The sensation was addictive.
It wasn't soft—Elara's hands were rough from years of scrubbing floors with lye soap—but the contact silenced the screaming static in Draven's brain.
For the first time in years, the beast wasn't clawing at the back of his eyes.
He didn't let the moment linger.
Sentiment was for corpses.
Draven released her hand, the fresh blood smearing across his palm like war paint.
He grabbed her upper arm, his grip bruising but possessive, and hauled her out of the office.
They stepped onto the rusted iron mezzanine overlooking the main floor of the "Pit."
Below, the music had stopped.
A sea of eyes—yellow, amber, and bloodshot red—stared up at them.
The air reeked of cheap gin, unwashed bodies, and the distinct, coppery tang of suppressed violence.
"Listen up, mongrels!" Draven's voice didn't need to be loud; the acoustics of the sewer-turned-fortress carried his baritone into every shadow.
The crowd shifted.
A few Alphas in the back bristled but kept their heads down.
"The Silas family has declared war," Draven announced, dragging Elara forward until her toes hung over the grating.
She felt the vibrations of the bass in the floorboards, her heart hammering against her ribs.
"And this," he gestured to her with a nod of his chin, "is the spoils."
A low murmur rippled through the room.
"She is not a recruit. She is not meat," Draven continued, his gaze sweeping the room, daring anyone to challenge him.
"She is my anchor. Anyone who touches her answers to me. Anyone who breaks her dies screaming."
He turned and dragged her down the spiral metal staircase toward the bar.
Elara stumbled, her bad leg protesting, but she bit her lip.
Weakness here was an invitation.
She had to look valuable, not fragile.
They reached the bar, a slab of reclaimed granite resting on oil drums.
Behind it stood a woman who looked like she'd been carved from flint and bad attitude.
Bella.
She wiped a glass with a rag that looked greyer than the floor.
Her dark hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail, exposing a jagged scar running from her ear to her clavicle.
She looked at Draven with adoration, then at Elara with unmasked loathing.
"You brought a stray into the command center, Draven," Bella said, her voice like grinding stones.
She slammed a bottle onto the counter.
"And a Silas stray at that. She smells like their laundry detergent and entitlement."
"She stays," Draven said, leaning against the bar.
He looked bored, but his muscles were coiled.
"We have protocols," Bella argued, her eyes narrowing on Elara.
"Spies are everywhere. If she wants to breathe our air, she proves she's not carrying a wire or a poison pill."
Bella reached under the counter and pulled out a shot glass.
She filled it with a clear, viscous liquid, then reached into a small leather pouch at her belt.
She pinched a small amount of glittering dust and sprinkled it into the drink.
Silver.
The bar went silent.
Even the drunkest Rogue in the corner sat up.
"Wolf's Lament," Bella sneered, sliding the glass toward Elara.
"Eighty proof moonshine laced with sterling filings. If you're a spy, the silver will burn a hole through your stomach lining before you can lie. If you're loyal... well, you'll just wish you were dead for a few hours."
Draven didn't intervene.
He merely tilted his head, watching Elara with the curiosity of a scientist observing a lab rat.
Elara stared at the swirling silver flakes.
It was a death sentence for a normal wolf.
For an Omega, it should be fatal.
But she remembered the pain of her childhood—the beatings, the freezing rain, the hunger.
Pain was an old friend.
She didn't hesitate.
She picked up the glass.
Don't show fear.
Fear triggers the predator instinct.
She threw her head back and downed the shot.
Fire.
It wasn't a metaphor.
It felt like she had swallowed molten lead.
The liquid scorched her throat, and as the silver hit her stomach, her insides cramped violently.
A gasp was torn from her lips, her knees buckling.
She gripped the edge of the bar, her knuckles turning white.
Deep inside her, the "void"—that strange emptiness that defined her existence—surged.
It didn't heal the burn, but it wrapped around the foreign energy of the silver, muffling the agony, turning a fatal scream into a dull, throbbing ache.
She panted, sweat beading instantly on her forehead.
The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth where she'd bitten her tongue.
She slammed the empty glass down.
The sound echoed like a gunshot.
Elara looked up, her eyes watering but fierce.
She locked eyes with Bella.
"You're cutting the supply," Elara rasped, her voice wrecked.
Bella blinked, caught off guard.
"Excuse me?"
"The drink," Elara wheezed, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
She pointed a shaking finger at the bottle.
"It's not just moonshine. You're spiking it with synthetic adrenaline blockers. The kind that expired three years ago."
The murmur in the room turned into angry muttering.
Rogues relied on alcohol to dull their senses.
Poisoning the booze was a cardinal sin.
"I smelled it," Elara lied—she hadn't smelled it, she had tasted the chemical degradation, a flavor like burning plastic that she recognized from the cheap cleaning solvents the Silas family used to scrub the kennel floors.
"It degrades the nervous system. You're not testing me, you're slowly crippling half the men in this room to save a few credits on brewing costs."
"You lying little bitch!" Bella shrieked.
Her composure snapped.
She lunged across the bar, her hand raised to strike, claws extending.
Thwip.
A blur of motion.
Bella screamed, freezing mid-swing.
A shard of the shot glass Elara had used sat embedded deep in the center of Bella's palm, pinning her hand to the wooden shelving unit behind the bar.
Draven lowered his hand, his expression dark.
"I said," Draven's voice dropped to a terrifying whisper, "don't. Touch. My. Property."
Bella whimpered, staring at the blood dripping into the sink.
The bar was dead silent.
Draven hadn't moved to protect Elara's honor; he had moved to protect his asset.
The distinction was cold, brutal, and clear.
Before the tension could break, the heavy iron doors at the far end of the hall burst open with a groan of stressed metal.
Two scouts stumbled in, wet, muddy, and smelling of fear.
"Boss!" one yelled, breathless.
"Bad news from the surface."
Draven turned, ignoring the sobbing bartender.
"Speak."
"The Silas family... they didn't just put a bounty out. They torched the warehouses in District 9." The scout swallowed hard.
"They burned the supply, Draven. The entire shipment of suppressors is gone. We have nothing to keep the madness down."
A wave of panic washed over the room.
For Rogues, suppressors weren't recreational—they were the only thing keeping them from devolving into mindless beasts.
Without the drugs, this underground city would become a slaughterhouse within forty-eight hours.
Draven's jaw tightened.
The gold in his eyes flickered, threatening to turn red.
Elara clutched her burning stomach.
This was it.
The door she had been looking for.
"I can fix it," she said.
Draven looked down at her.
"You're a laundry girl, not a chemist."
"I don't need to be a chemist," Elara said, forcing herself to stand straight despite the agony in her gut.
She remembered the loading manifests she had stolen glances at while scrubbing coats.
"The Silas family throws away tons of 'waste' material from their silver mines. They call it slag. But the filtration systems are old."
She took a step toward him, entering his personal space.
"There's enough residual chemically-bound silver and soothing herbs in their dump heaps to refine a stabilizer twice as strong as the garbage you buy on the black market. I know how to separate it. I've seen the refining logs."
Draven stared at her.
He saw the sweat on her brow, the tremor in her hands, and the absolute, unyielding steel in her eyes.
"You want to play alchemist with trash?"
"I want a trade," Elara corrected, her voice gaining strength.
"I fix your supply problem. You give me the run of the facility. No guards. No cages. I work alone."
Draven studied her for a long beat.
Then, a slow, predatory grin spread across his face.
"If you fail, I feed you to the boys in the pit."
"When I succeed," Elara countered, "Bella apologizes."
Draven chuckled, a dark, rumbling sound.
He grabbed her shoulder and spun her around, shoving her toward a heavy blast door marked Hazardous Materials.
"Get to work, ghost. You have until the moon rises."
Elara limped toward the door, her mind already racing.
She didn't know if the chemical separation would work without industrial equipment.
She was bluffing with a pair of twos.
But as she pushed open the heavy steel door, greeted by the smell of rust and decay, she knew one thing for certain.
She wasn't going to die a victim.
Inside the room, piles of unsorted industrial refuse loomed like mountains in the dim light.
Elara rolled up her tattered sleeves, her eyes scanning the debris for the distinct glimmer of raw silver ore dust.