Wild Seas Casino. Five floors of hotel and gaming facilities.

And another five of subterranean parking.

Gull righted himself in the gloom, struggling against bruises and the bindings around his wrists and ankles. After being dragged nine blocks, kicked down multiple vehicle ramps, then dropped into the sunken lower half of an elevator car stuck between floors, he felt like he'd gone a dozen rounds in a fight club. His utility pants, much loved for their many pockets, had rips at both knees. His knuckles, palms, and elbows burned with scrapes. His jacket and shirt were twisted around him, having been wrenched about in the lycans' search for weapons.

They'd found nothing but a short hunting blade and his Swiss army knife. The Tasers he and Ramesh had used on the female lycan lay somewhere out in the night's rain, where the other female, Stroya, had launched her attack.

Gull slumped against the back wall of the elevator. Darkness loomed, kept at bay by the stainless-steel panels enclosing him. Reflected flame rippled across brushed metal: trash fires in the underground space just above his line of vision.

In the dim light, he took in his holding cell.

Mouldering food wrappers and waste. Bloody rags. Assorted equipment and supplies, the contents of his pockets that'd been deemed harmless, lay scattered over carpet stiff with muck—dried bodily fluids, going by the smell.

He wasn't the first prisoner to have been dumped in this pit.

He turned his gaze back to the firelit, graffitied concrete above where he sat. The casino's lowest car-park level. The heart of the pack's den.

When he'd been dragged through it, he'd seen more than butchered, abandoned vehicles and the gruesome detritus of predators. Despite it being night, lycans' preferred time to hunt out in the city, numerous shaggy and human figures had shifted in the gloom beyond the smoke and burning trash. More had slouched on tatty cars seats torn from vehicles, in no hurry to leave the den. Most had snarled as he passed, many displaying embryonic fangs.

The pack was rebuilding its numbers.

Gull's breath locked in his chest at what that meant for him.

He had to get out of there.

A low growl overhead.

A dark body slunk past the half-blocked elevator entrance, eyes burning, claws clicking on car-park concrete. Patches of mange and a bad burn—recent, given lycans' ability to heal—identified the beast.

Stroya.

The mutt was guarding him with psychotic dedication, snarling at anything that got too close. Even moths and crawling insects.

Unfortunately, over the last few minutes, she'd attracted more serious challengers, some in the pack bored—or hungry. Numerous wolves had tested the lycan's short patience. One in particular, a heavy-set mutt with a healing scar across one eye, kept coming back. That second, it stood on the crumpled hood of a trashed BMW, a vantage point that allowed it to stare down into the elevator car to meet his gaze.

It licked its lips.

There was no warning; the beast flew at his lycan guard, fangs first.

Violence just exploded. Brutal, flesh-tearing savagery echoed off concrete overhead. Crashing collisions shattered the night: bodies hammering into cars—breaking glass, buckling metal.

Howls and yips joined the tumult: packmates encouraging the bloodshed.

Gull eyed his cell's now unguarded exit, but before he could do more than think about using it, two black bodies, locked together in battle, slammed into the wall just above him. Blood flew. Wild eyes wheeled. Then the lycans tumbled away again in a whirlwind of fur and teeth.

As laughter and wild howls rang out, Gull closed his eyes; fought to slow his heart.

He was so fucked. He was—

A jolt. An impact felt through the elevator floor more than heard.

Something had just dropped into his prison.

Gull snapped his eyes open—met an unblinking, glowing stare.

A female lycan in human form crouched before him, naked but for a loose shirt; a bloodstained, pinstriped anachronism from a world of spreadsheets and stock trades. Matted black hair hung lank before the creature's unsettling stare.

Nicked and scabbed lips peeled back to reveal fangs—not baby ones.

"Enjoying being fought over, puppy?" The words were a dark rasp. "Your fault for being so pretty."

Gull heard the wry humour, but saw death in the mutt's gaze. "Hungry?" he forced himself to ask, even as his soul rebelled. "I taste better than I look."

A canine snort that carried human derision. "I prefer my meat wild, and you smell fresh from the farm, though there is something to be said for cattle who feed and pen themselves." The lycan looked down his lanky frame, tongue slicking across her bottom lip, before she lifted her eyes back to his. "Got out of your pen today, though, didn't you?"

Gull clenched his bound fists. Mutts liked to call human settlements 'farms,' and given they could've destroyed most in a heartbeat, there was an uncomfortable truth to the insult. They allowed humans to build and breed, then attacked when it suited. "What do you want?"

"My teeth in your throat. Your blood on my skin. The pretty ribbons of your intestines in my hair." The lycan smiled as smashing glass—some car's windshield—sounded behind her, the battle in the car park full swing. "Stroya might have sweeter plans for your stringy hide, but don't expect her to rush back to nibble your toes. Banshee's happy to keep the bitch busy while we talk."

Gull forced bile back down his throat. "You engineered the fight."

A shrug of a pinstriped shoulder. "Encouraged. Stroya isn't the only one who likes your hair. Such a pretty colour."

"I'd be happy to shave it off."

Amused lycan eyes gleamed. "Banshee wants it in her pelt collection, and she's the better fighter. But Stroya is motivated. Desperately wants a new playmate after accidentally gutting her last. She stalked you for days, when she should've just killed you." A filthy brow lifted. "But she hasn't been the only one playing hunting games, has she, Red? What have those delectable, chewy green eyes of yours been watching this last week? Anything interesting?"

Gull's stomach slithered away. He knew who this lycan was—and why the gleam in her gaze promised violence more personal than a mutt hunting lunch. "I'd apologise for electrocuting your flea-infested hide—what was it, five times?—but I'd do it again with a happy smile on my face."

The mutt grinned—a disturbingly human expression, despite the reflective eyes. "The alpha has claimed you as pack. I can't kill you, as much as I want to."

"Sure you can." Gull exposed his neck; tapped his jugular. "Wee nip. I'll bleed right out." Die before his genetic code had a chance to be corrupted into that of a monster.

"Let me explain what being pack means, puppy." The lycan slunk forward on all fours, feet and hands either side of his bound legs, until her stare was mere inches from his. "I can beat you for days, chew on you until you're minced meat, but the killing strike, that's for Dragon alone."

"Dragon?" Gull dislodged his vocal cords. "That's your alpha's name? Not Terry or Eugene? How delicate are your egos that you can be two-hundred kilograms of muscle and fang and still need to call each other 'Destroyer' or 'Megakiller'?"

The mutt leaned in—snapped at his ear. "You can call me Zera."

Gull eyed her, pulse hard. "I'll stick with 'Killer'." He didn't want another female lycan making nice with him. In the firelit darkness over this one's head, two wolves were taking each other apart to the howling delight of their pack.

"I smell your fear, Red." Zera inhaled, closed her night-bright eyes. "It's lovely."

"Ah, thanks?" Gull recoiled inwardly. "Your odour of piss and week-old corpse suits you also."

Teeth snapped again—a heart-stopping nip at his nose.

Snorting at his flinch, the lycan sat back on her haunches, rested her hind end on his legs. "You're going to be a fun packmate to play with."

"I'm not. I'll never be a wolf, never follow that fur ballsack you call alpha."

Curved lips pulled back from fangs. "You will."

"No chance in hell."

The lycan eyed him, expression cooling. "Puppy, it's not just your meat that will change after Destroyer sinks her fangs into you. That brash, clever wit. All those sweet, pointless instincts to protect other humans and your capacity to love them. Kiss that goodbye. This..." She ran a filthy claw down his forehead, nose, then chest to groin. "This man who swears he will never be pack will become a creature who will bleed for it, kill for it, die for it."

Gull stomach withered to black fear. He'd seen enough people—friends—get infected to know the lycan wasn't lying. Every alpha carried a unique strain of the virus, one that tied the infected to others carrying it. The first years of the Emergence had been a bloodbath as new packs competed to build their numbers and survive their rivals. Once part of a pack, a lycan was slaved to it.

Holding the lycan's pitiless gaze, Gull vowed he'd die before that would happen to him. "Do you remember who you were?"

Another careless shrug. "She was a killer too, but used knives and guns, not teeth. She fought well, spilled blood. Killed three of the pack before she was put down, and two had to pin her so Dragon could bite her." Reflective eyes dimmed as the lycan cocked her head, gaze turning inward to the past. "I think she liked violets and apples."

Pity, the barest tang, worked Gull's throat. "Did losing her hurt?" He'd seen the start of the Change. It made horror movies look like children's programming.

Lashes flicked up over a slow, wide smile. "Every second is agony. Every ligament in your body stretches to breaking point, and the marrow of your bones turns to liquid fire. You'll hear your own jaw break, feel your eyeballs boil, and your soul dies slowly over days as madness remakes you."

"Glad I asked."

"And I have answered, good packmate that I am." Zera ran a claw down his stubbled cheek to the pulse point at his throat. "Time for my questions." She dug the claw in, eyes slicing straight to feral. "What poison did you inject into me, human?"

Gull breathed past fear to accept the death the mutt's gaze promised. It would be the best outcome for everyone. "Dewormer, like I told the tattooed a-hole you let boss you around. Or is that 'kick' you around? You weren't in a hurry to limp back to him from what I saw."

"Dragon likes to train and mentor those he personally remade—harden us. Our strength reflects on his."

"And do you feel stronger for being regularly beaten or just more psychotic?"

"You'll find out if you don't quit stalling—and lying." The lycan changed her hold; gripped his throat so multiple claws pricked flesh. "You tailed me, watching and scheming. You were playing hunter, not veterinarian. What was your intent? Death? Debilitation? Suicide?"

"You know what I don't get? If your packmate Stroya was also doing some stalking, why didn't she warn you that you were being tracked? Is that what pack loyalty looks like?"

Zera's eyes burned. "She said nothing because she knew I'd rip that long spine out of your body, and she wants this—" claws raked down over his chest "—for her games."

"I don't plan to play."

"Defiant pup." A smile that was all teeth. "Good. More fun for her."

Gull tried, and failed, to swallow. "And what exactly is her chosen game? Frisbee? Fetch?"

Matted hair swung as Zera looked over her shoulder. "You're about to find out." The commotion above changed from crashing and snarling to triumphant howls and multiple skittering claws on concrete. "Dragon has returned with what is needed for your rebirth."

A scream sounded—human. And was brutally cut off.

"That'll be lunch." Zera turned and snapped teeth at Gull. "Eat up, pup. You're going to need your strength."

Gull felt nausea surge. "No."

"Yes." Zera nipped his lip. "You'll have no choice." She backed away, eyes bright. "Goodbye, Red. Was nice meeting you. When we next speak, you'll be calling yourself Butcher or Hellfang."

Gull's heart boomed as the lycan retreated. "Just kill me."

"You didn't tell me what I wanted to know." She leapt up into the car park; shot him a sly glance. "So, I'll wait and ask Hellfang when he arrives."

Then she was gone.

With a bang and a crash, a body tumbled into the elevator. The corpse of a middle-aged woman, her jugular torn, her ragged clothes glistening black with gore.

A snarling wolf followed her down, its body a ruin of mangy, burnt, and torn flesh.

Stroya.

Gull's pulse roared as bloody fangs dropped open—lunged.

Howls sounded—multiple frantic calls. A disturbance higher up in the den.