It was in the shape of him. It was in his eyes and that white sliver of teeth when he smiled on just one side. It was the stout-shouldered regard of a leader, the soft concern, the love in him. It was just looking at Quentin made Jaylin's heart crack along all the worn, weak edges.

He was dressed in a suit; that business savvy black tie, his hair combed back, rounding his crown with a bit of curl to spare at the ends. His fingers tangled with the hand of another and somehow, before he even saw her face, Jaylin knew it was Anna. Her hair moved in waves down her back, the trim of her dress floating like water over the grass. They were in a meadow, treading a path between long, frosted hawthornes trees.

Everything was moving slower than it should have. When Quentin looked back at Jaylin over his shoulder, it happened within enough time to truly grapple the situation. Tangled between Anna's fingers, shoulders squared toward the hawthornes. He was leaving. And sure enough, when Quentin looked away, he did so with one slow step forward.

He was leaving.

"Wait!" Jaylin threw himself forward, but only to slam into a wall that he couldn't see—one that felt like cold glass on his fingers. He searched for a seam in the invisible glass, but it seemed to move on forever, in all directions. Quentin was gaining distance, Anna's hair rising in the wind. Her dress moving over the earth in ripples.

Jaylin threw himself into the glass wall, but it didn't so much as shiver.

"Wait!" he called again, but Quentin was nearly gone now. And within his next few steps, a darkness bared down on his black suit. Like they'd wandered off into a yawning cave as invisible as the glass beneath Jaylin's fingers, Quentin and Anna both vanished into the distance.

And in front of Jaylin now were two deep blue eyes. The little girl with the lichund hand was separated from him once again, by nothing but that same impalpable wall. She matched his hand through the glass, the way she had before—but this time she didn't smile. The little girl opened her mouth and an arsenal of white thorny teeth protruded from her gums. Then, through her sharp, reptilian smile, the little girl released a scream.

The sharp peal slit through Jaylin's ears like razor blades and he shot up from his sleep with a hard gasp of air. The world was white around him and the little girl was gone. The room he woke in felt like more of a hospital room than a jail cell, and it took a steady moment to remember that he'd been accosted by Ziya's men. That he was waking up in the blistering bowels of his own hell. Bits and pieces of his examination came back to him.

They'd taken his clothes, scrubbed him down in a shower room, shined lights into his eyes and his throat. He was given a cavity search and stabbed in the neck with a needle—both at the same time. He couldn't decide which he'd hated more. They'd given him white scrubs after that, but he could hardly change into them on his own. Whatever had been in the needle hit his blood fast and took him down in a matter of minutes.

He laid there on a foam mattress, hands wiping away the sweat on his face. The little lichund's eyes still stained his memory.

Nadaline.

"Is that what they'd named her?" Gunner had asked, surrounded by cubes of the lichund children. "Never knew her name, they just call her Six here."

Jaylin had stood there for several minutes, but taking in the sight of her was like a processing error. "I thought she died when Anna..."

"Thought so too," Gunner said. "But I had no idea what they did with the body once it was passed over. I hadn't found out until Ziya stationed me here that they managed to save the fetus. They've been using her DNA—inserting the gene into other kids. Were, not human. But there's a problem with Six. She's got the DNA in her, but she's trapped in transition. Just like the others—they're all stuck this way. They've tried everything to force passage, but nothing's worked."

"But why do they need her?" Jaylin had asked. "There are other lichund."

"Because," Gunner told him, "she's the closest thing we've got to you."

Even now, after Gunner had long gone back to his lab, Jaylin swore he felt the tick of Nadaline's heart in his chest. A sudden, fluttering little feeling.

Then all of the pale lights in the room shut off.

Jaylin rose from his bed, blinking in the dark. His eyes settled quickly and he moved toward the door, his feet still numb from the shot he'd been given. The handle didn't respond to his twisting, but a lock wasn't enough to stop a lichund. The glass window on the door was large enough to crawl through, and chances were, it wasn't made out of the same thing as those cells. Jaylin wound back a fist to shatter the glass. Then the door swung open.

His punch stopped inches from a cowering Matt, who'd crossed his arms around his head and gone still as a statue. Matt cracked open an eye and when he read Jaylin's surprise, he dropped his grimace and tossed his arms around his shoulders.

"Jesus," Matt said, hand in Jaylin's hair. "I thought she already made a zombie outta you."

He was enveloped in Tisper's perfume next and he ran his fingers through the silk of her ponytail when she hugged him. "I'm sorry we took so long."

Sadie was the one to take him by the hand and yank him free form their affections. "Guys we have to go. Gunner said it wouldn't take them more than five minutes to flip the breakers back on."

"What's going on?" Jaylin whispered. "Why are you guys here?"

"What the hell else did you think we were gonna do?" Matt asked. "Call a cab home?"

"Ziya's going to kill the others," Tisper puttered urgently. "If we don't get to them in time, they're dead when these lights go back on."

"Do you know where they are?" Jaylin asked.

Again, Sadie tugged on his hand, urging him to move. "They're in something called the throne room."

Jaylin found feeling in his feet again and he let Sadie pull him down the cold hall floor. His eyes had taken to the darkness quickly, and even the reflections in the windows they passed riled his nerves. He tore his eyes away from the glass planes and pinned his focus on the horizon. "Ziya has an actual throne room?"

"So does Qamar," said Sadie, her breath escaping her. Her hand felt like fire on his wrist. They must've been running for some time before they found him. "I saw it when I was there—a big empty room with a chair in the center."

"Gunner said it's where all official were-business is done," Tisper whispered just behind him.

When Jaylin heard a second set of footsteps, he barred an arm out to stop the others in their tracks. Even their breath went silent as he took a look around the bend. A man in a white labcoat was seeing his way through the black halls with the light of his cellphone. He flashed it onto a door so that he could pass his card through the security lock. When it didn't beep due to the outage, he cursed and shuffled around in his pockets for a key instead. After a long, breathless moment, the door unlocked with a click and the man stepped inside.

Jaylin moved forward, feet sliding on the slick linoleum. The lot of them moved fast and silent, slipping by the room undetected.

"Turn left ahead," Sadie told him. Her knack for directions astounded him. Every hallway in this place looked like the one before. "Another left," she said.

Jaylin stopped suddenly on his heels, catching Matt just as he burst into the open hallway. He slung Matt back against the wall and sealed his own spine to the glass of the windows. Tisper and Sadie caught on quickly, squeezing themselves flush against the wall just as a flashlight beam swept the floor, feet in front of them.

"Outage in wing B as well," a man said into a walkie. The device beeped and hissed and a second voice came through, too full of static for Jaylin to understand a word. The beam washed over the walls, then rolled across the floor and disappeared around a corner. Once Jaylin was sure the man was gone, he led the group on fast, silent feet through the left hallway. "I don't understand," he said, "this shouldn't be so easy. Why would they put me in a room I could break out of? Ziya's security measures were insane last time."

"Gunner was supposed to give you a second dose of sedative that would've put you out for another four hours," Matt said, gulping in breath. Already, his curls tacked to his forehead in a sticky, sweaty mess. "Gave ya saline instead."

"Left," said Sadie, but Jaylin didn't need her direction. He could see it for himself. A pale light, saturating the end of the hallway, where electricity still ran through the building. This time, he didn't run to it. He walked, silently from his heels to his toes.

At the end of the hallway, a pair of fiberglass doors sealed in the bloody glow of claret candlelight. He peered in through the glass to find a barricade of copper handrails—nothing but a long banister that curled the oblong-shaped room from one end to the other.

"We're on the third floor," whispered Sadie. "The throne room is just below."

So Jaylin pressed the door open and moved through quiely on his toes. The red glow came from several candle sconces on the wall—the rosy wax melting down the sides. The floor below graduated even darker—the round room, festooned in red velvet curtains that reminded him all too much of the hotel in California.

Jaylin spotted her hair first. The ghostly white curls draped down over her small shoulders, so washed against her dark skin. She sat on a throne—a real throne, on an elevated staircase dais. A woman stood beside her in leather pants, long brown hair spiraling down her back, lips painted in a tint so red, it looked like she'd kissed a bleeding body. He wondered who she was to stand beside the queen like that. Her sheriff, maybe. Did queens have sheriffs?

Then something hit the floor—first the hard knock of metal, then the bony thud of a heavy human body. Bailey bounced from the black-and-white tile floor, curling into himself. Blood rolled down his wrists and strung from his mouth, and for just a moment, he flinched at the boots that tramped within inches of his face.

A man paced around him in tight black jeans, a thrashed t-shirt and a worn leather jacket. The pale hair on his crown had been bleached bone-blond and shaved short on the sides. His accent was harsh—the hard vowels and soft R's of a New Yorker. "Ever seen a were-coy, Queen?"

"Once or twice," replied Ziya. "I've heard they're clever little things."

"Maybe not so clever," said the man. "But they do love to talk, don't ya?"

"Take off these cuffs," mumbled Bailey from the floor, "if you want more than just a chat."

The man moved forward in a fast clip of aggressive air. Whether he had planned to kick Bailey or to cut him in half right there, Jaylin wasn't sure. Ziya's voice stopped him, feet short of attack. "Zachary. Where are the others?"

"Dunno," the Zachary man said, falling back on the hard heels of his brown boots. "Still trying to get the doors open, I guess."

"They're here, my queen," a fresh voice announced. Jaylin couldn't see her entrance beyond the balcony where he stood, but he assumed by the smell of her that—like the blond man and the brunette at Ziya's side—she was a werewolf.

Felix was brought in then, shoved forward by a man built from sheer muscle. He was forced to his knees by the back of the neck—forced to kneel before a queen that wasn't his. The others were brought in beside him. Izzy first, who dropped slowly to her knees, hair hung over her face. Elizaveta was slung to the floor beside her, snarling and thrashing like a wild thing. But it was Nicon who was heaved out before them all, forced down to the ground by the two wolves who barred him by the arms. That long, black hair had fallen out of his clean plated braid, and it curtained him now like a veil.

"I expected the intrusion," said Ziya, "truly I did, but I hadn't expected one of my alphas to lead the threat right to my own front door."

Nicon said nothing, but shook himself free of the hands that gnarled his shoulders.

"Tell me, Nicon," Ziya said, "who brought them to me?"

A voice growled out from the floor below, but it didn't belong to Nicon. "I'm the only fucking hound here. Do the math."

The Zachary man did surge forward this time, to serve Bailey a good kick to the gut. He rolled face-first onto the floor, hacking out the air in him.

"You're an honest man, Nicon," said Ziya. "Tell me now, were you planning a mutiny?"

"I wasn't planning a mutiny," Nicon replied—but he didn't lift his head to Ziya. His breath blew at the hair that curtained his face. "But I was terribly hopeful that tonight would end in one."

For the first time, Jaylin saw a shimmer of dissatisfaction crack over Ziya's face. Her lip curled down at the edge, her brows tucked in just enough to wrinkle her forehead. Something tensed between them.

"Blood or silver?" she asked. And as if the brunette to her side knew just what she was thinking, she produced two needles on a silver tray. One held a clear liquid, the other red as a rose. When Nicon said nothing, she stood from her throne. The long, black dress she wore split at the thigh—just enough that Jaylin could see the soft dark, skin of her knee as she drifted down the stairs. "One will kill you slowly, but you'll be in a bearable amount of pain. The other will leave you alive, but in punishing agony. Choose your medicine, renegade."

"Blood," said Nicon without missing a beat.

The brunette descended the stairs, the syringes on her tray. The red, Jaylin assumed was filled with her blood. The same blood that was killing Quentin. The second syringe, though clear as it was, must contain some kind of silver. Colloidal silver, he realized. The kind his mother was using during her cancer treatments, before she heard it could turn her skin blue.

Ziya took the red syringe from the tray. "Open his mouth."

Zachary took Nicon by the scalp, hair fisted between his fingers. With his other hand, he anchored Nicon's jaw open, forced and twisted like he was milking a snake. Ziya tapped the needle of the syringe against his teeth and emptied the blood onto his tongue. He was released by the hair, freed by the jaw, and Nicon lowered his head slowly to the tile floor.

"I'm disappointed," said Ziya. "You were a fine alpha, but I suppose even alphas are replaceable, aren't they? Your territory will be left to your sheriff until the next in line is appointed. It's terrible to see you go, but you are a traitor, Nicon. At least you'll die knowing that."

Just then, Nicon's head snapped up, a spray of blood spitting from his mouth. It dusted Ziya in red mist. The queen did not flinch, but her wolves, panicked for their own safety, staggered away from the spray. That slight snarl found Ziya's lips again and she snatched the second syringe from the tray, stabbing the needle into Nicon's neck, pushing the liquid into his veins.

Jaylin flinched. He felt Tisper's hands on his arm, Sadie's fingers curling into the back of his shirt.

Not yet, they were telling him.

On the floor below, Nicon curled into himself. His shoulders shivered and he lowered his head to the tile floor. Jaylin could almost feel the pain in him. The dire urge to scream, building in his throat. He'd tasted Ziya's blood. He was going to die.

Ziya was provided a towel by a woman in a tight, black bun. She wiped the blood from her face and frowned at the stain left behind. "There are painless ways to kill a wolf," she said. "A bullet through the heart. A swift beheading. A concoction of sedatives and liquid mercury. I considered all of this. But now I think your visit calls for something special."

"Jesus Christ," snarled Felix. "Get on with it then, 'for ye' bore us all to death with the dialog."

A snicker came from Bailey. That annoyed divot between Ziya's brows reappeared.

She snapped her fingers and three of her wolves burst to blood. The silver tray the brunette held clattered to the floor and a white wolf stood where she'd been, coat dyed red and draining out onto the carpet of the dais. Zachary's shredded t-shirt flung wet from the shaking pelt of a black wolf. The last was the woman with a black bun—the brown tufts of her tail leaking onto the checkered tile floor.

Ziya climbed the stairs back to her throne and sat there, one leg crossed over the other. "Have at them," she said. "Just make it last."

Jaylin felt Tisper's hand squeeze his arm. "Jaylin," she whispered.

The wolves pressed in, the white one slinking closest to Izzy, sharp white teeth glowing red in the candlelight. The black wolf had set his sights on Bailey—the brown one licking her chomps and nearing Felix with low, grating breaths. There was no more time to sit back and watch. Jaylin climbed onto the railing, balancing there on his hands and feet. Perched to jump.

"Be careful, Jay," he heard Matt whisper.

Then Sadie. "Please be careful."

Tisper let go of his arm, though reluctantly. "We'll be right there, Jaylin."

He shoved off from the banister and leapt into the air, nothing but the wind of his fall touching a single part of him. It hit his ears like hard breath. He felt that tingle, the fire in his ribs. The rage of the lichund, clawing at the walls of his chest. Halfway to the throne room floor, the beast tore from his flesh. He hit the ground before his blood did, finding traction on on the blood-slick palms of his feet.

For the first time, he was cognitive. He knew what he was. He knew what he was doing.

He was a warden. And he was going to kill the queen.

One hard bat of his hand sent the white wolf spilling down the tiles. Then he snarled—a deep, thunderous threat that shook the black wolf back several steps. The brown wolf yelped and bounded out of the way of his arching claws. He could hear Izzy's breath shake as he stepped over her small body and made for the carpeted steps.

Ziya didn't look surprised. If anything, it was a pleasant smile that crossed her dewy lips. Jaylin took her in—truly marked the shape of her in his mind for the first time. She was so small. So soft in the cheeks and wide in the eyes. She was still a child—how had she become something like this?

She stood from her throne and stepped closer. The shadows washed from her face and with them went that feigned innocence. Jaylin wanted to end her then. He wanted to tear her to shreds with his claws and his teeth and every muscle in his body, capable of separating flesh from bone. But when he reached out for her, it was like a switch in him had been pressed. His flesh and fur tore away and he hit the ground on his knees, bathed in a shower of his own blood. He could see nothing but his hands—human again as they shivered in the puddle pooling on the tile floor.

"I was wondering what it would take to bring you out," Ziya said. "I thought you'd stay up there, watching your friends die one by one. I guess I didn't need him after all."

Him? Jaylin raised his head, his lungs heaving. He could feel the blood climbing down his face, dripping from the edge of his chin.

A door slammed open with a resounding bang, and though he didn't recognize the man who stepped out next, he knew the equipment he wore. The belt around his waist, the assault rifle strapped to his back. The same supplies the hunter wore. Behind him were two more men, a body heaved between them by the arms. Jaylin recognized the scent of him long before he understood his crumpled form. He was brought in front of the throne and tossed back into the seat. His body hit the backrest like a rag doll and he slumped forward, his entire chest turned black from the holes in his body—one eroded nearly down to the bone of his ribs.

Ziya rounded the throne slowly and reached over, taking him by the hair, forcing his head back.

Tears rushed to Jaylin's eyes—Quentin's pale, bloodless face lulled back in Ziya's grip. His eyes still soft as always, watching just through the slits of his lashes. His breath moved through his chest with a gritty, static sound.

"You think I didn't know your plan?" asked Ziya. "To kill me."

Jaylin's words pricked at his throat. "Don't hurt him."

"Andre's men got their hands on him this evening. Flew him in on a private jet and everything. He was only meant to be collateral—you know, in case you wiggled away again. You're so much trouble, Mr. Maxwell." Her eyes set on him and Jaylin felt his face go to ice. "I had wonderful partnership with Andre before you killed him. I had a perfect lichund specimen, but you somehow managed to kill her too. You destroyed months of research. You wasted my time." Her eyes went narrow. She held out a hand to the hunter, who loosened a pistol from his belt and placed it into her palm. Ziya flipped off the safety, and rough enough to hear the metal against his skull, she pressed the barrel to the side of Quentin's head. "Move and I shoot," she told Jaylin. Then to her wolves, she said, "Kill them. Start with the traitor."