"Tell me about your symptoms." Gull willed his pulse to steady, his hands clenching on the tender's stern seat. If his mother's work had produced a serum able to stop lycans taking their more aggressive form, he had to learn everything he could about its effects; his mother wouldn't be interviewing her test subject herself. Humanity's fate might be on the line, but his family's lives wouldn't be, and autopsies could only show so much.

The second he got close enough to the Colony, he'd signal a watchtower sniper.

Imaging a large-calibre round turning Zera's head into red mist, Gull flinched, then hardened himself. To take down one of the Changed permanently, decapitation or catastrophic brain damage was required.

Unaware of his murderous thoughts, Zera hauled on the boat's oars. "Red, I think it's you who needs to explain what's happening to my body."

He grimaced. He didn't know. He only knew what would happen.  A thorough scientific investigation. The lycan dead on a cold metal table, her organs bagged and weighed.

Gull swallowed bile. Killing Ghoul he'd managed to rationalise—just. But he knew himself too well to think that the same would apply to Zera. He'd spoken with her, been on the sharp end of her wit. With most of the blood and grime washed away and her hair slicked back from her face, she looked like someone at the end of a disastrous night out, not a predator who'd recently ripped out a packmate's throat. He had to remind himself the damp shirt clinging to her skin hadn't been borrowed from a boyfriend; it'd been taken off a dead body—possibly her last meal.

He fixed his gaze on her teeth, a visual reminder that while she'd once been a victim of misadventure, she was something else now. "That's not how the scientific method works. Perception is swayed by expectations and suggestion. If I say to expect a headache, you'll likely get one. You need to tell me what you've experienced, without me influencing your observations."

"You're assuming I give a crap about science." Zera yanked on one oar, bringing the tender around snappily. Overgrown mortar and stone stretched into the night a few feet to starboard: the retaining wall of Seabrink Park. A wild woodland challenged the border, the park's elegant, manicured tree-lined avenues no more.

Gull ducked, branches whipping overhead, dark and wet. "If you want help getting your wolf mojo back, you'll start giving a shit."

"You'll use any weakness against me."

"Completely and unapologetically." Gull eyed the moss-smothered bank as it transitioned from stone to wide concrete steps, a favourite picnic and swimming spot pre-Emergence. "But given you're stronger than me, heal fast, and own fangs, I'd say were gently tilting the playing field, not levelling it."

Zera considered him a long moment, eyes unblinking. "I know karate."

"Of course, you do, because fate hates me."

"Just remembered." Her teeth gleamed. "I'm keen to try out some moves. You look like a good practice dummy."

Gull eyed the waterside stairs as they approached too quickly. "I think we should do the talking bit before anyone's jaw gets broken, don't you?" The park's black trees loomed, saturated with the night's rain, alive with shifting shadows. Getting beaten up by Zera was only one of the threats he faced at ground level. The park's distance from the local dens didn't guarantee safety. At night, wolves roamed.

Zera stopped rowing, leaving the boat to drift in toward the shore. A couple of still functioning solar-powered path lights in the bank's weeds gave him his first good look at the lycan's face. Not friendly. Not pretty. Strong, the nose a little long, the mouth a little wide, and the eyes... Amber glinted. He imagined the colour would fit the lycan's raptor-keen stare. Even before she'd been Changed, Zera had been more warrior or huntress than model or duck-lipped influencer.

"You're staring, Red."

"And you're stalling." And so was he. He braced himself as the boat's bow jolted to a stop against the half-submerged stairs. "You said you can't change. What happens when you try?"

"Nothing."

"Try a few descriptors—some detail."

Zera rested her forearms on the tender's oars. "How about you offer some descriptors? Think real hard and try to change your body into the brainless turnip you were always meant to be. Now, tell me what you feel. Would it be 'nothing' by any fucking chance?"

Gull reluctantly got the point. "So, no tingles in the fingers? No weird buzz in your head? No partial shift?"

"Should there be a buzz in my head?" Brow arching, Zera jumped from the boat onto the stairs.

"I don't know." Gull clambered forward to the bow, silently cursing his mother—and himself for not listening more closely to her ramblings and theories. "All I've got to go on is the werewolf fiction I read as a teenager. I don't know what it feels like to change into a mangy, bloodthirsty mutt."

Zera grunted as she secured the mooring. "When Stroya tracks you down, your curiosity will be satisfied."

Gull paused as he was about to disembark; met the reflective stare aimed at him. "Don't even fucking joke."

A dark brow arched again. "Who's joking?"

Fighting back an ugly stew of emotions, Gull forced his feet out of the boat. The lycan's cavalier attitude to his future suffering confirmed the action he needed to take. He scanned the park's gloom, getting his bearings. The Colony and its watchtowers were close, maybe twenty blocks away.

He started up the stairs, taking the first steps toward a sniper's crosshairs. "What else do you feel?"

"Irritated." Snarling audibly, Zera stomped up the stairs behind him.

"What's new—"

Zera jerked him around. "That is new." Twisting a fist into his shirt, she yanked his startled gaze down to her level. "I should be feeling fucking homicidal." The flash of teeth that followed that declaration suggested nothing had actually changed there.

Gull held himself immobile, his heartbeat hard. This close to tense muscle and fangs, every inch of his body was aware of every inch of the lycan's. Gooseflesh broke out—an expected response to fear. Nerves jumped, but not all were the sane kind that screamed 'run'. Bedraggled and smelling of the river, not death, Zera seemed more woman than monster to the more stupid parts of his brain.

He blocked that uneasy thought. "So, you're what? Feeling fractionally more 'rational'?"

Zera fluttered her lashes. "Have I ripped your innards into teeny tiny giblets?"

Gull kept eyes on her fangs; ignored the curve of her lips. "I thought you were just following pack rules and softening me up to get answers."

"Red..." Zera lifted a hand to run a mutant fingernail along his jaw. "If we'd met yesterday, I'd have pieces of your liver between my teeth right now."

Gull winced, the visual not appreciated. Nor was the jump of his pulse under her touch. "It sounds like your stress hormone levels have dropped. Are you thinking clearer? High levels of cortisol can depress the parts of the brain used for more sophisticated cognition." They were likely depressing his right now, because he was yet to step back and break her hold.

Zera tilted her head. "So, you're saying this might be a good time to do some clever thinking, maybe investigate, say, a duplicitous plot involving an unknown chemical?" She jerked him closer, nose ramming into nose. "What fucking drug did you give me, Red?"

He lost his breath again, but very deliberately grabbed it back. "It was a poison—drain cleaner." He couldn't forget what she was, no matter that she seemed more human every minute. He was likely projecting humanity onto her; he'd taken a few blows to the head and... Shit. Necessary or not, the action he planned to take when he reached the Colony would erode his soul. "It wasn't anything special. These effects you're experiencing aren't related."

"Fucking liar." Zera's hard shove sent him down on his arse, concrete striking his tailbone like an unforgiving bitch. "Oh, hello homicidal rage. Welcome back."

Seeing the look in her eyes, Gull delayed any attempt to right himself; held his hands up instead. "Sorry. But what do you expect? Six years ago, the world we knew got annihilated by the virus that's in your blood. I went from being a perpetually hungover first-year university student to being a fucking dog happy meal. You think I can just accept that fate and not fight? Zera, I'm going to lie to you. I'm going to stab needles, knives, and whatever the hell else I can into any mutt who gives me the opportunity, because it's more than a matter of personal survival." He'd kill her. He had to. As a human, he had no other choice.

Zera angled up her chin, eyes gleaming. "Watch it, Red, all this heroic talk might convince me you're a threat, not a big old goofy pup."

Gull set his jaw at the insult, then reminded himself that even in their past lives, Zera likely could've handed him his arse without breaking a sweat. Next to her honed physique, he was a gangly goof.

"Not going to bark back, puppy?" She lifted a brow.

"What would be the point?" Glaring, Gull clambered to his feet. "I know how the conversation ends. I make a valid point you don't like, you play the 'I can eat your liver' card."

"I can eat your liver."

"You think I need the reminder?"

"Yes. You keep looking at me with soft puppy eyes, like you want to follow me home and lick my toes."

Gull snorted and headed up the steps. "I'm adding delusional to your symptoms."

Zera caught him up, wrenched him around to face her grim gaze. "You're right to fight to change the world, because soft, bleeding hearts like yours don't have a place in it except between a mutt's teeth. You can't save me, Red." Her mouth hardened after that low declaration. But a heartbeat later, it curved. "Or can you?"

Gull's breath cut off. "No. I—"

"Fuck. I'm right." Ramming both fists into his chest, she pushed him away. "You're working on a cure, aren't you?"

"No." He ignored the leap of his pulse. "Don't be a dumb mutt. No such thing."

Zera smiled, a lopsided event that might have been charming had her eyes not been pitiless gleams. "You're right about the brain working better, Red. I understand things way better now."

"Good for you." And no one else. The lycan had just got a million times more dangerous.

"I remember things better, too." Zera prowled towards him, making him back up the steps to the park. "Want to know what I remembered when I saw you in the boat, dragging on the oars like a drunk giraffe?"

"Not especially."

Zera's smile faded. "I remembered holidays by the ocean with my parents. I remembered their pride after I survived the arse-kicking of basic training. I remember the crappy food and shitty deployments, including one six years ago, when a weird illness caused civil unrest. I remember what happened when my boots hit this city's streets. I remember biting out a new recruit's throat and chewing on my CO's intestines."

Gull's heart thudded. "You were in the armed forces?"

"Navy. I like guns—bigger the better. But I adore the water. It's in my blood. Mother was ex-navy. My father boxed and worked on trawlers."

Gull inhaled, battling down the lump that wanted to close his throat. Nothing in the world was easy, the lycan a victim as much as those she'd slaughtered. "And you're telling me this to what? Impress me? Get my sympathy?"

Zera's smile returned slowly, grimly. "Red, I'm giving you a heads-up."

"About?"

"Oh, puppy." She patted his cheek. "I'm going to shoot every fanged face I have the pleasure of curb-stomping into the fucking ground."