The truck tore through the welded cars and was gone—metal shrieking, sparks fountaining, the bridge rattling itself awake under all that weight.

For a heartbeat there was only the echo of it and the tick of hot steel cooling.

Sera stood where she’d stepped out, Luci tight to her knee. The wind licked her hair, sending it dancing all around her. She was still barefoot, still in the same white dress that she had been in when she was in the lab.

It was still covered in dried blood that not a single person had asked her about.

Fuel stung the air; someone’s chain clinked against a boot. The riders who’d been jeering a blink ago went quiet the way men do when the script slips out of their hands.

On the far side of the blockade, the truck fishtailed, straightened, and thundered down the span.

She didn’t watch it long. She didn’t need to. They would circle and she would meet them. That was the shape of things.

"Did he just leave her?" a rider barked, incredulous under his skull mask.

Another laughed too loud. "Then she’s a gift."

Luci’s lips peeled back, the sound rolling out of him low and certain. It was not the bark of a dog—it was a promise from something with a jaw built for breaking bone.

Sera set her palm on Luci’s ruff for one breath.

Her mouth tilted up in a slight smile.

She could almost hear Lachlan in the truck, swearing at Zubair for flooring it.

She could almost hear Zubair not answering. He had understood exactly what she needed before she did.

He already catalogued her hunger as being something more.

And he was providing her with exactly what she needed.

Such a sweet man.

She had been eating food. Bread, stew, the decent things the cartel men passed around a fire.

It had kept her upright, but it had not filled her.

The lab had taught her what did.

But ever since that night...the ache had never gone away.

Apparently, Zubair had seen it.

And now, he was handing her a table.

"Come on, pretty thing!" a rider crowed, stepping in with a chain like a leash. "We’ll teach you how to heel."

Luci moved first, not to kill but to remind the man what a safe distance truly was.

A single lunge slammed him back into the door of his own wrecked car, the chain clattering from his hand.

The man tried to yank it up again—saw his mistake too late.

Teeth closed around his forearm, iron-hard, and the chain never belonged to him again.

The others surged to fill the space with laughter and boots and noise.

Noise helped men be brave. They should have kept it.

Noise covered the sound of her feet leaving the asphalt and then coming back, weight placed clean, the hops and slips that made closing a dozen yards feel like crossing a room.

Noise kept them from noticing how Luci took the second man low while she reached the third at chest height.

Sera’s fingers sank into leather and fabric.

The creature inside her uncoiled and came to the surface like something finally allowed to breathe.

She did not think of cages. She did not weigh mercy. She lifted, turned, felt a spine complain against a car hood.

Warmth rushed her wrists. The man’s mouth opened under his mask; whatever he meant to say never came out.

Her teeth found the soft place where pulse lived.

Arterial spray came hot and sweet, a shock and then not.

The taste rolled through her like a door opening into a bright room. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

Her jaw worked as she clamped down even harder and ripped the flesh clean from his throat.

Chewing slowly, she took in a deep breath... and the creature purred.

The ache that had constantly reminded her of its presence went quiet all at once, like an animal settling on the right spot of a blanket.

The riders went very still.

It was not the kill that frightened them; men in this world saw death as often as dust.

It was the way she did not stop when death arrived. It was the way she bit and tore again.

It was the way she hummed low in her throat, pleased with herself and the taste and the way Luci’s tail thumped against her calf in joy.

"Jesus," someone breathed, the word falling out of their mask like a mistake. "She’s—"

Another voice cut across him, thin with panic. "Zombie!"

The one at her feet kicked weakly; she finished what she’d started and set him down.

The next came at her with a pipe. He’d decided the answer was more noise, more speed, more mass.

It was a decent decision.

She rewarded it by stepping inside the arc and taking his wrist in her hand.

She felt the small bones roll.

She took his throat with her teeth and solved the problem thoroughly.

Luci dragged the chain-man across the asphalt by the forearm and put a paw on his chest when he tried to rise.

His jaws worked with a wet saw sound.

When the forearm came free, he tossed his head once like a pup with a rope and settled into the chew, eyes half-closed, blissed-out and ridiculous. Blood painted his muzzle a joyous red.

Around them, the masks had stopped jeering.

The engines thundered and idled, like animals waiting for their orders, but the men were engaged in the more ancient work of deciding between fight and flight.

Their advantage changed with each heartbeat.

And Sera slowed down just enough so that they realized just how fucked they were.

"You wanted tribute," Sera said, swallowing the chunk of flesh in her mouth. Her voice came out amused, almost conversational. "You asked for the girl. Here I am. Take me."

She opened her hands.

The closest rider stumbled back without meaning to. His boot caught, his weight went wrong, and he saw himself dying in the split second before he saved it.

He knew what she was now, and the knowledge made his mask too heavy to wear.

"This is wrong," someone hissed. "This is wrong."

"Shut up," their leader snapped from behind the cars. He had not moved since the truck slammed through. He was counting bodies now, his and hers, measuring whether rage was cheaper than reason.

She met his gaze through his grease-painted teeth and laughed. Not cruel. Not theatrical. Pleased. Free.

Laughter that said: you built a world where appetite rules the road and then you forgot appetite eats both ways.

Bullets came then—because when men cannot solve a thing with courage they try to solve it with metal.

The first pinged against a fender, the second sparked harmlessly off a spike.

The third would have been messy; Luci stepped through it and someone screamed about their hand.