Lara woke to the familiar discomfort of a full bladder and the lingering exhaustion of the workweek, padding through an apartment that felt far too quiet.
Still dressed from her shift, she shrugged off her office clothes and tied a robe around her shoulders, already thinking about coffee and the fact that Yve was likely out doing something unnecessarily helpful.
A faint footstep drifted from the hall, prompting an easy sigh as she called out toward the corridor.
“Told you, Yve.
I’d be the one cooking every Saturday…”
The words died the instant she pulled open the bedroom door.
For a breathless heartbeat, Lara stared into the face of a nightmare before recognition struck, tearing a raw scream from her throat.
She slammed the wood shut and threw the lock into place just as a massive impact crashed against the opposite side, making the entire frame shudder.
“Lara!”
Mark snarled from the hall, hurling his weight into another brutal blow.
Panic seized her as she scrambled to drag the heavy desk across the floor, but it barely moved against the rug.
Another impact shook the door.
Then another.
The hinges groaned.
A deafening crack split the air before the door burst inward.
Lara stumbled backward.
Mark charged through the threshold and seized her by the arm before she could escape.
He yanked her toward him and struck her across the face.
Lara cried out and staggered sideways.
He hit her again.
She raised her arms to protect herself, but Mark grabbed her wrist and twisted it behind her back before driving her into the wall.
“You’re gonna pay for what you did!”
Lara tried to scream, but another strike caught her across the jaw.
She fell to the floor.
Mark kicked her in the ribs.
Once.
Then again.
Lara curled inward, desperately shielding her head as another kick struck her side.
“Stop!”
She tried to crawl away.
Mark caught her ankle and dragged her back.
He hauled her upright by the robe and slammed her against the wall hard enough to knock the air from her lungs.
Before she could recover, he grabbed the back of her head and drove it into the wall.
Once.
Twice.
Lara’s vision blurred.
Mark struck her again, and her legs buckled beneath her.
She collapsed onto the carpet.
He stood over her, shouting insults as weeks of festering bitterness spilled out in venomous bursts.
“You think you can ruin my life and walk away?”
Mark kicked her stomach.
Air vanished from her lungs.
Lara doubled over, clutching herself as tears streamed down her face.
She tried to crawl toward the door, but Mark grabbed her by the hair and jerked her backward.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
He slapped her across the face.
Then again.
Lara’s cheek burned.
She raised an arm to protect herself, but Mark seized it and slammed her back onto the floor, his grip tightening around her throat as darkness began to creep in at the edges of her sight.
Lara’s fingers immediately clawed at his wrists, fighting with every ounce of remaining strength as she kicked and scratched at his arms.
Nothing worked against the sheer weight of his attack, his grip only tightening as her lungs screamed for air and her vision began tunneling into darkness, the room dissolving into a distant blur.
Then a furious voice cut through the haze.
“NO!”
The pressure vanished.
Mark was ripped away from her before he even had time to react, caught by a force that hurled him entirely across the room.
His body slammed into the kitchen counter with enough concussive impact to rattle the dishes and shake the floorboards beneath him.
Lara collapsed onto the carpet, gagging and coughing violently as burning oxygen flooded her starved lungs.
Yve stood between them.
For a horrifying fraction of a second, Lara barely recognized her.
The gentle warmth that always defined her friend had vanished entirely, replaced by something ancient and predatory.
She crossed the remaining distance in a blur, one hand shooting out to seize Mark by the throat and hoist him off the ground with terrifying ease.
Mark struggled wildly in her iron grip, gagging and clawing frantically at her wrist, but Yve did not move an inch.
Her gaze swept across the ruined apartment, taking in the splintered furniture, and the ugly bruises blooming across Lara’s face and neck.
Something inside Yve snapped.
The last traces of human restraint dissolved into a cold, lethal void.
Mark thrashed wildly beneath Yve’s crushing grip, his hand blindly sweeping across the kitchen counter until his fingers wrapped around the handle of a utility knife.
With a desperate grunt, he lashed upward, the blade slicing deep across Yve’s cheek before driving straight down toward her collarbone.
Yet the wound did not slow her.
If anything, the sight of her own blood only fed whatever ancient fury had just awakened inside her.
Her pupils narrowed into thin, predatory slits as shimmering emerald scales began spreading across her skin, crawling over her cheeks, down her neck, and across her arms to catch the light like polished armor.
Razor-sharp fins unfolded along her forearms while her teeth lengthened into unmistakable fangs.
Mark barely had time to register the terrifying transformation before Yve grabbed him by the collar and hurled him violently across the apartment.
Crawling backward in a blind panic, he gagged and dragged himself across the floor.
He looked up.
Yve stood watching him, the soft-spoken, unnervingly gentle woman entirely gone.
In her place stood a creature covered in emerald scales, with fins extending from her arms and fingers ending in lethal claws.
Her lips pulled back in a feral snarl, revealing a mouth full of fangs while her narrow eyes remained fixed on him without a trace of hesitation.
Mark’s breathing grew ragged.
He tried to speak, but nothing came out except a strangled cough.
Yve took a measured step toward him, and Mark scrambled backward until his spine struck the living room wall.
There was nowhere left to run.
Her expression remained utterly devoid of mercy before she lashed out with a brutal kick.
Mark flew backward, crashing straight through Dylan’s bedroom door as the wood tore off its frame and splintered across the floorboards.
He rolled through the ruined doorway, landing hard as he clawed frantically at the floor to pull himself upright.
He glanced back through the wreckage.
Yve stood in the center of the demolished apartment.
The television lay overturned, the furniture was smashed, shattered glass coated the floor, and the bedroom door hung broken from its hinges.
In the middle of it all stood the entity that had been hiding beneath a human facade.
Mark stared at her, his face draining of all color.
Yve tilted her head, her eyes locked onto his with chilling precision.
By the time Yve’s clawed fingers hovered mere inches from his windpipe, he had stopped fighting.
He was simply trying to survive.
Barely.
Lara did not know where the strength came from.
Every part of her battered body screamed in agony, her lungs still burning for oxygen, while blackness tugged relentlessly at the edges of her sight.
Yet somehow, she dragged herself forward and reached out for Yve anyway.
Yve whipped around.
For a terrifying heartbeat, Lara found herself staring straight into the eyes of a nightmare.
“Don’t…” The plea scraped past her raw throat like glass.
“Please…”
The darkness rushed in, swallowing her whole before she could say another word.
The change in Yve was instantaneous.
The feral violence did not vanish entirely, but the cold, lethal void softened, replaced by a sudden, grounding anchor as the human girl in her arms slipped into unconsciousness.
For a long moment, Yve simply stood motionless amid the wreckage, her fists clenched so hard her knuckles turned white.
Across the bedroom, Mark wheezed and struggled to draw a breath through blood and broken teeth, every agonizing twitch of his body looking like an effort.
Yve tore her gaze away from him.
Lara came first.
Dropping to her knees beside her friend, she searched frantically for a pulse, pressing trembling fingers against Lara’s neck.
The faint, shallow rise and fall of Lara’s chest reached her a fraction of a second before raw panic could consume her.
Alive.
Thank the tides.
Only once she knew Lara was breathing did Yve allow her attention to drift back to Mark.
The heavy cord tucked beneath the kitchen sink was easy enough to find.
Mark saw the look in her eyes and scrambled backward, absolute terror contorting his face.
It did not matter.
The first raw scream tore from his throat the moment Yve caught him by the wrist.
Bone gave way beneath her tightening grip with a sickening crack, and Yve did not even blink.
The shriek dissolved into a wet, breathless sob as she caught his ankle next.
Another crack echoed through the apartment, louder this time, as his leg bent at an unnatural, shattered angle.
Mark doubled over, clutching at the ruined limb while choking on his own tears and desperate pleas.
~~~
The ride to the hospital felt entirely endless.
Yve barely retained any memory of the journey itself, a dizzying blur of sirens, blurred streetlights, and frantic coordination.
One moment she was carrying an unconscious Lara out of the shattered apartment, and the next she was sitting beneath harsh, buzzing fluorescent lights, staring blindly at the closed swinging doors of the emergency room that had swallowed her friend.
Blood still stained her hands.
Every time Yve squeezed her eyes shut, she was hurled back into the living room.
She saw the ugly purple bruises marring that fragile throat.
She saw the terror in Lara’s eyes.
And above all, she heard the weak, desperate plea whispered right before the darkness took her.
Don’t…
please…
Yve pressed her bloodstained palms together, forcing her trembling lungs to draw breath.
The feral fury had not dissipated.
It still simmered just beneath her skin, heavy and demanding, hissing for her to march back to the apartment and finish what she had started.
Instead, she pulled her phone from her pocket with shaking fingers and dialed Darnell’s direct line.
He answered almost immediately.
“Yve.”
The single, calm word was all it took.
The fragile composure she had been desperately clinging to fractured completely.
She told him everything, the words spilled out in a jagged, breathless rush.
By the end of it, her voice sounded hollow and scraped raw.
Silence answered her through the speaker.
She could hear the steady sound of his breathing on the other end, agonizingly slow, controlled, and deliberately reined in.
“Is Lara alive?”
“Yes.”
Another heavy silence stretched across the line, and Yve knew that specific silence very well.
Then Darnell dropped the call.
~~~
Midnight had long since come and gone by the time Dylan finally returned to the building, but the heavy fatigue of the long day vanished the instant he reached the fourth-floor landing.
Something was wrong.
The splintered wood around the front door caught his attention immediately, the deadbolt sheared straight through.
For a second, he stood frozen in the dim hallway before his stomach plummeted into freefall.
The apartment beyond was a disaster zone.
Shattered glass coated the linoleum.
The coffee table had been reduced to a pile of kindling.
At the kitchen area lay a utility knife, its blade caked in dark red.
Dylan’s pulse slammed against his ribs.
“Yve?”
No answer.
He tore through the rooms anyway.
The bedrooms were a shambles, the bathroom was empty, and there was no trace of Lara or Yve.
The heavy, stagnant silence in the ruined rooms felt entirely wrong.
His hands were already shaking as he yanked his phone from his pocket and punched in Yve’s number.
The line connected after a few agonizing rings.
“Dylan…”
The sound of her voice hit him harder than the blood on the floor.
Yve sounded shattered, teetering somewhere between a choked sob and a whisper.
“Yve, are ya okay?” he asked, his voice dropping into a rough, urgent edge.
The only response was the wet, ragged sound of her trying and failing to hold herself together.
Dylan did not wait for explanations.
He pulled up her tracker, his breath catching in his throat when he saw the destination.
Hospital.
The ride there dissolved into a blur of blinding streetlights, screaming engines, and the freezing night air rushing past his jacket.
He kept the line open the entire time.
Yve barely spoke.
Sometimes he heard quiet, shuddering breaths, sometimes the faint tremor of a sob, and sometimes total, suffocating silence.
That silence was worse.
By the time the emergency entrance came into view, Dylan was already cutting the throttle.
He dropped the motorcycle right by the curb, leaving it abandoned where it fell.
“Yve,” he muttered, bursting through the sliding glass doors.
Nurses tried to block his path, firing questions and demanding names, but Dylan brushed past them with a dark, frantic intensity.
Seconds stretched into hours until someone finally pointed a hand down the corridor toward the trauma ward.
Dylan took off.
He found her sitting alone on a plastic chair beneath the harsh, buzzing fluorescent lights.
The sight of her struck him almost as hard as the ruined apartment had.
Her shoulders trembled violently, her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, and she looked smaller than he had ever seen her.
“Yve.”
She looked up at his voice.
The flash of relief on her face lasted only a second before fresh tears spilled over her lashes.
Dylan dropped immediately into a crouch in front of her, his hands hovering uncertainly before resting on her arms.
“Lara?”
Yve flicked her chin toward the swinging double doors.
they’re treating her.”
Her voice cracked completely.
Dylan gave a single, hard nod.
Alive.
Thank God.
Only then did he really look at her, taking in the state she was in.
“Are ya hurt?”
She did not answer, staring blankly at the floor.
The realization hit a second later.
Blood.
Dark streaks stained the fabric of her blouse, far too much of it to belong to anyone else.
His gaze snapped upward, tracking the damage.
A jagged, angry cut was carved across her cheek, still raw beneath the hospital lights, while more blood soaked into the fabric near her upper chest.
Dylan felt the color drain straight out of his face.
“Jesus…” He was on his feet before the word had even left his mouth.
“Nurse!”
The harsh shout echoed down the quiet corridor, panic surging through his veins all over again.
Mark’s eyes fluttered open to the sight of moonlit water stretching endlessly beyond a massive wall of glass.
For several disorienting seconds, he simply stared, struggling to piece together where he was and why breathing no longer felt like a knife twisting through his ribs.
A man stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows with his back turned, one hand loosely holding a wine glass as he looked out across the ocean.
The room itself was elegant, quiet, and impossibly expensive, nothing about it resembling a prison, yet the heavy steel restraints digging into his wrists told a very different story.
The man turned around.
Recognition did not come immediately, but the sheer, crushing authority in his posture was unmistakable.
He set the glass down on the mahogany desk and regarded Mark with the calm, detached attention one might give an insect trapped beneath a jar.
Nearby, Victor stood quietly to one side, hands clasped behind his back, saying nothing.
“Who are you people?” Mark rasped, his voice rough and strained.
He tugged violently against the restraints, earning nothing for his effort except a fresh flare of pain.
Darnell studied him for a long, quiet moment before speaking.
“Lara’s alive.”
The name ripped straight through Mark’s confusion.
Darnell caught the flicker of realization and continued with chilling composure.
“Be grateful she’s alive.
If she wasn’t, neither would you be.”
A cold knot formed in Mark’s stomach.
“How do you know her?
Who the hell are you?
Let me go.
You know this is illegal, right?
You can’t just abduct people.”
To his absolute shock, Darnell laughed.
It was not loud or angry, but merely amused, a dry sound that unsettled Mark far more than shouting ever could.
“I don’t personally know Lara,” Darnell said, stepping down from the raised dais of his office.
“But she’s someone Yve cherishes.”
At the mention of Yve’s name, Mark’s expression darkened with a mix of leftover terror and lingering spite.
“Yve?
Who the fuck are you people?
What’s your relationship to them?
This is bullshit.
I didn’t do anything.”
The denial had barely cleared his teeth before pain exploded across his face.
The force of the blow tipped Mark’s chair violently sideways, sending him crashing hard onto the polished floor with a sickening thud.
Blood flooded his mouth, metallic and hot.
Through ringing ears, he vaguely registered Victor stepping forward to haul him upright and reset the chair.
Darnell leaned in front of him, closing the distance until Mark could see the terrifying, absolute absence of warmth in his eyes.
“Didn’t do anything?”
The question was spoken at a low, measured volume.
Somehow, that made it infinitely worse.
“Do you know something interesting?” Darnell regarded him for a long, quiet moment before continuing.
“I’ve spent a very long time imagining different ways to kill you.
But for people like you…” A faint, humorless smile touched his lips.
“Death isn’t a punishment.
It’s a gift.”
Mark froze.
The blood drained from his face as Darnell’s eyes had suddenly changed.
The pupils narrowed into thin, jagged slits, gleaming with a cold, predatory light that was entirely inhuman.
In that instant, the memory of Yve no longer felt like a fever dream born from adrenaline and pain.
The emerald scales, the razor-sharp fins, the fangs.
Every terrifying second of it had been completely, horrifyingly real.
“No…” Mark whispered, his voice trembling.
Darnell’s smile never reached his eyes.
“And I’m not exactly munificent toward people like you.”
Terror struck Mark with full force, washing away any lingering defiance.
Questions flooded his mind, but none of them mattered anymore.
Not who these people were, not what Yve actually was, not how any of this was possible.
Because as he stared into Darnell’s altered gaze, he finally understood a singular, crushing truth.
The predator standing before him had already decided his fate.
Darnell regarded Mark for a few seconds longer before straightening his posture.
He merely offered a brief glance toward Victor before returning his attention to the vast, dark ocean beyond the glass.
That was all it took.
Victor’s hand drifted to the sleek communications device on his wrist, his voice dropping to a low murmur as he relayed a short instruction.
Within moments, five heavy-set men stepped into the office, their expressions carved from stone.
The change in Mark was immediate, whatever leftover bravado he possessed dissolving into naked panic as they hauled him up from the chair.
His protests escalated into wild shouting, then shrill screaming, frantic curses spilling from his mouth as he twisted and kicked against their iron grip.
None of it mattered.
The men dragged him toward the exit while his desperate shrieks echoed off the walls.
Darnell simply stood at the window, watching the moonlit waves roll endlessly toward the shore.
By the time silence settled back over the room, only Darnell and Victor remained.
“Tomorrow, prepare for Ysa’s arrival,” Darnell said, his voice carrying the same calm, chilling composure as before.
“And send some flowers to Lara.”
For the first time that night, something softened briefly in his hard expression.
“She’s had enough trouble already.”
Victor inclined his head.
“Of course, sir.”
Darnell’s gaze lingered on the dark water beyond the glass.
The words were simple, almost casual, yet Victor knew him well enough to understand what lay beneath them.
The President always sought the deep sea when the violent storms within his mind threatened to break his absolute control.
Without another word, Victor excused himself and left the office, closing the heavy door behind him.