Chapter 23 Miranda
MIRANDA
It feels like I’m losing my grip in reality as the cabin screams around me.
Wood splinters and shreds as silver-tipped bullets chew through the reinforced logs, turning the south wall into Swiss cheese.
The air inside is a choking haze of sawdust, pulverized drywall, and the acrid, metallic tang of ozone.
Every impact shakes the floorboards against my chest, a rhythmic, violent percussion that rattles my teeth.
It’s rage.
My blood feels carbonated. It’s bubbling in my veins, hot and pressurized, pushing against the inside of my skin like steam in a sealed boiler. The noise outside—the wet tearing of flesh, the roar of engines, the screams of men dying—doesn't make me want to curl up and hide.
It makes me want to hunt.
I crawl to a knot in the wood near the base of the wall, ignoring the splinters digging into my elbows. I peer through.
The yard is a nightmare lit by stadium floodlights. The mud is churned into a bloody slurry. I see black shapes—Wolves—tearing through armored men like they’re made of paper. I see a wolf take a bullet, stumble, and get back up to rip a man’s arm off.
A chaotic, warring instinct rises in my chest, seizing my diaphragm.
Part of me wants to arch my head back and howl, to join the chorus of the Pack and rip throats with my teeth. That part feels like cedar and loyalty. It feels like Jax.
But another part... a colder, darker part... watches the blood spray from a Hunter’s severed artery and feels a sharp, painful cramp of hunger in my stomach. I don't just want to kill them. I want to catch the red spray. I want to drink the essence until the fire in my veins cools.
"What am I?" I whisper, my voice sounding distorted, guttural to my own ears.
Movement catches my eye beyond the fray.
Standing at the edge of the tree line, untouched by the mud or the violence, is Matilde.
She is wearing a pristine white coat that glows fiercely under the UV lights. She isn't fighting. She’s watching. And she’s smiling.
Her gaze snaps to the cabin. To me. She can’t see me through the wood, but she knows.
Come out, little spare part.
The voice slides into my ear, oily and cold, bypassing my eardrums entirely to slither directly into my brain stem. It feels like a violation. Like maggots moving under my skin.
Come let Auntie fix you. Come let me drain that dirty mongrel blood out of your veins.
The psychic intrusion hits me like an ice pick to the temple. Nausea rolls over me, thick and cloying. The hunger spikes, demanding I run to her, demanding I kneel and offer my throat just to make the pain stop.
No.
My hand flies to my pocket. My fingers clamp down around the rough, cold iron of the railroad spike Jax gave me.
I squeeze.
I squeeze until the rusted edges bite into my palm, breaking the skin.
The sting is sharp, immediate, and grounding. The iron burns against my flesh, searing away the cold, oily voice in my head. The mental fog clears instantly, leaving only the red haze of adrenaline.
"Get out of my head," I hiss through gritted teeth.
CRASH.
The door explodes inward.
It’s not just opened; it’s demolished. Splinters the size of daggers fly across the room. A dark shape fills the broken frame—a Hunter in full tactical gear, gas mask on, rifle raised.
I don't have time to think; the survivor takes the wheel.
I rack the shotgun. Clack-clack.
I pull the trigger.
BOOM.
The recoil kicks hard against my shoulder, bruising the bone, but the result is absolute. The spray of buckshot catches the Hunter in the chest plate. His armor shatters. He flies backward off the porch as if yanked by a cable, disappearing into the night.
"Target neutralized," I pant, the smell of gunpowder filling my nose.
I scramble to pump the slide again, my hands slick with sweat.
A second shadow dives through the ruined doorway before the shell ejects.
He’s faster. He’s bigger. He hits me low, tackling me to the floor with the force of a falling tree. The shotgun skitters away, sliding under the table, out of reach.
I hit the wood hard, my breath leaving in a whoosh. Stars explode in my vision.
The Hunter is on top of me instantly. He’s heavy, smelling of stale tobacco, unwashed sweat, and fear. He grabs my throat with one hand, pinning me, and reaches for a serrated combat knife on his belt with the other.
"Got you, bitch," he grunts, his voice muffled by the mask.
He squeezes.
My windpipe compresses. Air cuts off. Black spots dance at the edges of my vision.
I thrash, bucking my hips, clawing at his arm. It’s like hitting a concrete wall. He’s too heavy. He laughs, a wet, ugly sound, and raises the knife.
"Matilde wants you alive," he sneers, bringing the blade down slowly toward my shoulder. "But she didn't say you had to be in one piece. I’m gonna carve the fight out of you."
Fear flares—white-hot and blinding. But it’s not the freezing panic of a prey animal. It’s the furious, molten panic of a cornered predator.
Something inside me unlocks. A safety valve blows.
Kill him.
The command screams through my nervous system.
My vision shifts. The dim cabin sharpens into high-definition clarity. I can see the scratches on his gas mask lenses. I can see the pulse fluttering wildly in his carotid artery beneath the skin of his neck.
The heat in my blood reaches a flashpoint.
My limbs feel light, charged with a kinetic energy that defies physics. My bones ache, a sharp, growing pain in my fingers.
I reach up and grab his wrist—the one holding my throat.
I squeeze.
Crunch.
The sound is loud, dry, and sickeningly satisfying. It’s the sound of his radius and ulna snapping like dry twigs.
The Hunter screams, dropping the knife. "What the—"
I don't let him finish. I buck my hips, throwing his two-hundred-pound weight off me with a strength that shouldn't belong to a hundred-and-twenty-pound woman. He flies off me, crashing into the cast-iron stove with a heavy clang.
I scramble to my feet. I’m panting, but I’m not winded. I feel... exhilarated.
He struggles up, clutching his broken wrist, his eyes wide behind the mask. He lunges at me, desperate, swinging a clumsy fist.
I don't dodge. I move into the space.
Time seems to slow down. I see his fist coming in increments. I see the opening in his guard. I step inside it.
My hands... they feel strange. Hot. Heavy.
I strike.
I aim for his throat, my fingers curled.
But they aren't fingers anymore. My nails—which I keep short for work—have lengthened in seconds. They are hard, curved, and black as obsidian. They slice through the air with a hiss.
My hand connects with his neck.
It’s not a punch. It’s a slash.
My new claws shear through the tactical fabric of his collar, through skin, through muscle, and through the windpipe like wet paper. There is zero resistance.
Hot liquid sprays across my face—salt, copper, life.
The Hunter gurgles. He clutches his throat, blood pouring between his fingers in a dark torrent, his knees buckling. He stares at me, shock replacing the aggression, as the light fades from his eyes.
He falls face-forward onto the floorboards. He twitches once. Then stops.
I stand over him, my chest heaving. I look down at my hands. They are coated in crimson to the wrists. My nails are long, curved talons, dripping.
I wait for the horror. I wait for the nausea, the guilt, the human reaction to taking a life violently.
It doesn't come.
Instead, I feel... calibrated. I feel efficient. The threat is removed. The variable is deleted. The predator inside me purrs, satisfied.
I wipe the blood from my cheek, my tongue darting out to catch a drop on my lip. It tastes sweet. Intoxicating.
"Power," I whisper, flexing my claws. The sensation is electric.
I turn toward the door, stepping over the body. I’m ready to find the next one. I’m ready to tear them apart until the swamp runs red.
A sound cuts through the roar of the battle outside.
Yelp.
It’s high-pitched. Young. A sound of pure, terrified agony that bypasses my ears and hits my soul.
I rush to the shattered doorframe, gripping the wood with my talons.
In the mud below, illuminated by the harsh, blinding glare of the floodlights, I see them. Twins—Jax’s young pack members.
One of them is down. A boy, barely sixteen, in his wolf form. His grey fur is matted with red. A Hunter stands over him, a serrated bayonet buried deep in the wolf’s flank.
The Hunter twists the blade.
The wolf screams—a human sound in an animal throat.
The "calibrated" feeling in my chest shatters. The cold, efficient predator vanishes, replaced by a wave of nausea so violent it nearly doubles me over.
That isn't a monster down there. That isn't a soldier. That is a child. Probably a kid who likes bad jokes and stealing extra biscuits. And he is dying in the mud because of me.
The reality of it hits me harder than any bullet. They aren't just fighting; they are being slaughtered. For a stranger. For a Duval.
The breath leaves my lungs in an agonizing whoosh.
My knees hit the floorboards, the strength draining out of my legs as the guilt crushes the air from the room.
I watch the blood pool around the boy’s flank, and I feel the phantom echo of the blade in my own gut—not magic, but empathy so sharp it feels like I’m bleeding out with him.