Zubair awoke to the overwhelming sense of wrongness.

He had fallen asleep with Sera in his arms, and now, there was nothing.

Not her scent, not her touch, nothing.

Instead, he was greeted by the cold floor of his cage under his palms. Plexiglass in his peripheral vision. A ceiling light humming overhead like it had swallowed the sun and choked on it.

Withing seconds, he was on his feet before the rest of the room existed to him.

He turned once, twice, mapping everything around him.

The others were here, too. He caught the outlines of his men through the see through walls. Alexei was on one side, Lachlan directly across a narrow hallway, Elias was sitting too still in the far cell with his hands braced against his knees.

None of them spoke.

None of them needed to.

But as much as he would have been willing to die with any of these men before, right now, he didn’t want to see them. He wanted to see Sera, and she wasn’t here.

Zubair moved to the door, slow enough to make the cameras in the corners whir softly as they followed his movement.

He hoped that maybe she was in a cell that he couldn’t see. But she wasn’t.

The air in his chest locked down, pressure building sharp and tight until his hands flexed without his permission.

The walls didn’t care.

The lights didn’t care.

The others didn’t help.

Something inside him buckled, then snapped like bone under too much weight.

The first hit shook the door in its frame.

The second bent the metal hinges holding the door in place.

By the third, the cameras above his head screamed with static before going black.

Zubair didn’t make a sound. He didn’t need to. The walls were learning it for him—the language of steel meeting rage, of concrete cracking when something far too strong refused to stay where it was told.

He hit the door again.

And again.

The others stayed silent in their cells because they knew better than to speak when the creature inside him decided it was done being quiet.

The next impact left a dent big enough to allow the air from the hallway into his cage.

The lights overhead flickered once, like they knew who the real animal in the room was.

Zubair braced his hands against the twisted frame, shoulders bunching, ready to rip it off its hinges with or without permission. He was done playing nice.

The words from Dr. Orhan echoing in his ears, her voice taunting both him and his creature. It reminded them of her promise of what would happen if he didn’t fuck Sera in front of her.

Knowing that she was cruel enough to keep her promise. He doubled down until the door to the cage crumbled at his feet.

------

Sera woke to heat.

Not the warmth that she fell asleep to. Not the safety of being in Zubair’s arms. Instead, there was a strange heat where there shouldn’t be any.

A hand lay low on her hip under the blanket, stroking in a slow curve, tracing her body like it owned her. But the hand didn’t belong to Zubair. It had some of the same calluses, but the feeling of it was wrong. The scent flooding her system was wrong.

The first thought wasn’t confusion. It was calculation.

The second was violence.

Her eyes opened into the same room as before—same walls, same bed, same blanket, same light overhead. But the weight behind her was wrong, the angle of the arm across her waist unfamiliar.

The smell hit her next: sweat, sour nerves, the chemical sting of someone who belonged to the labs, not to her.

The hand slid lower, moving to her thighs, its fingers trying to find a place that no one has ever touched.

Sera rolled in one motion that wasn’t human, the blanket tangling around her legs as she turned fast enough to make the man startle back.

But it wasn’t far enough. Not nearly far enough.

Her hand locked around his wrist before he cleared her reach. Bone ground under her grip, as he screamed, the sharp angle of the bone collapsing with one twist that left the joint pointing the wrong direction.

There was a moment of silence where the man’s body tried to process what had happened. Then he screamed again. And this time, he didn’t stop.

However, Sera wasn’t that forgiving.

She followed him off the bed as he stumbled, her weight slamming him to the floor. Her fingers hooked his jaw, her thumb digging under his tongue as her other hand tore across his throat.

The first spray of blood hit the walls of the cell, the bed, the sheets.

The second hit her face, bathing her in the heat of his life’s force.

He gurgled under her onslaught, the sound wet and useless as he valiantly tried to fight her off.

But she was too far gone.

Sera’s grip ripped through cartilage of his neck, right at his Adam’s apple, then she punctured his windpipe, finally cutting of his screams. Her hand came back red to the wrist as she withdrew it before she drove it forward again, harder this time, until all she could see was red.

The man kicked out once... twice.

Then he stopped kicking entirely.

But Sera didn’t.

Something inside her had found the line between exhaustion and fury, between human and monster, and decided to live there now.

She moved away from his neck and tore into his chest, opening it under her hands until his ribs gave way like thin wood.

When his heart reminded her that it was still beating, she went after all the other organs inside. They came apart in pieces she didn’t bother naming.

The door behind her slammed open.

Guards shouted and the sound of the safeties being taking off clicked around her.

Sera turned, slow and slick with blood, her hair stuck to her cheek where blood and fat and muscles turned to glue. Her eyes flat and black as a pit, as she smile with a mouth that was no longer human.

She held up the man’s arm in one hand like it was a turkey wing, digging into it and pulling a mouthful of meat off it.

The creature inside of her hummed, happy to once again be fed. It had hated being touch by someone that didn’t belong to her... that didn’t belong to her horde. And while Sera had always refused to eat humans before this... it was content that that was no longer the case.

"Surprise," she said softly, voice steady under the alarms beginning to scream through the halls. "I bet you didn’t see that coming."

The guards didn’t move fast enough, not nearly fast enough.