cat’s paws indicated a quarter past
three. Damn, who was up at this time? Except those like her who couldn’t sleep. Or like
Allan, who seemed to be stuck in a bad spot. She wouldn’t mention it to his girlfriend
for fear of Asia making it worse for him.

Brioni padded on silent feet down the corridor leading to one of the subway

tunnels. She emerged in one of the old stations. Before people had started to leave, the
resistance had made this station its center of operations because either end of the tunnel
led to nothing but cave-ins. Thus safe. The station was quiet now, and deserted. But
with Cristoval’s return, things would pick up again. In fact, she should get her stuff in
order, collate a few reports, show him the scary numbers she kept only to herself—
they’d have to move soon. It was just too big to maintain down here.

Oh, she could hear the sound better here. What the hell was it?
A cool breeze caressed her face when she leaned from the platform and peered into

the darkened tunnel. There. Like a whisper on a breeze, a couple of notes. Definitely
some sort of wind instrument. Flute maybe?

Brioni Metcalf was curious if nothing else.
Making sure not to get her robe snagged in any of the dirty rungs, she climbed

down the metal stairs at the end of the platform, walked a few steps into the tunnel to
make sure she had the right end. She did. Bolstered, she ventured farther, left the light
behind. Keeping to the wall so she wouldn’t trip on the old tracks, Brioni walked until
she spotted the end of the main tunnel. Blocks of stones and other debris prevented
anyone coming in or going out. No one ever ventured down here anyway since it led
nowhere. But to her right, near the cave-in, a grille door had been pushed ajar. A
narrow corridor? Here? She hadn’t even known there was one. Obviously, whoever had
come here wasn’t very big. Well, neither was she. So she squeezed through the narrow
aperture without touching the grille. The music reached her much clearer here.

Long, haunting notes made her press a hand to her mouth. It sounded so sad.

Beautiful, eerie and enthralling, but so very sad. She’d always been a sucker for organic
music. Not the stuff machines made. Real music from real people.

Brioni took extra care to be silent as she crept down the side tunnel. At the end to

the left, a doorway spilled trembling, golden light on the opposite wall. Cautiously so
she wouldn’t disturb the flute player, she tiptoed to the doorway. In case the person
faced it, she stayed in the corridor so she could enjoy the music.

There was no beat to it, no rhythm that she could detect. Only long notes like pleas

and wordless prayers. Sadness. Beautiful sadness. Tears welled in her eyes. Whoever
was playing had—was still—hurt bad. She leaned against the wall, crossed her arms
and closed her eyes to share in her mysterious musician’s gift. The music went on.

9

Nathalie Gray

Poignant, moving, a hymn to sorrow. Then it changed, quickened, felt as if something
in the music tried valiantly to rise. Brioni felt the tears roll down her cheeks. Then it
came to her, just like that. She knew what it was—a requiem for redemption. The player
wanted to atone or be forgiven. The music was asking forgiveness. Each note a gallant
appeal.

The melody cut short.
She barely had time to peel her back off the wall when a rough hand reached

around the doorjamb, clutched her collar and yanked her inside.

Shoot.
She gripped the offending hand with both of hers as she faced her aggressor. A

smallish man. Black hair in a jagged fringe over his face. A luscious mouth pulled in a
one-sided smirk.

“Haruto?”
He released her, stepped back and slipped something in the collar of his long coat.

A tiny tea candle in a chipped glass dish set on the floor illuminated the small room.
Hanging between two steel beams exposed between missing concrete, a rope hammock
rocked faintly. A colorful rug from eons past but still looking good stretched in the
middle of the room while in black lacquer that had seen better years, a straight-backed
chair was the only piece of furniture. This was someone’s private place. A sanctuary.
She was in Haruto’s home.

“Were you spying on me?” His tone was flat even if she could detect the anger

there.

“No, I swear! I’m so sorry,” she said through her fingers, knuckled the tears from

her cheeks. “I-I had no idea… I didn’t know. Shoot. But that was so beautiful and, well,
you know, I got curious.”

His mirrored goggles reflected her face. She looked as dumb as she felt. Her eyes

and nose were red. Great. Not the impression she was trying to give this man.
Especially this man.

He seemed to relax. By the angle of his chin, she knew he was giving her the once-

over. Her heart beat madly as she shoved her hands in the pocket of her robe. “Where,
um, where did you learn to play like that?”

“In between torture sessions.”
Anger flared white-hot. Someone had tortured him? Where? When? Why? “That’s

awful.”

“I didn’t say I was the one in the chair.”
“Oh… Um…” The realization hit her. “Ew.”
The characteristic smirk widened. “Don’t always believe what people tell you.”
“Even you?”
Smirk. “Especially me.”

10

Animal

God, she loved his voice. Always had. Soft, a notch above a murmur. It ran over her

skin like a film of hot water. She shivered. “I’m sorry I interrupted.”

He must have heard the earnest effort to convey how truly sorry she felt because he

nodded once. So magnanimous of him. “As you can see, there’s nothing to interrupt in
my home.”

Was that a point of sadness creeping into his voice? It sure crept into her own when

she sighed. “I know how that feels.”

Haruto cocked his head. Clearly, he was asking, “Oh yeah? Tell me about that.”
So she did. Brioni Metcalf was curious and chatty. Lycans beware! She’d imagined

for months how it’d be to exchange a few words with the enigmatic lycan—maybe
more than words on a couple of lonely nights. She’d be damned if she’d miss her
chance. Plus, something kept her put, something primitive and obdurate. Attraction.

“Yeah, there isn’t much to ‘interrupt’ at my place either. Gets pretty dull sometimes.

I used to have eight other women to chat with at night and now there’s not a soul left in
the entire dormitory. Talk about bo-ring.”

When he approached, Brioni realized he only wore pants under his long coat. No

shirt. A silvery item like a flattened lemon glimmered at the end of a black cord and
rested on the most perfect chest she’d ever seen. Her palms tingled at the sight of that
gorgeous skin the color of ochre. In the reflection of his goggles, her eyes flared wide.

“Was that a come-on?” he asked.
“Oh, no-no, I only—I meant, it’s not anything personal—not that I don’t think

you’re cute, you are, believe me… Um. Yeah, I think I’ll go now.”

He reached out and pinched the cuff of her robe. “Wait.”
She could’ve used a few ice cold glasses of water right about now. Haruto. The man

whom no one liked, no one trusted, who had a gift for pissing people off with his
smirks and sniper comments. He’d invited her to stay.

“I didn’t mean to bug you.” Just shut up, Metcalf.
“If I asked, would you stay?”
“I think, um, I think you just did.” She felt the blush rise to her hairline. Good thing

she was the “Goth Fairy” and kept her hair in an overgrown bob dyed purple-black. So
she was able to hide her predicament.

For the first time since she’d met him, Haruto smiled. Not a great big megawatt

grin, nothing like the ones she could pull off, that was for sure, but a small smile that
made a crease at the corners of his mouth. That luscious thing.

“What’s that instrument? I’ve never seen one of those before.”
Attagirl, change the subject. Smooth.
He pulled the thing over his head and proffered it to her. She took it, turned it

around. Metal. Lighter than she’d expected. With eight holes in two rows and a little
“dovetail” to blow into.

11

Nathalie Gray

“It’s an ocarina.”
She repeated the word under her breath. “It’s beautiful.”
“Only two artisans make them nowadays, one of them here in the United Koreas.

Ocarinas are obsolete instruments, thousands of years old.”

She fought to keep her breathing under control. “That’s too bad they don’t make

them anymore. It’s real music, not the stuff machines make.” She tapped her fingernail
on the globular flute’s side. “It’s made of metal?”

“Platinum. There’s only one like it.” He opened his palm, so she placed the ocarina

there. Stopped breathing when their fingers touched.

“Platinum? Oh man, don’t get caught with this around your neck.” White metals

had become so prized only GAN was allowed to have more than an ounce.

“It will be our secret.”
In his mouth, the words sounded devilish and stimulating. Our secret.
“So, um, for real, when did you learn to play?”
The smirk returned.
“Yeah, okay, never mind.” A person was allowed his or her secrets, right? Just

being here was thrilling enough. She didn’t want to ruin it with her incessant questions
and insatiable curiosity.

He pointed to the lone chair. “Sit.”
The pleasant heat on her cheeks turned fever-hot. “Excuse me?”
Haruto seemed to rethink his comment. “Sit. Please.”
Much better. Obviously, he didn’t deal often with niceties. “What about you?

There’s only one chair.”

“Why do you care where I sit?”
She shrugged. “I was brought up this way. You don’t sit if someone else is standing,

you know what I mean?”

“No.”
“Well, it’s kinda basic courtesy.” She cleared her throat when the smirk rose again.

“I guess it just depends where you were brought up. Different ways for different folks.”

Just shut up, Metcalf.
“There’s a chair,” he started slowly. “I offered it to you. But you won’t take it

because I don’t have one.”

“That’s about it.”
Haruto cocked his head down at her so close that she could smell his hair. The

simple act had the same effect as getting a shot of hairdryer in the face. Heat spread to
her cheeks and forehead. Was she ever glad to be able to hide most of it! She felt the
hairs on her arms rise in tingly waves.

“It makes no sense.”

12

Animal

“Who says it has to?” she whispered.
For a long time he stood there facing her. What was he looking at? she wondered.

Was he checking her out? Was he rolling his eyes? Did he think she was silly for
showing good manners? He lacked even the most basic graciousness but seemed as if
he tried, at least with her. That “sit, please” seemed to feel foreign to him. But he’d
tried. In the end, that was all she ever asked of people, that they try. As she did.

“You’re very trusting of people.”
“You make it sound like a bad thing.”
“It is.”
“Not to me, it’s not,” she replied with a small smile. “We all have our ways, and

mine are this—you have to give each person a fair chance. Until they prove you
wrong.”

Haruto’s goggles reflected her smiling face. Her cheeks were flushed. She

swallowed hard, heard the deglutition gurgle down her throat and blushed even more
for it. A downward spiral of tension.

“And if they do prove you wrong?” he asked in a soft voice.
Brioni, for no reason she could explain, felt sad that he would ask. “Then it’s over.

Folks get one chance with me.”

He moistened his lips, drew back. “Some people don’t deserve even that.”
“I disagree. Everyone deserves a chance. At least one. Life’s unfair enough as it is.”
Shaking his head, he knelt on the rug as one would in a dojo. He looked pretty

comfortable so she crossed the room and reluctantly sat on the chair facing him. With
one hand, Haruto parted his long coat so it’d fan around him. The sight of his chest and
belly, both looking rock-hard and satin-smooth, made her salivate. He was perfect. In
symmetry, in proportions, in aesthetics. To her number-loving mind, Haruto embodied
the perfect theorem, one worthy of any Gauss’ precepts. The lycan part of him only
accentuated the rest. Made him more.

Yet he was an enigma. A sphinx. If he posed her a riddle, would he eat her if she

answered wrong?

Brioni was about to ask what—or if—he intended to play for her when he brought

the lemon-shaped instrument to his lips, put his long fingers on the twin rows of tiny
holes and took a deep breath.

She had to close her eyes when the long, hauntingly beautiful note rose in the air,

became a living thing that curled slowly like a tendril of smoke. Others soon joined it,
like a dance for the soul.

Slowly so she wouldn’t disturb him—with the goggles, he could’ve had his eyes

closed in meditation for all she knew—she slinked off the chair and sat in front of him,
cross-legged. The rug was nice and thick against her ankles and feet. She closed her
eyes again to better appreciate Haruto’s music. Plus, if she kept staring at him, one of
them was bound to become ill at ease. And she could just guess which one it’d be.

13

Nathalie Gray

He didn’t play the same melody as the one she’d unfortunately interrupted. But the

same haunting beauty graced every note. Haruto’s music made her want to hug him in
a fierce way. Who knew the man had this emotional depth to him? If she hadn’t been
worried about exposing his private life, she would’ve enjoyed rubbing the beautiful
music in his detractors’ faces. They didn’t understand the first thing about this man.
Although she hadn’t known him well, she still understood there was much more that
met the eye than the sexy body and the mocking smirk. Clearly, the lycan enjoyed and
could create beauty.

But the melody was so damn sad. What could have happened to him to make him

draw such painful music from his soul?

Brioni felt tears threaten again and willed them to disappear. She didn’t want to

ruin the moment or spook him. Or worse, have him think she wasn’t tough enough to
take the gift. After a particularly long and poignant series of notes, she sighed long and
hard.

She made the promise to herself then and there. Brioni Metcalf liked to believe she

was a friend to someone in need. And did Haruto need a friend right now! She’d be this
friend. If he let her.

Brioni realized with a start the music had just stopped. And that Haruto had gently

pressed his lips to hers.

14

Animal

Chapter Two

What was this young woman doing here in his home? He shouldn’t have invited

her in. What was he thinking? Obviously, he wasn’t.

But she was such a reprieve, such a soothing presence. And low-maintenance. She

didn’t seem to care if he agreed or not, only expected him to give her a fair shot as she
did him. A novel concept for Haruto, who’d given up on the species altogether. And all
its sub-elements as well. Yet here he was, sharing his music for the first time with
someone else. Well, not for the first time. He’d told her the truth about the torture part.
Except that contrary to his temporary ego-fueled comment, he had been the one in the
chair. Years of it, in fact. A nameless child born to a corporation, raised and trained by
researchers in a program no one outside knew existed. Even the Iron Conclave didn’t
dare mess with Inu, his former “home”. He should’ve leveled the place when he
escaped. That demented place of silence, patience and cruelty. A place that had
produced the most dangerous and unstable weapon conceivable—him. A third-
generation product of DNA tampering and genetic enhancements. A lycan of sorts, half
human, half…something else.

Haruto cleared his mind of the toxic thoughts. He wouldn’t let it pollute his music.

This was all he had left. Well, maybe not anymore.

What was he thinking!
He had nothing. Needed and wanted nothing. A conscious choice. A necessary sum

of all his dangerous parts. He didn’t care for people and they happily returned the
favor. Everyone knew where they stood. Made life much simpler.

As he looked at Brioni sitting in front of him, eyes closed and oblivious to the

menace he represented, he wondered if his simple view of life hadn’t just been tipped
over. Temporarily at least.

So while she sat quietly with her eyes closed, he played. For her and for himself.

There wouldn’t be another occasion like this. Sometimes he wondered if there really
was, perhaps, something like fate or fortune. Maybe there was. Who knew? Not that he
cared.

With the goggles, he could admire her at his leisure. The first time he’d met her, the

diminutive woman with the purple and black hair, pointy chin and purple dress code
had left no impression at all. He’d dismissed her as a non-threat. But the more he’d seen
Brioni interact with the resistance leaders and regular members—lycans, some twice her
size, didn’t seem to intimidate her at all—he’d come to realize there was strength
underneath the surface. Those eyes the color of an iceberg usually sparkled with mirth
and an easygoing disposition. But he’d seen her get pissed off once. And since that time,
Haruto had found it very difficult to discount his interest in the “Goth Fairy”. Until

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Nathalie Gray

tonight, he’d had no idea she felt anything at all for him. Her eyes didn’t lie. In a way, it
should turn him off—so different from his own. But it didn’t. He caught himself drawn
to her like a moth to a flame. Maybe he’d get burned. He didn’t care about that either.
Life was one long series of burns.

When he entered into a passage of longer notes, he saw the impact they had on her.

Tears rimmed her black eyelashes. Haruto couldn’t understand why he had such effect
on her and she on him. Neither could he comprehend his own response to her tears.
What did he care if she cried? It wouldn’t be the first time he made someone cry.

To his shock, he stopped playing before his brain caught on. His lips had already

touched hers when he mentally scolded his frailty. But the sensations evaporated
everything else. Instant fire. Burning. Consuming. He heard her breath catch in her
throat. The goggles touched her forehead. The damn things. But he couldn’t take them
off. Wouldn’t let anyone see his eyes. Never again.

Her lips felt exactly the way he’d thought they would. Soft and plump like the

cherries of which they reminded him. He hung on to the feeling for as long as he could.
It wouldn’t last long. It never did. It’d end soon. Like a spark. Valiant but short-lived.
To his confusion and shock, the moment remained bright and warm and sweet. Haruto
pressed his lips a bit harder. Surely this would be it. The thread would break. So fragile.
Nothing on which to anchor. But no. It remained, even grew.

When Brioni, eyes closed and still rimmed with tears, raised a hand and let her

fingertips—chewed fingernails painted deep purple—gently rest on his jaw, Haruto
experienced a deep tremor that originated in the pit of his stomach. What the hell was
that?

His heart rate accelerated. Was he about to change? Panic rose like a heat wave. Not

here! Not with her! Yet the sensations were different. No rage came to spoil it. Just as
hot and intense, but unusually…pleasant. It didn’t have anything to do with his lycan
half, this fire boiling his blood. What else as intense was there but rage? Nothing but
anger could be so strong. But he didn’t hate her. Far from it. What was going on?

He tentatively cupped her chin as he angled his head sideways. There, perfect fit.

Their mouths felt as if they’d been built to be pressed together. Her tongue tentatively
darted out to touch his lips. A shot of adrenaline coursed through him. Reining in the
massive amount of hormones triggering muscle reactions down to his calves, Haruto
deepened the kiss. Her lips were moist as she parted them to allow his tongue entry. He
took the invitation. A soft moan left Brioni as he licked her bottom lip, sucked it into his
mouth, nibbled the juicy offering. He couldn’t stop himself from cupping the back of
her head to press her harder against his face, intensified the pressure of their mouths
until a hint of teeth raked on his lip. The resulting jolt shot his hormonal levels into the
stratosphere. His lycan half manifested itself, to his chagrin and frustration. He felt his
fangs and claws harden—as did his cock. If the first two were genetic enhancements
and chromium-based, the third was good old-fashioned human response. He usually
gave in to his lycan half. Not this time. He fought it. With all he had, he fought it

16

Animal

because he feared that should he let it run its course, he’d kill the precious thing. And
this moment right now with Brioni had become important to him.

She felt the surge of body heat coming from Haruto and wondered for a second

what was going on. But his mouth on hers drowned everything else. He was a great
kisser.

Slowly, side to side, Haruto ran his lips on hers, spilled over to kiss her cheeks, her

jaw, up to her eyelids and the bridge of her nose. Back down he kissed a burning-hot
trail to her collar. Brioni raised her chin. The ocarina dug into her chest when she
encircled his shoulders and pressed herself against him. He seemed to get the hint and
embraced her with both arms. She knelt up so she could espouse his form. He was as
hard as he looked. And incredibly hot to the touch. As if a fever raced through him.
She’d never felt that kind of heat coming from a person before. A portion of his skin
touched hers directly. A moan left her. One of need. One he seemed to understand.

She snaked her hands into his coat and made them as light as she could as she ran

them along his sides, the feel and heat of him such a contrast to her. He shuddered
when her cold fingertips reached his waist. Built like a long-distance runner, Haruto
was one glorious network of corded muscles. And while she caressed him, he did the
same to her.

Long fingers traced her collar and delicately tugged it back from her shoulders. For

a crazy second, she lamented her purple and bat-pattern cami and boxers. Not at all
what she would’ve worn had she known how the night would end. It was almost four
a.m. and here she was, getting up close and—very—personal with Haruto. She’d never
liked calling him Smiley, Asia’s choice of nickname. It didn’t seem appropriate
somehow. Although she had no idea if he minded or not. He probably didn’t care either
way. People’s opinions seemed not to matter one iota to him. She wished she were that
impervious to others’ pressure. Hadn’t she tried to go blonde in her teen years because
her friends had thought she’d look good? She hadn’t. A “Goth Fairy” shouldn’t be
blonde, dammit.

Brioni rolled her shoulders to help the robe fall back around her elbows. He gently

pulled the sleeves off without taking his mouth from hers. She let him do it for her
because one, she loved how he worked, diligent and precise, and two, she’d never
willingly let go of that succulent mouth. Once in only her cami and boxers, cool air
caressed her shoulders and thighs. Haruto’s mouth traveled down the length of her
neck, a shoulder, a biceps.

“Did you plan for this?” he whispered against her skin, kissed her in the crook of

her elbow. “Did you come here for this?”

Brioni smiled at the ceiling as she let him kiss his way down to her wrist. “I’d have

worn something more dignified if I had.”

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Nathalie Gray

Haruto straightened. His lips glistened from their kissing. He was smirking. Again.

She was starting to wonder if it was his way of smiling. Maybe he didn’t even realize
the mocking lift to his mouth usually antagonized and infuriated people.

“What you have now suits you.”
“Yeah, but it’s not exactly sexy.”
His smile turned lascivious. “It is to me.”
He straightened, sat on his heels and took his long coat off, which he dropped

behind him. He slipped the ocarina from his neck, reverently deposited it on the
garment. She was about to slip her cami up over her head when he stopped her with a
hand pressed to her shoulder.

“No.”
She arched an eyebrow at his tone.
Haruto seemed at a loss for words for a second. “I want to do it.”
It didn’t sound like a question but neither did he modulate it like an order. He was

trying hard. She didn’t care what people thought or said of him—he wasn’t such a bad
guy.

At arm’s length, he pinched the cami strap and slipped it down her arm. She cocked

it, let the spaghetti strap slide down over her elbow. Cool air tightened her nipples
painfully hard. Instead of uncovering her breast, he pinched the other strap and
repeated the motion. He was taking his time. Her heart skipped a beat.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmured, head cocked to one side.
The mirrored goggles reflected her in the tiny tea candle’s light and bathed her in

bronze and copper radiance. She wasn’t beautiful in her book, more goofy than
anything else, but the glow did accentuate the good bits about her. Her too-long bob hid
part of her face, for which she was glad. She didn’t have goggles behind which to shield
her emotions. He must have been able to see and sense all that went on in her. It
should’ve scared her. Even a little bit. It didn’t. She had no reason to trust Haruto yet
did and that was that.

“You’re beautiful too.” She reached out and slipped a strand of his hair between her

two forefingers. It felt like satin. “You’re perfect. Everywhere.”

“You haven’t seen ‘everywhere’ yet.”
“I’ve seen enough.”
Haruto shook his head.
“What?”
“You’re different.”
Brioni caressed his sculpted cheek, his sharp jaw. “Different as in ‘ooh, me likes’ or

different as in ‘oh boy’?”

“Different as in ‘me likes’.”

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Animal

The joking tone must have sounded as strange to his ears as it did hers because he

snorted a mocking laugh before sobering to his usual stoical expression. “You shouldn’t
be here. I’m not a good man, I’m not safe. I’m not even a bit nice.”

“Sure you are,” she retorted. “You just like to believe you’re all bad and

dangerous.”

The mocking lift to his mouth left. “I am dangerous.”
Great going, Metcalf. You just killed the mood.
Haruto must have read her contrite expression. He leaned over, teasingly licked her

upside the neck and ended his course with a quick nip of her earlobe. She gasped in
shock and thrill.

“But I’m not dumb. I don’t know why you’re here and I don’t know why you’re

staying. I’m just glad you are.”

She’d rarely heard him link so many words together. Arousal turned into affection.

She was beginning to discover whole other layers to the enigmatic lycan, and the more
she did, the more she liked what she saw. If the others only knew the depth to the one
they liked to hate. The whole suspicious lot of them!

“Have you ever had sex with a lycan?”
Brioni felt herself blush beet red. Talk about blunt. “Erm, no. Not that I have

anything against lycan guys, I’ve just never had the… Well, no, not yet.”

The smirk threatened to return. He nodded. “You have to know lycans can’t always

control their responses. I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong impression.”

“What impression?”
“That if I don’t change it means I’m not excited enough. I am. I just don’t want…”

He shrugged, adjusted his goggles.

Brioni scooted forward until she was kneeling between Haruto’s parted knees. She

planted both palms on his thighs—so hard and glossy and exciting with the ribbed
black polymer—and leaned forward. The kiss she gave him had nothing demure or
gentle. Even if she could feel the muscles on his jaw twitching—for a split second, she
was afraid he’d tackle her down and take her right then and there—he didn’t do
anything to match or stop her.

She heard his breathing quicken when she straightened. “I’m not intimidated, if

that’s what you think. And you don’t gross me out or scare me, now or if you change. I
can take you, Haruto the lycan, and Haruto the man. I can take both. Are we good? Can
we go on now?”

Haruto did exactly what she’d thought he would. Tackled her right onto her back to

settle on top of her. She humph-ed against his mouth. He sucked the muffled sound out
of her. Pressed a thigh between hers, tore a moan of delight when he pushed upward.
The heat of his skin pressed against hers, the impact of his hard body and skilled hands,
the thigh he rolled against her sex all served to shred what little inhibitions Brioni still
had. She wanted him. God, she wanted him.

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Nathalie Gray

He snaked a hand down between their bodies and cupped her mons. Serious heat

seeped through the thin cotton. Brioni arched against his hand. He got the hint. Slipped
his hand underneath the boxers, found the spot that ached for his touch. She
whimpered when he parted her with his middle finger and began to gently rub up and
down. Squeezing her thighs hard, she trapped his hand against her pussy. Haruto
smiled against her mouth. His teeth added to the stimulants. He nipped her on the jaw.
She returned the favor. He raked his bottom teeth up her neck. She did as well. But
when he slowly curled his middle finger and sank in tiny, gradual increments, Brioni’s
mental faculties—those that remained—floated out with her whispered “oh God”.

“You’re so wet,” Haruto whispered. He took his finger out despite her thighs still

being clamped over his wrist. Damn him. Brought his middle finger up to his mouth
and sucked on the glossy digit. She could watch only his mouth. Nothing else mattered.
“And so sweet,” he added through a mocking curl to his decadent, glistening mouth.

As if it could dispense from her brain’s messages, her back bowed off the floor

when Haruto backed down between her legs and trailed kisses all the way there before
settling between her thighs. She shook from trying to keep still. With hands gentle but
demanding, he pushed her knees up then outward. She wanted to wriggle out of her
boxers but he batted her hand away.

“Keep them. I like it this way.”
Goggles gleaming, he dived for her cleft. Through her parted thighs she watched

him work. The agile tongue lifting a section of her boxers or sneaking underneath the
fabric itself to burn her skin with his unnatural heat. He was so incredibly hot. She
could just imagine how his cock would feel moving inside her. The searing heat with
which he’d brand her. She’d never wanted any other man as hard as she wanted
Haruto, her enigmatic lycan with the hidden eyes. Maybe someday he’d let her see. Or
not. His choice. It wouldn’t change a thing for her. She liked him just the way he was.

“Come back to me,” he murmured, smirking as he raised her feet off the rug and

hooked them on his shoulders. “You were somewhere else.”

Brioni nodded. “But you were with me.”
“Even in your fantasies, I’m there?” He didn’t look convinced.
“Especially in my fantasies.”
He placed his hands, opened wide, on the back of her thighs and pushed her legs

up and apart. Brioni gasped loudly when he clamped his mouth on her sex, began to
suck and lick and kiss her pussy right through the flimsy cotton. His wet heat seeped
through. She let a moan escape. They were growing increasingly harder to contain.

“Don’t fight it,” he whispered. Licked her drenched cleft through the boxers. “Let it

out. Let me hear how you want things.”

She’d never been a shy girl, even if she’d always been on the quiet side. Her

reserved nature didn’t stem from bashfulness but from a tendency to observe rather
than dive in and get her hands dirty. Still, letting Haruto know exactly what she wanted
him to do left her gritting her teeth. What if he didn’t want to bear down on her? With

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Animal

all his weight and all his strength? Take her without reserve, without apologizing and
worrying he’d hurt her? She enjoyed sex. Raw and unrepentant. No holding back.
Would he think her damaged cargo?

“I like…” She didn’t have the nerve to finish.
On all fours, he licked his way from her cloth-covered pussy right up to her

sternum. “You like…?”

“I like it rowdy.”
She felt the blush rising to her hairline. She’d never said that to a man, especially

one not her boyfriend. She usually required a glass of wine, some coaxing and a few
months of “evaluation” before she’d confide something so personal to a lover. Plus, this
was the kind of thing one demonstrated, not asked out loud like an order at the cook
shop.

An order of sex please. Make it rowdy!
With Haruto though, she sensed it’d be okay. He wouldn’t judge her. Well, she

prayed he wouldn’t.

Black hair fell in a jagged fringe around his face. He licked his upper lip, made a big

show of it. “Rowdy?”

She shrugged. “Hey, you did ask.” Argh God, this is so awkward.
Haruto fisted the front of her cami and yanked it down below her breasts. “Like

that?”

Her half gasp, half moan rose between them. More urgency and acquiescence than

the strongest words. Behind her, the tiny tea light sputtered.

Teeth gleamed when he dove for her breasts. Her nipples were treated to the most

potent sucking she’d ever known. She grabbed his hair in two fistfuls and forced him
down on top of her. He landed with a growl, bit and licked her breasts, rolled her
tender nipples until she moaned every time he even came near them. Clawing at his
skin, she tugged him up, higher, until he straddled her chest. The ribbed polymer pants
proved the most tempting yet frustrating barrier. She scratched at it, tugged and
yanked on it until Haruto got rid of them and returned to her, this time naked except
for the mirrored goggles. But they didn’t really count. A bead like liquid crystal
dangled from the slit on his glans. She rubbed it with a thumb, took infinite pleasure in
Haruto’s labored breathing. Around the ridge of his cock, his thick and veiny shaft. His
balls constricted. When he straddled her chest close enough for her to get a taste, she
did with a long whimper of satisfaction. His thigh muscles twitched.

Brioni took his cock into her mouth. Made room for the broad head by opening

wide. Her teeth raked when he pushed in, his torso buttressed on his hands. He
trembled all over. Brioni felt powerful, even if she was the one on her back while a man
pushed his cock into her mouth. He retreated before she was done with him.
Fingernails curled into the skin of his taut backside, she forced him back in. Deeper. By
mewling and moaning, she let him know this was okay, this was good, she wanted it
thus. In smooth rolls, he glided in deeper, retreated to the glans. With her hands she

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Nathalie Gray

forced him back down. This time, Haruto thrust almost all the way in. She shouldn’t
feel so damn proud to be able to take a guy in so deeply, but she did and that was that.
To each their own. She could give good head. So sue me.

“Brioni,” he whispered. A warning.
On a nose-sigh, she pushed him back so she could lick his balls, squeeze and play

with them, suck one then the other. She was about to take him into her again when he
hurriedly backed down to her thighs, roughly parted them with his hands and shoved
his face against her pussy.

“Ah!”
Haruto’s mouth was both conqueror and lover as he ate her out through the soaked

boxers.

“Take them off,” she whimpered. “Please, take them off.”
Two fists on the back of her underwear, Haruto yanked toward him. Stitching

ripped. The boxers went flying behind him. Denuded to his hungry mouth, Brioni only
had time to moan when he used his thumbs to part her sex. Teeth gleamed. She cried
out. He’d bitten her!

“Ah! Yes!”
He did it again. Bit her on the inside of the thigh then up higher, right along the

labia before sucking her tender flesh into his mouth and trapping it there between his
teeth.

He released her. “Rowdy, you said?”
“Yes! Please, yes!”
Muscles corded when he straightened between her legs. “Spread wide for me.”
She grabbed her knees, brought them up on her chest.
Instead of eating her out, he pressed his palm on her distended pussy, so wet and

ready, and rubbed tiny circles. Brioni’s breathing doubled. Oh God, that was good. So
good.

From tiny circles, Haruto’s hand moved farther away from the center. Wider circles

rubbed her flesh and rolled her tender clitoris. She cried out each and every time he
pushed upward. A burning sensation started in her lower back. It wouldn’t be too long
now. So close.

Wider circles still. Her juices made the motion a form of beautiful torture. Muscles

bunched and rippled on his chest and shoulder. Still he rubbed her sex.

“Ah, ah, ah.” She gritted her teeth. “That’s it, oh please, yes.”
“Harder?”
“Yes! Yes!”
A split second before ecstasy hit, Haruto removed his hand, grabbed her by the

knees to position himself right behind her butt. On a snarl, he shoved himself into her.
Deep. Hard. Like burning metal covered in honey, his cock pushed deep, forced itself

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Animal

home. Distended, spread wide for him, Brioni came on a crystal-clear note. Skin clacked
again skin. Pleasure rippled in every direction. Her breasts bounced from the force of
Haruto’s thrusts. He didn’t make love to her. He fucked her.

Before she could voice her approval, he pulled out with a wet plop, roughly rolled

her over onto her front, pulled on her hips until she’d climbed up on all fours. His glans
pressed against her slit. Sank in. Brioni moaned and yelped, urged and pleaded. He
didn’t move.

“Haruto, please,” she whispered with a buck backward. “I’m going to lose it.”
“Shh.”
To her shock, he pressed a finger against her anus, rolled ’round and ’round. Her

juices coated everything, made the novel sensation a mix of anticipation and hesitation.
The rug burned her kneecaps when he finally pushed inside. To the end of him. Of her.
She let out a long keen. He pulled, slammed back in. Her voice became a metronome to
his thrusts. In and out. Rough and demanding yet the tenderest hands. He took her,
fucked her. Her breasts bounced, her palms ground into the thick weave. Into her. In.
Hard.

A shudder. Fever. Stillness. Then suns exploding behind her eyelids. She’d come

again, this time her orgasm left a burning wake. The next penetration heralded Haruto’s
own release. He pulled out, fisted himself to choke back the cum. She felt his knuckles
rubbing against her slick cleft. After a few seconds, he rubbed his cock against her anus,
up her cleft, against her coccyx. So hot. So smooth. On a long sigh, she collapsed on her
side. He followed her on the floor, didn’t spoon but pretty damn close. The notion it
was Haruto who lay behind her made her smile wide. They’d shared something. More
than sex. Companionship. A tiny glimpse through the fence. Even if nothing ever came
of it, she’d cherish this one time with the distant lycan. This had been precious and
warranted a special place in her heart. Which it had. He had.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” he whispered. She felt him play in her hair.
She rolled onto her belly, folded her hands and leaned her chin on them.
His hair was a mess of black ribbons. “What?”
“Nothing. I’m just looking at you. You don’t like that?”
He shrugged. Sweat made his muscled shoulder gleam in the timid light. “I’m not

used to it.” He adjusted his welder goggles.

She wished he’d feel comfortable enough to take them off. Someday, maybe he

would. She wouldn’t ask him. Either he did it on his own time or he didn’t. She’d
respect his choice.

“Well, you better get used to it.”
Haruto’s mouth curled up at one corner. The smirk was back in force. “Oh?”
“I like looking at you.”
“I’ve noticed.”
Her cheeks warmed. “You did? Erm…”

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Nathalie Gray

“Don’t worry. If it bugged me, you would’ve known.”
“Ahhh, so you like it.”
Haruto leaned over, kissed her shoulder. “Don’t get cocky.” He seemed about to

say more but tilted his head at the door, sniffed delicately. His mouth hardened. A tic
pulled at his jaw.

“Is something wrong?”
He sighed. “Something always is.”

24

Animal

Chapter Three

He hadn’t lied. Something always was wrong.
She couldn’t have heard or smelled what he did. No one but lycans could, and with

his “special nature”, he’d detected it probably before anyone else. Trouble was
knocking at their door. Knocking hard.

Abruptly, somewhere above their heads, a blast made dust and debris float down

from the metal I-beams. To her credit, Brioni just shook her head sadly and didn’t panic.

He should’ve known the moment wouldn’t last. Although this time, the end hadn’t

come because of his unwillingness—or inability—to let his emotions out. Not that he
had much. No, this time events had killed it for him. And it pissed him off to no end.
He rarely was angry. Or sad, or happy. Just numb. Except for tonight, in Brioni’s arms.
A haven, a warm place to be if only for a short while. And it was gone.

While she wrestled her clothes back on, he did the same, slipped the ocarina in his

pocket so it wouldn’t be damaged hanging on his chest. It was the one thing precious to
him. A gift from someone long ago who’d tried to help. Not hard, but who’d at least
tried.

“Where will you be?” he asked. His voice surprised him. He sounded nervous. He

didn’t have much practice with emotions of any kind. Maybe it wasn’t nervousness he
felt. Maybe it was something else. He looked at Brioni as she shoved her feet into her
slippers. No, not nervous. He was worried. For her.

“I’ll be with Asia and the kids.” Brioni turned to him, gave him a quick kiss then

whirled around.

He caught her by the sleeve, stayed her. “Brioni…”
Another blast dislodged dust and mortar from the walls. She didn’t seem to care.

Blue chips of ice for eyes framed with a black and purple fringe of hair. So lovely. The
cherry-red mouth smiled. “I’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine.”

No, they wouldn’t. But Haruto let her leave. Before he made a fool of himself.

Before he did something he regretted.

A series of smaller explosions indicated pulse cannons. At least two. It had to be the

Iron Conclave. No one had that kind of arsenal at their disposal. Even if he lived with
the ghosts of his past and the very real option that they could find him someday—
they’d spent a fortune creating him—Haruto knew it wasn’t Inu blasting its way into
the resistance home. It wasn’t their way. They preferred stealth and coercion rather than
all-out aggression. But the violence hurt just as much.

He gave her a few seconds head start before he rushed out of his home and into the

station. Her smell still lingered in the air. Voices reached him from the many corridors

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Nathalie Gray

leading to this station. One he recognized. Asia. She’d been the only one—outside of
Brioni—who’d let him be. She’d never tried to change him, make him more palatable to
the rest. As long as he pulled his weight around the place, Asia had respected his choice
to be a sour, cynical killjoy. In his own way, he liked the mouthy teen. But her
boyfriend… Not so much.

Speaking of which, Haruto had an inkling the young man would know what was

going on.

When he emerged into the station proper, he caught Cristoval and Asia bent over

the ops table. No map there tonight. There’d been a mess of them before Vonatos had
been taken. He looked skinnier, gaunter. Haruto snuck back out. He didn’t want to
have to deal with anyone right now. Except for one man. In a corridor leading to a
lower level, he caught up with the one person he suspected knew what was going on.

The redhead raked both hands back in his hair. He hadn’t seen Haruto yet as he

paced back and forth. He muttered curses.

“It won’t work.”
Allan whirled on the spot. His eyes looked huge in his freckled face. “What do you

mean?”

Haruto blocked the way when Allan seemed to want to walk around him and leave.

He backpedaled, looking very much like a trapped rat. Which he was.

“Letting them in to save your skin. That’s not how it works.” Human nature was a

terrible thing.

Blotchy red spots spread over his throat and cheeks. Allan shook his head, started

several times to reply. Tears welled in his eyes. “I didn’t mean… I-I… That’s not what I
wanted.”

“When you open a dam, you can’t control where the water goes.” Haruto retrieved

his gloves from his pocket. Fingerless because of the claws ruining any other kind. He
pulled them on, flexed his hands and made fists. The leather creaked softly. “That’s
why there’s a dam in the first place.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Allan pleaded. He backed when Haruto

crowded him against the wall. “I swear! I’m sorry!”

Haruto closed his eyes in his goggles to sever the vision of the young man’s tear-

lined cheeks. A freckle-faced traitor. He closed a hand over the other’s throat, squeezed
only slightly. It was enough for his claws to harden inside the quicks of his fingers. He
felt the chromium particles gather over the phalanges. A partial transformation to lycan
heightened his senses, deepened his processing ability of ambient stimuli—smells and
sounds from long distances reached him. Contrary to other lycans, because of his
unique “background”, he didn’t regress to a sort of half-beast, half-man being but
instead transcended both. Mental faculties intact, even sharpened. Like a sword with a
mind of its own.

Haruto brought the change. Slowly, with excruciating pain, his fingernails

elongated, turned into black metal claws that contrasted sharply against the young

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Animal

man’s skin. His fangs lengthened as well. He could taste blood from his throbbing
gums.

“You betrayed them,” he murmured softly. He wasn’t one to raise his voice. “Those

who gave you a home.”

That man had betrayed Brioni, who gave everyone a chance.
Allan closed his eyes when Haruto bared his black metal fangs, ready to tear the

betrayer’s throat out. Even he wouldn’t do such a thing as betray the resistance, despite
his flexible morality. But a voice stopped Haruto.

Brioni. She was calling his name.
Allan must have felt the change because he pushed Haruto off and scampered

away. Haruto let him. The bloodlust had already dissipated.

He rushed back into the station only to spot Asia and Vonatos sprinting away. A

thunderous explosion caved in part of the tunnel to his right where his home had been.
Choking dust rolled in fists. He cursed mentally as he ran to the armory. Once there, he
joined the few still underground as they stocked up on volters, stunners and various
weapons. He gathered a volter and several clips of nickel. The static-charged beads
would create more damage at close quarters than any other kind of ammunition.

Searching for Brioni in the chaos, he spotted her with a clump of children gripping

her bathrobe belt, which she’d cleverly un-looped from the garment to use as guide
rope. Small, grave faces followed him as he passed the group, gave Brioni a nod then
bifurcated to take a shortcut while Vonatos and Asia led the rest to safety. To Haruto’s
disgust, he spotted Allan’s red hair right behind his girlfriend. If she only knew.

One of the abandoned tunnels would be best. Perhaps the Iron Conclave’s maps

wouldn’t be so old as to show these ancient channels. Unless Allan had given
everything away.

Dust followed him when more explosions rocked the old tunnels. Ceramic tiles

clattered to the concrete floor. He coughed, squeezed into the grille door then charged
up the tunnel. Noise and dust stayed behind. The lack of light translated into shades of
blue in his enhanced night vision. He only wore the mirrored goggles to hide his eyes,
not shield his vision. He didn’t need them but neither did he want to deal with others’
reaction. The first thing he’d learned after his escape from Inu’s clutches was that his
eyes were too unnatural even for the hardiest soul. To keep from having people back
away in fear or horror, he’d had to hide behind the goggles. He wondered what Brioni
would think. If she’d ever wondered about his eyes.

Focus.
He forced his mind to clear of the visions. Brioni’s mouth around his cock. Her

hands tilling his back. The feel of her warm and welcoming flesh. He willingly gave it
up so he could concentrate. Another first for him—he’d never had to fight for focus
before.

What has she done to me?

27

Nathalie Gray

Haruto moved with absolute silence, faster than normal eyes could follow. One of

his many “gifts”. He reached a corner where another abandoned tunnel ran
perpendicular but froze when he heard a small sound no one else could’ve possibly
detected. Even some lycans.

The smell of polymer armor reached him. Iron Conclave.
Silent as death, Haruto pulled the volter out. If he didn’t get rid of them, Brioni’s

chances of survival would be nil. He wouldn’t let that happen. He could live with
someone else’s death on his conscience—if he had one—but not hers.

Haruto closed his eyes momentarily. Adrenaline spikes raced through him. His

blood heated. His mind cleared. It was time.

He’d already downed several of them by the time returning fire illuminated his

targets. Shades of blue from his night vision gave the scene a surreal feel. Several
uniformed bodies lay in the positions in which they’d died.

Haruto advanced without regard for his safety. Too quick for them to follow. He

could smell their fear and panic. Their shots went awry. One nickel bead passed
through his coat, burned a hole in the leather by his hip. He pressed the trigger with
steady rhythm. One, two, three, four. Even cadence. Metrical death. The enemy fell.
Kept falling as he cleared the last few paces. His unnatural speed allowed him to reach
them before they’d realized he’d moved.

Bones crunched when he kicked the first in the chest, sent him flying back ten feet.

He shot the feet out from under another Iron Conclave operative. A loud howl of pain
ripped the eerie silence. Smells of burned flesh and bone tickled Haruto’s sensitive
nostrils. He leaped high, arced over their heads in an aerial cartwheel, volter blazing.
Landed to leap again a split second later. This time, he used the wall, ran up almost ten
feet before gravity began to pull him back down. With the angle, he delivered death
from above. More operatives fell.

Methodically, as he’d been trained to do, he dispatched the enemy until a veritable

mound of broken and ruined bodies had piled around him three feet high. Until there
wasn’t any left. Silence settled once again. He felt more presences coming from the
perpendicular corridor. He smelled a lycan, male. They ran across the corner. Vonatos
bringing up the rear, they sprinted by him. Asia and Allan as well. Haruto stared at the
traitor until the man looked away. As usual, Vonatos threw him a suspicious glare as he
ran by. No one in the resistance trusted Haruto. Because he didn’t play well with others.
Because it was much easier to focus on him, the outsider, the one everybody loved to
hate, than take a good look in the mirror and see the treachery’s ugly underbelly—the
freckled face of a twenty-year-old man. He didn’t say anything. One, he didn’t have the
heart to break Asia’s, and two, he didn’t care what everyone thought of him.

Instead of following them, he retraced his steps so he could find Brioni and her

group. He smelled them up ahead in one of the tunnels leading up by the river. Smart
woman. Easier to escape through the crowded, riverside slums than anywhere else in

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Animal

the city. He should know. It’d been his first home after his escape. A place of anonymity
and egalitarian poverty. Everyone was no one up in the riverside slums.

But as he met with the last stragglers behind Brioni, he realized something was

wrong. They’d stopped. Blue scope lights bounced on the walls, reflected old, broken
ceramic tiles. Someone asked if there was a lycan with the group. Haruto didn’t bother
replying. He felt someone behind him, turned to find the Batista sisters, both lycans,
sprint up the single file.

The smell of Brioni’s hair made him close his eyes. He silently jogged up the group

until he spotted her amidst the children. Tiny fists still gripped her belt. The poignant
sight stirred something deep in him. A malaise he couldn’t place. These children were
lucky to have someone like her caring for them. Under her wing. No one would ever
hurt them as long as people like Brioni kept an eye on these children. He intended to do
his part. For the first time, he wanted to help.

She turned to him when he reached the lead. At once, he had to fight the slew of

emotions assailing him. He wanted to embrace her again, taste her, touch and love her.
But the rank smell of male sweat intruded in his thoughts.

“Don’t take another step,” he murmured, passing her. Some of the children recoiled

from him. He was used to that reaction.

He heard the faint rustle of dragon-scale armor from up ahead and around the

corner. An explosion not very far behind made some of the children squeeze their eyes
shut. He waited for the aftershock to dissipate. Pressed his index finger to his pursed
lips to indicate they should quiet down. Someone snarled that they should “get the hell
out of here”. Brioni shushed them.

Haruto grimaced when the change took him without warning. He felt his bone

structure adapt to the lycan form, his jaw crunched, his gums throbbed with renewed
fire. Claws and fangs hardened, elongated, pushed out of the human skin. Senses beset
him in a sensory overload—smells of fear, of shampoo, polymer, lotion and sweat.
Shades of red replaced the blue scale of his night vision. He couldn’t tell anyone apart
except for one. Brioni. Her smell and silhouette cleaved a path to his brain.

Arousal surprised him. The intensity burned his resolve.
He wanted her again. Here and now. Carnal abandon. Mating of the most primal

kind. Hard and dirty and noisy. He didn’t care about anything else. He wanted to push
inside her, take her over and over. Lick and bite her tender flesh, make her come for
him, around him. Her sex smelled like candy. Haruto parted his mouth so he could
taste the air. The scent of her sweet cunt tore a low growl from him. Want. Need. Fire in
his belly.

Another step took him dangerously close. To fuck her. On her elbows and knees.

Without restraint. Dig his claws and fangs in her flesh while he ploughed her.

The vivid images his altered mind conjured accelerated his heart rate. All he saw

was red. All he could smell was her cunt. Ghostlike cries of ecstasy filled his ears. He

29

Nathalie Gray

should do it. Or better, drag her back with him to a nice, quiet place. She wanted him. It
was all over her.

Despite the arousal he smelled on her, Brioni backed away from him, arms behind

her to shield the children.

Haruto grimaced at the spoiled opportunity. Later. There was always later. For

now, he had to keep her safe. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a later. And he wanted one.
Hungered for it.

Rio had been right. Brioni was glad the children didn’t see what Haruto had done.

He’d saved them, she reminded herself. But the carnage…

He’d gone ahead, to scout, to kill a way to freedom for them all. He left gruesome

scenes behind, one Batista sister on each end of the small group, volter scanning, hard
eyes as well. One hand on her stunner and the other on her belt to make sure the
children didn’t lag, Brioni gritted her teeth through the cloud of dust and smoke,
followed the blue beams of volters’ scopes and soon emerged into a wide underground
chamber. There the group could breathe a bit better. A sputtering fluorescent high
above still gave a bit of light. When she counted her charges, she noticed tear lines on
the grubby cheeks. Silent tears.

Haruto emerged from a portion of broken-down wall that led to another chamber.

He stepped over the debris and joined the rest. Brioni noticed he seemed to avoid her as
he kept to the intermittent shadow of a concrete pillar. Above his head, the fluorescent
sputtered continually.

She nodded a thank you at him. Received a nod in reply.
“Someone let them in,” Rio snarled under her breath. “Look.”
The tall brunette covered in tattoos and body jewelry pointed at a grille door.

Everyone trooped to the spot. A magnetic lock lay on the ground, its green light
flashing. Someone with the code had opened it. Not even the best lock picks could fool
one of those and a built-in alarm kept them from being cut.

A cold shiver raced down Brioni’s back. How could someone do this?
Rio’s sister Fortaleza, a smaller, younger but meaner version, kicked the thing

away, muttering rapid-fire curses in Portuguese. “Let’s go. I’m sure there’s more scum
hiding around the tunnels. We’ll deal with the traitor later.”

Brioni could easily guess how the person would be “dealt with”.
A commotion from the tunnel they’d just left made everyone scatter for cover,

except for Haruto, who simply took a step backward into deeper shadows.

A pair of men ran out, covered in dust and blood. One of them was an Iron

Conclave operative and the other was Allan. As soon as he noticed the rest, Allan
pushed off the man.

“They took them! Asia! Cristoval!”

30

Animal

Before anyone could react, Fortaleza leaped into view and put a single, economical

nickel bead in the operative’s head. He arched back, all but decapitated, and noiselessly
slumped to the ground. On the concrete floor, a dark stain crept outward like a wet
halo.

Chaos erupted. Everyone started talking at once, most of them to curse at Fortaleza

for acting so damn brashly. Some of the children started crying. Brioni had her hands
full trying to calm some of them.

Allan bent over and gasped for breath. “They took them,” he panted, spat blood.

“Asia. Cristoval. Jill. A couple others. Fuck, my head hurts.”

While Rio and the tall, bearded Sam came over to dust Allan off and exchange

plans, Fortaleza stomped toward the dead Iron Conclave man and started to search
him. Standing, she brought back a couple of items, among which was a portable
decoder. Brioni noticed blood on its silvery face. She shivered.

“It was an inside job,” Rio told Allan, who straightened and passed a shaking hand

over his mouth. “Someone let them in.”

“It was? How do you know that?”
“Someone knew the entry codes,” Rio put in. She pointed to the magnetic lock. “It

wasn’t picked and the built-in alarm wasn’t triggered. Someone knew its code.”

Brioni wondered why Allan looked more triumphant than angry. She sure was.

Whoever had let the enemy in should get his butt handed on a platter. There was no
place in the resistance for traitors.

“That’s bad,” Allan remarked as he joined Fortaleza and looked over her shoulder.

“What if he’s still around, giving our position away as we speak? We need to know
who it was.”

“You think the rat will just give himself away?” Sam asked.
“What does it matter? We need to get out of here,” Haruto remarked from the

shadows. He leaned against the pillar, crossed his arms. The long leather coat hid his
legs but she knew he’d crossed his ankles as well. She loved when he did that.

Fortaleza threw her hands up. “It matters!”
Haruto’s mouth curled in disdain. “Small things matter to small minds. We have to

go.”

The woman bristled. “You goddamn—”
Sam cut in. “Smiley’s right. Let’s go.”
“Wait,” Allan said. “Here. Try the comms settings.”
“No one is that dumb,” Fortaleza snapped. “Well, what d’you know.” She shook

her head. “You think they’d scramble their fucking comms. There’s a whole bunch of
numbers and fixes in there.”

Allan looked up around the gathered people. Brioni wondered for a second why he

was smiling so broadly. Must have been hit on the head or something. “Let’s try the
latest. It could—”

31

Nathalie Gray

Haruto detached his shoulder from the pillar. “There’s no time for this shit. Let’s

go.” The man’s voice, which was usually gentle and even, sounded cold and sharp.

“There. Let’s see who picks up the link.” Fortaleza thumbed the screen. She put the

decoder to her ear, waiting.

Sam and Haruto started to head for the opposite end of the chamber when a small

bleep froze both men in mid-step.

Faces grave and tight, everyone looked around at everybody else. Even Brioni tried

to judge from where the sound originated. Sam took a step away from Haruto. His
wide, bearded face was beet red.

Slowly, his face impassive, Haruto fished inside his coat and produced a portable

decoder. The red light flashed.

“Fuck me,” Fortaleza breathed. She gaped at the thing in her hand, which had just

opened a link to the one in Haruto’s pocket.

Allan reached for his volter at his belt. A grimace twisted his freckled face. “It was

you.”

“Haruto…?” Brioni took a small step forward, as if she meant to keep someone

from falling, bracing them, try to buffer the hit. Cold and emptiness numbed her.

“That’s not mine,” Haruto replied. He let the thing bleep without answering.
“What’s it doing in your fucking pocket then?” demanded Fortaleza.
The mirrored goggles angled toward Allan. A mean sneer rounded Haruto’s cheek.

“Yeah, I wonder—”

An explosion of such force that it ripped part of the railing off the concrete wall tore

out of a tunnel. Heat and debris buffeted them. Bricks rolled off the already-broken
wall. Mortar disintegrated under the impact. Brioni yelped, was blown back pell-mell
amidst the tiny bodies she was desperate to shield with her own. Someone snarled.
Another cried out in pain. A female voice with a Portuguese accent cursed long and
loud. Rio? So unlike the calm Batista older sister.

Her ears rang, blood seeped under her tongue. Everywhere she turned, people on

the ground or kneeling. Everything shades of brown and gray. The fluorescent had
stopped sputtering and cast a wide beam of yellow light.

“Everybody?” Rio said, standing gingerly. She bled from the shoulder but

otherwise looked unhurt. “Report!”

Voices began to list names. Brioni hurriedly counted her charges and closed her

eyes in relief. “Brioni here, the kids are okay.”

Unfortunately, neither Allan nor Sam had been so lucky. Clearly dead, their broken

bodies made Brioni avert her gaze. While she hoisted the youngest children to their feet
and dusted their faces, the rest started going around those who were still on the floor.

“He’s gone,” Rio said at length. Her voice was like a blade. “Haruto’s gone. That

backstabbing little shit.”

32

Animal

The words cut Brioni deep. But not as deep as the man’s deed. How could he have

done this? Everyone had been right. He was trouble. She never should’ve agreed to
stay. But then again, something didn’t add up. Why now? And why stick around when
he could’ve been long gone? He’d stayed behind to help. Would a traitor do that? No, a
traitor would flee as soon as he could.

As they prepared the wounded and began to move, a tiny flash on the littered

ground caught her eye. She stopped to take a better look. Her heart skipped a beat.
After telling her charges to stay right there, she rushed over and picked the little item
from the ground. Dented and scratched, the little ocarina glimmered in her dirty hand.
She pocketed it, returned to her work.

They finally reached the surface after a few other close calls. They emerged from a

tunnel directly by the river, surfaced into the dawn to crisp, cool air that replaced the
chocking dust of the underground. Brown stripes slashed the purple sky. To her right,
the sun had begun to glow over the taller roofs. She took a deep breath, ignored the
tears rolling down her cheeks. No time for this. Later.

“Come on,” Rio said.
She crossed the old parking lot by the river, which flowed gently and glistened

under the moonlight. Checked all around as her sister did the same. Under the Batista
sisters’ escort, the bedraggled group made it to the nearest building, a gutted factory
lined with “habitats” of corrugated sheet metal held by willpower and nylon strapping.

“I know a couple people around here,” a man said. For the dust covering him, she

couldn’t recognize him. Jonas, maybe? Or Sergei? He and Rio set off at a brisk pace.

Not five minutes later, they returned, accompanied by several women and a couple

of children in slightly better shape than those clinging to her bathrobe belt. Grouped by
age and familial link—she hoped the parents, somehow, somewhere had survived the
raid—they entered the riverside slums.

Brioni slipped her free hand in the pocket of her robe to touch the precious item

there. Haruto’s ocarina felt smooth and cool. She clutched it for no other reason than the
need to keep a link to him. Even if he’d betrayed them all.

It sucks, Metcalf. Long and hard.
The one guy on whom she’d had a bit of a crush—okay, a big one—had turned out

to be a liar and a traitor. What did that say about her tastes or her theory there was
good in everyone? Maybe he was the exception. Maybe there wasn’t any good in him at
all.

33

Nathalie Gray

Chapter Four

Getting drunk was hard to do when one had a veritable army of nanobots diligently

cleaning one’s systems of any dangerous substance. Even a simple buzz was a feat in
itself. But Haruto was slowly, laboriously, getting there. The many tiny glasses lined on
his staked portion of counter along the wall could’ve—and should’ve—downed two,
even three normal men. But he wasn’t a normal man, now was he? With a grimace, he
leaned another shot back and set it at the end of the neat row he’d made. Waited for the
effect. A tiny bit of burn warmed his veins. Barely. His vision troubled a bit, doubled
before settling back to the regular sharpness. So he drank another shot. The liquid fire
raked down his throat. This one had a bit more effect. He felt woozy, dull. For a good
half minute before the enhancements did their job. Too well.

He’d have to spend a fortune just to get a bit drunk. He chuckled at the irony. He

wasn’t a cheap date, that was for sure. A date. Ha. He’d never even been on one. The
women with whom he’d had sex hadn’t been interested in anything more than physical
release. As had he. Except for those glorious few hours with Brioni. That’d been more
than sex. Haruto sighed, rubbed his numb fingertips on his thigh. It didn’t feel the
same. Yeah, a bit of an alcohol kick slowly seeping into his system. About damn time.

Blue eyes like ice. Shock and sadness. Cherry lips parted on a silent gasp.
The look on Brioni’s face as the damn thing rang in his pocket still haunted him.

He’d never even owned a portable decoder. For a good second, he’d wondered who the
hell could’ve put it there. He’d quickly guessed though. He should’ve killed Allan
when he had the chance. Cowardly and sneaky.

Not that he cared what they thought. He didn’t. But Brioni thinking he was a traitor

didn’t sit well with him. At all. And to top it all, he’d lost his ocarina.

Both elbows on the dirty counter, he downed a shot then the last of the full glasses

he’d set along the wall. The liquid fire left his mouth raw and tingly. He should get
more. He wasn’t even drunk. And right now, the oblivion of a dozen shots of synthetic
sake was the most important thing in his life. Sleep until next month, when the ache
would be gone.

Those huge blue eyes staring at him through the disheveled mane of black and

purple hair. The one other time he’d seen her that way looking at him through her hair
was when she’d straddled him. The memory of her warm flesh making a home for him
made him hard again.

A presence by both his elbows triggered his defenses. He tucked his head between

his shoulders, tensed. He didn’t want to be disturbed in his pity party. Couldn’t a guy
have a bit of peace and quiet so he could get properly drunk? The fake leather jacket
he’d stolen from a slumbering junkie creaked. Gray “fur” trim around the high collar

34

Animal

tickled his cheek when he angled his head a bit sideways. He didn’t even want to see
who had broken his ruminations.

“Walk away,” he snarled under his breath.
A woman’s voice surprised him. “You look lonely,” she purred. “My friend and me

could keep you warm.”

Haruto snorted in derision. They left, muttering curses.
When he’d come in—earlier that day, last week, who knew—he’d thought the place

was free of vermin. Apparently, he was wrong. Maybe he should move his drunk-fest
elsewhere.

Not two minutes after the women stormed off, a large shadow blocked the light of

the lone bulb bolted directly on the dirty ceiling. Four-star luxury.

“I don’t need to be kept warm,” he spat. “Walk away.”
A hairy forearm appeared from his right. Haruto snarled a mocking laugh when he

was roughly whipped around on his stool. His face a shade of veiny purple, a huge man
in bits of Iron Conclave dragon-scale armor—stolen, obviously, the thing could barely
contain the rolls of fat—cocked his fist back. Haruto didn’t even try to block or parry.
He caught the row of ring-bearing knuckles right on the mouth, a hit that whipped his
head back. Who cared? In a few hours, his lycan system would repair the damage
anyway. For now though, he was bleeding. Grinning mockingly, he licked his upper lip.
In various states of undress, both women had their arms crossed and wore expressions
of righteous triumph. One kissed the air in his direction. Beyond the trio of
troublemakers, the rest of the patrons went on with their business. Some of them
appeared much more successful than he was at getting drunk. He envied them.

“You been disr’pectful to my women?”
“They’re women?” Haruto sneered.
Another punch, this one in the solar plexus. It also hurt quite a bit more than the

first. A gag reflex bent him over. The giant gripped the back of Haruto’s hair and forced
him upright. The stool tipped and clattered to the floor. The toes of his black boots
barely touched the floor as the huge pain in the butt reeled Haruto to his face. His
breath smelled of greasy food and beer.

“You gonna pay dem a drink. An’ you gonna like it, pretty boy. Gotit?”
“You gonna provide dem rubbers ’gainst rabies?” Haruto quipped, parroting the

man’s speech.

Why was he wasting his spit on that guy? He was drunk after all. Finally.
Haruto blocked the next punch with a forearm that must have felt a lot harder than

the man had anticipated because he grimaced in pain. He shoved Haruto back against
the counter. Behind him, glasses fell to their sides and rolled around. A long, narrow
blade flicked into view.

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Nathalie Gray

One of the women grinned waspishly. “Yeah, rearrange his pretty face,” she

goaded. Her friend licked her bright pink lips. Both looked like plastic dolls come to
life. They probably sported more enhancements than even he did. Ha!

The man put the blade right against Haruto’s chin. Just in case the idiot ruined his

jacket, Haruto shoved the hand away. The tip of the blade caught his goggles, which
ripped off his face and went flying to the floor to slide under a nearby table.

Both dolls gasped in shock and backpedaled furiously while their pimp curled his

upper lip in a deep grimace. “Argh, Jesus fucking Christ!” He backed up, spat on the
floor. “You one of dem freaks!”

Several people turned to stare.
To his own shock, Haruto attacked. He lunged forward more rapidly than anyone

could do—even if he thought his move was sloppy at best. With the heel of his hand, he
hit the large man in the sternum. Felt bones crack under the violence. The impact
propelled the man clear over the closest tables, arms and feet straight out in front of him
as if a giant winch had suddenly reeled him back. He arced ten feet back to crash into
the actual bar. Large splinters of transwood broke from the cast. People scrambled to
get out of the way.

Haruto snarled as he leaped on the closest table still intact. He crouched,

momentarily, fighting to keep the claws and fangs from jutting out. His blood boiled. A
red veil descended on his vision.

“He’s one of them!” a man cried out, pointing at Haruto’s face. “Look!”
A dangerous rumble spread in the crowd. Some jumped to their feet to get a look.

Others merely turned to him, gasped then signed themselves. Cretins.

“Get out of here!” a woman yelled. Cry taken by a couple others. Safety in numbers.
A flash to his right. Haruto snapped his hand up, deflected the knife twirling at

him. It clanged against the wall and fell to the floor. Pale-faced, those who hadn’t yet
retreated from him did.

He wanted to yell at them, insult them the way they had him. Throw curses and

names at the whole stupid lot of them. Bigots, hypocrites and xenophobes. They were
the monsters. Not him.

He leaped off the table, pretended to go after the closest man, tasted the temporary

delight of seeing everyone scamper well away. The pimp still lay on his back amidst the
broken bits of bar he’d demolished. Behind the counter, the barman had a portable
decoder to his ear. Probably calling security. Haruto couldn’t be found. Inu had people
in every echelon of authorities, here and elsewhere on Earth. The resistance had proven
a perfect place to hide from them, but the surface wouldn’t be that safe for him. His
DNA nomenclature would assuredly trigger all kinds of sleeper warnings. If arrested,
Inu would come swooping down on him in a matter of hours. If that.

Haruto used the tip of his boot to flick his welder goggles up, which he caught with

one hand. He backed toward the door, slipped them back on.

36

Animal

Names were hurled at him. Someone spat on the floor in his wake. “We don’t want

your kind here,” a man snarled low, pulling a volter from his pocket. His companion
put her hand on his arm, but her expression wasn’t any less disgusted or shocked.

Haruto turned only when he’d cleared the front door. Once outside in the

darkened, crowded and smelly alley, he flicked the fur collar of his jacket up by his face
and walked away. Far. Fast. Aimless. He didn’t care where he ended up as long as he
put some distance between the ghosts of their horrified expressions and himself. Sake
couldn’t dull the sting of their reaction, even if he’d been used to it. The goggles could
only do so much. In the underground, everyone had looked at him askew as well, only
for different reasons.

Not everyone.
Only one had never looked at him with anything else but healthy curiosity and later

with affection. He wondered how Brioni would have reacted to the sight of his eyes.
Would she have signed herself? Spat on the ground? Recoiled in horror? Not that he’d
blame her. Those who’d created him hadn’t had humaneness or charity on their minds
as they adjusted his sight. They hadn’t cared if his eyes looked the way they did after
they were done. He’d been twelve years old at the time and unfortunately remembered
every second of every “treatment”.

As he entered into another alley that ran perpendicular to the one he’d just left—

riverside slums were just that, alleys—Haruto spotted old Global Alliance of Nations
posters peeling off concrete support pillars of houses built on stiles to evade the
crushing taxes. The posters reminded him of the one on which he’d found his name.
That night, he’d hurt so badly, he thought—hoped—he was going to die. No such luck.

His body quivered with adrenaline. With panic. With fear. Several volter shots had grazed

him, leaving behind fire and agony. His body would repair each, he knew. But he had nothing to
dull the pain. No one to tell him everything would be all right. He was alone. Afraid. Bleeding.

Confused. With a snap that made him see stars, one of his ribs crunched back into place. He
groaned in pain.

But he was free.
Only hours before, he’d been still at the employ of Inu, a nameless subject, a breathing

weapon they sent at their enemies. He’d killed more people than he’d befriended. By a long

measure.

Rain fell on him, cold and greasy. His body racked with fever and privations, he looked up,

spotted through the rain a peeling poster that bore a face sharing some of his characteristics.

Young. Male. Almond-shaped eyes—only the shape though, certainly not the color—and a
compact, wiry frame. An action vid star, or so claimed the poster. He looked at the man’s name,

red slashes against black background. Haruto. He liked it, so he took it. No one had taught him
not to.

No one had taught him anything except what he needed to kill.

37

Nathalie Gray

Haruto presently stopped when he hit a stone parapet. Panting, he gripped the

handrail in both hands. Rusty metal dug into the portion of his hands not covered by
the fingerless gloves. The small discomfort should’ve triggered a response. No
adrenaline. Nothing. Alcohol numbed his reactions, dulled his mind. He chuckled.
Didn’t know why. Was shocked to feel moisture gather inside his goggles.

This present night reminded him of another. His escape a few years ago still blazed

in his memory as though it’d happened the day before. He wondered if his creators
were still looking for him after the explosion of the shuttle transporting him. Inu rarely
made mistakes. They’d made one that night in not drugging him out during transfers.
Overpowering and killing the half dozen guards had proven easy. Except for one. He’d
let that one live.

Haruto looked at the river scintillating beneath a deep purple sky. Floating above

the roofs on the other side of the river, the “good” side of town, a hoverclock indicated
nineteen hours twenty-two minutes and four, five, six seconds in acid green. So he’d
been at that bar all day? The thirteenth day after he’d run away from the underground.
Only two weeks since he’d seen Brioni. It’d felt like years spent on broken glass.

Why had he run away? Why hadn’t he stayed to defend himself?
He’d run because he couldn’t be bothered to explain how he’d watched Allan over

the months pass intel to the other side. He’d kept an eye on the traitor but never been
moved to act or confront him. What did he care? He wasn’t one of them. He didn’t care
about any of them, did he? Of course not. So what if they thought he was a traitor and a
mole? It’d been cynicism that had made him leave, not anything else. Not fear that
despite his claims, she wouldn’t believe him. Not fear she would reject his words. Or
push him away. It was better leaving this way than trying to convince her and failing.

No, it hadn’t been the fear that’d made him run as fast as his lycan system could

push his poor human shell.

Liar.
A metallic moan pulled him out of his downward spiral. Haruto realized with

shock he’d bent the steel handrail. Disgusted with his lack of self-control, he pulled his
hands away. The sky started to spin over his head. On a grunt, he rolled against the
railing and leaned back. Such a pretty sky. A blue star reminded him of Brioni’s eyes.
The same twinkle, the same light.

“Brioni,” he breathed, desperate to hear the name out loud. He couldn’t have the

woman, maybe he could hang on to her name.

Then again, why couldn’t he have the woman? She wanted him. He could see it,

smell it, feel it on her. And taste it too. She’d made herself his, given herself over to him.
She’d said so herself. Haruto ran numb fingers over the smooth portion of handrail not
gnawed by rust. Bent far back until his spine hurt. Muscles over his belly and chest
tingled with the exertion. That star winked at him. Brioni had done that too, before
leaving his home, even with explosions rumbling in the distance, she left him on a grin
and a wink. Unflappable. Beautiful, warm and sweet.

38

Animal

He hardened painfully against the ribbed polymer pants. The bits of armor worked

into the double layer would protect him from bladed weapons or stunner shots, but
they could do nothing against the blade that he twisted in his own heart. How he
wished he hadn’t wasted all that time. Maybe if he’d met her sooner… Or noticed her
quicker. Although he had noticed her, only never worked up the courage to approach
her. Not that she scared him. Nothing did. Cynicism had killed even that. He was afraid
she’d look at him differently.

“A fool,” he heard his voice whisper. He could smell the alcohol on his own breath.

A ribbon of steam gave form to his whispers. “A damn fool.”

Maybe he should…
No.
She was gone. He’d run away like a fool and now here he was. Alone once more.

Cretin.

Why couldn’t he have her again? He made no sense. Where had his orderly world

gone? He was so drunk. His erection hurt as much as the memory of Brioni pleasured
him. A growl left him. It was too late. Too late to think about her.

“Fuck…”
The change took him quickly. He felt the dual cocktail in his bloodstream, the

dangerous alcohol and even more so lycan. He didn’t fight it. Welcomed it instead.
What was a bit more pain? Claws and fangs hardened, protruded from the human
flesh. Haruto smelled the air. So many scents. Natural, synthetic. He bet he could find
her by scent. It’d be easy.

Mmm, yes. Her sweet, intoxicating scent.
He wanted her again and he would have her again.
Running. Leaping over shuttles and clawing up obstacles. People slinking into the

shadows to let him pass. Wind in his face made him growl a laugh. Rain puddles
reflected the scenery. Twice the misery. He stepped in them with a vengeance. Broke
the surface.

Female musk stopped him. He whirled around, threw himself at that smell. A

slender body connected against his chest. Haruto encircled her with his arms, licked a
long pass up the woman’s neck. She shrieked. A nudge to her foot parted her legs so he
could crush his erection up her back. Smells of her reached him, blinded and deafened
him. His balls constricted with lust. An arm around her waist, he pressed his hand on
her sex. Heat. Sweet, wet heat. But she kicked and thrashed. He spun her around,
pushed her against the wall. Maybe she hadn’t recognized him.

Black eyes wide in terror reflected his mirrored goggles. Not her.
With a low growl, he pushed himself off the whimpering woman. The hunt was

back on.

Brioni was his.
His.

39

Nathalie Gray

“Mine.”

40

Animal

Chapter Five

Brioni had no idea so much could happen in only two weeks. After the attack on the

underground home, Cristoval, Asia and a few others had fallen to the Iron Conclave.
After a momentous rescue mission by Dex Solomon’s team of lycan mercenaries, during
which both he and Cristoval had been wounded, things had settled down. Somewhat.
She still couldn’t sleep more than three or four hours a night.

What remained of the resistance had gathered in an old factory turned transient

quarters. With help from the smooth-talking, blind lycan Liberty and her vast
connections, cots, food and necessities had been brought. At least the kids had been able
to get something to eat and fall in oblivion. Poor things could barely stand. Now it was
Brioni who could barely stand. She’d gone over Haruto’s apparent betrayal several
times in her head and something didn’t pan. Didn’t make sense. And when something
didn’t make sense, Brioni Metcalf was known to dig and scratch and poke until it did.

She presently stood to stretch her tired frame as the rest devised ways to hunt the

rogue lycan down. Her blood pressure could’ve beaten records. Asia, most of all,
wanted Haruto’s head on a pike. She’d lost Allan and wanted someone to pay. As much
as Brioni empathized with the teen’s pain, revenge wouldn’t help a thing. Within
minutes, only Asia and the Batista sisters remained, the rest having departed to make
more permanent accommodation plans.

“Slimy little son of a bitch,” Fortaleza growled. The portable decoder gleamed in

her gloved hand. She tossed it back on the table, jumped to her feet and began pacing.
She was armed to the teeth—literally. Her usual way. “We should put up a reward, see
how long the rat can outrun the cats.”

“Goddammit, just settle down,” Brioni snapped.
The verbal slug must have shocked the Batista sisters as much as it did Brioni.

They’d always reminded her of a pair of beach volleyball players. Tall, strong and
aggressive. She took a long breath. “We don’t know what happened.”

“We do know what happened,” Asia retorted. Her eyes were red and puffy.

“Smiley fucked us all! I should’ve listened for once.” She crossed her arms and rubbed
her nose on her shoulder. A green-eyed, curly black-haired fury.

Fortaleza threw her hands up. “We should go out right now, hunt his skinny ass

down. Not sit here and wait!”

The old factory reverberated with her voice. Metal I-beams created shadows

between ceiling lights. Rows of cots lined the far wall. Small lumps under felt blankets
that didn’t reach the foot of the cots told of tiny occupants. Blades of light fell on the
sleepers. Through the large, ceiling windows, the pale sun had risen but still they slept.
They needed the rest.

41

Nathalie Gray

Asia adjusted the volter at her waist. “I agree. I want…” Her voice broke. She

cursed, angrily knuckled her eyes. “I want him dead.”

Brioni’s blood pressure spiked. The whoosh-whoosh pulsed in her ears. “And what

good will that do?”

“An eye for an eye! Allan’s dead because of him.”
“Allan is dead because the Iron Conclave killed him. Not Haruto.”
“And who the hell let them in, huh?” Asia countered. “You? Me? No, it was Smiley.

That thing was in his pocket. That’s what you all said.”

Both Batista sisters nodded while Brioni tried her best to take long and deep

breaths. She wanted to speak with Haruto, ask him why. How. Anything to explain his
actions. But she didn’t want to hurt him, and surely not watch him die. The mere
thought squeezed her chest.

“We don’t know enough to make that kind of decision,” Brioni began calmly.

“There’s something that doesn’t make sense.”

“Yeah,” Fortaleza agreed. “Like why the hell did it take us so damn long to kick his

ass out!”

“Woman,” Brioni snapped. “Can you think with your brain and not your dick once

in a while?”

The younger Batista sister stomped up to Brioni, thinking maybe the volters, the

knives, the muscles and the rest would scare her. Well, it did. But she’d be damned if
she’d show it.

“Get out of my face,” Brioni snarled low.
Rio reeled her sister back by the sleeve and sent her waltzing away from Brioni.

“Keep it down, the kids are sleeping.”

With a colorful curse, Fortaleza stormed out of the impromptu meeting room in the

building’s former kitchen. Only a counter and sink remained. Doorless cabinets held
some supplies.

“That was a cheap shot, Brioni,” Asia let drop before she left too. The bits of armor

swooshed as she walked away.

Sighing long and hard, Brioni raked her hands back in her hair.
“They’re scared,” Rio said. “And one is hurting. Don’t mind them.”
“I know, but… Argh, never mind.”
“You all right? You’ve been on your feet for hours.” Rio yawned. The Brazilian

beauty looked tired and drawn.

“Yeah.”
She checked her watch. The black cat indicated almost eleven in the morning. By

the corner of her eye, Brioni studied the portable decoder. It looked familiar. But not
from Haruto’s, because the only item she’d seen him handle was the ocarina, presently
tucked nice and safe into the pocket of her borrowed coat. The blind lycan and her

42

Animal

protector, a giant man nicknamed Cupcake, had delivered clothes earlier that morning
before leaving again to attend a briefing uptown in the financial district. Life as usual.
GAN no longer seemed in control of anything and Solomon and Eva tried their best to
form alliances with those politicians they deemed less slimy than the rest. He’d named
one particular ally, Finance Minister Deng Muhua. She was apparently very close to
reaching a deal with former GAN members to give full immunity to people in the
resistance. Maybe the days of living underground would be over soon. Of course, not
many agreed with the Deng woman. Yet she was their best hope according to both
Solomon and Eva.

Brioni walked to the table, retrieved the decoder and turned it around in her hand.

She hadn’t had the chance to examine it herself since the attack. It felt cold and smooth.
The thing that had damned Haruto. How could he have done such a thing? Still…

“Hard to believe, huh?” she murmured.
Rio snorted. “Are you kidding me?”
“No.”
The woman cocked her head. “It’s not hard to believe at all. Smiley always looked

the backstabbing kind to me. And now we know he is.”

“You can’t judge a person like that. Even if they ‘look’ like something, it doesn’t

make them so.”

“Sometimes, when it looks like it, smells like it, sounds likes it…”
Brioni sighed as she thumbed the thing on, checked the screen. “That doesn’t work

for people. We’re more than the sum of our parts.”

Something caught her attention. There were only two links opened the day of the

raid. The first, which had been from the mole to the Iron Conclave operative’s own
decoder, glimmered acid green against the slate-gray background. It’d been made at
three fifteen that morning.

“Whoa,” she breathed. A second check revealed the same thing. The supposed link

to the enemy had happened a little after three, with the last—Fortaleza’s test—at
around seven. “That can’t be right.”

“What’s wrong?” Rio joined Brioni and craned her neck to see the screen above

Brioni’s shoulder. “You found more links?”

“No, but there’s something wrong with this. According to the log, the first link was

made a little after three. Haruto couldn’t have done it.”

Rio narrowed her dark eyes. “Why not? It was before the attack. He could’ve had

time to open a link, tell them where and how.”

“But the link only lasted two minutes. Definitely not enough time to pass all that

info.”

“They must have talked about it before then and only confirmed things during the

last link.”

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Nathalie Gray

“No, that can’t be it. Haruto wasn’t on a link. He was with me. Actually, I was with

him. At his place.”

“What do you mean you were… Oh.” Rio’s eyes flared. “Oh?”
Her heart raced. She flicked the thing closed against her hip. Scenarios flashed in

her mind’s eye. If this wasn’t Haruto’s decoder as she suspected, then whose was it?
And what was it doing in Haruto’s pocket? Plus, she remembered its little red light
flashing. She’d seen it before.

Her heart skipped a beat. “Oh no…”
“What?” Rio rested a hand on the butt of her volter. Brown leather creaked when

she leaned over, ready for battle. As the Batista sisters always were.

“I saw that decoder in Allan’s hand, around that time too.”
“How the hell would you have seen it? Everyone’s sleeping at three in the

morning.”

Brioni could detect the resistance to the theory Allan, such a sweet and jovial young

man, could have been the traitor. Not when Haruto, a cynic who loved pissing people
off, fit the bill much better.

“I couldn’t sleep. So I went to the cafeteria to get tea, only there wasn’t any hot

water. Allan was there, arguing…” She put her hand against her mouth. “Oh my God,
Rio, he was arguing on the decoder. Looked upset and everything. He abruptly killed
the link when he saw me.”

Despite the doubt still plain on the tall brunette’s face, Rio did look a bit

confounded. “If Smiley didn’t make that damn link, why didn’t he just say so?”

“He never had time.”
Cursing, Rio nodded. “True. Shit hit the fan.”
“And you think anyone would’ve given him a chance to talk? Fortaleza already had

her volter out and pointing at him. Shit!”

Maybe she wanted to believe more than she was merely following the logical trail.

She didn’t care. Everyone deserved a chance. Haruto, as well. But where could he be? If
he thought everyone accused him of betraying the resistance, where would he go? She
doubted he had much more than the clothes on his back. Her heart swelled with
chagrin. She realized she’d started nibbling her thumbnail. A pearl of blood appeared in
a corner.

“We need to talk to him,” Rio declared. “Under controlled settings. But we need to

talk to him. If it wasn’t him… My God, Allan?”

“Not as convenient as Haruto, huh?” Brioni remarked caustically.
“Do you know where he could be?”
“No idea.”
Rio narrowed her eyes. “If you two are close, then what tells me you’re not trying to

frame Allan, conveniently unable to defend himself, for your guy’s sake?”

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Animal

“I’m not lying. You know it. You’re just not willing to believe you were wrong

about both Haruto and Allan.”

A long silence settled, during which Rio looked alternatively pissed off and contrite.

In the end, the older Batista sister—the wise one—nodded. “Okay, we need to get a
hold of Haruto before they set out after him.”

“Fortaleza?”
“Asia. When she hears about your theory…” She shook her head.
Asia would hit the roof. Rio was right, they were already planning to “hunt the rat

down”. Her heart rate doubled. He was no rat! Although she didn’t doubt for one
second he could take care of himself, she’d rather he not kill a former friend, even in
self-defense.

“I’m going after him. We need to know.”
“You’re not going by yourself. We’ll wait for Solomon and Eva to come back with

the arsenal he promised. We’ll have trackers and trancs then we’ll—”

“Trancs?”
Rio nodded. “You think the adrenaline alone wouldn’t be enough to send Haruto

over the edge? We’ll need to sedate him before we can even approach him.”

“He’s not an animal!”
“Maybe not one hundred percent, but anyone with a bunch of lycans after him

would react defensively. We can’t afford a fight and we can’t afford a single loss either.”

Loss. Such a clean word for death.
“I don’t agree. I’ll talk to him. He’s not the ‘rat’ you all think he is.”
Rio shrugged. “I don’t care what he is. I’m not risking anyone’s safety—”
“Hello? I may not be a lycan, and I may not be able to shoot a volter like you can,

but I don’t need a babysitter. I’m going after him alone.”

“No, you’re not. And he could be anywhere. Even out of the Koreas.”
“Then I’ll follow him.”
With a roll of her dark eyes, Rio walked toward the door. There she stopped and

passed a hand back over her head, for the first time since she’d met the woman showing
signs of stress. “I think it’s better for everyone if I tell the others about this new intel.
Where are you going to be? Here?”

“Yeah,” Brioni lied. “Since you think I need a babysitter.”
“It shouldn’t take long to get everyone ready. Plus, I’m sure you’ll hear both of

them long before they get here.” Rio zipped her brown leather jacket up to her long
neck. “I hope for your sake it went down the way you said. Because if you lied to save
your guy…”

“I don’t lie, you know me better than that.”
Brioni should’ve felt bad she was lying through her teeth. But she didn’t and that

was that. She wasn’t about to let them tag along. And she wasn’t about to let them try to

45

Nathalie Gray

hurt Haruto, despite Rio’s assertions to the contrary. Fortaleza and Asia together, pissed
off, would be hard to control. Brioni didn’t like the possibilities, didn’t like the numbers
lining up in her brain, adapting to various inputs and probabilities. There were more
chances of shit hitting the fan than there weren’t. When it came to Haruto’s safety, she
wouldn’t gamble.

Brioni squeezed her hand around the scratched and dented ocarina in her pocket.

The most precious thing she owned. She knew exactly where to start looking.

Rain fell thin and cold on the crowded street. The kind of rain that could—and

usually did—last for weeks. She stood in the middle of the artisan quarter, the old
bazaar that stretched the length of Seoul’s riverside. It was only late afternoon but with
the rain creating an early dusk, streetlights were already on, stretched like garlands
across the street. There were members of every societal stratum here, from the rich
looking for an exotic item, to the poor hunting for bargains and a way to stretch their
credit. And everything in between. Formerly, GAN security members would’ve
marched in tight quartets, volters out and in view. Now the same guards patrolled in
the same uniform even if things had drastically changed in the last few months. Only
this winter, the resistance had had to buy contraband electricity to power a few of the
hydroponics gardens underground. She could still remember the cost of that
contraband power. She’d nearly had an attack as she tortured the numbers to try to
stretch them as much as she could. In a way, the underground home being destroyed
had forced a decision that she’d known was coming—they had to move out of there.
Charity, sympathizers’ salaries and the rest of the credit input just wasn’t sufficient to
run the show. Now up on the surface, they’d be forced to find something else.
Hopefully, something better.

Brioni looked around at the hard faces glistening with water. She could still easily

see the schism. A subtle glower here, an open curl of lip there. Not everyone was happy
to have the world’s “riff-raff”—vitriolic political ads plastered walls and skytrain
stations—mingling with the rest. To her practiced eye, she spotted quite a few “genetic
deviants” walking around, from deformations to enhancements to outright additions.

In her pocket, Haruto’s ocarina felt cool and smooth. She wrapped her hand around

it and squeezed. No one knew about it. Even after the confrontation with Asia and
Fortaleza, she hadn’t shared that last card up her sleeve. It was enough that they
doubted her word. And with Allan dead, no one could verify her claim. But numbers
spoke volumes—Haruto had been with her when that link had been opened. Except
that Asia hadn’t seemed impressed with that bit of news, even if Fortaleza had
grimaced and shivered, muttering the “skinny jerk” definitely wasn’t her type.

No worse blindness than those who refused to see.
While they’d prepared and gathered weapons for their “rendezvous”—a manhunt

to her—Brioni had quietly slipped out of the old factory through the kitchen door.
Because of the rain, she doubted anyone could follow her trail by scent. She’d been
around lycans and other genetically enhanced people long enough to know their

46

Animal

capabilities. And limitations. She’d run hard and fast and had reached the bazaar
around four in the afternoon. Right smack in the middle of the busiest time on the
busiest day, Friday. Let them try to find her.

Because they were lycans, tall and powerful and well-armed, didn’t mean she had

to follow their orders. She wasn’t without her own means and ways, her own recourse.
She’d manage. Plus, her reasons for finding Haruto and confronting him were too
personal to share with anyone.

Artisans of every kind lined the narrow alley to her right. People stood shoulder to

shoulder as they filed in and out. An older woman stood on the corner, clearly looking
for a path. Behind her sat a small cart on wheels laden with cloth protected by a clear
plastic covering.

“Wow, it’s getting worse every day,” Brioni remarked as she made a big show of

raising herself on the tips of her toes.

The woman agreed with a grimace. “Worse now with all the new people.”
Brioni politely cleaved a path and just as she was about to enter the crowded alley

proper, she turned and emphatically invited the older woman to walk in her wake.
Nodding with energy and much relief, the woman grabbed her cart and followed
Brioni, who used her smile as much as her elbows to wedge in and out of the thick
crowd. Behind her, the woman stayed very close. When they’d reached a relatively clear
spot in front of a man demonstrating the virtues of “the world’s finest botler”—who
would want a robotic butler—Brioni stopped and helped the woman set her cart up.
Tiny hydraulics pushed both sides of the cart up to form a table.

“Thanks, kiddo.”
“No problem,” Brioni replied, feigning to leave but remembering something. “Oh,

you wouldn’t know where I could find the metalsmiths, would you?”

“Sure, at that corner there, to the left, then past the cook shop with the giant noodle

bowl.”

Brioni chewed on her bottom lip. “And those are the good ones, right? It’s for my

mom. She has a medical condition. Her hip, right. Needs a new one.”

With a nod of understanding, the older woman leaned over. “If it’s the white metals

you’re talking about,” she started, stopped as people slowed to look at her wares.
“You’re looking for the Japanese fellows. They have their guild up by the spaceports. I
don’t know where exactly though. Sorry. Tell your mom to drink lots of green tea for
her joints. It helps with mine.”

White metals—aluminum, platinum, titanium and the likes—had become so prized

that anyone caught with more than a tiny bit and no permit could face a long time in
jail. Brioni smiled wide and patted the woman’s bony forearm. “Thanks so much. Good
luck with the sales.”

Brioni spent the next two hours fighting through the crowds on her way up to the

spaceports. Twenty million people crammed in a city designed for five created all sorts
of chaos. The worst of which was public transport. The rickety skytrain, noisy and

47

Nathalie Gray

belching great big clouds of toxic fumes, took her up to the more industrial part of town
where she disembarked as near to the spaceports as she could. Throngs of dockworkers,
each burlier than the next, followed her out of the skytrain. Rain still fell. Overhead,
space ships loomed like giant insects made of metal and bristling with antennas.

Instead of following the streets, she used the back alleys to try to spot the foundry.

If they dealt with metals, they had to have smelting facilities. That’d stick out amongst
the private buildings.

There. To her right. A chimney spewing black smoke caught her attention. It was

short but thick. Too thick to be a regular household. She approached the backyard and
peeked through the chain-link fence. It was getting dark, so people were starting to
light their houses. She shivered in the cold rain, drew the collar of her borrowed coat
closer. Dressed entirely in deep purple, from loose pants and tunic, sash and ankle-
length coat, she could probably stand in the shadow and not be seen too clearly.

Her heart skipped when she spotted a pair of Asian men sitting on the back metal

stairs, smoking. One wore a thick apron and goggles pushed up on his forehead. She
noted the house, rushed around to the street and narrowed her eyes at the front of a
tiny store. They seemed to be in the business of, well, everything. From pipes to baby
supplies to food. Hands shaking, Brioni opened the door and poked her head inside the
cluttered store. A counter with an automated cashier whirred softly, lights blinking. The
scanner must have caught her because a green light switched on.

“May I help you?” the genderless voice asked.
“Yes, I’d like to speak to the manager, please.”
A few seconds of clicks and ticks from the automated cashier preceded the sound of

footsteps. Brioni smiled at the ancient man who appeared in a doorway between a pair
of cold drinks dispensers. He wore the most wrinkled shirt she’d ever seen.

“Yes?”
“Oh hi.” She approached, shook rain from her hand before she stuck it out. “I’m

Janet, how are you?”

“We’re not looking for workers,” he snapped, retreating by a step and ignoring the

gesture.

She fought to keep her smile steady. “I’m not looking for work, sir. I’m looking for a

gift. For my sister.”

The man’s eyes narrowed even further. “We don’t sell gifts here.”
“Oh? I was told you did. I’m looking to purchase an ocarina. Do you know what

they are? Little round flutes?”

The man blanched. “You were told wrong.” He retreated into the darkened

doorway.

Oh?
“No, no, I’m sure I have the right house.”

48

Animal

He backed away, not in fear but to her shock, in horror. He shook his head several

times. “We don’t have that here. Go away.” He turned and walked the way he’d come.

“Sir! Please, wait!” She followed him behind the counter, entered the doorway but

stopped when he turned around and imperiously indicated the door. The gesture had
such commanding effect that she almost backed off. This man had done something else
in his life than own a tiny store. The glint of steel in his eyes confirmed her suspicions.

“Sir,” Brioni whispered, digging in her pocket and pulling the little instrument out.

“My friend is in trouble. I need to find him before someone else does. Someone who
wants to hurt him. Please, could you tell me if you know anything about this?”

As soon as his gaze fell on her hand, a transformation came over the tiny man. He

ran a hand back over his balding head, eyes closed, lips moving in silent words. Was he
praying?

“Where…where did you find this?”
“It belongs to my friend.”
“I doubt that.” He opened his eyes. “There’s no friendship where this thing came

from. Where did you find it? Did you steal it?”

“I didn’t steal his ocarina. He lost it when—” Brioni cleared her suddenly tight

throat. “He’s in trouble, sir. My friend is in trouble. Please, what do you know about
this?”

She resisted the urge to take it away from him when he reached out and delicately

passed a gnarled index finger over the dented surface. Dust still clung to the black cord.
“How old is he now, your friend?”

“I’m not sure. Thirty, maybe a bit more? It’s hard to tell.”
He nodded. Sadness washed over his face. “How long have you known him?”
“About a year.”
“You’re a friend, you say?” He planted such a penetrating gaze on her that Brioni

felt herself blush right up to her hairline. “Then you’ll forget this place, forget him and
move on.”

“I can’t. I won’t. He’s my friend.”
“Have you ever had regrets, child? Regrets so keen they’re like needles under your

nails?”

“Yes. I should’ve followed him right away. That’s my regret. What’s yours?” She

hadn’t meant to sound so challenging but couldn’t help it. She’d act pushy with an old
man if it helped her find Haruto’s trail.

He took his hand away, rubbed his face. “We don’t have much time. Come with

me.”

The thought he was leading her to some nasty surprise crossed her mind but didn’t

stop her from following him deeper into the narrow place, down a corridor barely
wider than she was, past maladjusted doors and into a tiny, dirty kitchen where the
only real spot of color was a plant sitting on the windowsill.

49

Nathalie Gray

He picked up a remote from the counter, thumbed the screen. She heard the bolts in

the back door slide into place. A tiny jolt in her heart made her ball trembling fists. If he
tried anything, she’d have no qualm about kicking him where it hurts and running
away. But instead, he methodically fixed tea and soon had a pair of tiny, handleless
cups the color of coal in his hands. He offered her one. She took it, even if she had no
intention of drinking whatever the strange man had brewed. To show good graces, she
pressed her lips to the burning edge. It did smell nice though. Jasmine tea.

“I’ve lived with this stone in my shoe for far too long.” He took a tiny sip. In the

yellow light of a rice paper lamp hanging from the pitted ceiling, his skin looked like
liver-spotted leather. “Your friend is more than what he seems. And he’s less at the
same time.”

Brioni pretended to drink again, pressed her lips and waited. At least the thing was

warming her hands, which she’d cradled around the tiny cup. “Haruto is very secretive,
I agree.”

“Haruto?” The man looked surprised. A shadow of a smile crinkled his skin.

“Funny how he chose a Japanese name for himself. Distant One. It’s fitting.”

“Haruto’s not Japanese?”
“Haruto is not even a man.”
She bristled at the implications. “He’s very much a man, sir. And a good one too

despite his, well, his caustic personality.”

A white eyebrow raised, he seemed to study her as he drank his tea. “He’s made a

life for himself, then. I’m happy. But you have to know that ‘Haruto’ is different from
you and me—”

“I know about his gift—”
“Don’t interrupt me,” the man snapped. “He’s the best thing and the worst thing

technology can create. Long before the Iron Conclave and even the fools behind the
Genes Wars, secret societies have funded and created and tested experimental weapons.
Like your friend, who was a prototype of sorts.”

A prototype…?
“The things that poor child went through,” the man murmured. “Science can be as

ugly as it can be beautiful. Imagine being created in test tubes, being raised by
researchers and weapons engineers, around machines and death, around metal and
concrete. Imagine a child who can kill a man in more ways than he can count. A child
treated like a… A thing.”

Tears welled Brioni’s eyes. She willed them away. “How do you know all this?” she

whispered even if she knew the answer.

“I was there. I saw it with my own eyes. And I did nothing.”
“You were one of the researchers?”
He shook his head, put his cup on the counter. Another stain joined the collection.

“I was only a guard. Every day I’d go to work, and every night I’d come back home. But

50

Animal

I couldn’t stop thinking. Guilt is a powerful thing, child. He had no one, no toy, nothing
but tools of death and databases of violence. So I brought him this.” He pointed to her
pocket where she’d slipped Haruto’s ocarina. “It was a small gift, but I think he was
happy. In his own way, I think he was happy.”

She agreed with a nod. God, not at all what she’d expected. She was dizzy with

information overload, with the pain the man’s words created, the implications and
horrors they triggered. Haruto had grown up and lived in a research lab? Empathy
washed over her in a great, warm wave. The isolation, the crushing loneliness must
have been terrible.

“One night,” the man went on, as if he were reliving the past. Tears filled his

yellowed eyes. “After we picked him up from a mission—he must have been sixteen or
so at the time—I decided to do something. Instead of sedating him the way we usually
did…”

She put the untouched tea on the counter. “What did you do?”
“He was awake when my colleagues went to slip the restraints on.” A grim look

passed over his face. “He… All dead, except for me. He let me live.”

She could imagine the rest. Haruto had killed his way to freedom. Who could

blame him?

“Did they blame you?”
The old man shook his head. “I’d become very good at lying, I needed that skill to

live with the fact I was letting Inu turn a child into a killing machine.”

“Who’s Inu?”
Hatred tightened his mouth. “The ones who’re on the other end of the link right

now, listening to us.”

Her heart skipped a beat. She backpedaled, cursing. “What?”
“Oh, they won’t get here for another good ten, fifteen minutes.” He fished inside his

wrinkled shirt collar, slipped a thin silvery chain from around his neck. On the end
dangled a tiny chip of raw white metal. He approached until he stood barely a hand’s
breadth away. “There’s a data clip inside,” he whispered in her ear. His breath smelled
of jasmine tea and fish. “The chromium casing can fool any detector. Take it. It’s been
my ball and chain for too long. I’d always hoped to have enough courage to use it
someday. I never did.”

“They’re coming right now? These Inu people?” Her heart hurt from the mad

beating. Sweat tickled a teasing course down her spine.

He backed by a step. “They’re barely ‘people’, but yes, they’re coming. They

monitor everything, know everything. Everyone owes them, either now or generations
ago. They’re the keeper of memories, a database too vast to understand. As for your
friend Haruto, if you love him, you’ll make sure they don’t catch you.”

“I won’t let them hurt him.”

51

Nathalie Gray

The tone of her remark, the aplomb and cold, hard determination made the old man

smile for a second. It didn’t last. “He doesn’t want to punish Haruto. That’d require
emotions he doesn’t have. But he’s been looking for him, all this time. Searching,
hunting.”

She slipped the chain and pendant around her neck and tucked it safely into her

tunic. It was still warm from the old man’s skin. A curious bond to him formed in her
mind—they were now the keeper of Haruto’s future. She hoped she did a better job at it
than he had. She tried in her heart to find compassion for him. But he’d let those horrors
happen to a child and hadn’t helped. What sort of man did this? Fear was one thing, but
to allow researchers without conscience to conduct experiments on a kid… She tried to
hide the rage and judgment from her eyes, knew he could probably still see them, if
only because they were a reflection of his own. “You said ‘he’s been looking’. Who’s
he?”

The old man cocked his head. “Where do you think they get their initial DNA?”
The words left a bad taste in her mouth. “Someone inside Inu is… Erm, he’s the one

who…?”

A nod. “He wants his prodigal son back. Even if he never was a father, he was still

the genitor.”

“Does Haruto know this?”
“No. And I suggest you don’t tell him either. No one needs that on their soul. And

after I’m gone, there will be only two who know.”

“That man and me?” She refused to use the word “father”. She agreed with the old

man at least on that—Haruto had no father as far as she was concerned. She wouldn’t
burden his heart by revealing he shared DNA with the monster who’d tortured him.

“Please tell him,” the man went on as he manually unlocked the back door. “Please

tell him. I’m sorry. I’ve lived with this regret all my life. If I could, I’d change things.”

“Would you save him?”
He nodded. “I’m saving him now.” He opened the door, gestured for her to follow

him down the concrete staircase leading into a darkened garage. Through a door to her
right, she spotted an orange glow. Acrid smells of rotten eggs and sulfur made her
crinkle her nose. The foundry.

“Was it you who made it? The ocarina, I mean?” She followed him to an old and

battered-looking airbike leaning on the garage wall.

“My father. He’d made it for me when I was little. I never married, had no children

of my own. There’s only one like it in the world.”

A man’s voice rose beyond the door to the foundry. Her companion responded in

quick, hard words. “Hurry. Take it. You’ll have a chance this way.”

He grabbed the old bike by the handles and wheeled it to the garage door, which he

indicated Brioni should open. She did, used her hip to force it wider. Rusted and
stained, the bike collected tiny drops of water as they wheeled it outside. Night had

52

Animal

fallen. The sky was slashed in brown and purple. Wind had also picked up quite a bit.
High overhead, shuttles flew back and forth. It was a busy sky above the slums. The
massive hulls of space vessels glistened as they hovered, moored to the spaceports
overlooking this part of town like giant clusters of silver grapes atop needle-like towers.

“Will you tell him?” the old man asked. Regret filled his eyes. He looked even more

ancient this way, staring up at her as she straddled the bike’s plastic seat and pressed
her thumb on the control panel by the handle.

She nodded. “If he doesn’t know already, I’ll make sure he learns what you did for

him. For what it’s worth, he’s become a good man. A bit of a cynic but good at heart.”

A tired smile pulled the leathery cheeks. “I’m glad to know he made a life for

himself and found a good girl to love.”

She was about to argue Haruto and she were just friends but closed her mouth and

nodded. Why rob this old man of a rare bit of good news? He’d probably suffered
enough, if only through his guilt. Although she wished, as he did, that he’d acted
sooner. Maybe Haruto would’ve turned out completely differently.

“The Hwaseong.” The old man backed away from her as he fearfully checked the

sky. “The Brilliant Fortress. That’s where they kept him. That’s where Inu has its
research facilities. That’s where he is as well.”

She nodded, logged the piece of intel in her brain. She’d have to find something to

note all of this, maybe even open a link to Vonatos and data charge everything to him.
Yes, actually, this was what she’d do at the first opportunity. She couldn’t take the risk
the knowledge would go down with her. She knew her strengths and also her limits.
She was no lycan.

“One last thing,” she said. “Haruto, why does he wear goggles all the time?”
The old man’s chin trembled. “He hides his eyes?” he breathed, barely loud enough

to be heard. “I would too.”

Brioni was about to reply when a great whoosh of heat preceded a fireball like the

mouth of hell opening right behind them. Only because she had her hand already on
the handle and about to rev the engine did she escape the explosion when it ripped
through the garage. The image burned an impression of itself in her retina. Orange,
fiery background, and a tiny, bent silhouette like a broken puppet.

53

Nathalie Gray

Chapter Six

Haruto spotted a bright ball of orange flames roll upward from a neighborhood

beneath the spaceports. He watched, mesmerized, as bright flames rose above a portion
of the city. In his enhanced vision, they looked like tongues licking the sky. Somewhere,
a siren sounded. He smelled the emergency shuttles, smelled the fire retardant agents
they used. Sensory systems honed into fine blades, he rushed up an old convenience
store’s emergency ladder. Rain hit his face but didn’t cool the fire in his belly. Inferno
that only Brioni’s flesh could quench. The images flashed in his mind. Vivid. Light and
shadow. Pale skin and rosy flesh.

On her back, up against a wall, on her elbows and knees, astride him. She was all

his, had made herself his and would again.

He leaped from roof to roof, across streets and alleys until he stood on a flat rooftop

across the street from where a couple of buildings burned with a vengeance. The smell
of fuel still clung to the air. A shuttle must have come by only seconds before. Where
was it now? He should still be able to see it. The heat reached even to him. He closed his
eyes for a moment, basking in the warmth even if it stemmed from destruction. One
had to find heat where one could. In his life, he’d learned not to be choosy.

Emergency crews were only starting to filter in. He smelled their clothes, their hair,

everything that had ever stuck to the soles of their boots. They didn’t smell of
adrenaline or fear. No rush. No one cared too much about a couple of houses burning
up in Seoul’s slums. Haruto was about to turn and head back down when a faint tendril
caught his nose. He froze. Sniffed delicately, mouth parted to roll the scent on his
tongue. The subtle smell hardened his cock. His palms tingled at the prospect of his
hands closing on the softest limbs, the smoothest skin.

So he had found her by scent after all.

* * * * *

The explosion tore a gasp from her. She frantically twisted the airbike’s right

handle. The engine roared in response. The thing may be old but there was still life left
in it.

Howls of pain coming from the foundry tore at her heart but she couldn’t stay and

help. If she were caught, they’d try to find what she knew about Haruto. And God help
her, she’d rather die than give those monsters a single bit of intel. The pendant’s sharp
edges pricked her skin. A constant reminder of her duty. Surely it’d been the same for
the old man. She wondered if his chest bore any scars from years of wearing the sharp
pendant.

54

Animal

Turning away from the blast of heat, Brioni tucked her head low between her

shoulders and twisted her hand hard. With a roar, the airbike lurched forward and up,
gathered enough speed to lift off the courtyard’s broken concrete slabs, tore over the
chain-link fence and flew at forty-five degrees over the buildings across the alley.
Behind her, another explosion ripped the night. She felt the violence and heat against
her back. A wave of hot air slammed into her. She revved the engine as hard as she
dared. She hadn’t sat on one in years, since quitting her auditor job, selling everything
and moving underground.

Behind her, movement. To her shock, something large passed her, trailed a wake of

heat and a smell of fuel that made her eyes sting. She glanced up. Nothing. Yet a
definite whir of engines could be heard.

Oh shit. A shrouded craft.
She’d always thought only Leviathan-class space ships had them. Fortunately, with

the rain she was able to spot a few angles here and there. A stunted wing, a glistening
bow. She swerved when—she thought—the shuttle veered toward her. Slowly, almost
gently. So they wanted her alive.

With her coat and sash flying wildly around and behind her, Brioni raised the

handles to try to gain a bit more altitude. Flying ten feet over rooftops wasn’t
particularly safe. Chimneys, antennas, shuttle landing pads zoomed by. The shrouded
craft moved closer, tried to keep her from rising. Burning heat suddenly spread all over
her. A split second later, a blast of fire arced right over her head and crashed against a
building around which she’d been about to fly. Bricks and debris rained to the ground.
There could be people in those! Were they nuts?

She tamped the fear down. Haruto wouldn’t have a chance if they caught her alive.

She had to find a way, somehow, to lose the shuttle.

Another blast tore a good chunk of a gutted office tower. Glass exploded in long

shards. Brioni only had time to swerve to the left to avoid a shower of sparkling bits.
People screamed in pain. Alarms, no doubt triggered by the fiery blasts, wailed behind
her. Wind and rain made piloting the airbike tricky. Everything looked greasy and
dangerous.

A perfect opportunity presented itself. Near the end of the industrial neighborhood

stood a cluster of taller buildings. Former apartment complexes. She aimed for that.

The shuttle’s occupants must have understood what she meant because the craft

dropped dangerously close to her. She could have reached out and touched the damn
thing. The shuttle’s warm hull tapped her. That was some piloting! They tried once,
twice. Ram her “gently” enough to steer her in another direction but not violently
enough to unseat her.

Closer the apartment complexes grew. Brioni dove between the nearest two. She

leaned over the handles, looking at the brick walls on either side. Graffiti. Darkened
windows. The smell of fuel and garbage and urine overpowering. Where the hell could
she go? She had to lose them.

55

Nathalie Gray

The skytrain.
If she could make it to the nearest skytrain station, or even the tracks—high voltage

would keep the shuttle well away. An airbike was small enough to fly between the live
wires. Not the smartest thing to do. But in desperate times…

Yeah. Get to the skytrain, Metcalf.
Then she’d lose them in the crowd. The neighborhoods around the spaceports were

almost deserted. But at the skytrain, she’d have a chance. There’d be lots of people, as
always. Above her between the two roofs, the shuttle followed. Damn them.

Focus. Breathe, for Pete’s sake!
Haruto depended on her. She couldn’t let him down.
Instead of maintaining speed and height, Brioni dropped to a foot above ground-

level. Here, the smell of dead and rotten things made her breathe through her teeth.
Above, the shrouded shuttle still followed. Same speed. Same heading. Shit, maybe
they had heat sensors. Well, she’d give them heat, the bastards!

A tiny noise at the far range of her hearing forced her to check behind.
“Shit!”
Right behind her. Two airbikes, thrusters blazing bright blue and illuminating two

pilots dressed in black armor and face shields.

She gunned it.
Above her head, a dark form flashed from the roof to her left to the one to her right.

Ah great, another?

She didn’t have time to pay closer attention since one of her pursuers decided he’d

had enough tailing. They came at her hard and fast. Like bike races—the full contact
kind—she was sandwiched between the two, growled and kicked out at the black-clad
one to her left. She was a leftie. So he got it right in the snout. Went violently veering
away. Sparks flew in a wide arc when portions of his bike scraped against the brick
wall. Before she could evade the other, that pilot reached out and grabbed a fistful of
her coat. A good yank nearly unseated her. She kicked, twisted the handles, cursed at
him. But despite her best efforts, she wasn’t strong enough to get him off her. Slowly
but inexorably, he forced her sideways enough that she had to let go of the handles. The
borrowed airbike slowed until it plummeted to the ground twenty feet below.

Brioni watched her only form of transportation hit the ground, roll several times

before slamming against a concrete ledge that once sheltered pedal bikes. “Shit!”

The man must not have thought things through very well because when Brioni was

forced to straddle the back of his seat, she wrapped both arms around his head.

Try to see now, buddy!
She heard the curses. Gritted her teeth against the rough hand clawing at her so he

could dislodge her. His cohort dropped right by their left. He leaned over, must have
thought he could manage her with only one hand. She kicked him again. In the head, in
the back. He veered away. Came back again. She was waiting.

56

Animal

She felt the one sitting in front of her tense. Heard a muffled curse from within the

helmet.

Brioni didn’t have time to brace when he lost control of his bike. A first thud against

the ground forced a growl of pain from her. Her tailbone hurt. Another thud. Sparks
flew from the handle where it scraped the brick wall. The buildings ended. Both bikes
shot out of the narrow aperture like bats out of a cave. With a bone-jarring, teeth-
grinding, tailbone-compressing impact, both bikes collided against one another. Brioni
only had time to lift her foot to avoid having her leg crushed between the two
machines. The stench of fuel overpowered everything else.

“Shit!”
Screaming, she held on to the backseat as the bike’s backend rose. Higher. It flipped

completely forward to crash against the pavement of an old pool enclosure.

The impact knocked her teeth together. Pain radiated up her back and legs. Both

bikes, pilots and she went tumbling down into the old pool. Her good fortune held
because she landed—kind of—on one of the men.

Get up, Metcalf! Haruto depended on her.
Fear and adrenaline kicked up another notch. She clawed up the gentle incline, feet

scraping rapidly, had managed to reach the shallow end of the pool when something
gripped her by the coat and dragged her down and backward.

She howled. Frustration and fright. Desperation. Kicking, clawing, cursing. They

wouldn’t catch her alive. The bastards!

“Get her! Hurry!” she heard behind her.
Brioni lost all control over herself. Animal instincts kicked in. She heard them grunt

and pant as they tried to subdue her. One of them managed to roll her underneath him.
The heavy body crushed her into the concrete. He cocked his fist back. She arched,
twisted away. Stars exploded in her vision when the fist crashed against her forehead.
He must have hurt himself too because he grunted, fisted her hair for another go.

“Come on!” he growled. His companion frantically fished around his pockets.
She spotted the trancgun. “No!”
Renewed fire in her veins. In her peripheral vision, she spotted more forms rushing

in.

“Don’t lose her!” one yelled from far away.
The sound of a shuttle landing. Heat buffeting her face. They couldn’t get Haruto

back! She wouldn’t let them!

Then something happened.
A black silhouette flashed by her side. It collided with the men holding her down,

hurling them back into the deep end. One of them crashed back so hard he cracked the
concrete wall before slumping in a heap.

“Get the volters!” one yelled.

57

Nathalie Gray

“They want her alive!”
“He’s here!” the same voice replied.
Who was there?
As they ran toward the pool, the men dressed in likewise black armor and face

shields drew volters. She yelled a warning, didn’t know why since she hadn’t
recognized her savior.

Everything happened fast. The dark flash moved too fast for her eyes to follow. She

only caught glimpses of it here and there as it leaped, rebounded, arced and flipped. It
flew at the newcomers, crashed into them and sent them outward like a puff of black
feathers. Bodies crashed pell-mell into bushes, against walls, over park benches and
garbage cans.

The telltale blue-white flashes of volters illuminated dark corners around the

apartment complex.

“Don’t shoot, you moron! It’s him!”
Despite her state, she heard the deference in their tone. And the fear.
Her body protested as she pushed herself up on her knees then to her feet.

Stumbling, she made it out of the pool. By the few remaining lights around the pool
enclosure and the old park-like area, a scene of carnage.

Men in black uniform. Literally flying ten feet in the air, projected and thrown and

tossed like ragdolls. Bits of clothing flew. Weapons as well. And blood. It arced
overhead in thin lines. When the dark flash slowed as it leaped atop the roof of a small
utility shed right by her, she was able to get a good look. Her defender froze facing
outward, clearly using himself as a shield between the oncoming attackers and her.

Oh God…
She knew him. The black boots up to the knees, the tight-fitting, ribbed black

polymer pants, longish and spiky black hair. The gray, fur-lined bomber jacket was new
though. She would’ve recognized the man anywhere, under any circumstances.

When Haruto turned, she took a step back. Even if his face was still the same

beautiful visage she’d always seen, he was clearly in lycan form. Black metallic fangs
and claws glistened like ink. One of the light posts was right above his head and cut his
face with slices of shadows. The mirrored goggles reflected only flashes of light and
concrete. He crouched lower against the roof ledge, curled his upper lip at her, sniffed
delicately.

“Brioni,” he whispered.
Her heart beat madly. “Haruto…” A flash of metal. “Watch out!”
He leaped high and grabbed the light post, used it as a launching point to soar right

over the enemy. He landed with impossible grace, crouched in a feral pose on the
railing of a nearby wheelchair ramp. Perched there like a crow.

“Run,” he calmly said to her. The goggles glimmered with rain. Like tears. It began

to fall heavy and cold. Seeped in her hair and clothes.

58

Animal

Brioni shook her head. She wasn’t going to abandon him to these bastards. “But—”
“Run!” he roared.
Fear and panic seized her. She backpedaled when he jumped from his perch and

came at her. Turning around, Brioni raced out of the park area. Out of the apartment
complexes. Past deserted streets and around detritus-strewn corners. Echoes followed
her. Men’s voices raised in pain and alarm. She didn’t look back. She ran. Across a small
park where children’s play structures stood frozen in the glistening rain. Everything felt
slimy underfoot. One hand on her mouth to keep from giving herself away, Brioni left
the sidewalk so she could sprint down a grassy embankment that ended with a chain-
link fence. Her breath burned in her lungs. Her legs felt like lead. Hair hung in her eyes.
She ran along the fence, slipping on the wet grass, almost all the way down to the river
but couldn’t see an opening. Damn.

She sprinted back up the embankment, bifurcated into a tunnel that passed

underneath the street. High above, the skytrain’s wires ran parallel to the street. There’d
be a comms booth at the next station, she’d be able to data dump the thing around her
neck directly to Vonatos’ account. But that’d leave her out in the open. And right now,
she needed to lay low. Temporarily at least. Under the street she sprinted. Water pooled
in the divot along the middle. At least she’d be able to get past the fence above this way.
Her breaths and boots echoed in the corrugated metal tunnel. A circle of light indicated
she was close. But Brioni whimpered when she realized the same chain-link fence
blocked her way out here too. She gripped the fence, rattled it, cursing.

Behind her, a small sound allowed a split-second warning.
Something hit her in the back. She yelped, hit the fence, tried to brace the impact

with her arms as she was pinned facing it. Rain made the metal slippery and cold. A
lean and strong body pressed all along the back of her, from knees to shoulders. A hard
lump was crushed in her lower back. To have felt that magnificent body before, she
recognized it well.

Haruto.
Long fingers tipped in black claws glossy with rain curled into the chain links by

her face. Like anchors. “There you are,” he murmured through the wet hair covering
her face.

“You’re safe!” she panted, swallowed the lump in her throat. She could’ve wept in

relief. “I thought—”

“Shhh,” he breathed.
Adrenaline shifted gears. She quivered as he put his mouth against her ear.
Brioni swallowed. “Are you…are you all right?”
“Now I am.”
“W-what are you doing?”
She’d never seen him this way. The lycan was clearly in control. Although he

wasn’t like the others, didn’t change that much in physical appearance when the lycan

59

Nathalie Gray

took over. Only became more. More menacing, more the lean and mean hunter skirting
the shadows. Like a hungry wolf without a pack.

“I’ve been thinking about you,” he breathed, stopped for a deep but delicate sniff. A

frisson shot up her spine. “I’ve been hungry for you.”

She tried twisting her head to look over her shoulder but he pressed himself harder.

Metal links dug in her breasts and belly. Created a thrill she never would’ve expected
from the situation. “Are we safe? Are they…? Did you get rid of them?”

“Gone back to their masters,” he replied in singsong. She smelled a faint hint of

alcohol on his breath. “With their tails between their legs.” She felt him tense. “Did they
hurt you?”

She’d escaped an inferno by the seat of her pants, had fought two men while flying

ten feet off the ground at forty miles an hour, crashed on an airbike, had received a
punch right in the forehead. “No, I’m all right. I—”

He pressed his mouth against the back of her hand, which glistened with rain as she

gripped the fence. His breath warmed her skin. He slowly licked the droplets from her
knuckles. “Did you miss me?”

“I was worried. I thought…” She tried to go on but no sound came out when he

raked his bottom teeth very, very lightly up the back of her hand. His metallic fangs
dangerously tracing veins and tendons. She could feel the reined-in power, the
suppressed violence. The hunter resting a delicate claw on the prey’s tail.

But she was no one’s prey.
“I was worried,” she repeated with more aplomb. “You should’ve said something.

At least to me.”

“Why?”
“Because I’m your friend.”
“Mmm. My friend.” He seemed to taste the word, test it, roll it around in his mouth.
His licking her knuckles again closed her eyes. She shivered. The hard feel of him

crushed against her was starting to affect her mental processes. Despite his state.
Because of it. She couldn’t think. Torn between remnants of fear and a budding arousal.
Between her relief he was all right and her worry about where he was taking this. Yet
hoping he would. What a mess.

A long lick from wrist bone to curled fingers. “I love your taste.”
With the angle, rain still reached them, rendered his skin the richest shade of wet

sand. He yanked on both hands, which were still attached to the fence with curled-in
fingers, while pushing his pelvis against her lower back. The clink of the fence was like
music. A ribbon of breath rose in the air when she opened her mouth. Haruto did it
again, this time rolled his pelvis in an upward thrust that crushed his erection up
against her butt. She bit her bottom lip to keep her focus sharp.

She gasped when he fisted the side of her coat and tugged it up so he could slip his

hand underneath. Stitching ripped. Contact. Skin against skin. The heat of his palm

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Animal

triggered frissons up her side. Haruto followed her waist, squeezed into the drawstring
of her loose-fitting pants. Brioni didn’t try to stop him when he curled fingers over her
mons, parted her. Liquid heat gathered in her folds. The smell reached even her.

“You missed me too,” he whispered, chuckled. She’d never heard him do that.

Haruto? Chuckling?

When he crouched behind her, one hand still curled into the chain-link fence while

he pulled her pants down with the other, she let him. When he denuded her butt and
thighs and yanked her pants down around her ankles then off altogether, she hung on
to the fence and didn’t make a single move he could’ve construed as unwillingness.
And when he straightened, plastered himself against her back, hand around her front
and still pressed against her pussy, Brioni remained immobile. Waiting to fall over the
edge. That one last gust of wind that would topple her off the cliff. Relinquishment was
a powerful thing. As were the animal instincts keeping her put while he readied her.
Because that was what he did—readied her. She knew what he wanted.

The sound of a zipper made her tuck her bottom lip behind her teeth. Burning-hot

flesh pressed against her lower back. He made his cock a cradle of her cheeks. She
curled her spine to change the angle. Facilitation. Invitation he didn’t need but took.

Puffs of hot breath curled as steam by her face when Haruto gripped the fence on

either side of her head. Rain made his black claws glisten. His heat triggered frissons all
over her shaking body. Naked thighs against naked thighs. His chest crushing hers into
the chain-link. His lower belly molded to her butt. Sensualization spread through her.
She felt each tiny detail—the way rain droplets teased and tickled down her naked legs,
and how strands of Haruto’s wet hair stuck to her cheeks or the tendons of his hands
corded. Small details. Petty details to the lucky ones who’d had a good life and never
had to fight for the ones they loved. Each mattered to her. Each was treasured.

He growled her name. Pushed inside.
When he took her, Brioni thought her world had been snuffed out. Like a candle in

a gust of wind. A claiming born of two bodies pushed to their limits. The fence clinked
with his demanding push. His cock filled her while his heat seeped into her flesh. He
didn’t pull back. Remained sheathed in her. She didn’t know how long. Couldn’t tell a
minute from an hour. Her body molded itself to his. His unnatural warmth transferred
to her. Give and take. She gave herself over to him. In turn, he shared himself with her.
She ceased to exist except as an extension to him while he lost himself in her core. They
became one and the same. The oldest circle. The purest number. One.

He pulled back to the glans. Brioni only had time to bite down before he thrust

back. Hard. Her gasp created swirls of steam. Then again. The burn of his skin mixed
with that of her distended flesh. The fence rattled with each powerful penetration, the
metallic sound, a rhythm from nature’s oldest song, reverberated in the tunnel and
entered her very bones. Rain made Brioni’s grip slippery. But she held on. The burn
accentuated, deepened into pain.

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Nathalie Gray

Haruto’s claws ripped into the chain-link fence as easily as she did when she tore

the netting around oranges. What exacting control he must have deployed to modulate
his strength to not harm her. It awed her. How the man could display such terrible force
yet simultaneously contain it to the last iota. And still he pounded himself into her, as
though he meant to disappear, cease to exist, lose himself in her welcoming flesh and
loving arms. Took and gave. Claimed and shared. Subjugated and abandoned. United
them—the lycan, the man and herself. One.

He didn’t come. Neither did she. This union wasn’t about sexual pleasure but a

triumph over adversity. They were together in spite of everything that worked and
schemed to keep them apart.

The sweat that slicked them both, mixed with cool rain, rose in steam around their

weary bodies, like ghostly fingers reaching up to the stars. Haruto’s brutal claiming
subsided, his body slowed, his breath softened from growls to half whimpers. He was
changing. She felt it in her senses, in her flesh. He pulled out, gently turned her to face
him then dropped to his knees to press his face to her belly, each hand on her hips, as if
he held the most precious vessel and was afraid a mere touch would break it.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered against her skin. “I shouldn’t have touched you. Not this

way.”

“Shh.”
Brioni held on to the jagged edges of the chain links he’d broken. The discomfort

felt like an anchor to her rioting senses. Her thighs throbbed, as did her sex. Half pain.
Half satisfaction, even if she’d derived no pleasure from this hurried claiming. A hand
over his head, she curled shaking fingers into his wet hair. Eyes closed, she could better
savor their small victory over the world.

Perhaps he felt he should make it up to her in some way—didn’t he understand

she’d wanted this other side of him?—because Haruto began to softly kiss her belly.
Tender hands moved in serpentine patterns over skin that pebbled with goose bumps.

“You don’t have to…” she murmured. “We should leave.”
“I want to.”
So did she. Hanging on with one hand above her head, Brioni hooked a knee over

his shoulder. Such a perfect fit. Made for this. For each other.

Haruto turned his face against her inner thigh, pressed his lips but didn’t kiss her.

His tongue darted out yet the lick never came. He rested his teeth… No bite startled
her. And she yearned for it. Everything.

She whispered pleas for him to seize it, consume it, taking it into him. Take her. His

mouth was gentle when he pressed it to her sex. So hot. She sighed long and hard.
Using his thumbs to part her wide, he licked in wide upward passes. Shivers tightened
her denuded flesh, tingled in her clitoris. She shook for him.

“Take me.” Her murmur rose in the cold air like swirls of fuel in water. In black and

white. Color had left her world. Drained to make room for other stimuli. Her body
wouldn’t be able to contain it all. Maybe she’d blow up in a million shards of mirrored

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Animal

glass? Or go supernova and dissolve in pure matter no longer held by bounds of
physics? Freed, elevated to absolute numbers.

With his mouth, Haruto took her. Then with his fingers. She was so wet for him, so

ready that he only had to blow gently on her clitoris to trigger an orgasm. Her moan
lasted so long she felt deflated, ready to be filled again. He did. With skilled lips and
tongue and teeth, Haruto brought her to the very precipice of reason. She came and
came and came. Until she couldn’t differentiate the lulls between each climax, until her
belly and lower back ached with muscular spasms and still he worked, diligently,
tenderly, toiled for her pleasure and never asked a thing in return.

Soon, strength abandoned her and she slid down the fence. Already kneeling

between her legs, Haruto was waiting. On a long sigh, she took him into her as she sank
onto his lap, aided by his strong hands on her hips. Her essence lubricated the gentle
entry. She had time only for a quick breath before she came hard enough to burn. A
series of frissons tightened her sex around his. Rings of pleasure squeezed his cock like
a fist. Filled with the man she held so dear, Brioni let her head loll back against the
fence, let the ecstasy take her.

And with his arms around her while she leaned her head on his shoulder, he

waited. Immobile, sheathed deep inside.

The moment could’ve lasted an eternity. Should have. They belonged together.

They’d earned the right.

“You didn’t come?” she whispered through his hair. He smelled of rain and a hint

of almonds. “I can finish you by hand. Would you let me?”

“No.”
He kissed her neck, sucked on the spot underneath her ear. Brioni’s toes curled in

her boots. That man’s mouth was the eighth unsung sin.

She pulled from him, reached between them to grip his cock, but he twisted his hips

away. “Hey, come on, let me do it.”

“I said no.”
“Why not?”
“For touching you that way.”
“God, Haruto, don’t punish yourself—”
He helped her up, retrieved her pants and pulled the legs right side in, even helped

her put them on. They were wet and cold. She shivered.

“I had no right—” He raked both hands back in his hair. “Fuck, I think I’m still

drunk.” Brioni must have done a lousy job hiding the hurt because he tilted his head
down to her. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know.”
“I’m good with pain. We’re old friends. But that was…” He turned away to pull his

pants closed, zipped then looped the belt back. “I just wanted to make it stop, you
know. I figured…” He shrugged.

63

Nathalie Gray

“Did it?”
“No.” He faced her, shoved his hands in his pockets. “But you did. With you,

nothing touches me.”

She felt her cheeks grow warm. A thought crossed her mind. “Oh, I found this, after

you left.” She pulled the dented ocarina from her pocket.

He reverently took it, turned it around in his hand.
“I found the artisan as well. The one who gave it to you.”
She heard Haruto’s breath catch then resume. The mirrored goggles didn’t betray

his reaction but the hard set of his jaw did. He looped the instrument around his head.
“You did.”

No question. A statement.
“He said—”
“I don’t care what he said,” Haruto cut in.
“He is…was, very old in the end, Haruto, and remorseful. He said to tell you that if

he could, he’d do something.”

Haruto zipped his bomber jacket over the silvery item, flicked his collar up and

shoved his hands back in his pockets. Clearly, this wasn’t a good time to bring up his
past. But would there ever be a good time? She doubted it. Plus, all a person really had,
in the end, was right now. Nothing but the present.

She fished inside her tunic and pulled the little silver pendant out. “And he gave

me this as well. There’s a data clip in it.” When he didn’t turn to her, she gently put her
hand against his forearm and walked around him so they faced one another. “It’s all in
here. Everything. Enough to bring them down, Haruto. Enough to make it right.”

A shrug was all she got.
“Haruto? We can bring them down. The ones who hurt you all these years.”
“The man…” His voice was barely above a whisper. “What did he tell you?”
That he’d admit this to her, that he’d go back from what he’d claimed and ask her

what the man had said warmed her heart. Haruto may be abrupt at times, but there was
good in him. And vulnerability. He just didn’t know how to let it out. She wondered
what sort of man he would’ve been had Inu not turned him into whatever he was.
Lycan, lethal tool. But then again, if Inu hadn’t “created” him, Haruto wouldn’t even
exist. On a selfish level, she preferred that he did.

“Not much,” she lied. “He said he was very sorry, that guilt had eaten him all these

years, then he gave me this. We have to transfer it to Vonatos. If we can upload the
data, then it won’t matter if they catch us or not. The data will be safe.”

“They won’t catch you.”
“Well, just in case—”
“I said they won’t catch you!”

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Animal

Startled, Brioni stepped back from him. For a second she thought he’d pounce or

turn around and run away. He literally quivered on the spot. His fists shook in his
pockets. Hair wet with rain and plastered to his forehead glistened. His chin trembled.

A long and slow breath seemed to deflate him. He hung his head. “They can’t get

you. I won’t let them.”

She was reminded again of the old man’s words about Haruto’s shared DNA with

the man behind Inu. Anger tightened her chest. The knowledge would destroy him. She
had no intention of ever sharing it with him. Slowly so she wouldn’t aggravate the
situation, she approached him, framed his face in her hands. He was burning hot.

“We’re in this together, Haruto. It’s us now, not you and me individually. And

we’ll be fine, whatever happens, we’ll make it work. Okay?”

Haruto closed his hands over hers and for a second she thought he was going to

pull them away. But he didn’t. Instead he stayed this way, his hot hands over hers,
squeezing hard as if he were afraid to let go. After a long while, he did.

“There’s a skytrain station not far,” he said. “We’ll use one of the comms booths. It

should be safe.”

She wanted to add “for now” but thought better of it.

65

Nathalie Gray

Chapter Seven

He’d never felt anything like it. A sort of buoyancy tempered with cynicism. As if

he’d separated in two and each side fought against the other. Haruto wanted to share
Brioni’s outlook on life. He yearned to warm himself by her positive disposition and
loving attitude. He wanted it so much. To be embraced, valued not for his deadly skills
but for his capacity as a man, as a person, and for once in his damn life to be worthy of a
good woman’s affection—a constructive element instead of a destructive force. Haruto
wanted to build something with Brioni and not destroy something to be with her.
Although he would in a heartbeat. Yet she hadn’t asked him anything like that. She
hadn’t tried to use him as others had—even if it paid well. And this warmed his cold,
distrustful heart.

But at the same time, he couldn’t shake what had made him the way he was now.

Couldn’t get rid of the taste of ashes. Inu had robbed him of much more than his
childhood and even part of his dignity—they’d robbed him of hope. Even if hoping for
some time with Brioni was his most burning imperative. He wanted time with her.
Hours, weeks, years. Die old and gray in her arms, physically frail but emotionally
invincible.

As they walked back up the deserted street—rain had turned to sleet—Haruto

shook his head at the ludicrous course of his thoughts.

First, they had to transfer the data clip’s content to Vonatos’ account. She was

holding something back. And knowing her, it couldn’t have been that good if she didn’t
want to tell him. He respected her choice even if he’d rather she told him all she knew.
After the transfer, he’d find a safe place to hunker down. And there, she’d tell him all.
Maybe he’d even relax—a rare occurrence for him—and give in to the temptation his
friend represented.

My friend.
He had a friend. A true friend. What a novel concept.
“There.” Brioni pointed. Across the street and atop a squat, hundred-foot structure

that resembled a diving tower, a skytrain station was lit in pitiless white fluorescents.
One sputtered and blinked irregularly. In his enhanced vision, the thing was
maddening. A comms booth stood near the ticketing kiosk. It gleamed canary yellow.
“We’ll try this one,” she went on.

She was well on her way across the street and was about to put her foot on the first

concrete step when Haruto caught up with her, passed her with a pointed look—that
she couldn’t see given the goggles. But he knew she could interpret his body language
better than anyone.

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Animal

“If you don’t mind,” he muttered, passing her. Did she want to give him a heart

attack? Setting off that way without first having him clear the premises.

The steps felt greasy under the soles of his boots. The partly enclosed staircase

smelled of wet concrete and urine. Cigarette butts and beer bottles littered the corners
of wet steps into which had accumulated decades of grime. The bad part of town
represented in each layer of detritus. He cleared the last landing, waited until she’d
passed him so as not to leave her alone in the staircase then set out toward the comms
booth. A few commuters sat hunched on metal benches, waiting for the next skytrain as
sleet ticked on the clear thermoplastic roof overhead. They didn’t even turn to see
who’d arrived.

While Brioni fiddled with the thing around her neck, Haruto stood facing outward.

He heard her curse a few times before the chime of the link opening reassured him
she’d succeeded. She keyed in her personal number. Each key bleeped a different tone.
Not safe at all. Nothing was safe in this damn world.

“Cristoval,” she said through her teeth. “This is Brioni. I’m attaching some data to

this link. It’s very important. Bye.”

Unfortunately, Vonatos hadn’t been there to answer. At least the upload had

worked since Brioni joined him, slipping the pendant back into her tunic. The thing
didn’t even look like a data clip. She leaned back against one of the metal support
beams, let out a long breath that rose as steam in front of her. The purple of her tunic
and coat suited her very well despite the mess of black and purple ribbons rain and
wind had made of her hair. Lips like berries glistened when she moistened them. Her
nose was red from the cold. He reached out, brushed a wet strand of hair from her
cheek.

“It’s done,” she announced.
Haruto nodded because his voice had just failed him. She was so incredibly

beautiful. Within and without. A caring person, a great friend, a sharp mind.

“What now?” Her eyes sparkled like sapphires.
He wanted to embrace her and never let go, but he tamped down the emotional

élan to focus on the present situation. They needed a place to stay. Because of its
numerous members, the resistance wouldn’t be safe. It was better to hang low just the
two of them. Which wasn’t one hundred percent altruistic. He wanted her all to himself.

“Now we disappear for a while.”
She nodded. Just like that. Trusted him implicitly. He could deny it all he wanted

but he was falling for his “Goth Fairy”. Falling hard. That made him cranky.

“Where?”
“Off-planet. One of the orbital colonies.”
She grimaced, which crinkled her nose. “Ew.”
“Not the luxury you’re used to?” He’d forgotten how cute she was when she

crossed her arms and gave someone The Look.

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Nathalie Gray

“Hey.”
“You don’t have to come.” Haruto found it impossible to remain cranky around

her. How annoying. “But you’re welcome to.”

“You always do that, front-load everything you say with a cynical shot.”
He only smirked. His enhanced hearing picked up the first rumbles long before the

other passengers would stand to approach the quay. “The train is coming.”

With one last second of The Look, Brioni turned around and preceded him to the

ticket booth. She thumbed the control, was about to pay for both their tickets when he
reached over her elbow and quickly keyed in his own number instead. He didn’t have
much, but he could pay for that. Felt a bit more like a real man. This was what a real
man would do, wouldn’t he? Pay for his girlfriend’s purchases? How did it work, this
relationship thing? Was he supposed to pay all the time? Half the time? Would she get
pissed? Fuck.

“Off-planet is a good idea,” she murmured as she perused her ticket. “It’s so

crowded, they likely wouldn’t find us there. And it’s still close enough for direct link-
to-link communication.”

The rumbles grew loud enough for the other passengers to stand and join Brioni

and him by the concrete quay. Coming from their right, the noise soon drowned
everything else. He turned to watch the deafening arrival. In his enhanced vision, air
rippled ahead of the bullet-shaped skytrain. Electricity crackled in blue arcs along the
head pantograph on the white roof. By his side, Brioni drew near, stood arm-to-arm
with him. He wanted to twist his wrist and grab her hand but fought the impulse. He
didn’t even know why. Her hand would feel good in his. Would fit perfectly. Yet he
couldn’t move. Prey to the most stupid and morbidly self-defeating notion that he
couldn’t touch her even if he wanted to. He just didn’t know how to handle these
things. Had never been taught, had never had the opportunity to “watch and learn”
others do it. Inu hadn’t been a place of learning. Not in that sense anyway, because he’d
learned a whole lot more in every other way. By the time he’d turned fifteen, he’d
become a walking encyclopedia, hooked for hours and hours to decoders. Always
tuned in to the same subjects—death, war, weapons, pain. Haruto sighed as he stepped
a bit sideways so he wouldn’t feel her arm anymore.

Like an angry banshee, the train rumbled into the station with a cloud of toxic fume

and a screech of airbrakes. From the corner of his eye, he spotted a lone dark form
fleeting from the railing to behind the comms booth Brioni had used to send her link.
Then a very particular smell hit him. Volters had a distinctive odor caused by the resin-
like finish on the handle. His heart sank. Inu had always been single-minded. Like a
hungry dog with his bone.

“They’re here,” he snarled loud enough to be heard.
To her credit, the only outward sign that’d she heard him was the color of her face

dropping to chalk white. She didn’t look around, didn’t put her hand to her mouth or

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Animal

betray them to the professional hunters Inu had sent. They would’ve known right away.
They’d become adept at spotting fear.

The automated train’s arrival caused the quay to quiver underfoot. Haruto grabbed

her by the wrist as soon as a set of doors went past them. He pretended to aim for the
doors when in fact he had an entirely different goal in mind. He hoped Brioni would
trust him. Shockingly, he’d put his money that she would. Someone trusted him.

Years of suppressing his emotions and facial expressions finally played in his favor.

He changed without Brioni turning around or even showing that she’d noticed. He had
to watch it though in case he crushed her wrist. They reached the doors farther to the
head of the train, rushed on as they started to widen. A couple of people stood inside
and waited to disembark. He made sure to keep them to his right as shields between
Inu and Brioni. He’d sacrifice anything and anyone to save her. Himself included.
Although he hoped for purely selfish reasons that it wouldn’t come to that. Already he
was getting hard thinking about her. Smells from her wet hair reached him. He forced
his lips over the fangs, trying to part the seal. Breathing hard through the nose calmed
him a bit. The doors opened.

All hell broke loose.
But he’d been waiting for it. The first volter shot created a scuff along the train’s

dirty side. People began to scream and push out of the way.

“Shit!” Brioni ducked.
Haruto shoved someone out of the way, propelled Brioni into the train at the same

time as he whirled around and slammed his free hand on the control panel. The doors
closed with a whoosh. Volter shots hit the dirty thermoplastic, melted through. Masked
men in black tactical armor rushed out of half a dozen hiding spots. One carried a
grenade-launcher under his arm. He stopped, took aim.

“Down!”
Haruto barely had time to tackle Brioni when the side of the train disintegrated

inward. Bits of metal and thermoplastic flew horizontally. Chocking dust rose from the
grimy rubber floor cover. They hit the deck hard. He took the brunt of it, rolled her
underneath a seat then stood just as a pair of Inu men were trying to pry the doors
open. The train began to leave the station. Fast. Faster. Running now, the men managed
to keep up until Haruto stomped to the doors, kicked right through the window. It
detached from the moorings in a shower of cubic diamonds. His foot connected hard
against the closest man, who folded in half.

“Watch out!” Brioni yelled from behind him.
What the hell was she doing out of the hiding place he’d put her?
Part of the roof burst inward a split second before several men jumped in the messy

opening. Broken but live electrical wires took care of a few but at least three or four
remained upright as they landed in the aisle. They stepped over their fallen comrades
and fanned three abreast to face Haruto.

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Nathalie Gray

The station disappeared from the windows. The train gained speed. Lights from the

city flashed by as the train sped on its monorail to eventually reach the spaceports
uptown. Wind howled through the shredded doors and burst-in roof. One of the men
pulled a stunner from a holster strapped to his thigh. He took a step forward. Electricity
was the one thing Haruto couldn’t fight, even in lycan form. It’d been used—
extensively—by Inu to keep him more docile. Except for the night one of the guards, the
one who’d given him the ocarina, had “forgotten” to put him out after a mission.

To his shock, the sound of thrusters outside drowned the train’s racket. Someone

was following them in a shuttle. Were they mad?

“If you follow, she won’t be harmed,” the one with the stunner said. The face shield

distorted his voice.

A subtle nod from one of them put Haruto on alert. Instead of waiting for them to

make the first move, he did. He always did.

Haruto pounced, claws leading. Fangs ready. The stunner wielder fired. Muzzle

flash. The dart flew harmlessly a hair’s breadth from his cheek. On a mocking snarl, he
landed in their midst.

With a kick to the sternum that crushed the fragile rib cage, Haruto sent the first

man outward hard enough to dent the wall. The next lunged with an electric baton
aimed at Haruto’s thigh. He deflected. The prongs pierced the polyurethane seat.
Remained stuck. The Inu man only had time for one tug. It didn’t dislodge the weapon.
With a backhand that destroyed part of the man’s face shield—and the face under it—
Haruto sent him spinning. Caught him by the shoulder pad and knee, flipped him
sideways to use as a ram.

“Run!” he roared for Brioni’s benefit. “Change wagons!”
He felt movement behind him, knew she’d listened to his instructions.
Outside, the shuttle appeared out of nowhere. It must have turned its shroud off.

He had barely a split second to drop the man and hang on to one of the silvery poles
running the length of the wagon. The shuttle hit the train. Metal against metal made his
ears hiss painfully. The stunner wielder crashed back against the intact wall, dropped
the dangerous weapon. His colleagues fell over like pins in a bowling alley.

Brioni yelled. Went tumbling head over heels dangerously near the destroyed

doors. His heart stopped.

“Brioni!”
Before he could get back to her and help the clearly dazed woman to her feet, she’d

already clawed away from the edge and used seats to stay put. His brave little Goth
Fairy!

The shuttle’s rivet-covered side appeared in the window closest to him. The next

heartbeat, it hit again. Violent lurch. Lights blinking off then back on. A shower of
sparks arced from the train’s busted doors. Some of it melted holes into seats. Brioni
yelped as she scooted away, tripped and floundered over and around seats. He had to
get them out of here.

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Animal

Through the front-facing window, he spotted the next station. It was announced

over the comms too. So normal. Automated, the train would keep going unless and
until it was destroyed. Which the shuttle pilot seemed bent on doing.

Brioni climbed to her feet. “Hang on!” she yelled.
What the—
Haruto’s reflexes saved him. He barely had time to extend a hand and grab the

handrail by a window. He saw her reach out to the emergency brake. With a yell, she
grabbed the lever and literally hung on it. The sudden deceleration felt like a horizontal
fall. Broken bits, loose seats, men in black armor went flying toward the front of the
wagon, past Brioni who’d looped her arm into her own bit of handrail. The smell of
burnt rubber. A thundering noise like a dragon. His hair flying out in front of him. The
train stopped a few feet from one of the support poles.

Moans rose like smoke. Haruto cleared the wreckage in two jumps, grabbed Brioni

by the back of her coat, and before any of the dazed enemy could climb to their feet and
try to stop them, he forced open a set of doors and leaped out. Brioni’s shrill yell drilled
into his brain. But his aim had been true. Claws on his free hand leading, he raked their
way down the support pole. Ribbons of metal curled out as he used the pole to cut the
rate of speed. Heated metal burned his hand but he didn’t let go. He could survive the
hundred-foot fall easily. Brioni wouldn’t.

She yelled the whole way down.
Keeping her well away from the flying ribbons of razor-sharp metal, Haruto

dropped to the slick ground while still holding on to Brioni’s coat. After he’d landed, he
set her down by his side. But she crumbled to her knees. His lycan part suddenly gave
way to the man as he cradled her in his arms, her head on his shoulder. She shook
violently. Had he hurt her? Had he misjudged his strength and hurt her? The thought
revolted him.

“Brioni? Brioni?”
Tears filled her eyes and streaked down her cheeks. “G-g-give me…” She puffed air

through pursed lips. “Give m-me a…a second.”

They didn’t have that. He scooped her up in his arms, fearful eyes up at the train

overhead. The diminutive woman weighed little in his wound-up state. Adrenaline still
pumped his veins and sluiced his systems with all the enhancements Inu had put in
him over the years.

The shuttle circled like a vulture. Search beams came on, lit the place where they’d

landed. An old shopping mall turned habitats. A few people could be seen in the tall
windows, peeking through curtains. They wouldn’t help. He knew the kind.

“Put me down,” she protested. “I’ll…I’ll b-b-e okay.”
Haruto ignored her objections and carried her away from the searching lights. He

heard voices calling for positions and reinforcements. Inu men. They’d come down
from the train as well, using the emergency pegs in the support pole. Damn them. They
were well trained.

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Nathalie Gray

“Shh,” he breathed against her neck as he carried her around the old shopping mall.

Everything was dirty and slick with rain. He wondered how life was on the other side
of the river. The good side of Seoul where “genetic deviants” still weren’t allowed to go.
Not that it made a stitch of difference right now. He just would have loved treating her
to a safe place that didn’t have bugs or nasty neighbors. They definitely had to get off
Earth if they wanted to ever have a chance. Over the years, he’d come to understand
how Inu worked. They preferred to keep their cards close to them, not move too many
pieces at once, stay on-planet where they were well connected and stronger. Off-planet,
with the population in such crowded clusters, connections would’ve been too hard to
control. And too far to reach in a hurry.

Yes, off-planet would be perfect for them. Them both. Because he wanted to be with

her. Always. For the first time he wanted to be with someone for no other reason than
the pleasure of their company. No ulterior motives—well, except for the kind that
happened in bed. The smell of her wet hair against his cheek made him close his eyes.
He deposited her near a decrepit fountain long dormant. Cracked concrete made for a
poor seat but it was all they had. How he hated his life right now. He wanted to give
her so much more. Soon, he would. He made the vow. One day, he’d treat her the way
she deserved to be, and not forced to hide like a rat. Someday…

“There,” he murmured. Her coat was half off her shoulders so he pulled it back up,

tucked the collar down. “Take your time.”

“I’ll be fine,” she whispered, repeated it several times as if it’d become a mantra.

Despite the poor light, he spotted the moisture on her cheeks.

His heart ached. What should he do? Hesitantly, he crouched in front of her,

brushed hair from her face. He was surprised to note that his hand shook. Badly.

“We’ll be fine now. We’ll find a way to get off-planet.”
She nodded. With her sleeve she rubbed her nose and cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. Something in his chest ached. He had no idea what was

going on with him. “I…”

What was there to say? It wasn’t her fault she was caught in his web of violence.

Trapped in his world. With remnants of ancient societies that didn’t belong to this
century. He sighed long and hard. It wasn’t her fault he was such an expensive piece of
freakish technology.

The heat of her palms forced his eyes closed when she framed his face. “Why are

you apologizing?” Her voice was so gentle, so full of compassion and affection.

Dare he say more than affection? Don’t go there, man.
“You’re stuck in all this.”
“It’s my fault. If I hadn’t tried to find the artisan who made your ocarina, I wouldn’t

have triggered the trap.”

“It’s not your fault.”

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Animal

She shrugged. “I think it is. I’m the one who’s sorry. You’d managed to escape

them. Then I come along and mess everything up, brought them right on your back
again. God, I was so stupid.”

Haruto kissed her so she wouldn’t keep blaming herself. She encircled his neck and

held him close.

Something stirred deep in him. Something he didn’t know he had. Something he

thought had been bred out of him by genetic manipulations and years at the hands of
Inu.

Love.
He loved Brioni.

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Chapter Eight

When he stood and held his hand for her to take, Brioni had to fight the impulse to

throw her arms around his neck and never let go. They couldn’t afford it right now. But
later. She made the promise to herself to stop for a second, even amidst the chaos of
running from Haruto’s tormentors, to stop and tell him all that was in her. She wanted
more than this. More than a few stolen moments here and there. She wanted to be with
him.

The pair walked around the old shopping mall. Through apertures in the curtains,

she knew people watched them. Probably scared of the pair more than in the mood to
offer help. She couldn’t blame them. GAN and its secret-no-more enforcer, the Iron
Conclave, had done this to people, made them scared to offer help, to become involved.
Decades of iron rule, centuries of slow eroding of the fabric that held a society together.

“We have to get to the spaceports,” Haruto murmured. Outwardly, he seemed his

smooth, regular self. The man into whom nothing and no one could make a dent. A
shadow of smirk even played on his lips. But she felt the difference, the closeness that
had developed between them. Closeness that transcended sex. He’d let her in. Brioni
sensed it as clearly as if he’d voiced it himself—Haruto had decided to trust someone
and for this, a special gift, she burned with renewed fire and enthusiasm in life, which
in turn made the danger tailing them that much darker. They had so much to lose now.
So much. The odds were stacking up against them. Several high and several deep. She
didn’t like those numbers, the chances of their fragile bond breaking under forces
outside of their influence. She liked the odds of their making it off-planet even less.
Where would they find a ship, first of all? Other numbers of great portent that were
taking on negative variations had to do with what was growing in her heart. What if
they didn’t make it? What if they went down without her sharing how she felt for him?

He had to know.
Brioni cleared her throat. “Haruto, when this is over—”
“Shh.” He raised his hand. “Don’t.”
How could he have known what she intended to say? Was she so easy to read? Not

that it’d surprise her, she’d always been expressive. “Why not? You should know. You
have a right to know.”

“What if I don’t want to know?” he snapped. Just by the tight set of his shoulders,

she could tell he didn’t feel as smug as he looked.

Brioni slipped her hand in his, squeezed it. “I’ll let you have that one back.”
“So generous of you.” Despite the flippant tone, he squeezed her hand.
“Not at all. You’ll owe me later. And I keep wicked scores, believe me.”

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Animal

He didn’t look at her or change his demeanor from the watchful man she’d come to

know, yet she felt his attention was on her, the body language that always spoke louder
than the rest. His chin was tilted slightly toward her as she walked by his side. This
alone would’ve sufficed.

“I’ve been rude to you,” he went on. “Why aren’t you mad?” He seemed more

confused than frustrated.

“Everyone has bad days. I think today qualifies for both of us.”
“You’re too good—”
“For my own good?” she interrupted.
“And for mine.”
“You don’t believe that. You’re just going with what you’ve always gone. Keep

your bubble, I don’t care, I see right through.”

“What bubble?”
She slipped her hand from his so she could bow her arms and bring them together

in front then behind her, as if she followed an orbit around her waist. “Personal space,
you know, your bubble.”

He shook his head. “You’re stranger than I am.”
“Thanks.”
By the angle of his chin and the set of his shoulders, she knew he’d thrown a quick

glance her way, maybe trying to ascertain whether she was being sarcastic or not with
her “thanks”.

“Someday,” she began tentatively, “will you tell me about the time in-between?

What you did before you came to the resistance but after you left Inu?”

“No.”
“Ouch.”
Haruto was the one who slipped his hand in hers. She’d come to expect this, subtle

amends in the way he’d touch her, or how his mouth would thin to a line. Even if she
couldn’t see his eyes, she knew when he felt contrite about something he said. Such as
right now. Or maybe she was seeing things that weren’t there to make herself feel better
about his lack of basic courtesy? Who knew?

“There’s nothing to tell, Brioni,” he murmured after a while.
She shrugged. “You know how it goes, you show me yours, I’ll show you mine. But

that’s okay. I won’t tell you about my old boyfriends or about that time I had sex on the
roof of a shuttle.”

He didn’t say anything. But the smirk was back.
They rounded the corner of the street, crossed it and had reached the opposite side

when he let her hand go so he could check into the darkened alley. She waited by the
lamp post. Cool metal against her cheek. She was shivering despite the sweat.
Somewhere behind them, a dog barked. Haruto froze in place.

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Electricity barely reached this part of the city. Except for the spaceports looming

over the skyline, the sky was so dark it could’ve been drawn in ink. The street was
deserted. Yet they weren’t alone.

He turned to her, opened his mouth. The smirk abruptly turned into a grimace of

pain. He shuddered as if something had hit him in the back. Took a step but froze. He
began to shake violently.

“Haruto!”
To Brioni’s shock, blue arcs of electricity danced over his skin and clothes. From

shaking, he began to convulse. She heard his teeth chattering.

“Oh no! Haruto! Haruto!”
By the corner of her eye, she spotted several dark forms spilling out of the alley

across the street. Damn. She tried to reach out, snapped her hand away. It’d be no use
getting electrocuted as well.

“OhGodohGod.”
She took a step, clenched and unclenched her hands. Water droplets landed in arcs

with the sheer violence of his spasms. She couldn’t leave him this way. She had to do
something.

Do something, for Christ’s sake!
Panic hit her. Never mind the enemy catching them. What if he died? Gritting her

teeth, Brioni grabbed the lamp post, reached out then closed her hand around Haruto’s.

Hot, cold, hot, cold. She heard herself grunting with pain. At once, the current

traversed from him to her, shot straight to her heart. But because she’d become a mere
conductor, the jolt of electricity passed through her and into the metal post, to be
dissipated by the structure and its armored concrete base. Within a second or two, it
was over.

She couldn’t keep Haruto from slumping on the sidewalk. Neither could she keep

from joining him a second later. When he crumbled to his side, his head thudded
against the concrete and his hair whipped across his face. Brioni fell likewise on her
side, facing him. Through sheer willpower born of desperation, she “walked” her hand
to his and grasped it.

“I-I…” I’m sorry, she’d meant to say. Sorry they wouldn’t have a chance together.

Sorry she’d brought them down on him again. They’d found him because of her. The
guilt would crush her.

Fear and panic rose in waves when a small army of masked men dressed in black

descended on them. Her hands were clipped together behind her back while a sack was
slipped over her head. Before the cloth obscured her vision, she saw that Haruto was
suffering through the same treatment.

They’d come so close.
Shoved and pushed and carried. The sound of struggling then someone poking her

in the back hard enough to make her yelp. The struggling subsided. They were using

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Animal

her to force Haruto to cooperate. How she hated them. The feel of cool air, the sound of
engines whirring softly. At idle. Being thrown into a…shuttle? She was sure when she
felt the lift-off, the angle of the craft. Engines powering up. By her side, a warm form
pressing against her. A hand searching along her side then closing on hers. Haruto’s
unnatural heat seeping into her cold fingers. She squeezed back. The flight was short,
eventless. The landing, smooth.

Picked up then moved, forced to walk, carried when she couldn’t manage the

difficult terrain. Steps everywhere. Uneven floor. Stone? Wind howling. They stood
somewhere high. By the river, perhaps?

The Brilliant Fortress! That’s where the old man said Inu conducted its research.
“Home” for Haruto. Despair closed in. She cried silent tears of rage into the sack

over her head.

Soon they were indoors, walking again. No one spoke a word. Warmth replaced the

cold rain. She shivered. The sack was pulled from her head and her hands unclipped.
Brilliant light from a dozen lamps strewn around the place made her eyes water. Brioni
hung her head to use her hair as a shield. Around her, a large room like an old-world
library. Rows upon rows of books thirty feet high lined the circular room. Divans and
comfortable-looking chairs sat in clusters of two or three.

By her side, Haruto was suspended between a pair of large men, his head lolling on

his chest. His ocarina dangled outside his jacket. Dented and scratched. A bright flare of
fear and anger washed over her.

“What have you done to him?”
She turned to confront them but another door between two bookcases opened and

in came an older man sitting in a hoverchair. His jet black hair was slicked back over his
perfectly shaped skull. He nodded in her direction, aimed his silvery chair with
murmured verbal commands until it set a few feet in front of her. The small whirr
indicated the tiny thrusters had turned off. She hadn’t expected this. She’d envisioned
someone physically imposing, not an invalid man in a hoverchair. Although the steel in
his eyes made her swallow hard.

“Did you scan her?”
One of the men holding Haruto nodded.
“Scan her again.”
While the same man held on to her friend, his colleague pulled out a handheld

decoder and directed it at her. A single swipe top to bottom. He checked his screen,
pronounced her “clean”. She resisted the urge to touch her pendant. The artisan had
been right, the chromium casing didn’t let any signal out.

“Miss Metcalf,” the man in the hoverchair said. “My name is Miura Yoshizumi. You

now belong to Inu, whose roots go beyond the nineteenth century Meiji Ishin revolution
in the land formerly known as Japan. Do you understand?”

She cast him a venomous glance.

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“You will be fed, clothed and well treated,” he went on, still in a frustratingly calm

voice. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to see, folks, move on. “Your cooperation
will ensure the specimen’s well-being. You will remain here until we no longer have use
for you. Do you understand?”

She would’ve taken a step toward Haruto, but one of the men holding him up

shook his head once. She froze. They’d hurt him to force her to behave. She had no
doubt they would. Instead, she directed her anger at the old man in the chair. “The
‘specimen’ has a name. Haruto.”

“It has no name.”
It?
“Go to hell,” she snarled, rethinking her words as she went. She had to be careful

here. “You can’t do this! It’s wrong.” She sounded so puny and lame when she wanted
to rage and throw things and break whatever still worked in the old man. That hateful
monster.

He didn’t seem pleased or displeased, just mildly irritated. He cocked his head.

“You should have left when you could.”

“What do you mean?”
“When our vassal attacked your underground stronghold. You should have left

instead of trying to find the thing’s maker.”

“He’s not a thing! He’s more man than you’ll ever be!”
“Not the specimen, the ocarina,” the man clarified with a haughty curl to his lip.

“Your attachment to the specimen is fascinating. And very useful. Bring the instrument
to me.”

One of the guards pulled the ocarina up over Haruto’s head and brought it to the

old man, who took it in careless hands, turned it around. He blew in the dovetail end. A
trembling but beautiful note rose. She hated his guts even more.

“That’s not yours, it’s his.”
“So it can produce beauty,” he mumbled under his breath. Clearly, that Haruto was

capable of something other than killing surprised the old man. “Interesting.”

“It’s not yours,” she repeated, this time with as much emphasis as she dared on the

last word. She was too chicken to tear a good one off him but still…

“Keep it if you wish. I do not need it.” He tossed it at her.
Brioni caught it in both hands, would’ve made a big show of wiping the dovetail

had she been confident Haruto wouldn’t pay. But in case he would, she just slipped the
ocarina in her pocket. She’d wash it later. If there was a later.

“You know,” she ventured, waited for a sign he’d let her finish. His head cocked

ever so slightly was as good a sign as she’d get. “Statistically speaking, it’s very unlikely
you’ll be able to control both of us long enough to be worth a damn. He’ll escape again.
You know that, don’t you?”

The man shook his head. “We only need to control you.”

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Animal

She crossed her arms. Anger was winning over everything else. Her heart beat so

hard it hurt. She was afraid. Terrified in fact. A nervous pee burned her belly. She
sweated like a pig. Afraid for her, somewhat, but even more for Haruto. But she’d die
before she let it show. She had to be strong. For him and for herself. These people had
done unspeakable things to a man she liked very much. Bastards. She kept that in mind,
to push the terror away.

“You look damn sure keeping me here will change a thing. It won’t. Plus, what you

did to Haruto is despicable and twisted and someday he’ll kick your ass.”

A smirk rose to the man’s lips and this was when she realized precisely who he

was. Not only one of those who’d treated Haruto so poorly, but the one about whom
the old artisan had spoken. The one who’d provided the DNA. In a sense, the invalid
man in the hoverchair was Haruto’s father. A gag reflex threatened. She swallowed
hard several times. Now that she’d come to the realization, Haruto very much
resembled the man.

She uncrossed her arms and put her fists on her hips. One of the guards shifted on

his feet. “You know, he looks like you. Only better.”

A twitch played on the older man’s sculpted jaw.
Bingo.
“Is that why you’re playing around with genetics, trying to find a way out of this?”

She motioned for his chair with her chin. “For all of your power,” she gestured at the
room around them, “you’re still a sick, scared little man stuck in a chair. You’re still
someone who’d torture a child for a chance to stand on your feet.”

“Your attempt at finding a flaw is commendable. Exactly the sort of things we

taught to the specimen. Perhaps you will be a positive influence after all. In addition to
a safety deposit.”

“Numbers don’t lie. There are more chances of Haruto kicking your ass than there

are of my cooperating with your sick plan.”

“A fellow mathematician?” A shadow of a smile rounded his hollow cheek. “How

unexpected. I will look forward to exchanging with you. Life is a rich tapestry of
numbers, do you not agree?”

“We have nothing in common. No common denominator.”
“We have it in common. Even if our goals vary, it is still a common element. We

both value its safety. But you value its comfort, and I do not.”

Brioni swallowed the lump rising up her throat.
A mumbled curse preceded Haruto’s feet shuffling on the floor. He was coming

back to his senses.

“It is time,” the man said. The pair of guards holding Haruto turned away.
“Wait!” Brioni felt torn between rushing after them and staying to confront the old

man. Maybe if she overpowered him? Maybe his guards would back off? Then what?

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But with Haruto barely conscious, she wouldn’t stand a chance. The numbers didn’t
add up to a sum she liked. “Where are you taking him?”

“Had I foreseen a person’s level of devotion for the specimen, I would have

changed a few things.” He seemed genuinely interested in her bond to Haruto. Sick
bastard. “People have always looked for the redeemable, even in things not even
human and thus incapable of such sentiment. It cannot feel remorse, Miss Metcalf. Nor
affection, nor resentment. It looks human and shares traits with us, but in the end, it
will remain a construct. Bio and mecha. The ultimate fighting, thinking machine. But
still a thing, even if flesh covers its surface.”

She watched, impotent, on the verge of tears, as they took Haruto away. The door

closed softly. With finality. Something in her broke.

“You’re…” Her throat squeezed. Tears burned her eyes.
The man reached into the side of his hoverchair and produced a large portable

decoder. She noticed that his hand shook. He looked so frail despite the steely gaze.
Could she use that? They wouldn’t do anything to damage Haruto. They needed him
alive. No, if there was hurt to be had, she’d be the one to get it. They hoped to control
him through her. Yet the man had told her he wasn’t concerned about Haruto’s
comfort. Clearly, he wouldn’t shy away from causing her friend pain. How could she
gamble with Haruto’s safety? She felt like a pendulum. Tick, tock. Swing to one side,
swing to the other. Caught between a hammer and a nail. Both sides would hurt. Both
could kill her. She had to stay alive. Haruto needed her.

Clearly, this Yoshizumi man was mad. But he had all the cards.
She took the proffered decoder. The wide screen, the size of an old paper magazine,

glowed faintly. The urge to whack him across the face with it almost won. Her hands
shook from trying not to attack him. “What’s that?”

“You will be able to follow the specimen’s movements with this. Your actions will

have direct and immediate consequences on it. It is already undergoing certain
modifications so that we do not lose it again—”

“What modifications?” She sounded more scared than angry. An appropriate

reflection. God, what were they doing to him now? She couldn’t possibly hate them
more than she did.

Shaking, she thumbed the screen. At once, it filled with a multi-split relay of what

looked like vital signs in a corner while the other half of the screen was devoted to a
vidcaptor recording a scene that froze her blood. A crowded medical room of some sort,
and Haruto being stretched out on a gurney, his clothes cut from him while the two
guards buckled crisscrossed straps over his legs. Within seconds, the efficient madness
had prepared him. There he lay, tubes coming out of—or went into—his arms and
behind the crooks of his knees. The goggles were gone but his eyes were closed. He
looked asleep. Her heart sank.

“How can you do this to your own son?”

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“The specimen is not my child. It merely shares my DNA. As do the others.”

Yoshizumi activated the chair again. It lifted a few inches off the floor.

Fear crawled up her spine. “The…others?”
“It is one of many, some as old as it is, others more recent. Although it is the best. A

crowning achievement. And during its absence, we found ways to accelerate the
lengthy maturing process. This is a complex, ongoing program, Miss Metcalf.”

“Why?” she breathed to the back of him. The chair hovered in place when he

reached the door. “Why do you do this? To find a cure for your disease? What?”

“Who do you think holds the leash to the Iron Conclave? The resistance thinks they

have decapitated the enemy. But like the hydra, it has many heads, most of them secret.
Hector Killen was only one such head. I am but another. Inu is vast and ancient.” He
turned his head back. “We have worked years to perfect this particular specimen, and
have searched ever since it left. We are many and we are patient. Do not force our
hand.”

Brioni stalked up to the hated man. “Leave him alone, you sick bastard!”
She didn’t know what she meant to do. Hurt him at the very least. But as soon as

she touched the chair’s metallic surface, with the full intention of at least sending it
against the wall, a jolt of pain hit her in the chest. Her arm felt as if it’d stretched. She
collapsed to her knees, panting.

“Do you know what negative reinforcement is, Miss Metcalf?” the man asked. That

smirk again. God, he reminded her so much of Haruto that surely he’d seen the
similarities. “The removal of negative, or painful in our case, stimuli is a form of
conditioning. Your good behavior will remove its negative stimuli.”

He left her there, kneeling on the marble floor as she massaged her throbbing arm.

Tears welled in her eyes. She angrily knuckled them away.

Think, Metcalf. Put that 159 IQ to good use.
She had to find a way to get Haruto out of here. First though, she had to get in

contact with him. She threw a glance down at the screen, compared its time with her
watch. The cat’s black paws indicated eleven-thirty-four. Same as the decoder, give or
take a minute. So this was happening right now.

To her shock, she saw Yoshizumi appear in the medical room with Haruto. That

was fast. Haruto must have been pretty close. Her gaze switching from the screen to
where she was going, Brioni rushed for the door through which the older man had just
disappeared, put her hand on the handle. Locked.

“Damn.”
In the screen, Yoshizumi slipped surgical gloves on, injected something in one of

the tubes going into Haruto’s arms. Almost right away, he began to stir then to struggle
until he was violently arching from the gurney and straining against his bonds.

“Please no…”

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Tears splattered on the screen. She whimpered in impotent rage as she watched the

“medical” team do the unspeakable to Haruto. The modifications Yoshizumi had talked
about obviously involved something about Haruto’s blood since she realized it was
being pumped out, run through a machine then pumped back into him. But they must
have added something because it seemed incredibly painful to him. His mouth was
opened wide. She didn’t have any sound—a small blessing—but Brioni knew he was
screaming.

A small item like a golden pen in hand, Yoshizumi looked up directly into the

vidcaptor. Directly at her. Brioni’s heart skipped a beat. Sweat slicked her hands. He put
the implement directly over Haruto’s heart.

“No,” she whispered. “No, no, no…”
As soon as it touched the skin, Haruto arched violently against the crisscross of

straps. Some broke, which sent the medical team in a frenzy of movement. Other straps
were added. Guards joined the white coats. Black metallic fangs and claws sprouted
from Haruto’s mouth and fingers. He’d changed and still couldn’t fight them off. They
must have given him something to counteract the incalculable lycan strength. That
golden pen had triggered the change with alarming speed and efficiency.

Eyes closed, Brioni began to weep as she pressed her forehead against the edge of

the screen. Yoshizumi had warned her her actions would have direct and immediate
repercussions on Haruto. She believed him now. To her undying chagrin, she believed
everything he’d said.

But if there was justice in this mad world…

* * * * *

They stood in front of him as he knelt on the floor of a large, stone hall. He’d never been in

this part of the fortress. White coats and curious eyes. Behind them, the ever-present guards
hiding their expressions behind face shields. Then he came in. He’d added another cane to aid his

ungainly posture but it barely kept him upright. He seemed in pain as he sat on the lone chair in
the room. A straight-backed, wooden affair.

No one spoke. No one ever did. But they waited. He could feel the anticipation in the air like

a thick perfume. And his own stench of fear.

The hated man nodded.
Then pain began. In his limbs, his jaw, his cranium. Things snapped, crunched, changed. He

was…different. Black claws made of metal pushed out his quicks. He howled in agony. Too

much. What was happening to him? What were they doing? Where had these things come from?

A door opened. If the smell of his fear was offensive, the newcomer’s was even worse. Guards

pushed this new person—a bearded, unkempt man—into the room until he stood a few paces
away.

His own personal Satan pulled a small implement from his jacket pocket. A golden pen? A

small click inside his cranium made him blink. Another somewhere in his chest triggered a gag
reflex like a punch to the solar plexus.

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Everything turned red.
He fell with a vengeance on the newcomer. The claws and fangs that had shredded out of

him made ribbons of the man. So soft. So weak. Like dough. It didn’t take long. Death added

another layer of smell to his world.

One of the guards shot him with a stunner. Darts pierced his skin and delivered vicious jolts

of electricity. He collapsed on his side, face-to-face with his victim. Dead eyes like glass balls. He
closed his so he wouldn’t see his handiwork. Why had they made him do this? Why did they
make him do all these bad things?

He’d turned eleven the next day.

Haruto passed a hand on his shaven head. He felt denuded, vulnerable without his

hair. He’d never fully realized how much of a shield it’d been. Until it was gone. To
gain better access to his cranium and whatever they happened to have ready for
implementation, they’d kept him constantly shaven. It’d been the first thing he’d done
after he escaped, grow his hair long. Before the goggles, he’d been able to hide his eyes
behind his bangs. And after the goggles, he’d still kept it a bit on the long side. Old
habits. At least Inu had let him keep the goggles. They’d retrofitted them to include a
tiny vidcaptor. He didn’t know who was at the end of the relay but he could guess. Inu
wanted Brioni to see. Another way to control him. They didn’t need a leash to keep him
coming back to them. They had Brioni. They knew it was enough. And Inu was right—
he’d never try to escape again. Not if that left his one friend behind to face the
consequences of his actions. This time, they owned him body, mind and now soul.

There wouldn’t be anyone to help either. The resistance would use the intel Brioni

had shared, wouldn’t give a second thought about where she was or what had
happened to her. At least she’d given them a few good steps ahead. Inu wouldn’t be
able to fight back every attack. As far as Haruto was concerned, Vonatos was smart—if
a bit too soft for his tastes—and well connected with the addition of Solomon and his
team. Remnants of a time under N’Namdi’s chancellorship when GAN wasn’t so bad.
The resistance would put the intel Brioni had shared to good use. At least there was
that.

Unfortunately, he was about to put a serious kink in the resistance’s wire because

Inu had tasked him with a certain politician’s assassination. A prominent and lycan-
friendly member of the official opposition party, Minister Deng Muhua had adopted all
her children from “genetic deviant” households no longer able to care for them. The
public outcry would be massive. The pro-authoritarian regime would use this against
change. It’d be a mess.

Inu had specifically tasked him to make an example of her, show exactly who—

what—had killed her. He’d do it. But only because disobeying would jeopardize
Brioni’s safety. He’d never do anything to put her in danger. She was doomed because
of him. Because she’d cared enough to go after him. Damn them.

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Despair threatened to swallow him into a dark and cold pit. He wiped rain from his

goggles as he presently waited for Minister Deng Muhua to come out on her balcony for
her nightly cigarette. Crouched below the opposite building’s parapet, Haruto had been
waiting for three hours. Unmoving. A gargoyle of flesh yet barely alive. Shuttles flew
over his head. Deep-space ships transitioned to FTL in a bright blue flash that arced
over the horizon. So many of them. Like upside-down shooting stars. And he had but
one wish to make—Brioni’s safety. If something happened to her…

Haruto let cold rain seep into the back of his collar. He didn’t care. He never got

sick anyway. The technology and lycan blood would clean his system right up.
Sometimes he wished—

A light came on across the divide. The part of him Inu had constructed analyzed

each detail. Like old times. He missed very little. Lounge window. Third to the right.
Fifty feet away. Maybe fifty-one. One of her bodyguards scanned the street below
before pulling the curtains closed.

Avoiding looking down at the bodyguard—another death on his hands—who’d

been standing in Haruto’s spot before he took position, he worked his stiff legs to get
some circulation back in his feet. The fingerless gloves creaked when he made fists,
shook out his hands.

The balcony doors opened, Minister Deng Muhua stepped out. She clutched a ratty

bathrobe as she brought a lighter and cigarette holder from her pocket. He could smell
the shampoo on her hair from where he stood. Fifty-nine years, only a few
modifications. She wouldn’t take long or much effort. He hated his analysis. Hated how
he could do it with such ease. What would Brioni think about it? Was she watching him
right now? Were they forcing her to watch?

Haruto closed his eyes. Willed the lycan to take over. He changed silently. Pain

racked his body for a few seconds. His gums most of all when the metallic fangs pushed
out of the throbbing skin. Changed into the killer they’d made him.

Silent amongst the shadows, he stepped on the parapet, waited until a shuttle flew

by. Muscles fired with adrenaline and capabilities never meant for a human body, he
crouched, readied. He leaped.

Across the divide. Rain and wind tried to slow him down. But nothing could deny

the lycan.

The whirr of the shuttle’s engines muffled his landing. Concrete slick with rain. The

balcony shuddered under the hit. She must have felt the tiny tremor. Turned just
quickly enough to see him coming but not enough to do anything but raise her forearm
across her face. Haruto looked away—the vidcaptor in the goggles wouldn’t record the
next few seconds—as he wrapped an arm around her neck. A brusque tug. The snap of
fragile bones. He guided her slow fall to the ground, gently pulled the frayed robe
closed over her denuded knees. She wouldn’t want to be seen this way. It didn’t matter.
Why did he bother? He’d never bothered before. Still, he kept his head angled away
from what he’d done as he slipped into the house. He couldn’t let the little betrayer

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worked into his goggles from displaying his sordid handiwork to the one person whom
he wanted to protect. From himself most of all.

And more deaths were to come that night. Many more.
Of them all, only one bodyguard managed to place a good hit. Haruto’s lower back

radiated with hot and throbbing pain. But then that guard died like the rest. The stench
of blood pervaded the house when Haruto emerged from the front door. Knowing none
of the vidcaptors set around the building would be fast enough to catch more than a
glimpse of him, he charged across the street, across the city, along the river until he
came to the Hwaseong, the Brilliant Fortress. He heard it clearly when the alarm was
raised a few minutes later in the diplomatic sector across the river, in the good side of
Seoul. Someone must have discovered his victims.

He leaped and climbed one of the vast fortress’s towers, using roof ledges and

windowsills until he came to a large terrace of potted plants on one side and a wall
entirely made of windows from floor to ceiling on the other. The place Inu had given
her. The golden cage into which they’d imprisoned his precious songbird. He’d been
granted rights of visit. They didn’t care what Brioni and he did together because they
knew he was in no position to refuse them a thing. They knew he’d do anything for her.

How he hated him, the one at the helm of this demented ship. He didn’t even know

his name but his face had accompanied every dream of revenge he’d had as long as he
could remember. Haruto hoped the man’s debilitating illness hurt long and hard.

He approached one of the windows, peered inside the room. In a simple pale blue

shirt, she sat on the couch with the decoder on her lap. Watching him watch her. She’d
seen everything. Everything he couldn’t hide anyway.

Brioni turned to the window. His heart skipped a beat. The lycan was no longer

needed or welcome. The change gradually dulled his senses—as much as they could be
given Inu’s enhancements. He pressed his hand on the wet glass pane. She must think
him a monster, killing people this way. An older woman and half a dozen guards
whose only fault was to have been on Inu’s list.

She stood, approached the window, pressed her hand on her side of the glass, level

with his own. Instead of the stern disapproval or horror he expected, she shocked
him—elated, strengthened and amazed him—with a quiet smile and a nod of welcome.
He didn’t let himself believe her reaction until she left him there so she could open the
terrace glass doors and poke her head outside.

“Come,” she murmured. The tick-tick-tick of rain against glass. Wind tossing her

hair back. “It’s cold outside.”

Haruto felt as if he were in a dream as he followed her into the warm and candlelit

room. He trailed water in, froze just inside the doorway. She slid the glass door closed
behind him, took his hand.

“Come. I have a hot bath waiting for you. It’ll feel better afterward. Everything will

be better.”

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Nathalie Gray

In a daze, he could only stare at his boots mucking up the slate floor as he followed

her across the living room and into a darkened bathroom lit only by a candle on a stone
ledge. Ceramic tiles in muted grays barely reflected the light. He felt this way with
Brioni. A dull, porous surface against which even her bright light couldn’t reflect.
Everything felt strange and dreamlike. Was he dreaming? Was she here? He was losing
his mind.

“Are you…?” He reached out, closed his hand on her shoulder to turn her around.

His thumb left a reddish print on the pale blue cotton. Sullied her. He snatched his hand
back. “Why?”

She glanced at the stain then back up at him. “This is nothing we can’t deal with.

You and me. Okay? We’ll deal with this.” She unzipped his jacket, slipped it back from
his shoulders, took it off altogether. He stood frozen with confusion and stupefaction as
she undressed him, pulled his boots off and piled everything in a corner. As though
she’d taken the violence off him and dumped it. In a corner, where it belonged. He
wanted to wrap his arms around her and hold her close but would never touch her with
these hands. Not after what he’d done tonight. Instead, he stepped into the ceramic
bathtub. The water was nice and hot and a boon to his aching limbs. He sat, leaned
back.

“Can you take them off?”
She pointed at the goggles. To his shame, he shook his head.
“That’s fine. We’ll work around them.” With a warm smile and calm hands, she

passed him what he’d need for his bath. Straightening, she put a thick towel on the edge
of the bathtub, turned to leave.

“Brioni…” he whispered. He didn’t trust his voice.
She turned, graced him with another smile. “You’re welcome.”
She left.
As far as he could remember, he’d never cried. He couldn’t recall a single time

when he’d shed tears. Out of pain or grief. Not one. Until she disappeared around the
doorway. A single tear pearled out of his eye. He slipped his goggles off his head and
dropped them into the water where the specks of blood came loose from the leather and
metal construct. He touched the tear, gingerly, unsure. Perhaps it was sweat. Or rain.

Liar.
Haruto pressed both palms against his eyes. His abdominal muscles burned from

trying to keep the sobs silent. Her gift was too great to process. She’d offered him a
warm and quiet place, sanctuary, solace from the world outside. From his violent life.
From himself. And someday, this place would kill it. Would kill what Brioni and he
had.

They couldn’t both escape. She wouldn’t be able to manage the jumps and runs and

violence required to reach freedom. Plus, they only kept her to control him. They didn’t
want her, they wanted him.

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They’d get neither.
He’d set her free then destroy the one thing for which Inu would never stop

looking.

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Chapter Nine

Brioni turned the decoder off and placed it facedown on the couch by her side. She

didn’t want to see him through that thing. She’d watched, horrified, worried and sick in
her gut as Haruto was briefed about Minister Deng Muhua. She’d sat in the rain with
him as he waited on the rooftop overlooking his victim’s apartment. And she’d cried for
those poor people and for him as he killed them. For her. To keep her safe. She knew for
a fact he never would’ve cooperated otherwise. She didn’t know him that well, but she
knew this—Haruto was stubborn if nothing else. And now she sat while he had a bath
to wash the blood off his hands if not his conscience. But this was a burden she
intended to share. He wouldn’t carry all of it alone. No way. Inu could go screw
themselves.

The sound of his sobs broke her heart. But she didn’t move. He wouldn’t want her

to see him this way. Vulnerable. So she waited with a trembling chin and shaking
hands, doing all she could not to be heard. Until he’d grown quiet, until the pain had
once again become manageable. When she was sure Haruto was ready, she stood and
quietly poured two glasses of water, which she brought to the bathroom.

“I’m coming in,” she warned a few feet from the doorway, even if she knew he

could probably hear her heartbeat. Until she’d seen what they’d done to him, she’d
never realized the amount—and depth of invasiveness—of modifications and
enhancements he’d received. He was practically quarter machine. “Hope you’re still
naked,” she added to lighten the mood.

He didn’t smile when she entered the candlelit bathroom but didn’t look as

defeated and bone-weary as he had coming back from his… The thing they’d forced
him to do. She hated them. But he’d slipped his goggles back on. Maybe some day he’d
trust her with this. She’d wait. For him, she’d wait for as long as needed.

“There.” She gave him one of the glasses. The black cat’s paws indicated three a.m.

She wasn’t even sleepy. Going on adrenaline alone.

He took the glass, drained it in one long draw then delicately put it on the bath

ledge. Brioni sat cross-legged on the toilet cover. Not the sexiest position for sure.

“Cheers,” she said, raising her glass. With a teasing wink at his frown, she took a

sip. “Mmm.”

“Why are you doing this?”
“Keeping things normal, you mean?” When he said nothing, she went on. “People

have to act like people, even when they’re surrounded by beasts.”

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He bristled. Water rippled outward when his entire body tensed. Skin the color of

wet sand glistened with water droplets. Her mouth was suddenly dry so she took
another sip.

“You know I meant them,” she replied after another swallow of water didn’t cool

the fire growing in her belly. His belly contracted and tightened with his slow
breathing. She could look at nothing else. “Come to think of it, they’re not beasts. Way
too much of an insult for the animal kingdom. No, Inu, they’re a special breed. And life
will catch up to them eventually.”

“You sound sure.” From dormant, his cock gradually rose under the surface. He

shifted in the bathtub, raised his outward thigh. Why was he hiding his erection?

“That’s because I’m a good bullshiter.”
A tiny smirk curled his lip. She wanted to jig for joy. That was her thing. Make

others laugh, lighten the mood so everyone—herself included—could go on with life.
There was enough negative energy floating around. It was hard. Fighting against the
current, especially in a place like this fortress and what went on inside. Maybe this was
why she redoubled her efforts to keep things normal, keep them light despite what they
forced him to do, keep Haruto and her from going mad. It’d be easy here. She wouldn’t
give those Inu people the satisfaction.

“Seriously, you can’t escape from the numbers you set into motion. You know what

they say about every action.” She made a wave gesture of her free hand. “There’ll be an
equal and opposite reaction. Someday, Inu will get its wave, its comeuppance.”

Haruto took his empty glass and set it on the floor by the tub. “Come here,” he said,

grimaced before adding an awkward “please”.

“Much better.”
She deposited her own glass on the floor, moved the candle out of the way and

knelt by the bathtub. Cool tiles pebbled her thighs with goose bumps.

“Did they do anything to you?” he asked. “Did they hurt you?”
“No. I’m good.”
Whoever had shaved his head had done a crap job. If they insisted on having him

walk around bald, then dammit, she’d do it. Obviously, they didn’t care about the
humiliation they were causing or how their treatment could strip him of his humanity.
Then again, Yoshizumi didn’t think Haruto was a person, only a collection of bits.

She leaned her arm on the bath ledge so she could rest her chin. She was so close to

him, she could feel his breath on her cheek. Need burned in her belly and thighs. “Do
you feel better? A bit?”

He nodded. Seemed about to say something before pressing his lips together.
“You’re welcome,” she replied to his unspoken thanks.
“Yeah…”

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Nathalie Gray

Water dripped when he reached out and lifted a strand of her hair, one of the

purple ones, and twirled it around his index finger. Water darkened the electric purple
shade to deep plum.

“The first few weeks after I escaped,” he murmured, moistened his lips. She tried

not to stare at them too much because she knew how precious each of his few words
were. “I didn’t adapt well. None of my skills were useful.”

She could just imagine. “How old were you?”
“Sixteen. But I was much younger in some ways. Especially around women. I

hadn’t been ‘trained’ for that.”

Brioni blushed even if it was all over and had happened a long while ago.
“I fell for the oldest trick in the world.” A sardonic smile pulled his lips to one side.

“I wasn’t very good either.”

“Well, you sure changed that.” Her theatrical wink-wink, nudge-nudge made him

sigh.

“I didn’t even know I was supposed to pay.”
Brioni lost her smile. Prostitutes all had protectors, some of them thugs, others

worse still. “Her protection must not have been very happy.”

“They jumped me before I got to that part. Now this, I was trained for.”
“From a kid, they must not have seen it coming.”
“That night, they learned there were worse things than them. And that night, I

learned I could make a living using the tools I already had.”

Haruto, a pimp? Hmm.
“And they’re lying—crime does pay. In credits anyway.”
“Why did you stay in Seoul when Inu was right there?”
“Because it was right there.” A smirk replaced the smile. “You said you’d show me

yours if I showed you mine.”

Brioni cleared her throat. “You remember that?”
“I can’t forget. Anything. It’s all up here.” He pointed to his temple.
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
She smiled. “Even the little bits?”
“Especially the little bits.”
Haruto dropped the strand of wet hair and picked another, closer to her face so

every time he twisted his wrist to wind his digit around her hair, his knuckles would
caress her face. Heat from his hand made her close her eyes. She could’ve stayed this
way forever. Never mind flowers and chocolates—this was romantic. She shut the rest
out. The ugly surroundings, the uglier witnesses to their exchange—she had no doubt
Inu watched and recorded every move that went on in this apartment or anywhere else

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in the massive complex. She shut it all out to preserve and protect what Haruto and she
had created together. Their fragile bubble against madness.

“I’m not from the United Koreas originally,” she began. “I was born in North

America, the East Coast. We moved around a lot. My mom got a contract to work here
in Seoul about ten years ago.”

“What does she do?”
“She works for GAN, at a bank. My other mom used to teach but she’s retired now.

Says she wants to stop the advanced signs of aging.” Thinking about her parents made
her smile. If any good came out of the present situation, she’d introduce Haruto to
them. They’d love him. Quirky personalities—even as prickly as his—were a welcome
challenge at home.

He dropped her hair, closed his hot hand on her wrist and brought it to his lips to

kiss. “Didn’t you lose all your friends when you moved?”

Brioni shivered with pleasure. His belly constricted and corded with lean muscles.

Beneath the water, his cock pointed proudly. With her free hand, she gathered water
and let it drip down his knees, which surfaced from the water in two ocher-colored
islands that shimmered like satin. He had such glorious skin. Perfect. Muscles twitched
on his thighs. He might act cool and composed, but she could sense the hunter
crouching low, ready to pounce. The duality of his character thrilled her.

“I make friends easily. Plus, I’m lucky to have cool moms who made us a home

everywhere we went. But if I had anything below a B+ at school, oh boy, watch out.
Uncool happenings in the Metcalf house, let me tell you.”

“What about your boyfriends?”
“Are you jealous?”
“No.”
She grimaced dramatically. “Not even a little bit?”
“Should I be?” He nipped the inside of her wrist.
Brioni gasped when he did it again. His teeth flashed in the warm glow of the

candle by the foot of the bathtub.

“I want you,” he murmured. The smirk was gone. Seriousness tightened his

luscious mouth. “I want you hard enough that it hurts. Right here.” He placed her palm
over his chest. Regular and strong, his heartbeat thudded against her hand. “I don’t
know…” He sighed through the nose. “I don’t know what’s going on anymore.
Everything’s a mess.”

Brioni raised herself on her knees so she could lean over the ledge. His goggles

reflected her when she pressed her lips to his.

To her surprise, he put his palm over her shoulder and gently pushed back. “Not

here.”

Brioni nodded. “Because they’re probably watching? I understand.”

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A pronounced curl pulled his mouth sideways. Oh the wicked, wicked man. “I

don’t care about that. I want it to be in a bed this time. This thing.” He pointed to her
chest, to his then back again. “It deserves a proper bed.”

This thing.
Nodding, Brioni stood but took the towel before he could retrieve it. “I’ll fight for it

if I have to. You don’t want to take that away from me, do you?” She gave him her best
Evil Eye.

“Opportunist.”
“You bet.”
He stood patiently as she rubbed the towel all over him, more gently around the

many bruises marring his skin to finish with his face, which she dried by patting in
tender little circles. She even finished with a quick wipe of his goggles, to Haruto’s
obvious incredulity. Not that she’d use the situation to her advantage, but she still filled
her hands with as much of his taut and lean body as she could. When he was dry to her
satisfaction, she draped the towel on his shoulders and gave him the corners so he
could keep it there.

“You enjoy that.”
“What? Fussing?” Brioni grinned. “You haven’t seen anything. God forbid you ever

catch a cold. You’d get the full treatment, right down to a mustard compress and
almost-homemade chicken noodle soup.”

“I can’t get sick.” A sigh deflated his glorious chest.
“If you cough a couple times, it should be enough to trip my Nurse Switch.”
“What are you wearing under that shirt?”
His abrupt change of subject reminded her Haruto had very basic manners and

even less finesse. The question still triggered wet heat between her legs. Maybe his
unpredictability was as much a turn-on to her as it was a turn-off to others.

“Nothing.”
Haruto’s nostrils dilated when he took a delicate sniff. “I know.”
“Why did you ask then?”
The smirk reached epic proportions. “I wanted you to say it. Turns me on.”
A puff of heat wafted out of her parted collar. “That’s a good thing for a woman to

hear.”

“Men lie most of the time, especially when they’re talking to a woman.”
“Are you lying now?”
“I can lie and do it well. But not to you.” He lost the smirk. “I want this to go

slowly. I want us to take our time.”

A note of despair tightened his voice. After what he’d been forced to do, no wonder

he wanted to make a good thing last a bit. She did as well. “I agree. Nice and slow.”

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Something fluttered in his chest. Trepidation, hope, elation. She meant all these

things to him. And more. She meant everything.

The heated tile floor felt good under the soles of his feet. He ached in several places

as his systems were restoring him to optimum level. Sometimes, he enjoyed the pain if
only to make himself feel more like a man, instead of… Whatever he was.

She retrieved the candle and he followed her out of the bathroom, across the living

room. She waved her hand once in front of the sensors on the lights panel. Darkness
descended on the airy room. To the right, a narrow corridor ended in a bedroom that
resembled more a monk’s concrete cell than anything else. But the bed was wide
enough for them. Plus, he’d gladly lie on a cold, stone floor if it meant sharing it with
her.

Carefully, she placed the tiny candle on the ledge just inside the doorway then

turned to him as she backed deeper into the darkened room. The wavering light graced
her body, created burgundy highlights in what he knew to be the purple streaks in her
hair. Shadow pooled high between her thighs visible below the shirt. Because of the
unruly bangs dropping over her pointy face, he couldn’t see her eyes clearly. But he
knew she was watching him. Only him. It turned him on like nothing else. His little
Goth Fairy.

She undid the first button.
“Don’t.”
Brioni froze, let her hands drop by her side. “You want to do it?”
Haruto nodded because he couldn’t talk. The sight of her stole his breath away.
By his ocarina, two small piles of clothes rested on a low table in a corner. Inu’s way

of ensuring their “specimen” didn’t go naked. They’d even provided them with
toiletries and a well-stocked library of digital vids for Brioni. So she wouldn’t get bored
waiting while he killed people. How long would it take, he wondered, for this place to
kill what they had? A week? A month? This place he thought he’d never see again. At
least they could be together. Like a strange, old-fashioned hotel made of brick and stone
and madness. With that odious man just there outside the wall. Watching. Cataloging.
Patient. Haruto hated him.

He pushed the thoughts away and joined her for a long and tender kiss. Just basked

in her glow as he ran his lips on hers, her cheeks and fluttering eyelids. Her skin
pebbled under his palms. The towel dropped from his shoulders and created a teasing
scree of shivers as it rubbed down his back, his butt and calves to fall on the floor. The
fabric had felt like hands. They spent a long while just kissing and rediscovering each
other with their mouths, their fingertips, their breaths and hungry gazes. He learned all
over again how to touch her, followed her voice as it modulated to a different touch or a
subtle pressure. She sounded like a dove, softly crooning while he kissed her throat and
licked it in long, upward passes. His cock was ready to explode. But he denied the
burning urge. This had to last.

“Touch your breasts,” he whispered.

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Brioni cupped them as he knew she would. How? He had no idea. He just knew.

He’d always known her, since the beginning of time and human conscience had known
this woman, had loved her and would do anything for her. Run or hide, take on a
thousand enemies or jump from a bridge. For her, he’d do anything. Kill. Die.

Without warning, she abandoned her breasts and fell to her knees. He choked on a

gasp when she fisted him, wolfed him down. Her throat was hot and smooth. Like her
sex. Two mouths.

Haruto couldn’t help himself and grabbed two fistfuls of hair. Anchors. With her

hands on his ass, she showed him just how deep she could take him. Her forehead
pressed against his belly. His breath came in shallow and quick. Fire licked his balls.
The sudden urge to plough her almost broke his will. But he did allow himself a
brusque roll of hip. She moaned contentedly. With fingernails digging into the skin of
his ass, Brioni pulled him to her. She spared one hand to fist his shaft, knead his balls.
Fuck, he was about to come.

She must have felt it because she retreated to the end, grabbed him hard at the base

and squeezed just in time to choke back the cum. Some managed to seep through and
Haruto watched her, heart beating like a jackhammer, lick the thin white foam off his
glans.

“Stand up,” he breathed. His breath was ragged from trying to do ten things at

once. He wanted her here and now, but not here and now. In the bed. Fuck the bed.
Against the wall. No better, on her elbows and knees. Astride his hips? Adrenaline
pumped his veins. Fire licked his joints and jaw. The lycan was clamoring to be free. He
wouldn’t. Haruto was in control. Felt powerful, able to control even his lycan half. He
could do this, skirt the edge without falling into the lake. With her—for her—he could
do this. The quicks around his nails throbbed with chromium particles amassing there,
ready to form the claws. His gums as well. Fangs wanted to come out.

Brioni stood, wiped her mouth with the inside of her wrist. Through the parted

collar, he spotted the nascence of a breast. He wanted to see more. The lycan wanted it
all.

“Let it come,” she said.
She knew? How could she know when he’d become an expert at denying that part

of him, when he’d trained for years to fight the effects of adrenaline? Although what
laced his blood right now was more pheromones than anything else. He hadn’t trained
his body to suppress that. He’d never had to.

Brioni raked her hair back with one hand, which accentuated the V of her partly

undone shirt. A pink nipple flitted between two buttons. Haruto’s breath caught in his
throat.

“It’s part of you,” she went on, undid the second button. “Let it come.”
“I said don’t.”
That hadn’t been him talking. That’d been the lycan.

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Brioni only had time for a quick gasp when the change took him quickly. The

muscles accentuated, became more prominent over his lean body. Black claws and
fangs slid out of him. Glistening like fresh ink. He came for her. Upper lip curled over
his fangs, Haruto gripped her by the wrists and back-walked her to the wall, kept her
there. Her breaths came fast and thin.

“I’ve been wanting this since I first saw you in it.” The fricatives whistled through

the fangs.

She bit her bottom lip, watched him bend over her. Was he going to bite her? She

froze, stopped breathing.

Snarling, he dove for her throat. She yelped.
But he didn’t bite her. It was the buttons he was after. One after the other, with his

front teeth, he clipped the buttons from her shirt, didn’t even damage the fabric. She’d
been around lycans long enough to know this required rare dexterity and control. He
spat them one at a time, grinned wickedly between each then clipped the next. He
reached the end of the shirt, gave her a hard lick that started on her sex and curled all
the way up to the sensitive spot under her ear. His hands still around her wrists, he
straightened to press himself all along her front. His cock made itself a home between
her shaking thighs. The muscles on his shoulders bulged when he left her wrists to part
her shirt with delicate fingers tipped with deadly black claws. The contrast was
riveting.

He could’ve taken her right then and there. She wouldn’t have done anything to

stop. But instead, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the bed pushed into
a corner. Laid her down gently. But as he walked to the foot of the bed and put his
hands flat on the mattress, there was nothing gentle about the curve to his lips.

“Let me see,” he murmured in a low voice. Bent over this way, arms corded with

wiry muscles and eyes narrowed to black slits, Brioni couldn’t do anything but listen to
him. She couldn’t think, couldn’t process anything other than the basest needs. She
wanted him in her. Wanted it with a violence that should’ve surprised her. Yet didn’t.

“Spread your legs.”
She did. Unabashedly, without coyness or pretense. No games.
Haruto grabbed her by the ankles and yanked her down to the foot of the bed. The

covers wrinkled and rolled under her sweaty skin. She would’ve bent her knees up but
Haruto’s grip didn’t allow for any movement at all, so she lay propped up on her
elbows.

“I could smell your cunt from outside the apartment.” He seemed to wait for a

reaction. All niceties and finesse, what little he had, were gone. The lycan was in charge.

Brioni raised her chin. “And? What did you want to do to my ‘cunt’? Hmm?”
A wicked smile pulled his lips to one side to denude only one fang. Her ankles in

iron grips, he licked the insides of her calves, her knees and thighs. Crawled upward
between her legs like a hunter would, head steady but shoulders rolling. She felt liquid
seeping from her sex down to her anus. Flesh constricted. Muscles tightened.

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Then he was on her.
His mouth, everywhere. His hands, demanding and precise, in her sex, her ass,

along the insides of her thighs. She cried out, let her head loll back.

“Look at me,” he snarled, bit her on the mons. “Look at what I’m doing.”
Brioni watched while Haruto used his mouth and hands to alternatively make love

to her sex then fuck it. She was bitten and sucked on, licked and caressed, spread wide,
rolled onto her front then back supine before Haruto knelt between her legs. Hands like
vise grips on her hips, he brought her up on his lap. He pushed in. Took her with near
violence. Abdominals worked hard when he rolled and undulated against her butt. The
feel of his cock in her made Brioni squeeze her eyes shut. The sensation of fullness, the
unnatural heat of him… She felt the first tingling of an orgasm.

He bucked against her. “Look at me!”
Her bottom lip tucked between her teeth, she forced her eyes open and watched his

cock slide in and out, the glistening shaft covered in veins that teased her and
tormented her.

Haruto left her hips, grabbed her ankles and raised her legs high. Tendons strained

at the juncture of her thighs. Brioni welcomed the pressure, the weight of him as he
thrust into her with feral abandon. Rendered shiny with sweat, her breasts bounced.
Without warning, he popped out, flipped her over as easily as though she’d weighed
nothing more than a wet towel, then took her from behind. With the acute angle, her
clitoris received most of the attacks. From tingling, the orgasm finally hit like a slap of
thunder. Her voice rose. His as well. Fire spread to her lower back, her cleft. Still he
pounded into her. Took her and took her. But he didn’t come.

She felt him move behind her then he popped out again. Brioni checked to make

sure he hadn’t hurt himself and found him flopped onto his back. He hooked his index
finger.

Brioni crawled on her hands and knees and settled astride him. He put a hand on

her thigh, gently caressed it. The claws and fangs were gone. Raising herself on her
knees, she angled his penis. She sank on him with a contended sigh, which he shared.

Leisurely, she rolled on him. His cock was rendered smooth by her cum and easily

slid in and out. While she took him deep into her, Haruto cupped her breasts.
Unhurried, their lovemaking lasted what felt like an eternity. She’d never made love
this way, tenderly, soothingly, and discovered whole new layers to this man she hadn’t
yet seen. From the demanding lycan who’d fucked her to the man who presently
caressed her breasts while she rolled on top of him. The duality of his character was an
intoxicating cocktail. She felt it come again. The pleasure rose like a wave. It unfurled
over her. Taking her with it. But this time, she felt Haruto accompanying her. His cum
jetted into her in powerful little bursts. Brioni quieted, stilled. Sweat tickled her back
and hairline.

When she bent over him, a drop of sweat rolled to the tip of her chin. Haruto lazily

pressed the tip of his tongue to it.

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“Don’t take it personally,” he breathed, yawned before closing his eyes, “but you

won’t mind if I fall asleep?”

Brioni chuckled, which cramped her vaginal muscles around him. “You mean right

now? Just like that?”

Haruto didn’t reply.
Her first reaction was to punch him on the shoulder. But as she watched him

sleeping peacefully, she couldn’t help but admire the perfection and symmetry of his
form and facial features. And he looked so much younger this way, unburdened and
without the characteristic smirk. So she let him sleep. With any luck, he’d find oblivion
and temporary solace. With even more luck, she’d find some as well.

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Chapter Ten

From the schematics on the various viewscreens, he’d seen the extent of the enhancements

they’d done on him. Metal laminates, gene splicing, hormone fortifiers and a slew of implants,

among them aural and ocular. He could hear a pin land from across the courtyard as clearly as a
conversation taking place at arm’s length. He could see in complete darkness as well as under a
midday sun.

He wondered what life outside these walls would be like. From what little he’d been able to

glean, here and there and from observing the researchers interacting, he figured he was in his
early teen years. Maybe thirteen, fourteen. One time, he’d managed to steal a few minutes of free

time reading a “newspaper”. The sheets of thin plastifilm had felt so strange and new in his
shaking hands. He’d read about things like sports and fashion, travel to places he’d only studied
in case he was sent on a mission there. He had been punished for it. Severely.

As he sat in his bed, knees drawn up under his chin and waiting for the painkillers to take

effect—one of the rare occasions he’d been given any—he heard the click of his cell door
unlocking. Another training session? So soon?

A guard slipped into the doorway. For the face shield and bits of armor, he could’ve been any

age. Or even a woman. He cocked his head. “Do you know what Kodomo no Hi is?”

His heart beat hard. What did this man want? He was Japanese, obviously, if he asked about

the Children’s Day. He nodded once.

He couldn’t help the flinch of fear when the guard slipped his hand into his armored jacket,

but instead of producing a weapon or one of the dreaded stunners, he held a small lemon-shaped
item. It glistened like molten silver.

“For you. Blow into the end while you keep your fingers on the holes. It’s called an ocarina.

It makes music.”

The guard deposited the item on the bed and retreated to the door. “Don’t let them find it or

they’ll take it away. Happy Kodomo no Hi.”

When the door had closed again, he tentatively reached for the silvery item. It was the most

beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Nothing in his life had served other purposes than those related to
death or pain. This thing on his felt gray blanket served neither. It made music. It made beauty.

He took it, turned it over and around several times in his hands for the sheer joy of watching

light dance on its smooth surface. The guard had said to blow on the flattened end. So he did.

Gently so as not to attract attention. The cell was soundproof, but in case someone walked by, he
made a tent of his blanket, burrowed under the hard pillow and spent the rest of the night
making different sounds with the ocarina. When morning and more lessons in death came, for
the first time in his life, he couldn’t wait to get back to his cell. Because something special that
was his alone waited for him there. Something beautiful.

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The first explosion woke him abruptly enough that Haruto swore he didn’t even

bend and just sprang off the bed. By his side, Brioni rolled onto her belly, head tilted up.
“What was that?”

“Something blew up.” He went hunting for his clothes, threw hers at her whenever

he’d find a piece that didn’t belong to him. “Hurry.”

He didn’t need to tell her since she was getting dressed faster than he was. Jacket on

his shoulders, he rushed out of the bedroom in which he’d spent the best moments of
his life. No light outside the wall of windows.

“What’s going on?” she asked behind him.
It occurred to him then she could die and he’d be there to watch it, unable to help,

unable to stop it. The thought terrified him. What if…?

No. He wouldn’t let it happen.
Haruto tucked the ocarina into his jacket, which he zipped up to the collar. Another

explosion rattled the glass panes along the terrace. His joints ached, as did his jaw. It
was coming. The lycan.

The stress alone of keeping Brioni from harm caused him to change spontaneously.

Shit, bad timing. Claws and fangs shredded flesh and tissue. The pain bent him in half.
His senses magnified, sharpened, revealed layers of stimuli until then only tickling the
back of his mind. People. Close.

“They’re coming.”
Brioni hurriedly shoved her naked feet in her shoes. Businesslike, afraid but in

control.

A faint odor of resin announced someone carrying a volter was approaching. He

leaped up at the ceiling, dug his claws and “crawled” upside down until he was above
the door. Not a second too late. It burst open. Half a dozen guards, some of them with
votlers, others with stunners, piled into the room.

Brioni yelped in fright at the sudden arrival. To his brief confusion, she turned right

around and charged for the glass doors. “Haruto! Come back!”

Clever woman.
With the guards’ attention momentarily in the wrong direction, Haruto dropped

from the ceiling. He sent the closest pair flying back with a roundhouse kick, followed
with a palm-strike to a third’s sternum. The violence of the hit projected the man five
feet in the air. Haruto whipped around, caught one of the guards by the collar. With no
more effort than whipping a towel around in the air, he threw the man at the glass wall.
The guard flailed and screamed when he crashed through the tempered glass. As if
someone had thrown a bucket of white paint at the windows, the damaged panes
turned milky white before disintegrating into long cascades of glass. The sound rang in
his ears. Yells. The sound of volter shots. His own throaty growls. Bones snapped when
he ripped the volter out of an attacker’s hand, slid it in Brioni’s direction—she made
quick work of picking it up and firing at more guards barging into the room—before

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reversing his grip and delivering a backhand that made pulp of the guard’s head. Blood
arced high and far.

“Hurry!” he snarled for Brioni’s benefit.
She fired another shot as she backpedaled out the room through the broken

windows. Glass crunched under the soles of her shoes. Another volter shot illuminated
her face. Fear and determination alternately widened then narrowed her eyes. She was
the most beautiful and arousing thing he’d ever seen. A vision of bending her over and
taking her flashed in brilliant colors in his mind. He shook his head, using another
guard as a missile against those trying to squeeze into the door. The man’s broken body
bent at impossible angles when he crashed partly against other guards and partly
against the doorjamb. Behind him, Brioni yelled a warning a split second before the
general alarm started wailing.

“Hurry!” she implored him as she whipped the volter back and forth. Not practiced

ease but sheer fortitude.

Haruto turned and leaped outside on the terrace just in time to spot a shuttle

descending from the rooftop and firing attitude jets to fly nearer to the ledge. The craft’s
side hatch was wide open. Men in black uniforms and face shields crowded the hatch.
Brioni shot at them, missed most of the time but she kept them busy trying to dive.
Bought Haruto precious seconds. He leaped the twenty or so feet between the terrace
and the shuttle, landed on the bow. Claws poised behind his shoulder, he took a potent
swing. Slashed armored metal. If he could slash through all three layers, he’d put an
end to this shuttle’s flying capabilities. The pilot angled the craft left to right, hoping
perhaps to dislodge Haruto. He cocked his hand back, slashed at the hull again. Electric
sparks arced and danced on the fuselage when he punctured the covering that
protected the power grid.

Below, Brioni yelped. He turned, spotted black lines dropping like convulsing

snakes from the side hatch. They intended to rappel down and storm the terrace. She’d
be defenseless against so many.

Haruto abandoned the shuttle with a back flip that brought him directly onto the

terrace’s narrow ledge. He jumped off, joined Brioni by the wall. As he cleared the last
few feet, intent on taking Brioni by the waist and bounding down a few tiers to get
away from the dangerous shuttle, he noticed some of the guards waiting in the shuttle
didn’t wear anything to conceal their identity. The sight of their faces stopped Haruto
cold.

They looked like him. Were identical to him.

Brioni’s brain turned to cold slush when she spotted a small army of Harutos

soaring out of the shuttle’s side hatch. They arced overhead and landed on the terrace
with the deadly grace of panthers. She backpedaled, put a volter shot in the two closest.
One collapsed, snarling, the other turned to her and advanced. Except for the different

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clothes and goggles—they wore black coveralls and nothing else—these lycans were
identical to Haruto.

“Oh God,” she murmured over and over as she backed to the wall, firing her volter

into exact replicas of the man she loved. “Oh God, oh God—”

Almost too fast for her eyes to follow, Haruto threw himself at his doppelgangers.

He tore into them, bit and clawed and kicked and fought with more violence than she’d
ever seen. The fight was eerily silent except for the sound of each hit landing.

Just as more turned to him, a bright searching light hit the terrace, swept back and

forth. Another shuttle, this one smaller and with its side hatch likewise open wide, flew
like a bat out of hell. What maniac piloted this? In the hatch, a blonde woman with a
giant silvery gun roared in a language Brioni didn’t understand. But she did recognize
the woman—Cristoval’s abrasive girlfriend. She’d never been so happy to see that one!

“Wanna ride?” the tall blonde yelled over the din.
Brioni waved but couldn’t spare another second as guards kept coming into the

apartment then out onto the terrace. She missed about half her shots, but dammit, she
gave it all she had. The blonde turned the monstrous volter at the terrace and delivered
a long, uninterrupted hail of nickel beads that tore into the enemy and reduced walls to
Swiss cheese. The smell of dust choked the air, despite the rain. The pilot—against all
odds and every flying protocol—brought the craft right along the ledge. Not even six
feet from the parapet! Were they mad?

A form flew out of the friendly shuttle. A tall lycan with a proud head like a jackal’s

straightened to a considerable height. The thickly muscled man must have normally
been dark-haired. He was huge, almost seven feet tall. She recognized him—Cupcake.
He charged, took on three Haruto lookalikes. Two other forms also leaped, females. The
Batista sisters. She could’ve hugged Rio right then, even the foul-tempered Fortaleza.
The shuttle turned right away and fired a volley from its fore pulse cannon at the first
craft and the building. Destruction rained on the terrace. She cried out when debris
landed around her.

A terrible battle ensued, with Haruto fighting other lycans who could’ve been—

were, in a twisted way—his twins. He destroyed them. The rage was palpable.

Not far in front of her, the large lycan threw himself at the guards spilling out of the

doorway, blocking their progress with his massive body, effectively using himself as a
shield while the Batista sisters laid waste to the rest. Brioni wasn’t a good enough shot
to take chances and only fired when one of the “bad” Harutos or a guard detached from
the rest. She realized tears were streaming down her cheeks. Fatigue, stress, fear.

“Come on!” Cristoval’s girlfriend yelled from the shuttle. She put more nickel into

the building. Parts of the roof collapsed around Brioni’s feet. Shards of light from the
room below stabbed upward through the destruction. “Get in!”

Volter shots coming up through the ruined roof prevented Brioni from moving

away from the wall. With her back plastered against the bricks, she scooted sideways.
One of Haruto’s doppelgangers leaped right in front of her. Fangs like black ink

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glistened when he snarled. As if in a dream, she raised the volter. Took aim. As she
pressed the trigger, she squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t watch him die. The sound
of a body landing on concrete alerted her the shot had been true. Whimpering through
her teeth, she jumped over him.

Both Batista sisters joined the towering lycan and blocked more guards from

coming in that way. But the shuttle overhead was still buzzing around, black lines still
dangling underneath its belly while sparks flew out of its damaged bow. The friendly
shuttle’s pilot had to move out of the way to avoid getting blasted by the other’s pulse
cannon.

Haruto grabbed one of his copies by the armpit and crook of the knee and sent him

over the edge of the roof. “The tower!”

What tower?
Because Brioni had no idea where the tower was, she followed when he started

looking skyward. Only broken-down rock walls. The two shuttles had now entered into
a dog fight that took them away from the walls. Blasts of pulse cannons reverberated
around the massive stone complex. Bright flashes of light accompanied each delivery
and a sound like thunder each hit. The friendly craft had one advantage over its larger
enemy—its pilot was dementedly skilled. And demented, period.

“Hold on to me,” Haruto said as he encircled her waist with one arm.
By their side, all three other lycans broke the fight and leaped up and over the wall.

At least thirty feet high!

She slipped the volter in the back of her waistband and hung on to Haruto’s neck.

He climbed using only one hand, metallic claws digging into rock as though it were
clay while he scrabbled for purchase with the toes of his boots. Each tiny crack became a
rung in this impromptu ladder. She wished she could help. But this was above and
beyond her capabilities. He was taking chances for her. Rage and love battled in her
heart. She hated Inu for forcing him to do this but simultaneously fell in love with him
all over again.

Finally, with guards starting to line up shots a bit too close for comfort, Haruto

climbed over the parapet and deposited her on the rampart proper. Three feet wide, one
side faced inward and the courtyards while the other side opened out into darkness and
a hundred-foot plunge into the icy Suwon River. No one, not even a lycan, would
survive such a fall, so she made sure to stick to the left side as much as possible as she
followed Haruto. He nimbly skipped broken sections and waited for her to pass then
would soar right over her head and wait at the next difficult portion of the ramparts.
His hot hand became a calming certainty after each hair-raising section of broken wall.
The last few feet before the thick, circular tower proved easier and Brioni was able to
run as fast as she could. Sweat and rain mixed on her face and in her clothes. She
slipped at the last possible step before the stairs, cursed as she skidded to her knees.
Haruto was there to help when she stood again. Her kneecaps throbbed. She nodded
her thanks.

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“We must hurry,” he said, eyes searching the sky.
Voices raised in alarm. She distinctly heard volter shots above the alarm still

wailing its heart out. She just wished that thing would stop already!

Hand in hand, they climbed the circular tower. The Batista sisters and Cupcake

leaped and bounded past. So different from Haruto, who retained his human
appearance. They disappeared around the first curb in the staircase. Haruto and she
followed.

The sound of thrusters drowned what he said when he reached the tower’s

upturned roof. The complex had been built a long time ago, in the seventeenth century
by a king who’d turned an entire city into a fortress. Contrary to its name, she’d never
thought there was anything “brilliant” about it. Formerly twenty miles away, Seoul had
since sprawled all the way here to Suwon, which was now officially part of the capital
and taken its name. On a whimper of pain—her knees ached so bad—she ran to the
crenels, leaned over them to see above and below. Wind made a mess of her hair. Then
she saw it, the smaller shuttle. It was dented and covered in scuffs but flew rapidly to
their position. They just might make it out of this mess alive. By her side, Haruto bent
with the change back to man.

Rain thickened. She shielded her eyes as she turned to find the three other lycans

changing back to human form.

“Let’s go!” Rio said as she straightened. With agility and grace, she jumped onto the

crenels and waited for the shuttle to descend. Thrusters blazed white as it did. A deep
gash marred the silvery prow.

Below her stood Fortaleza. She stared at Haruto and Brioni, seemed to debate

something before she walked over and stuck her hand out to her companion. “Cristoval
showed us the data… Allan’s name… Shit, it was on the list of contacts. I was wrong
about you, Smiley. I should’ve checked the facts before I ran my mouth.”

Smirk firmly in place, he looked down at Fortaleza’s hand.
“Come on, man, don’t let me hang there.” Her smile hardened.
Haruto turned his back to Fortaleza and her outstretched hand, grabbed Brioni by

the arm and tugged her behind him. “Hurry,” he said without turning.

Standing on the crenel, wind and rain plastered what little left of her clothes still

clung to her tall and muscled body, Rio gestured for them to hurry. The change had
wrecked her boots. “They’re coming!”

A lone shot from a distant volter harmlessly passed overhead. Still close enough to

pump Brioni’s tired legs.

The shuttle tried to get closer but the upturned roof prevented them from landing

on the tower itself. Dipping a wing, it fired attitude jets in quick bursts, showing
impressive skill and handling on the part of the pilot. Closer still. Five feet from the
crenels. The side hatch was pulled back wide. Cristoval’s girlfriend was there, grinning
like a loon.

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“Wanna ride? Twenty credits each!”
She reached out as far as she could while keeping her other hand on the handle,

grabbed Rio’s wrist and tugged her onboard. Another volter shot arced in the air.
Everyone cursed or yelled. Cristoval’s girlfriend the loudest. More volter shots
accompanied the first. The enemy was closing in. The shuttle rattled with the precarious
angle into which the pilot forced it. The thing wouldn’t last long before the laws of
physics kicked the pilot’s ass again.

“Come on!” the blonde growled. “Peanut and I have a date with those morons

down below!”

Haruto passed a seething Fortaleza and kept his hand on Brioni’s arm. Together,

they climbed on the crenels. Rain made long glistening lines on his face.

“Help her!” he yelled at the blonde in the hatch. Both she and Rio extended hands

for Brioni to catch. She did and was quickly pulled into the shuttle.

Next came Fortaleza, who nimbly jumped in followed by the giant Cupcake, who

took a run and leaped into the hatch. A collective “whoa” was heard when the shuttle
leaned dangerously close to the crenels. Below one hundred feet of darkness waited.

“Jesus Christ, Cupcake!” the blonde roared.
Still cursing, she extended her hand to Haruto, the last to board.
Brioni did as well. Her other hand on one of the cargo straps, she reached out to

him. He could probably jump as Cupcake had, but she wanted to feel needed for a
change.

More volter shots stabbed upward from somewhere below the tower. The guards

must have entered this portion of the courtyard. They’d be up on the roof any second.

“Hurry!” she yelled for no other reason than the need to let some adrenaline out.

She was shaking all over. From fear, from the thrill of freedom a mere moment away.

Instead of reaching out, Haruto stood on the crenels, lance-straight, facing the

shuttle. He smiled.

Brioni’s heart stopped. “Come on!” she urged. The blonde by her side threatened

him with bodily harm if he didn’t move his “skinny ass”.

He took a step back. Shook his head. “You go! Now!”
“Come on, Smiley!” Rio yelled as she stomped her foot.
A deafening boom rattled the tower. The blonde whooped. “Solomon and Cristoval

got in! That place’s gonna blow, buddy! Get in!”

“It has to end this way!” The general alarm partly drowned his voice. But his

expression was peaceful as he faced Brioni. Rain plastered his clothes on his lithe body.
“Inu never would’ve stopped looking!”

“No, please, Haruto. Please!”
“There!” one guard yelled. “Get him!”

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They converged on him. Obviously, nothing else mattered than catching Haruto

alive.

Another explosion tore a yelp from Brioni. Part of the wall on which they’d run to

reach the tower slowly collapsed in large articulated sections. Blocks of rock rolled and
crashed into the courtyard. One guard reached the tower. Then another. They fired in
the shuttle’s direction, missed. Another detonation from within the massive complex
dislodged large clusters of tiles from the tower’s upturned roof and created fissures up
the side. The tower could cave in any second.

The pilot’s skill was confirmed when the shuttle flew sideways to follow Haruto as

he ran away from crenel to crenel, drawing the approaching guards with him. They
converged on their true target, volters drawn but not firing. They wanted him alive.

He jumped over the separation and landed on the next crenel. Rain pearled on his

goggles and skull when he stopped to face her. The smirk was back in full force. “I
would’ve loved you! Always!”

The fissures widened into cracks as wide as a man’s thigh. Large sections of the

tower disintegrated. Just as more guards reached the shuddering tower, he turned
away, took a run. One of them ordered him to freeze. Too late. He was airborne.

Horror paralyzed Brioni. She couldn’t talk, breathe, think.
With guards barely ten feet behind him, about to close ranks on him, Haruto dived

off the hundred-foot-high rampart and into the darkness below. A black-clad angel with
broken wings.

A couple of the charging guards climbed on top of the crenels to look down into the

abyss. She couldn’t hear what they said over the wailing siren and the sound of her
heart swooshing in her ears. Like an old-fashioned steam locomotive. Whoosh-whoosh.
Her heart, which had surely been ripped out of her. Maybe this was why she could hear
it so clearly.

But her voice returned. A long wail ripped out of her.
“Nooo!”
Brioni almost fell off the shuttle deck when she reached out, hands impotently

clawing at the air. Only Rio’s and Cupcake’s grips managed to haul her back inside.

“Eva! Get us the fuck out of here!” the blonde roared. She slammed the hatch shut.
The shuttle swerved away from the crumbling tower. Forcing her stomach down

low. Leaving her heart behind.

* * * * *

He’d never done this before. He hadn’t been trained to know anything about this. How a

man and a woman could come together, be one for a few precious seconds. At the purple-eyed
girl’s insistence that he “fuck her cunt”, Haruto pushed deeper into her warm flesh. It molded to
his penis. So hot and wet. Fire licked his lower back. His testicles. Her moan of pleasure spurred

him on. He pulled out, thrust back in. She kept demanding more, so he gave more. He wished she

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could’ve let him close his eyes and learn the feel of her, the scent of her sex and how her breasts
felt beneath the tight bodice she hadn’t wanted to remove. She wrapped skinny, bruised legs

around his waist and held on tight. He felt trapped as much as embraced. At the apex of his next
push, something happened. Liquid fire shot out of him in tiny pulses. Sweat stung his eyes. He
grinned in spite of himself. The girl, no longer moaning and demanding, turned her face away
and nodded.

Who was she nodding to when there was only the two of them in the dirty little room?
Pain erupted in his back. Such a sharp contrast to the sweet fire still kissing his shaking legs

and back.

A blade. That, he’d been trained to recognize.
It stabbed deep. Haruto felt the tip notch one of his ribs. Blood gushed between the fingers he

pressed to his side. It’d been two months since he’d escaped the insanity of Inu’s fortress. He’d

gone from mistake to bad judgment calls, such as the one that had brought him to the girl’s small
room. She’d seemed so friendly. Smiled and winked at him from the darkened doorway of a
decrepit building. The alley had smelled of urine and garbage. She’d smelled of perfume and
woman. Haruto hadn’t needed a second invitation inside her humble home. He hadn’t known

about prostitutes back then. Hadn’t realized her thugs had lain in wait, ready to jump him when

he became “busy”. So much to learn. So far, freedom had tasted of sour beer and charity-handed
free meal packets. But he wouldn’t change a thing. If he had to do it all over again, he would. In a

heartbeat.

“Stick him again,” said the girl with whom he’d just shared himself. Obviously, he’d

misunderstood her winks and grins. She hadn’t liked him one bit. She rolled him off her, pulled
her sheer underthings back on as she backed from the bed.

Haruto rolled to his side just in time to catch his attacker, with his eyes yellowed from drug

use—not much older than Haruto—cocking his arm back. The blade pierced Haruto again. Fire
raced through his belly. He fell off the bed to roll onto his back. The dirty floor felt sticky under

his naked body. Blood. He knew the feeling of it. Light danced crazily around the small room
when the lamp crashed by his side. Both thugs angrily searched his discarded clothes to find
nothing more valuable than a strip of plastifilm with a charity’s address.

“He don’t have a thing,” one of them snarled. “He don’t have a fucking thing.”
The purple-eyed girl gave him a sharp little kick in the hip. “You weren’t gonna pay me, you

freak? Huh? Huh? You fucking freak?” A kick punctuated each instance of the word he’d heard

so many times since he’d broken free.

He could feel his systems already repairing the damaged tissue and stemming the flow of

blood. He’d had worse at Inu’s hands. Much worse. What could these lowlifes do to him that

hadn’t already been done? Haruto snapped his feet under him and stood. Snarling, the one with

the knife aimed his blade at Haruto’s belly again but didn’t get anywhere near his mark. How
could he when Haruto had just grabbed the young man’s wrist and twisted it sideways? Bones
crunched as easily as if they’d been twigs.

The young man howled. His friends ran for the maladjusted door, started to yank it open.

Haruto abandoned the moaning man, leaped over the narrow bed to plant his hand on the door.
His bloodied palm made a long smear when he pushed it closed.

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The girl’s chemically enhanced eyes widened in fear. He could smell it on her. On all three of

them. The two young men backpedaled to the opposite wall. The one cradling his broken wrist

kept looking at Haruto’s belly. Horror widened his eyes. Was he admiring his handiwork?

“You should be dead,” the thug growled accusingly.
Fear was like a choking cloud. His clothes stank of it. It oozed off his every pore. His back

connected against the wall when he tried to take another step away from Haruto. The other two
stared silently, as though too afraid to speak, or still hoping Haruto would fall dead. He
wouldn’t. Inu had taught him that if nothing else—death was a haven he wouldn’t be allowed to

reach for a very long time.

But something else snapped into place for Haruto. Right then and there, he understood

concepts Inu hadn’t taught him. How to take advantage of a situation, of others’ fears.

Humans—genetic deviants and otherwise—were masters at coercion and bribery, revenge and
exploitation.

He pressed a hand to his side, rubbed his thumb on the back of his bloodied fingers. He

forever could taste pain but never the sweet oblivion of a mortal wound. “Things are going to
change.”

His voice sounded different. Deeper. Colder.
Tears welled in the girl’s purple eyes. He heard her swallow hard. So strange to be on the

other end of this. After having spent his life from the victim’s viewpoint.

“Look, man,” one of the young men began. Rings on his ears and nostrils glimmered when

he took a step forward. “Look, we can work this out, okay?”

Haruto nodded. “I agree. From now on, you’ll work for me.”

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Chapter Eleven

How could she go on living when her heart wasn’t in her chest anymore? An empty

cavity, wires still dangling impotently after having been ripped off. When she couldn’t
take in a breath without fire singeing her lungs and shredding her throat? Brioni had
never known the pain that tore through her. Yet she bore no wounds. She hadn’t been
shot, stabbed or slapped. Nothing had even touched her. Small comfort when all she
wanted was to crawl into a deep hole, lay her head down and go to sleep. With any
luck, she wouldn’t wake again.

Haruto was gone.
As she sat there in the back of the shuttle, directly on the metallic deck and with her

knees drawn under her chin, Brioni stared at the pitted bulkhead separating her from
the last sight of him.

His lean body arcing like a diver, arms outstretched.
Tears burned her eyes but didn’t spill. Her pain was too great for tears.
“What’s wrong with her?” the blonde asked in undertones. Didn’t they think she

could hear? Even those like her, the walking-dead, could hear.

Rio, who alone could guess the depth of Haruto and Brioni’s bond, shook her head

as if to say, “Let it go”.

Fortaleza reached over from across the shuttle’s small cabin and smacked Brioni on

the knee. “We’ll blow these fuckers up, okay? For him.” She nodded grimly, patted her
volter. “We’ll do it for him.”

By her side, the giant Cupcake remained silent even if she could feel his pale blue

gaze occasionally turning to her. Of them all, his quiet presence was the most welcome.
She didn’t even care about Inu anymore. Fortaleza could do whatever she wanted. The
spark was gone for now. Maybe someday it’d return. Not tonight. Not while the fire
consumed her and left nothing but ashes.

The pilot leaned over in her seat. A shock of cherry-red hair cut asymmetrically

framed a pointy face Brioni recognized. Solomon’s girlfriend. Soon to be his wife. “Gear
up. I’m putting it down in the courtyard.”

The tall blonde kissed her monstrous volter as she stood near the side hatch.

Clearly, no one was going to the party before her. Cupcake climbed to his knees, put a
bear-paw of a hand on Brioni’s raised knees. His one hand covered both her knees. “He
gave you something. Don’t toss it back.”

The tears that had threatened finally rolled down her cheeks.
He was right. Haruto had shared himself with her when he hadn’t done so with

anyone else. He’d trusted her, had dropped his guard and let her glimpse inside, even

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for a few precious seconds. And ultimately, he’d killed himself to make sure Inu
wouldn’t go after her again. What right did she have to “toss” that gift back at him? At
the memory of him? Brioni used the too-long sleeves of her purple coat to rub her eyes
and nose. Self-pity would have to wait. There was work to be done.

Everything felt strangely removed. As if she watched an action vid on a screen. In

the thick of things yet apart by filters she couldn’t see. A volter was pushed into her
hands. Everyone had to pitch in. The enemy was great and many. She fired her weapon.
She killed people yet couldn’t work the guilt that usually followed her around like a
shadow. The “tree-hugger” of the family. She ran and climbed stairs and waited
panting with her back plastered to the door as her lycan escort destroyed the ones crazy
enough to make a stand. Inu had unleashed a force it couldn’t hope to defeat. Pockets of
fighting erupted then died. Shuttles tore off the grounds in several places. Inu was
running away. Those who could anyway. Her group met with others. Cristoval, first in
lycan form then as a man, came to her, said a few words of encouragement. Rio must
have told him of Haruto’s sacrifice. Someone finally cut the general alarm. Both Batista
sisters were tasked with clearing the last of the fortress. Fortaleza left with an ominous
spring to her step.

Finally, they stood in front of wide double-doors locked from the inside. The inner

sanctum, according to Cristoval. He had a portable decoder strapped to his wrist and
provided navigation aids to the rest. It must have been part of the data Brioni had
uploaded to his account. The old artisan had told her everything was on that thing. He
hadn’t lied.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Solomon growled as he rearranged his greatcoat back on his

chest. He hadn’t changed but still bore signs of the terrible battle. A pair of volters hung
from a utility belt while stun grenades glimmered menacingly from clips on his harness.
He pulled both volters out, widened his feet. “Make me a door, woman.”

Cristoval’s girlfriend—Dragana, Brioni remembered out of the blue—backed away

from it, indicating others should clear the deck. The giant volter in her hands resembled
a silver squid with its tentacles grouped into a point. Everyone hurriedly backed from
the doors and took cover around the corridor.

“Knock, knock,” Dragana snarled before she fired.
Despite the fact Brioni had closed her eyes, the blue-white muzzle flash brightened

her eyelids before heat buffeted her face. With a roar like a dragon, the hail of nickel
beads hit the metal doors and literally minced them. Metal bent and melted from the
force and intense heat.

Solomon and Cristoval were the first to rush through, followed by Dragana—Brioni

swore the Valkyrie was elbowing her way through to get there first—and the rest.
Brioni brought the rear. Lycans were much better suited for this than she.

No guard waited for them. In fact, only one person stood—or sat, more aptly—in

what resembled a control room. On dozens of screens set around a central workstation,
vital signs blinked, flashed green or red. Some had flatlined. In another screen, a view

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of a narrow corridor lined on both sides with doors. It reminded her of a prison. It
probably was.

As soon as Brioni walked around the veritable wall of lycan, she recognized the

man sitting in a silvery hoverchair.

Him. Haruto’s “father”. Brioni felt her expression harden. That man was

responsible for it all. That hateful man.

The redhead, all grace and fluid strength, approached Brioni. “You know him?”
“He’s behind Inu’s operations here…whatever it is here, it’s his work. It’s his fault.”
Yoshizumi reached to a console on his right. Solomon fired a single shot that missed

the man’s armrest by no more than a hair. He looked surprised at the scuff marring the
silvery chair.

“You stay away from buttons, switches or dials, old man, you hear?”
Yoshizumi nodded at the redhead when she quietly approached Solomon and

whispered a few words to him. “Ah, I recognize you. Killen’s protégé.”

Solomon bristled. “Okay, I think I’m gonna shoot him. Anyone got problems with

that?”

A haughty curl of lip to his mouth, Yoshizumi shook his head.
Brioni remembered something the man had told her when Haruto and she had been

brought in. “Where are they?” she asked. Her voice sounded rusty and raw. “The
others, and the kids you keep here? Where are they?”

“There are no children here, Miss Metcalf, only other models, some newer

constructs. Someone with a gift for numbers should see more clearly than that.” He
turned to a particular screen, dull, slate-gray. A thin yellow line blinked at the bottom.

Cristoval rushed to the consoles, scanning quickly. “Children? Here?”
“You are too late,” Yoshizumi went on. “Inu has already pruned this tree. I am but

a dead branch that sap no longer feeds.”

A shiver raced down her arms. “What do you mean, too late?”
“Dragana and I will go,” Cristoval said from the demolished doorway. The blonde

joined him there.

“Yeah,” Solomon said out the side of his mouth. His volter never moved from its

target—Yoshizumi. “If there are kids here, I wanna know where they are. Cupcake, get
a team together and wait for Liberty. Make sure her media buddies record everything.
We don’t want to mess this up. Not after Deng’s assassination. And tell her to send her
medical team down here too. I think we’re gonna need them to deal with this.” He
pointed to the screen showing the corridor of doors.

“He did it,” Brioni quickly pointed out. “Haruto was forced to kill that woman,

Minister Deng, under his orders. I saw everything.”

“Liberty will want a word with you,” Eva replied, nodding.

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While the three left, Solomon, Eva and Brioni approached the circular console.

Yoshizumi backed from it with a soft verbal command, floated around the workstation
to stop a few feet from Solomon. Clearly, the moody lycan didn’t like this one bit.

“You know what,” he growled as he slipped a volter back in its holster. “I don’t

think I like you sitting there like a smug cat. Been fucked in the ass—figuratively—by
your kind a bit too often. You won’t mind if I don’t trust your lying face? I thought
not.”

Brioni couldn’t find it in her heart to feel sorry for the old man when Solomon

grabbed him by the front of his jacket and hoisted him out of his chair. None too gently,
he deposited the invalid man on the floor with his back against the wall. Eva
deactivated the tiny thrusters and, as the cushion of air dissipated, the chair alit on the
concrete floor. By the corner of her eye, Brioni spotted several forms on the screen
showing the “prison” wing. Cupcake’s height blocked the view for the first few seconds
but soon he walked across the corridor, opened another door. Young men cautiously
came out. Some of them barely past puberty. All of them Asian. All of them versions of
Haruto. Brioni’s eyes welled all over again.

Solomon shook his head as he scanned the consoles. “This is some messed-up shit,

old man.”

Brioni noticed Yoshizumi had glanced at that particular screen again where the thin

yellow line blinked.

The next second, a clamor rose from outside. With an entourage of half a dozen

people and vidcaptors buzzing around like giant, metallic insects, the blind female
lycan entered the room. Liberty could’ve been a queen in her court. Dressed in a white
suit that accentuated her dark skin, she extended her arm, addressed the media
clustered around her like excited but grave-faced children.

“Inu also financed the Iron Conclave’s most secret programs, among which is this

one.” She indicated the consoles. “Children born in captivity, raised by rejects from the
genuine science spheres, enhanced with illegal technology and sent out to do Inu’s dirty
work. Political assassinations, industrial sabotage. It’s been going on for decades. Only
last evening, Inu had Minister Deng assassinated.” The barrage of questions seemed to
wash over the tall woman like rain on a duck’s back. She nodded solemnly. “You will
have full access to this facility. Questions will be answered later.”

With a small nod for Solomon, who grumbled something as he turned his back on

one vidcaptor that buzzed a bit too close to him, the smooth-talking lycan left the room,
followed by the open-mouthed members of the media. Surely they’d never had this sort
of leave. Smart woman was exchanging positive coverage for access. Stragglers took a
few last shots of the control room. Not a second later, an even larger group led by
Cupcake entered the place. Some of them carried small valises and silver cases. The
medical teams.

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Brioni took a deep breath. She didn’t relish facing Inu’s dirty deed but those kids

would need a friendly face, not just lycans and doctors. She intended to be that friendly
face. “I’ll go with you.”

But just as she was about to walk away, a tiny spike from the thin yellow line

caught her attention. Then again, another spike. She stared at it, waiting. The words
“vital signs—receiving” flashed in the bottom left. From mostly flat, the thin yellow line
spiked at more or less regular intervals.

She only noted then that particular screen’s position. The last one in the bottom

right corner. The moorings around the screen looked newer than the rest as well.

Yoshizumi’s eyes narrowed. He abruptly turned his head when she set her gaze on

him.

“Who’s at the other end of this screen?” she asked. Her heart beat hard and fast.
He looked away.
“Old man,” Solomon snarled. “The girl asked you a question.”
A smirk much like one she’d known and sorely missed rose to Yoshizumi’s lips. He

spoke in what she guessed was Japanese followed by English. “Foe unvanquished, I
will not perish in the field. I will be born again, to take up the halberd seven more
times.”

Brioni stalked up to the man, crouched by his side. She wouldn’t manhandle an old,

handicapped man but she sure would get in his face. “What’s that screen? Tell me!”

“Ask the right question, use your scientific reasoning,” replied Yoshizumi. Clearly,

he enjoyed this exchange. Sick bastard.

“Who is that?” she demanded, pointing at the screen. The line was flat again. Sweat

pearled at her temples. She felt each pore tingling at her hairline.

Yoshizumi fished inside his jacket, which had Solomon rushing to press the butt of

his volter directly on the man’s skull. “You be very careful about what you’re gonna do,
old man.”

“First answer mine,” the man said, superbly ignoring both Solomon and his

weapon as he pulled a handkerchief to wipe his glistening forehead. He was sweating
profusely. “Which is most important, deduction or induction?”

Solomon cursed. “I’ve been patient—”
“Wait!” Brioni cut in as she extended an arm in front of the lycan. “Deduction,” she

said, turning to Yoshizumi. “Erm, deduction, if the premises are true, then so are the
conclusions. Induction—that’s, um, that’s when the conclusion can be supported by
premises but not necessarily produced by them… I swear, if you don’t tell me—”

Yoshizumi smiled. Sweat literally poured down his face, which had taken on a dull,

grayish tinge. “You…” He cleared his throat, coughed.

“What’s wrong with you?” Solomon demanded. “You’re not dying, are you? We’re

not done with you yet.” Eyes narrowed suspiciously, he sucked through his teeth as the
man wiped his forehead again. His hand shook badly.

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“I answered your question,” Brioni remarked. She’d had enough of Inu and their

craziness. She wanted answers.

His eyes rolled in the back of his head.
“Argh! I hate when the motherfuckers do that,” Solomon growled, giving a shake to

Yoshizumi. “Hey!”

He spoke Japanese. Halting words, broken syllables. From gray, his skin turned

very pale. He was dying. Brioni clenched her jaws against the rage. He was dying when
she had questions to ask still, when the consequences of his actions still needed to be
sorted out, when the ones he’d created would want to know why. He wheezed by the
time he switched to English. “…chromium particles—unbreakable. Its only frailty was
its heart.” He took a long, rattling breath. “I could never replace it…with a better
machine—precise…humans are so frail.”

Solomon threw his hands up. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“What did you take?” Brioni searched his jacket, pulled the golden pen-like

implement she remembered from watching Yoshizumi “work” on Haruto the day
before. The thing felt smooth and cold. She hated it. Would have tossed it far from her
had the man’s expression not stopped her.

The black eyes focused once more. The triumphant look he gave her froze the blood

in her veins. “In-indes…tructible.”

Slowly, she turned her head to the wall of screens. That line. Rhythmic spikes broke

it. A heartbeat? Life?

“Oh my God…” Brioni pressed both hands to her mouth. “It’s him, isn’t it? That’s

Haruto’s screen.”

On a long, tight wheeze, Yoshizumi’s head lolled on his chest.
Solomon pressed his thumb on the man’s throat, waited a short moment. “Alive but

barely. Motherfucking chicken shit.”

Brioni couldn’t even feel sorry for the man. Not here and now. Not after what he’d

done. And especially not after the hope Haruto might—just might, good God—be alive.
She jumped to her feet, slid the pen in her pocket. Stronger spikes began to break the
line. She would’ve danced for joy had the fear she was wrong not tampered her hope
down.

“Cupcake!” she called. “Please! Come with me! I think he’s alive!”
With a nod from Solomon, the giant of a man, who’d guarded the door, preceded

her down the corridor. A flurry of activity hit them. Media vidcaptors buzzed around
the place while doctors in civilian clothes walked by with children either in their arms
or by the hand. She was heartened to see a lot of young faces guardedly relieved. One
smiled at her. A tiny, skinnier version of Haruto. No more than ten at most.

God, how could these Inu people have slept at night, knowing kids languished in

their cells, waiting for the next fitting, the next bit of machinery implanted in their tiny
bodies?

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She didn’t know how they made it outside. All she knew was that if she hung on to

Cupcake’s belt and didn’t let go, she covered ground at speeds she wouldn’t have been
able to sustain for long. Outside, rain hit her square in the face. Destruction had leveled
some parts of the fortress but others remained intact. Night still owned the windy
complex but with the crowd of shuttles taking off and landing, the place was bathed in
bright spots of white light. By the time they’d circumvented the thick perimeter wall,
Brioni was running almost as fast as her lycan companion. By the riverbank, she slowed
so she wouldn’t fall into its icy depths. By her side, Cupcake took one step for every two
of hers. After they’d neared the place where Haruto had jumped—the crumbled tower
had spilled over the ramparts and littered the place with broken stones—Cupcake
suddenly extended a thick arm in front of her. She stumbled to a stop.

“Wait here.”
She craned her neck, squinted, wiped rain from her face. Darkness swallowed this

part of the rampart’s base. The river rushed by. Its roar only drowned by those of
thrusters above. “Why? Did you see him?”

Rain coursed in rivulets on either side of his nose when he looked down at her. She

felt like a kid compared to the man. “I think so.”

“Where?” She meant to push past his arm but he held firm. “Cupcake! For God’s

sake!”

“You don’t want to see him this way,” he murmured. By a nearby shuttle’s search

light, his pale eyes looked like chips of ice.

Her stomach twisted painfully. But she took his calloused hand in both of hers—

they barely went around. “I want to be there. I need to be there.”

After an eternity waiting, Cupcake nodded. He held her hand to navigate the most

treacherous parts where broken bits of tower had rolled down the embankment.

They found him by the river. His lower half in the rushing current, and his torso

and head wedged between rocks and debris. This had probably saved him from being
swept away—and had undoubtedly broken every bone in his poor body. She
floundered over and around the last few obstacles in her mad dash to reach him. At his
side, she knelt as best as she could. Touched his neck with tentative fingers. None of his
characteristic heat. Nothing. Her heart squeezed. She bent over, put her mouth on his.

“Brioni…” Cupcake’s voice sounded so far away.
A minute ribbon of breath touched her upper lip.
Thank you, she chanted mentally. Thank you, thank you, thank you…
“He’s alive.” Her voice sounded strong even if she felt nothing remotely close to it.
Tears joined rain on her cheeks as she held one of his hands. So long and slender.

Gently, reverently, Cupcake slid his arms under Haruto’s broken body, lifted high
enough for Brioni to fold his hands on his chest. A gleam of metal caught her eye. His
goggles. She picked up these too, pocketed them then walked by Cupcake’s side as he
carried her lover up to the fortress proper. Haruto looked like a child in Cupcake’s

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massive arms. As soon as they rounded the fortress limit and entered the courtyard,
Brioni ran well ahead to get the medical team’s attention any way she could. She yelled,
demanded, pleaded, begged and threatened. Soon, she had everyone’s attention.
Including the Batista sisters and Asia, who’d come in with the rest after the initial
attack. To Brioni’s shock—and renewed tears—Asia threw her arms wide and held her
tight.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured in Brioni’s ears. Over and over again.
“It’s okay, he’s alive. I don’t know how…he fell…the tower…”
“The docs will help. Liberty’s got only the best, okay.” That’d been Rio’s voice. It

sounded tight. “Only the best.”

They followed Cupcake and the medical personnel into the fortress. With the

activity already buzzing the place, they drew little attention. One of the doctors, a tall
blond with a Scandinavian air, asked her more questions than she could answer. She
didn’t know half the words he used. Chromium particles… She’d heard Yoshizumi talk
about that. Whatever it was. Cupcake followed this doctor and half of those who’d
greeted them in the courtyard into the very room she’d seen through the decoder as
Yoshizumi “worked” on Haruto. She swallowed as she surveyed the place. Metal and
plastic, concrete and rubber. Sterile and cold.

“You’ll be okay,” she murmured into Haruto’s ear. He couldn’t hear her, she knew.

It still made her feel better. After a kiss to his blood-stained lips, she backed a few paces,
was swallowed up by people with various equipment in their hands. But this time,
they’d make him better. This time, they weren’t here to hurt him.

She was pushed outside none too gently, told to wait in the observation room.

There was such a thing here? Cupcake, his arms and canvas sleeveless vest darkened
with rain and blood, gave a small nod to Brioni before leaving. With Asia by her side
and the Batista sisters clearing the way, they climbed up metal grille stairs and emerged
into a sort of tubular, upright tunnel made of unpainted concrete. Unforgiving
fluorescents lit the room she’d just left. No seat here. She didn’t need one. Her hands on
the railing around the clear thermoplastic panel, she slid to her knees.

“He’ll pull through,” Asia murmured as she joined her on the concrete floor. Circles

darkened the teen’s usually clear green eyes. Her black hair was a mess of curls. She
nodded. “Plus, he’s just too damn stubborn to drop the bone.”

Brioni chuckled through her tears. Wiping her nose with the cuff of her sleeve, she

nodded. “Yeah. That guy’s stubborn.”

“Solomon said to tell you the old man’s in a coma. Who is it?”
Yoshizumi. “The monster who created all this. Who wanted to turn Haruto into a

machine.”

Asia snorted. “Smiley’s way, way too bitchy to be a machine. That old guy’s high.”
The teen’s irreverence brought another smile to Brioni’s face and a boon to her

heart. Asia had suffered too. She’d lost Allan and found out a most awful truth
afterward. It couldn’t be easy.

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“I’m sorry,” Brioni began, searching for words as she went. “I’m sorry for Allan. I

wish—”

“He’s gone,” Asia cut in. “Smiley’s here. Let’s focus on that, okay.”
With the young woman’s hand in hers, Brioni leaned her forehead against the

thermoplastic and watched, chewing her nails until they bled, as the medical personnel
tried to bring Haruto back from the brink.

Later, much later, the doctor she thought looked Scandinavian appeared in the

doorway behind her. Asia had fallen asleep on the concrete floor, her knees drawn up
to her chest, her arm bent under her head. She looked incredibly uncomfortable.

The doctor motioned for Brioni to follow him, which she did. Her legs had cramped

with the time she’d spent kneeling or sitting cross-legged. Slowly at first, she padded
out of the observation room and joined him sitting on the topmost stair.

“Is he going to be okay?”
The doctor nodded. He rubbed his hair back. “I’ve seen all kinds of genetic

manipulations. Or I thought I had. That man should be dead.” He turned to stare at her.
“No one should have survived that fall. Every system in his body shut down. He had
more broken bones than—”

Brioni raised her hand. “The good news, Doc. I don’t think I can take much more of

this.”

“He’s alive. He’s back together. I wish I could take the credit but I can’t. Whatever

they did to him, it allowed his systems to repair themselves, heal the skin wounds,
mend the broken bones. Even on the cellular level, any decay that occurred during his,
erm, his temporary ‘shutdown’ was turned back. It’s as if nothing ever happened to
him. He’s a complicated—”

She stared hard at him.
“He’s a complex person.”
“So he’s back one hundred percent?”
The doc nodded. “I also took care of a tracking implant they’d put in his cranium.

At least, I can take credit for that. But yes, he’ll be all right. Except for the residual
effects of drugs—we had to pump him continually because his body kept fighting it
off.” He grimaced. “Except for one thing…”

Brioni’s instincts were instantly on alert. “Yes…?”
“We discovered something odd. There’s a plate, a sort of trigger. It’s directly linked

to his transformation abilities, to the lycan part of him. From what little we’ve gathered
so far, I think the people here could trigger the lycan elements with that thing. The
problem is, we don’t know where it is. None of the others like him have this trigger.
Some of them aren’t even lycans per se.”

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“I think I know what you’re looking for.” She slipped her hand in her pocket to

retrieve the gold pen she’d taken from Yoshizumi. “Could this be it? I’ve seen them
press this thing on Haruto’s chest. He changed right after.”

The doctor took the item, turned it around. “Yeah, that’s probably it. The same

marking on the tip here. See?” He showed her the tiny engravings depicting a
handprint with an eye in the middle. She’d never even seen it. “The same as on the
plate.”

“So that thing, it’s like a kind of remote trigger?”
The doctor nodded, gave her the pen back. “That’s my guess too. We’ll need to

research more, try to decipher Inu’s records. It’ll take years.” He suddenly looked tired
and much older than his apparent early forties. A yawn puffed his throat. He tried to
stifle it but she could still tell.

“Don’t you want to keep it?” she asked.
He shook his head, stood. “I wouldn’t want that kind of power over someone. A

man should be allowed to carry his own lock and key, you know.”

Brioni shook his hand, watched him lumber down the stairs. Over the railing, she

called to him. “Excuse me! What’s your name?”

He looked up. Dark circles underlined his blue eyes but he smiled nonetheless.

“Hans Kulig.”

“Thanks, Hans. I won’t forget what you did here.”
Sadness washed over his expression. “Me, I’ll try my damnedest to forget what I

did here.”

Nodding, she pocketed the pen-like instrument. The doctor was right. Haruto

should be the one to have it. No one should have that much power over someone else.

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Chapter Twelve

The ocarina felt smooth and cool in his hands. He blew the last note eyes closed. Long after

the ghostly sound had faded away, Haruto heard it float in the air like sweet perfume. It’d been a

good day. He’d accompanied the resistance’s lycan strike teams into the “good” part of Seoul,
had stolen a couple of generators then returned to the underground without losing a single
member. He didn’t care about them personally, but they needed all able-bodied persons.

Resistance.
The word made him sneer. Resist what? The inevitable, the inescapable, the unwanted? Why

fight against the current when it was so easy to just let it take one along the path nature had

carved out of the earth? Just sit back and let life pass by. Less painful that way. Less complicated.

But he’d given “the resistance” a try. He’d been bored with his life anyway. Protecting and

escorting his employees across town on their rendezvous had quickly turned from entertaining—
even educational—to mind-numbingly dull.

What did he have to lose but a few hours of his time?
So here he was, bona fide member of the resistance, taking orders from a teen with more

mouth than manners—Asia was probably the only one who could get away with it…and in a
sense, he enjoyed her blunt honesty.

But what made that day special was noticing one woman. He’d seen her before a few times.

She was cute in an old-fashioned “Goth” kind of way. And also a human calculator as far as he
was concerned. But it hadn’t been Brioni’s impressive mental faculties that had required him to

consciously focus on something other than her face during the next incursion’s meeting. It’d

been her smile. It’d not only lit up the war room but also every dark recess in his soul. He’d
felt…revived. As stupid as it sounded.

Saved.
Yet what could a girl like her want with a guy like him? He was the antithesis of her

luminous personality, the antipode of her vibrant temperament. She was light. He was a dark pit.

But it didn’t preclude him from watching her, which he did.

Later, as he sat in front of his untouched meal in the cafeteria, getting ready to leave,

Haruto’s heart had skipped a beat when two young women came in. Brioni nodded to him. He

replied in kind.

Because of the goggles, no one could guess what he was looking at. He didn’t care. Let them

wonder. But he felt a bit awkward staring so hard at Brioni while she prepared her meal then sat
to eat her bowl of noodles. Simple things. Ordinary, everyday things. Yet the most sensual to
him. The few women he’d known in his years between escaping Inu and finding the resistance
hadn’t excited him sprawled naked on his bed as much as Brioni did full-clothed and eating her
lunch. He was probably being a cretin but couldn’t help it. Her every gesture and smile made

him want to sit by her side for the simple pleasure of basking in her glow. And she chewed her

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nails when she crunched numbers, which was incredibly sexy to him. So normal and human. So
unlike him.

Her friend, a tall redhead with freckles and a ready smile, said something. They both snorted

in laughter. Haruto caught himself wanting to smile. He relegated the urge to some automatic

activation from mirroring behavior. Still, he had to fight hard not to grin at the way Brioni
mimed a surprised reaction, complete with gesticulation, only to knock her chopsticks out of the

bowl and create the thing she’d just imitated. Both young women seemed on the edge of choking
on their food. Others in the cafeteria joined in the fun.

Sitting with his back against the wall and his face angled down at his untouched bowl,

Haruto abandoned all pretense. Brioni couldn’t see him anyway. He smiled at her antics.

Rio entered the room, spotted him then made a beeline for him in the corner. He felt his smile

crystallize at the corners, turn into the smirk that had made him infamous—Asia’s nickname of

“Smiley” had come to his ear. Coming from her, he didn’t mind.

The tall brunette stood in the exact spot that blocked his view of the chuckling young

women.

“Move,” he said low in his throat.
“We have to go. Vonatos needs us for a job.” Rio put her fists on her hips and waited.
He sighed, dropped his spoon in his soup. “So?”
Rio rolled her eyes. “Just come, would you, and keep the attitude for those who’re

impressed.”

Haruto leaned over ever-so slightly so he could catch a last glimpse of the smiling Brioni.

The Batista older sister turned to see what he was looking at, shook her head then faced him once
more. With an “I’m wise and you’re not” expression, she remarked that they weren’t “his type”.

“And who made you a pro on my tastes?”
But she’d highlighted a fact—Brioni wasn’t for him. They were nothing alike. Haruto stood,

buttoned his coat up to his neck. “Does Vonatos always have so many pet projects? Is he
lonely?”

Rio shook her head. “You’re such an asshole.”
For the first time he could remember, Haruto regretted someone speaking the truth about

him, and regretted that, indeed, he was such an asshole.

* * * * *

Surfacing from murky depths. Air in his lungs, both burning and a cool balm.
He woke to the familiar sensation of cold in his extremities and the emotionless talk

of medical personnel. Except for two differences. One, he felt practically no
discomfort—something potent laced his blood, he recognized the effects of painkillers.
And two, he heard them speak of ways to “fix” the terrible things that had been done to
him.

Fix?
Not enhance, sharpen or strengthen? Improve, hone, change or advance?

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“Fix?” he heard a voice mumble. His?
“Shit, he’s awake,” said a woman. Older, gravelly voice. “Give him another shot.”
He felt the familiar ring of cold from an injector and heard the swish of something

being injected in his bloodstream.

“You’ll be all right, young man. Just let the meds take you away.” Someone patted

his shoulder.

Seconds later, he felt himself drifting away again. His last thought was of ice-blue

eyes sparkling through a shock of purple-and-black hair. Haruto smiled.

Later, a sound woke him. How much later? He couldn’t tell.
Not cold anymore. Silence around him except for that tiny sound in discordant little

bursts. Someone was messing with a flute. Not loudly, but with his hearing, he could
hear a pin land across the room. His ocarina. Then he recognized her smell.

“Don’t…” He cleared his throat. So raw. “Don’t give up your day job.”
Her chuckles would’ve smoothed everything away had he been able to forget the

last time he saw her. Escaping from Inu’s crumbling fortress. The insurance he’d given
them that he was dead, that there’d be no need for Inu to hunt her down, looking for
him. But here he was. They’d come looking again. She wouldn’t be safe. Didn’t she
understand? It had to be this way. What did he have to do, climb into a space ship
booster?

He stirred, flexed some muscles. Everything felt fine. As if nothing had happened.

As if he hadn’t died. But he knew he had. At least for a while. He remembered the wind
in his face as he jumped from the parapet and how rain had felt like tiny rocks on his
denuded head as he plunged into the darkness. Then impact. His breath knocked out of
him. Excruciating pain for a few seconds then oblivion.

And now this.
But as selfish as this made him, he was glad to be with her again, even if he’d have

to make sure this time would be the last.

“Can I do something?” she offered. Her voice sounded closer.
Haruto could feel nothing pressing on the bridge of his nose. His goggles were

gone. Shit. He kept his eyes closed as he turned to the sound of her approaching. Felt
cold and gentle hands cup his. Heat transferred. He felt her palms growing warmer and
this, for no logical reason he could find, pleased and thrilled him. He could do
something other than cause pain. He could warm this good woman’s hands. If he was
nothing else, if he meant nothing else, he was at least that.

With her free hand, she fiddled with the crisp sheets and the softest blanket he’d

ever felt, tucked them along his side and thigh, adjusted them until she must have been
satisfied. He let her fuss. No one had ever fussed over his comfort. It felt good. She felt
good. He squeezed the hand still in his.

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“You scared the shit out of me,” she remarked, sighed, went on more gently. “I

thought you were gone.”

Haruto turned his head to face away. Maybe she wouldn’t see his expression. The

fear and anger. “You shouldn’t have. Inu will find me again. He’ll use you and hurt you
and he’ll find me again.”

“Jesus,” she cried out. “Would you just let me love you!”
He only managed not to let his shock open his eyes. His heart beat hard and fast. A

tingling of adrenaline spread to his limbs. His belly cramped with muscular impulses.
She loved him…? How could she when they were so disparate?

He was slipping. Fast. “You shouldn’t.”
“Well, I do and that’s that. Plus, he’ll never find you again. He’s in a coma.”
Again, not opening his eyes proved hard. Could it be? The mighty master of the

Brilliant Fortress, Inu’s representative in the United Koreas? In a coma?

“When? How?”
“Two days ago. Yoshizumi tried to kill himself. Poison. Solomon said it was some

kind of cyanide-based compound and that it ate through the man like acid. But that’s
not important.” Her voice sounded closer. She pressed a kiss to his cheek. “You’re back,
and that’s the only thing I care about.”

“Yoshizumi? That’s his name?” A Japanese name, like his.
“You didn’t know? After all that time?”
“They were always very careful never to name one another. And I was always ‘the

specimen’.”

“You’re Haruto,” she replied with aplomb. “You’re a person, with an identity and a

name, and you have friends.”

Haruto wanted to say something but snapped his mouth closed when he heard the

rustle, felt the faint brush of fabric against his naked arm. She pressed an object into his
hands. “Here. I cleaned and fixed them for you. Good as new.”

His goggles.
He felt it as clearly as if he’d stood outside on a street corner. He had a choice. This

way or that way? Trust her with his freaky eyes or stay hidden, keep this barrier
between them.

“Have you seen vids of me? From my time here?”
“Some. Not much.”
She was such a bad liar.
“My eyes…” he began, had to clear his throat. “They’re not—”
Brioni’s fingers landed on his lips. “Shh. You don’t have to do anything you don’t

feel one hundred percent comfortable with. Okay? You don’t owe me anything. I’m
okay with them. They’re part of you.”

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What if he opened his eyes, naked and without the goggles? Would she recoil in

horror as others had? Would she stare in curiosity? Could he share himself with Brioni,
so completely and trustingly? Because in the end, it was all about trust. Could he trust
her with this?

“You know I’d trust you with my life.”
“I know,” Brioni replied. Her voice felt tight. Was she crying?
He had to know. He had to trust.
Goggles in a fist on the mattress, Haruto opened his eyes.

She’d dimmed the room’s lights. Pulled the curtains on the lone window of the

room in “their” apartment. The same Inu had given them. A lot had happened in the
last two days. She’d probably be looking at months of mental processing. So much
around which to wrap her brain. Cristoval had wanted her to sift through Inu’s records,
those still readable anyway since Inu had pretty much cleaned its slate. Yoshizumi had
chosen to stay when everyone fled. She couldn’t explain it. Made no sense. Why stay?
He’d said Inu had pruned the tree. Obviously, this facility was a mere part of what
made Inu, which was hundreds of years old if she correctly remembered her
conversation with the old man. With the help of Liberty’s forensic accountants, Vonatos
and she had spent an entire night piecing together Inu’s web of research facilities and
financiers. They’d even found records of the place in which Cristoval and Dragana had
been held. There was money from Europe and from the Americas, from the oligarchic
nations of Russia and Norway. The Global Alliance of Nations and its shadow enforcer,
Iron Conclave, were infinitely small portions of Inu’s realm of power. Two of its many
puppets.

Brioni rubbed her eyes. Since Haruto’s broken body had been found, a headache

had taken permanent residence behind her eyeballs. But everything faded away now.

When Haruto opened his eyes, nothing else mattered.
He was letting her see this part of him he’d so guardedly hidden. He was showing

her his eyes! Willingly. When she’d never known of him doing so with someone else, he
was sharing this with her. But she now knew why he always wore the goggles.

Brioni fought the impulse to cringe. His eyes…
Black. Entirely black. No white cornea, colored irises or pupils. Two orbs that

looked a lot like his metallic fangs and claws and that underlined the extent of the
modifications Inu had performed on this man. Black metal eyes.

Haruto stared at her. How could she know when the man had no iris or pupil by

which to judge? She couldn’t explain it except that he was looking at her. She could feel
it, see it somehow. And he waited. For a reaction. Anxiety tightened his mouth. Or
perhaps it was fear. Of her pushing him away. Or that she’d react with revulsion or
shock. He’d shared this personal sliver of his soul with her and she’d make damn sure
he didn’t regret it.

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He temporarily closed his black eyes again when she pressed a gentle kiss on each

of his eyelids.

“You didn’t have to do this,” she whispered in his ear, “but I’m glad you did.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and held him tight. For the first few

seconds, he only rested his hands on her back. But as though a dam had been breached
he squeezed her hard.

Gradually, his arms tightened until she had to sit by the edge of the bed from the

force of his embrace. “I love you too,” he murmured in her ear. “So much.”

Something poked her in the thigh. The pen.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, pulling away. His black eyes glistened when he

rolled them from her face to the door. Scanning. Ready to fight.

“I have something for you. Well, it’s, erm, it’s yours to begin with.” She cleared her

throat as she pulled the golden item from her pocket. Haruto’s sharp intake of air broke
her heart. She felt him tense. “The doctors. They said this can be used to force you to
change. I’ve seen the old man do it.”

His eyes narrowed. It felt so strange to see the expression flash in them, despite the

lack of iris or pupil. “I recognize it.”

Fingers steady despite the rage she saw in his face, he opened his palm for her to

drop the pen. She did. He didn’t close his hand, just looked at the item in it. As if he
were loath to touch the golden implement. It must have reminded him of Yoshizuma.
Of the pain and ill-treatment.

“You keep it,” he said at length.
“But you’ll need it. What if something happens to me—”
Haruto shook his head. “Then nothing else would matter, would it? I trust no one

else but you with this. Not me, not any doctor. I want you to keep it.”

Tears in her eyes once more—she was turning into a blubbering idiot—Brioni took

the pen and reverently slid it back into her pocket. The subtle poke in her thigh and
light weight belied the import of such a small item. She had a man’s fate in her pocket.
Literally. And his trust as well. Coupled with Yoshizumi’s blood tie with Haruto, that
she held two great pieces of the puzzle this man represented should’ve burdened her,
crushed with responsibilities. It did neither. She felt buoyed and trusted, honored that a
man such as him would trust her with this. And she intended to live up to that trust. No
matter what. She would protect him from his father’s identity and would guard his
lycan half with her life.

Haruto took her hand and kissed each of her fingertips. “You made yourself bleed

over me?”

She looked down and cringed. She’d really done a number on her nails. “It’s scary

not being able to do anything—”

A portable decoder she’d borrowed from Rio bleeped on the dresser.
Haruto snarled a tight “fuck” that made her smile.

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She would’ve ignored the bleeping thing but couldn’t as easily overlook the

demanding banging on the living room door. The panel rattled in its frame.

“Brioni! Haruto!”
She recognized Fortaleza’s voice through the panel. Brioni sighed long and hard

while Haruto let her go to slip his goggles back on. “I’ll go get it, all right?”

Some personal belongings had been salvaged from the underground resistance’s

former home. She’d been lucky enough to get a full garbage bag of her stuff back. She
was glad to wear her own clothes again, even if they smelled like an old ashtray. As she
adjusted her knee-length purple tunic and wide black pants, she stomped to the door,
yanked the thick panel wide. “What?”

The Batista sisters, both dressed in bits of armor and armed to the teeth, stood close

enough to kiss.

“Trouble,” Fortaleza announced. “They want your guy’s ass.”
“What? Who does?”
Rio raised an imperious hand to silence her younger sister, who fumed and shifted

from one foot to the other. “Cristoval said to tell you that shit has really hit the fan
about what he did to Minister Deng—”

“It was Inu that did it, not him! I told Cristoval.”
“Well, you can tell it to the security detail that’s on its way here right now. Solomon

only learned about it ’bout five minutes ago. You guys need to haul ass.” Fortaleza
didn’t seem at all sorry by the turn of affairs. Probably still chewing on Haruto refusing
to shake her hand or even acknowledge her.

This was so damn unfair! Brioni’s hands began to shake with repressed fury.

Haruto had thrown himself off a tower to save them all. Didn’t that atone for what he’d
done to the minister?

“I don’t care—”
Cristoval rounded the corner leading to her apartment. By that time, Haruto was

standing by her side, a very close match to his old black coat reaching a couple inches
off the ground. He flicked the collar up. His goggles reflected the three women’s faces
then Cristoval when he joined them just outside the apartment.

A five-o’clock shadow darkened Cristoval’s hollow cheeks and gave his dramatic

eyes even more character. “I’ve arranged for a transfer off-planet,” he said to Haruto.
He had a full head and a half over the lithe man. “No extradition law.” He turned to
Brioni, his expression softening. “I’m sorry. We need to buy some time until Minister
Deng’s death can be fully investigated. Plus, Liberty’s working her contacts and so is
Eva. We’ll find a way to bring him home.”

Haruto smirked. “My home is here.”
Brioni opened her mouth to argue, thinking he meant the building but snapped it

shut when she saw that he was pointing at her. It’d probably kill his reputation but she

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slipped her hand in his. He squeezed it. “Where he goes, I go,” she declared. Haruto
nodded.

Cristoval’s eyes narrowed for a few seconds then with a quick nod turned away.

“You don’t have much time to get ready.”

“We’re ready now.” Brioni checked her watch. Two o’clock. The black cat looked as

if it were waving both its front paws in the air. Its tail twitched with every second.

They trooped behind Cristoval as they had when preparing for a raid. Like the

good old times. Or the bad old times. She wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Except for
one thing. She linked her fingers with Haruto’s. He didn’t seem to mind holding hands
in public. An urge to chuckle, despite the dire situation, forced her to cover her mouth
as they emerged from the fortress and into brilliant daylight. Even Haruto stopped to
look up. She hadn’t seen the sun in months. No one had. There were some clouds, sure,
but not like usual. A group of kids went running by, some of them much faster than the
others, depending on their genetic makeup. She spotted one of the younger boys who
looked so much like Haruto running circles around the rest, to general delight. He
grinned wide.

A figure detached itself from the main rampart and approached. Asia joined

Cristoval and spoke a few words to him as they rushed out of the main courtyard.
Noise and activity drowned the conversation. Shuttles were taking off and landing at
regular intervals, using the complex’s grounds as pads. One such shuttle waited with its
side hatch slid completely back. Dormant, thrusters glowed wine-red, ready to blaze
bright white for take-off. Strangely, she didn’t feel as if she left anything or anyone
behind. There would be comms and vidcaptors. They’d speak and see anyone they
wished. She’d link home as much as possible. No, all in all, she was going to be just fine.

They trooped around the shuttle. A pair of men she’d only seen a few times waited

inside. They left the passenger area and slipped into both pilots’ seats. The thrusters
rumbled with renewed life. The stunted wings and tail twisted and lowered with pre-
flight check. Cargo containers in puke-orange had been stacked behind the passenger
seats.

Cristoval wrapped his arms around Asia and held her close while Rio and Fortaleza

made their goodbyes. Haruto didn’t even pretend to listen as he checked inside the
shuttle, must have deemed it worthy of her presence because he held out his hand for
her to take.

“Wait. I’d like to get a hug too.” She chuckled when he curled his lip and sat on the

hatch’s stepladder.

Cristoval finally let go of Asia. “Link to me as soon as you reach orbit, okay?”
The teen nodded, rubbing her sleeve over her eyes. “I will.”
“Where are we going anyway?” Brioni asked.
Cristoval’s voice sounded tight on the first few words. He cleared his throat.

“Solomon’s ship. It’s shrouded so no one knows where it is and a skeleton crew keeps it
in high orbit. The captain is an old friend of Eva’s and can be trusted.”

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A shrouded ship. Whoa. She couldn’t imagine the hirsute lycan owning such a

fancy ship. He’d probably stolen it from GAN.

From a few paces away, Rio turned and indicated to Asia to join them.
“No. I’m going with the Goth Fairy and Smiley.”
Rio seemed about to argue but one look from Cristoval and she nodded. “I’ll see

you soon then. Don’t cause trouble.” Her Portuguese accent made the word sound
decadent. Trrrah-bull.

“You’re coming with us?” Brioni extended her arm for Asia to wrap around her

shoulders.

“You two’ll need someone to keep things smooth. You’ll need me.”
When she turned, she caught Haruto giving the teen a small nod and a smile that

disappeared a nanosecond later. But it’d been there.

Cristoval shoved his hands in his pockets. His self-appointed niece grinned through

the tears and waved. “Be careful,” he admonished.

“Yes, Father,” Asia replied with a nasal voice. He joined her laughing then turned

to leave.

“Hey, don’t I get a hug?” Brioni opened both her arms.
The much taller and larger man scooped her up in a bear hug. “The docs told me

about the thing,” he whispered. “The trigger. Does he have it?”

“I do. He wants me to keep it.”
Cristoval put her back on the ground. He smiled. One of the rare occurrences he

did. “Smart man.”

They parted as the shuttle thrusters turned amber. Heat vortices distorted her view

of the fortress as she joined Haruto by the hatch. He held her hand while she climbed,
slid the hatch shut without a backward glance. Clearly, he wasn’t leaving anything
special behind.

* * * * *

When she exited the bathroom, showered and still shivering from the difference in

temperatures caused by the heated body lotion, Brioni caught Haruto smoothing the
cover on the bed. Carefully, in slow strokes. Long and knowing hands she loved so
much. Lotus flowers in her favorite color rested all along the dresser and headboard.
His ocarina glimmered softly on the night table.

“Where did you find flowers?” she asked, awed.
Wearing only a smirk and nothing else, not even his goggles—which he took off

only when they were alone together—he turned and cupped one of the flower heads.
“No big deal. They’re not real.”

Just like him to play down something this special.

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“I don’t care, they are to me.” She put her fingers to her silvery pendant. A habit

she’d picked up. The data it contained had been copied and sent over links to a few
people for safekeeping. But still, there was a certain weight to the information it
contained.

She made a bowl of her hands to receive the bright purple lotus and realized they

were made of paper. Tiny creases and folds filled with shadows in the dimly lit cabin.
Outside, the inscrutable blackness of space pressed against the large porthole. She
wished they could see Earth from their position in high orbit. They could from the
lounge. From the outside, the deceiving ship resembled a rusty old freighter, but inside,
state-of-the-art and expensive systems—including shrouding capability—and only the
best for a ship that had, she’d learned since boarding, once belonged to the Iron
Conclave but which Solomon had stolen “fair and square”.

“I didn’t know you could do origami. That’s beautiful.”
“That’s what they had me practice my dexterity on when I was too small to hold a

gun.”

She grimaced, shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
“I was joking, Brioni. Can’t you tell?” He rolled his black metal eyes, patted the bed.

“Lie down.”

Haruto? Joking? What was she doing to the poor guy? She was a bad influence.
“Oh, I think you forgot…” She paused for dramatic effect, held the lotus between

her lips so she could make her hands into pulsing “stars”. “The magic word,” she said
through her teeth.

“Now?”
They shared a quiet grin as she lay prone on the bed and leaned her chin on her

crossed forearms. He must have cranked the heat to maximum because she was hot,
and she’d spent the last week shivering and adding sweaters overtop sweaters. Haruto
walked around the ship in a T-shirt and pants. Barefoot. She gave it fifteen minutes
before Asia came pounding on the door to remind them they needed every iota of
energy. The crew—a family of four with parents in their fifties and two sons—had
begun to jokingly call her Empress. One of the sons, Brioni suspected, had a major crush
on Asia. Speaking of parents, she’d need to open a link to hers through one of
Cristoval’s secure channels. They must have been worried sick. She’d get an earful.

Haruto delicately placed one of the origami lotuses in the small of her back. The

corners prickled her skin.

“I like when you do that.”
She closed her eyes, sighed. “Do what?”
“Squeeze your butt like that.”
She groaned.
He ran a hand up her thigh, over her butt and along her back. “Cute.”

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Brioni felt another flower join the first. One more shiver followed the others. Even if

he could—and had—killed people with one hand, had anyone told her “Smiley” would
turn out to be such a gentle and romantic man, she never would’ve believed them.
Although she’d always known there was more than met the eye. More than the attitude
and the smirk, more than the long leather coat and goggles. More than what Inu
thought they’d made. The more layers she discovered of his personality, the deeper her
love for him. When it would’ve been easy to hate everyone and everything, Haruto
tried. Around her he tried—to give people a chance, to keep a leash on his sniper
comments. That was all she ever asked of people. That they try to get along. Life was
too short to butt heads all the time with everyone about everything. It was too short and
too precious.

“Where do you go when you do that?” he breathed in her ear. A light kiss made the

skin of her neck pebble.

“Do what?”
“When you daydream like that? Where do you go?”
She twisted to look into his face. God, he was beautiful. Skin like satin the color of

wet sand, lean muscles cording with every move. And some hair was coming back.
Finally. “You never daydream?”

He lay by her side, propped up on an elbow. “I wouldn’t know where to go.”
A third paper flower alit between her shoulder blades. Then a series along the

juncture of her legs.

“You’re like a garden,” he whispered. “Beautiful.”
When he knelt on all fours over her and began to kiss her back and shoulders, her

thighs and calves and created shivers of pleasure, Brioni decided this moment had to be
the best ever.

His hand pressed home high between her thighs, found her sex, wet and ready, and

rubbed small circles while he hummed the tune he often played on his ocarina. Brioni
would’ve loved remaining immobile, partly because she didn’t want to damage all
those exquisite origami lotuses, but couldn’t fight the impulses his fingers triggered.
She rolled her hips back, pressed her elbows in the mattress. Haruto met her slow rolls
with a finger sliding in, pulling out to gather more juices, going back in at the perfect
angle. The pillow absorbed her first moan, but not the series of long whimpers as
Haruto’s finger became two. In and out, small rolls. Her lower back burned from trying
to follow his circles. Brioni gasped when he lay on her. She parted her legs wider. His
cock replaced his fingers. On a leisurely roll, he pushed in.

She exhaled through the nose, a lungful that turned to a moan, a whimper that

tapered to shocked little gasps of delight as Haruto bucked the last inch in.

“Mmm, you liked that?” His breath in her ear felt like velvet.
She didn’t need to reply in words. The copious fluids that rewarded them both

transcended mere words. He knew she liked it. She knew that he knew. A perfect little
circle.

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He’d read somewhere that love could blind a man. In his case, it was the other way

around. Despite the technology with which he’d been changed and sharpened, he’d
been blind. Not until he’d met Brioni had he seen for the first time. There were good
people. The species wasn’t doomed to annihilate itself. When he’d revealed his eyes to
Brioni, fully expecting her to recoil or at least have some reaction, she’d merely cocked
her head, those bright blue eyes of hers expressing nothing but affection. No shock, no
horror. He didn’t think he could’ve survived her revulsion.

Haruto stretched out on top of her. He grabbed her wrists and pulled up so she lay

likewise, stretched like a plank. They connected from wrists to ankles. He loved it.

His abdominals worked hard as he pulled out to the glans and glided back in deep.

Again, he bucked to push the last inch of him. And again, she gasped in pleasure. The
anticipation, the excitement mounted. He knew where this would end.

Fire licked his balls. His heat seeped into her flesh and everywhere he touched her.

Which meant everywhere. Period. A roll of hips. Another sneaky little thrust at the end
of a slow and gentle penetration. Brioni’s groans grew louder. And louder. Turned
higher. This was how life felt. To love and be loved in return by a woman like her.
Strong and smart and beautiful. Haruto’s heart swelled with pride. And she was all his.

Brioni’s left leg couldn’t go any wider because of the bulkhead along which the bed

was set, but her right, she pushed outward to make more room for her lover to do his
magic. And he did. Slow and tender, he pushed himself in to the hilt, still humming and
kissing the back of her shoulders and head. Heat built. Muscles cramped. Close.

“Ahh…”
As she came, Haruto froze with his cock sheathed deep in her. Time stood still.

Frissons coursed over her and inside her and through each limb and every nerve
ending. She ceased to exist. No emotion. No sense of self. Stars must have stopped their
celestial course and the universe itself undoubtedly held its breath because as she
hardened all over with a diamond-hard orgasm, everything stopped. A precious
moment of pure clarity and stillness. A split second later, the dam breached.

A kaleidoscope of colors, a scree of sensations over her shaking body, a cacophony

of sounds—her heartbeat king of them all. Her voice broke on a note that deflated her
lungs. Satisfaction, ecstasy, joy.

“I love you,” she heard Haruto whisper in her ear.
Her heart quieted, as did the throbbing in her sex. Wetness coated her thighs and

his. Yet it was all hers because she knew he hadn’t come.

“You…you holding out?” she panted.
“I took care of that in the shower.”

129

Nathalie Gray

A snort of unladylike laughter escaped her. Chuckling, she twisted her neck to look

at him. He settled comfortably on the back of her. She humph-ed. He was much heavier
than he appeared.

“Took care of that, did you?”
“Why not? I was thinking of you, if that’s what you’re wondering about.”
“See? You daydream too.”
“That’s not daydreaming.”
Brioni yawned. Her muscles ached, her pussy felt nice and slick. A perfect world.

“What time is it?”

He leaned to the side to retrieve her watch, had to turn it over a few times before he

found the right way up. “That thing’s more for show than anything. It’s three-oh-five.”

“There’s nothing wrong with having a watch that’s—”
The comms panel above the headboard had just lit up in shades of blue and aqua. A

text-only message that flashed across the tiny screen read Forwarded from Asia.
Solomon—New GAN chancellor elected, not pro-lycan, Purple-Hair to work on attached files
from Vonatos. Old man died.

The last line hit Brioni the hardest. She’d fully expected Yoshizumi to die from the

massive amount of poison he’d taken. Yet the simple words Old man died impacted her.
She threw a surreptitious glance at Haruto, who only frowned as he sat on the edge of
the bed.

“He’s calling you Purple-Hair?”
“I’m sure it’s a term of endearment. That old man, it’s Yoshizumi.”
Haruto shrugged with one shoulder. “I don’t care. He was never anything but a

hated face to me.”

She almost told him. Came that close to revealing the man’s identity and his link to

Haruto but stopped herself. Her lover didn’t need to know. Not now. Not ever. She’d
decided to be the guardian of that painful information and she’d do her job. If there
came a time when she thought Haruto wanted to know more about his genetic
background, then, maybe, she’d tell him. But for now, she intended to make sure
nothing and no one—not even from beyond the grave—could hurt him. He’d suffered
enough.

Brioni knelt behind him to rub his shoulders. He hadn’t even sweated and she was

still panting. “Solomon was talking about scrambling his lycan team once again. If this
new chancellor is anything like Vonatos senior, then we’re in for a lot of trouble. Did
you watch the news last night?”

He rolled his shoulders and let his head loll on his chest when she rubbed a

particular spot between his shoulder blades. “No.”

“On the UniOne channel, they had different anchorpersons, came up with some

half-baked story about the others retiring and whatnot. You should’ve seen their cover

130

Animal

of what happened with Minister Deng. Not good, Haruto. Not good at all. I think
something’s going on behind closed doors.”

“Something always is. Keep rubbing that spot, mmm.”
Brioni smiled to herself, despite the dire turn of events. There’d be plenty of time

for trouble later on. Right now was for Haruto and her.

“Where were we?” she whispered in his ear, kissed the shell.
Haruto turned too fast for her to even yelp. He grabbed her by an arm,

overbalanced her so she landed on his lap facing up. Hungry and demanding, his
mouth landed on hers and stole her breath away. He sucked the pendant into his
mouth, held it there in his teeth then dropped it.

He pulled back. The smirk broke all records on the Wicked Scale. “I think we were

at the point where I fuck you senseless.”

“Oy! My virgin ears!” she laughed, hands clamped to ears.
“There won’t be a single virgin anything when I’m done with you.”
She bounced her eyebrows. “Bring it on.”

131

Nathalie Gray

Author Note

When the character Yoshizumi makes his last stand in the control room, he quotes a

short poem from Imperial Japanese Army general and samurai from a long line of
samurais Kuribayashi Tadamichi.

Foe unvanquished, I will not perish in the field
I will be born again to take up the halberd seven more times

132

About the Author

I am a mother, spouse, older sister, writer, ex-soldier, high school drop-out, dog

owner (or dog owned), half couch potato/half intermittent jogger, wannabe renovator
and avid reader who watches too much television, sinks too much money in clothes,
likes animals more than humans, recycles, wore braces, never downloads copyrighted
stuff, was a nerd without the grades, has a belly laugh that turns heads in theaters, can’t
stand bullying, is mother hawk more than mother hen, votes even if candidates aren’t
that great and thinks formal education is highly overrated (probably because she has
none).

Nathalie welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and e-mail

address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.

Tell Us What You Think

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Also by Nathalie Gray

Bain’s Wolf
DamNATION
Demo Derby
Femme Metal 1: Femme Metal
Femme Metal 2: Hot Target
Femme Metal 3: Cold Fusion
Gladius
Immortalis
Intergalactic Nick
Lycan Warriors 1: Feral
Lycan Warriors 2: Primal
Lycan Warriors 3: Carnal
Mechanical Rose
Shades of Silver
Sinful
Tease
The Hussies: Cassiopeia
Thrill of the Hunt
Timely Defense
Whispering
Wolfsbane

Discover for yourself why readers can’t get enough of the multiple award-winning

publisher Ellora’s Cave. Whether you prefer e-books or paperbacks, be sure to visit EC
on the web at www.ellorascave.com for an erotic reading experience that will leave you
breathless.

www.ellorascave.com