Full Moon, Final Hunt
The travel from Burning safehouse ruins to Abandoned lumber mill consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The gravel bit into his knee, sharp and grounding. He placed both hands on Eli’s shoulders, feeling the small bones beneath the jacket, the fragility of everything worth protecting. “No, son. Your mother and I are going to end this. You stay with Aunt Selene. Promise me you won’t shift.”
Eli’s lower lip trembled. The gold in his eyes flickered like a dying bulb. “I promise, Daddy.”
Caden pulled him into a chest-crushing embrace, then released him to Iris. She took over without a word, her hands moving with the efficiency of a woman who had spent six years learning to survive without him. She pressed a kiss to Eli’s forehead, then looked at Selene.
“The shed has reinforced steel walls. Don’t open the door for anyone except me or Caden.”
Selene nodded, her face pale but steady. She took Eli’s hand and led him toward the rusted maintenance shed at the edge of the lumber mill’s eastern flank. The structure had been their fallback for three days—a relic from the mill’s operating days, retrofitted with a generator and a military-grade door lock that Reid had installed under cover of darkness.
Caden watched them disappear inside. The door sealed with a hydraulic hiss.
Then he turned and ran.
—
The lumber mill sprawled across twelve acres of abandoned industrial rot. Conveyor belts sagged like dead snakes. Sawdust drifts piled against collapsed walls. The main building, a cathedral of rusted iron and shattered windows, rose against the moon like a skeletal fist.
Reid’s voice came through the earpiece, crisp and low. “Twelve tangos. Two groups of six, pincer formation from the north and south access roads. Owen and Cole are in the lead vehicle—black SUV, tinted glass. They’re stopping at the main gate. They think you’re cornered.”
“Good,” Caden breathed. He crouched behind an overturned logging truck, the metal cold against his back. “Let them think that. Status on the journalist?”
“Drone’s in position. Livestream is active. Signal’s clean—she’s broadcasting from the ridge, three hundred yards east. Whitmore’s legal team will try to bury it, but the feed’s already hitting major networks. We’ve got enough eyes to make this stick.”
“Reid. If I go down—”
“You won’t.” Reid’s voice hardened. “I’ve got a clean shot on Owen from the water tower. Say the word and I’ll end this before it starts.”
“No. The world needs to see them fall. Not a bullet. A trial.”
Silence. Then Reid grunted. “Your call. I’ll hold the line.”
Caden rose, fluid and silent. The moon was full, fat and white, and it pulled at something deep in his marrow. He’d spent twelve years suppressing that pull, numbing it with whiskey and distance. Now he let it fill him. His vision sharpened. The world became a grid of thermal signatures and ambient noise—the drip of water from a broken pipe, the scuttle of a rat in the sawdust, the distant crunch of boots on gravel.
They were coming.
—
The first group entered through the collapsed eastern bay. Six men, tactical vests, assault rifles, night-vision goggles. They moved like professionals, covering angles, clearing corners. Owen Whitmore walked behind them, his suit a dark stain against the industrial decay. Cole flanked his father, a pistol in his hand, his face twisted with the arrogance of a man who had never been hit back.
Owen raised a hand. The mercenaries halted.
“Caden Blackwood,” Owen called, his voice echoing through the cavernous space. “I know you’re here. I know about the boy. I know about the Reyes woman. You’ve been very busy for a dead man.”
Caden didn’t move. He was thirty feet above them, perched on a rusted catwalk, the metal groaning softly beneath his weight.
Owen continued, “Here’s how this ends. You come out. You sign over the boy. I let the woman live. She walks away with a clean record and enough money to forget she ever knew you. You go back to your hole in the ground. Everyone wins.”
Cole snorted. “Why are you negotiating with him, Father? He’s a liability. Put a bullet in him and take the brat.”
“Because,” Owen said, “I want him to know he lost. I want him to watch me take everything he loves, piece by piece. That’s a pleasure no bullet can replace.”
Caden moved.
He dropped from the catwalk, landing on the shoulders of the nearest mercenary. The man’s neck snapped with a wet crack before his brain registered the impact. Caden rolled, came up with the dead man’s rifle, and fired three rounds into the chest of the second mercenary. The third raised his weapon—and Reid’s shot punched through his shoulder from four hundred yards. The man screamed, his rifle clattering across the concrete.
Panic rippled through the remaining three. They fired blindly, their bullets chewing through rusted machinery and drywall. Caden was already gone, slipping through a gap in the wall, his breath even, his pulse a steady drum.
He heard Owen shouting, “Flush him out! Use the thermal drones!”
Cole’s voice, higher, cracking: “He’s not human, Father. Look at how he moves.”
“He’s human enough to bleed.”
—
Iris pressed her ear to the shed’s metal wall. The gunfire was distant, muffled, but she could feel the vibrations through the steel. Beside her, Eli sat cross-legged on the concrete floor, his eyes fixed on a crack in the ceiling where moonlight bled through.
“Mommy,” he whispered. “It hurts.”
“What hurts, baby?”
“Inside. Like something is trying to get out.”
Iris’s blood turned to ice. She knelt in front of him, taking his face in her hands. “Eli, look at me. You made a promise to your father. You have to hold on. Just a little longer. Okay?”
He nodded, but his pupils had dilated, swallowing the gold in his irises. A tremor ran through his small body, and for a moment, Iris saw something ancient and wild looking out from her son’s face.
Selene moved to the tool bench, where she had spread out the supplies Caden had left. “Iris. He said to use these if things went bad. Flares. A car alarm remote. Said it would create chaos.”
Iris stared at the items. Then at her son. Then at the wall that separated them from the men who wanted to take him.
She grabbed the remote. “Keep him safe. I’ll be right back.”
Selene’s hand shot out, gripping her wrist. “You can’t fight them.”
“I’m not going to fight them. I’m going to make them fight each other.”
She slipped out before Selene could argue, the door sealing behind her.
—
The yard was a graveyard of dead machinery. Iris kept low, moving between the hulks of abandoned equipment, the flare gun heavy in her jacket pocket. She found the logging truck Caden had been using for cover. The keys were still in the ignition, as he’d planned.
She slid into the driver’s seat, pressed the horn.
The sound tore through the night like a wounded animal.
Immediately, the mercenaries’ comms lit up with confusion. Voices overlapped: “Contact east!” “No, it’s the vehicle—someone’s in the truck!” “I see movement by the sawmill!”
Iris pressed the horn again, held it. Then she cranked the engine, threw the truck into reverse, and floored it.
The truck slammed into a stack of rusted pipes, sending them crashing across the yard. She threw open the door, rolled out, and fired the flare gun into the sky.
The red star screamed upward, bathing the mill in blood-light.
From the water tower, Reid adjusted his scope. The chaos was beautiful. The mercenaries had broken formation, splitting to cover three separate threats. Owen was screaming at them to regroup, but Cole had already fled toward the treeline, his pistol forgotten in his hand.
“Caden,” Reid said into the mic. “Cole’s running. South treeline. Owen’s pinned behind the main building. The journalist has it all on camera. Local PD is five minutes out.”
Caden’s voice came back, tight with restraint. “Take Owen alive. I’ll handle Cole.”
—
Cole ran.
He crashed through the underbrush, branches clawing at his face, his breath coming in ragged sobs. He had seen the way Caden moved—the impossible speed, the precision, the economy of violence. That wasn’t a man. That was something that wore a man’s skin.
A shape materialized in front of him.
Caden stood in a clearing, the moonlight painting silver lines across his face. His eyes glowed, twin embers in the dark. He wasn’t even breathing hard.
Cole stumbled backward, his heel catching on a root. He fell, scrambling in the dirt. “You’re not… you’re not human.”
“No,” Caden said, his voice low, almost gentle. “But I’m not what you think I am either. Your father’s experiments turned humans into monsters. I was born this way. There’s a difference.”
“Stay away from me.” Cole’s hand found a rock. He threw it. Caden didn’t flinch. The rock passed through the space where his head had been a second before.
“I’m not going to kill you,” Caden said. “You’re going to stand trial. You’re going to rot in a cell, and every day, you’re going to remember this moment. You’re going to remember that I let you live. And it’s going to eat you alive.”
Sirens wailed in the distance.
Cole broke.
He wept. He begged. He pissed himself.
Caden stood over him, arms crossed, waiting for the law to arrive.
—
The police swept through the mill, cuffing mercenaries and collecting evidence. Owen Whitmore stood in handcuffs, his face carved from stone, his eyes never leaving Caden. The journalist’s drone circled overhead, capturing every angle.
“Reid,” Caden said, his voice hollow. “Status on Iris and Eli?”
“They’re still in the shed. Selene confirmed. Door’s secure.”
Caden walked toward the shed, his legs heavy with exhaustion. The adrenaline was fading, leaving behind a bone-deep weariness. He had won. The Whitmores were finished. The evidence would hold. The trial would be public. Eli would be safe.
He was twenty feet from the shed when he heard it.
Iris screaming.
Not a scream of fear. A scream of pure, primal horror.
He ran.
The shed door was still closed, the lock engaged. He tore at it with his bare hands, the metal groaning, bending, breaking. He wrenched it open and saw Selene on the floor, unconscious, a gash on her temple. Iris was pressed against the far wall, her hands outstretched, her face a mask of terror.
And in the center of the room, the door to the small utility exit hanging open, the moonlight spilling inside like a river of silver.
Eli was gone.
In the chaos, Eli slips out of the shed and stands in the moonlight. His small frame shudders—he’s too young to shift, but the moon calls him anyway. Iris screams. Caden runs. Eli’s eyes blaze, and for the first time, tiny claws sprout from his fingertips.