The water shifted around them.

Sera stilled beside him, her body angled like a blade ready to cut any direction. Lachlan felt it too—not sound, not sight, but pressure. A heaviness that pressed into his chest as surely as a hand.

The current paused, then reversed. That wasn’t right. Currents moved like rivers; they didn’t stop and breathe.

Something big had changed the water.

The creature inside him rumbled in warning, the same way thunder warns the earth before lightning ever shows itself.

Turn. Now.

He turned, heart hammering, lungs filling with water-air that no longer felt strange.

The black wasn’t empty anymore. It had a shape, and the shape was coming for them.

At first it was just absence—dark within dark, blotting out the faint shimmer above. Then came the flicker of white: teeth. So many teeth they blurred into a single crescent of pale lightning.

It looked like a great white shark, but it was so much bigger than he had ever swam with before.

Even the 20 footers would look like a minnow beside this thing.

Bigger than anything that had ever lived in his nightmares. Its head alone was wider than the floor they slept on in the penthouse. Its eyes were pits sunk deep into a skull designed for one thing: to feed.

The roar never reached his ears.

It came as vibration through the water, a shockwave that shoved him sideways. Sera slipped with the surge, her creature stretching her body sleek, predatory, every line of her screaming apex.

Lachlan’s brain yelled run. His blood screamed fight.

The shark, no... the megalodon... surged again. The water carried its bulk like an avalanche under glass. Its jaws opened wider, rows upon rows of serrated knives catching what little light existed here.

Sera darted left, faster than his eyes could track. The shark followed. The water seemed too small to hold both of them.

Move, pup, his creature snapped. This is no place for awe.

He moved.

He kicked once, hard, and the water gave him speed he hadn’t expected.

His body wasn’t his anymore—it was leaner, sharper, wired for the hunt.

His nails bit at the current, leaving trails like claws. His skin darkened, turning blue as his veins pulsed black under the surface. His vision burned wide, catching everything at once: the shimmer of scales from scattering fish, the flex of Sera’s shoulders as she cut past the beast’s snout, the white churn where teeth closed.

She was quick enough to dodge.

He wasn’t sure he would be.

The Meg wheeled, the arc of its turn bending the water itself.

Its tail slammed once, a wall of force that shoved Lachlan back a body’s length. He snarled bubbles and dove under, dragging himself close to the shark’s belly where the current was weaker.

Teeth up top. Soft below, his creature whispered, savage delight curling through every word. Cut it open. Spill it out. Feed.

Lachlan didn’t hesitate. He reached for the knife at his spine, pulled it free, and drove upward.

The blade met skin tougher than steel, and for a sickening heartbeat he thought it would snap. Then it slid in, shallow but real, a streak of red curling into the water like smoke.

The shark thrashed, twisting its bulk with the casual force of a collapsing building. The movement threw Lachlan sideways into the dark, tumbling end over end until his shoulder smashed against a ridge of ice. Pain flared, muted fast by the thing inside him.

He blinked through the shock. Sera was still moving, darting across the Meg’s snout, dragging it away from him. She was baiting it, pulling its focus. The shark lunged for her again, jaws snapping shut on empty water. The sound was a crack so loud he felt it in his bones.

Don’t let her carry it alone, the creature inside him snarled. You are not prey. We hunt.

He roared back—soundless underwater, but the water itself seemed to shiver with the force of it.

He dove down again. This time he went for the gills.

He jammed the knife in deep, ripping sideways. Blood surged hot against his face, metallic and thick. The shark convulsed, twisting, and the world became a storm of bubbles and black water.

The gash wasn’t enough. Not for something this size. But it was pain, and pain meant distraction.

Sera took the moment. She darted low, her claws—long, black, and too sharp to be anything but a predator—scraping along the beast’s eye. She didn’t pierce it, but she blinded its focus, turned its rush into a confused spiral.

Lachlan clung to the gill slit like a parasite, knife buried to the hilt. His chest heaved with the exertion, not the lack of breath. His lungs worked fine. His blood sang with it.

The Meg twisted again. Its body slammed him against the ice ceiling. He felt his ribs crack. He laughed through the blood in his mouth because pain no longer meant what it used to mean.

Sera’s hand appeared in his vision. Not reaching for him—pointing. Down. Away.

She wanted him clear.

"Not a chance, love," he snarled, the words nothing but bubbles in the black. He wrenched the knife free, planted his feet against the shark’s hide, and shoved himself deeper along its flank. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

The voice inside him howled in delight. Yes! Ride the beast! Tear it open!

He drove the blade in again, lower this time, and ripped with everything he had. Flesh parted reluctantly. Blood boiled out, clouding the world in red.

The shark bucked, tail smashing into the ice with a crack that traveled through the sheet. A web of fractures spread above them. If it broke through, the whole ocean would come pouring down.

Lachlan barely noticed. He clung and stabbed, clung and stabbed, until his knife snapped in half inside the wound.

The Meg twisted once more, whipping its body with such violence he lost his grip. He tumbled free, spinning, lungs raw with exertion. The beast’s head swung toward him, its jaws yawning wide.

Too slow. Too small.

Then Sera hit it.

She came out of the black like a spear, her body sleek, her claws extended. She raked along its eye this time, sinking in deep to the shark’s weak point.

The Meg bellowed a soundless scream, head whipping sideways, jaws snapping shut a hair from Lachlan’s legs.

He didn’t waste the moment. His creature guided him with savage clarity: climb its back, go for the spine, dig until nothing moves.

He obeyed.

He kicked hard, using the current to drive himself up and over. His hands found ridges of scarred flesh. His broken knife was useless, so he used claws that the human side of his brain had convinced him that he didn’t have.

Black nails, long and sharp, bit into the hide like hooks.

He clung to the Meg’s back as it writhed. He didn’t think about falling. He thought about tearing.

Sera circled below, her black eyes glowing faint in the red cloud. She wasn’t smiling, but she didn’t look afraid either. She watched him with the stillness of a commander letting someone prove themselves.

The Meg rolled, thrashing. Lachlan raked his claws deeper, pulled until strips of flesh came loose. The water boiled with gore. His teeth hurt with the vibration of its roar.

Finally, the shark twisted away. Not dead. Not defeated. But hurt. It vanished into the dark with a sweep of its massive tail, the red cloud marking its retreat.

Lachlan floated, chest heaving with something that wasn’t breath, claws dripping black in the water.

The creature inside him purred, almost smug. Told you. We do not drown. We do not run. We fight.

He laughed, the sound rolling out in a trail of bubbles. Sera swam close, placed a hand against his chest the same way she had before, and looked at him with those endless black eyes.

Approval. That was what it felt like.

He bared his teeth back at her, grinning wide enough to split his face. For once, there was no hesitation. He knew what he was.

Not prey.

Never prey.