The collapsed subway tunnel still wounded the earth, a jagged mouth of broken concrete and twisted rebar. The air that bled from it was cold and heavy, thick with the smell of dust, decay, and something else… something wild and musky. The scent of a predator’s den. My predator.

  I stood at the edge of the rubble, the faint, multi-colored glow of the distant city painting the scene in hues of bruised purple and sickly green. This was it. The arena. No more running. No more hiding.

  A cold, hard calm had settled over me. The wild, chaotic storm of the wolf was still there, a low, dangerous hum beneath my skin. But I was the anchor now. The human consciousness, the girl who was still, somewhere in this mess, Nikki Nova, was a steady, quiet point in the hurricane's heart. We were a fragile, terrifying synergy. A monster on a leash. My leash.

  “Alright, Handy,” I whispered, my voice an indistinct murmur, swallowed by the echoing silence.

  “Let’s send out the invitation.”

  “Are you sure about this, Nikki?” Handy’s voice was a tinny whisper in my ear, stripped of all its usual sarcasm. “Once you do this, there’s no turning back. He’ll know you’re here. He’ll come.”

  “That’s the plan,” I said.

  I took a deep breath, and then, for the first time, I didn’t just let the change happen. I willed it. I reached inside myself and took hold of the snarling, primal thing that lived there, and I pulled.

  The pain was a familiar, fiery agony, but this time, it was different. It was controlled. I felt my bones shift, my muscles tear and re-knit themselves into a new, more powerful form. White fur, the color of bleached bone, erupted across my skin. My face elongated, my senses exploding into a high-definition, predatory clarity.

  When the change was complete, I was no longer a girl. I was a wolf. But this time, my own eyes were looking out from behind the monster’s face.

  I threw my head back and let out a howl.

  It wasn't a sound of pain or fear. It was a challenge. A declaration of war. It ripped through the silence of the under city, a raw, primal sound that echoed off the crumbling buildings and down into the dark, wounded earth. It was a sound that said, I’m here. Come and get me.

  The silence that followed was heavy, expectant. I stood my ground, my new claws digging into the loose rubble, my ears swiveling, my nose tasting the air.

  And then, I heard it. A distant, answering roar from the depths of the tunnel. A sound of pure, incandescent rage.

  He was coming.

  I didn't wait for him. I moved. I was a blur of white fur and controlled ferocity, a ghost dancing through the graveyard of my making. This wasn't just a fight. It was a performance. And the entire, unstable, crumbling tunnel was my stage.

  I used my cheerleading agility, the muscle memory of a thousand routines, and twisted it into something deadly. I leapt from one precarious pile of rubble to another, my movements fluid, graceful, and impossibly fast. I was a dancer in a death-trap, my every step a calculated risk.

  A hulking silhouette appeared at the far end of the tunnel, his buggy, yellow eyes two burning coals in the darkness. He let out another roar, a sound that shook the very foundations of the ruined tunnel, and charged.

  He was a battering ram, a freight train of pure, mindless fury. He smashed through obstacles that I had gracefully leapt over, his raw power a terrifying thing to behold. He was everything I was, but without the leash.

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  He charged. A freight train of fury.

  I didn't meet him head-on. I waited.

  At the last second, I pivoted. His claws tore through the air where my throat had been. His momentum carried him past, and he crashed into a pile of rubble. Too slow.

  He roared in frustration. I answered with a low growl from a new perch ten feet away.

  With every near-miss, with every frustrated roar, he grew angrier, more reckless. And with every charge, the surrounding tunnel groaned in protest. Dust rained down from the ceiling. Small pebbles became a cascade of loose rock.

  This was my strategy. Not to beat him. To let the tunnel beat him for me.

  I led him deeper into the ruin, into the most unstable sections that Handy had identified on the schematics. I was a whisper, a ghost, always just out of reach. I could feel his frustration mounting, a vibrating thing in the air. He was a creature of pure instinct now, and his every instinct was screaming at him to destroy the white wolf that was mocking him in his own den.

  I leapt onto the teetering remains of a concrete support pillar, my claws finding purchase on the cracked surface. From this vantage point, I could see the main chamber, the epicenter of the original collapse. It was a cavernous, rubble-strewn hellscape, the ceiling a spiderweb of fractured concrete and dangling rebar.

  The perfect kill box.

  He saw me. He let out a roar that was almost a scream of pure hatred and launched himself at the pillar.

  This was the moment.

  Just as his claws tore into the concrete at the base of the pillar, I kicked off, launching myself into the air, across the chasm of the main chamber. The pillar, already weakened, groaned, shuddered, and then gave way.

  The pillar groaned. A crack spider webbed across the ceiling above it. Then another. The groan became a high-pitched shriek, and the world came down. An avalanche of concrete and steel crashed into the spot where he'd been standing.

  I landed on the far side of the chamber, a cloud of choking, blinding dust billowing out from the new collapse. The ground shook so violently it almost threw me off my feet. The roar of the falling rock was deafening, a world-ending sound.

  For a long moment, there was only the sound of settling rubble and the ringing in my ears. I stood there, my white fur caked in dust, my chest heaving, staring into the impenetrable cloud of gray.

  Did I do it? Was it over?

  The dust settled. A new mountain of rubble now filled the center of the chamber, a freshly dug grave. There was no movement. No sound.

  The roar of falling rock faded. Silence. I let out a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding, my entire body trembling with adrenaline. It's over. The thought was a wild, shaky thing.

  I did it.

  And then, a single, massive, brown-furred hand, its claws elongated and sharp as knives, punched its way out of the top of the rubble pile.

  Every muscle in my body went rigid.

  He pulled himself out of his own grave.

  He shook off slabs of concrete like they were pebbles.

  He was bleeding from a dozen new wounds, one claw bent at a sickening angle.

  But he was alive.

  And the rage in his eyes was gone. Replaced by a cold, quiet, focused calm.

  He rose to his full, terrifying height, the dust swirling around him like a shroud. He looked at me, and the mindless rage in his yellow eyes was gone. In its place was a cold, quiet, focused hatred. A hunter’s gaze.

  My tactical advantages, my clever use of the environment, my dance of death… it was all gone. My stage was a wreck. My props destroyed. I had played all my cards.

  And he was still standing.

  He took a slow step forward, then another. The sound of his claws scraping on the rock was the only sound in the dead, dusty silence. I had nowhere left to run. Nowhere left to hide.

  The wolf inside me, which had been a controlled, humming engine, now roared to life, a supernova of pure, primal fear. It knew, on a level beyond thought, beyond strategy, that we cornered. That we were about to die.

  I braced myself, my own claws digging into the rock, a low, desperate growl rumbling in my chest. The dance was over. Now, there was only the fight.