15. The Monaco Gambit

The flight to Monaco was a blur of pressurized steel and the heavy, metallic scent of weapons being primed. I stared out the window of the private jet, watching the lights of the French Riviera flicker like dying embers against the vast, black void of the Mediterranean. Beside me, Girard was a silent storm. He was cleaning his silver-plated .45, the rhythmic click-slide of the metal acting as a countdown to the carnage I knew was coming.

    “You’re too quiet, Arielle,” he said, his voice a low vibration that I felt in my marrow before I heard it with my ears.

    “I’m listening,” I replied, turning to him. Through the Lien de Sang, I could feel the ripple of his muscles, the way his heartbeat was syncopated with the hum of the engines. “My father is changing, Girard. Even from here, across miles of open air, I can feel the rot in our shared blood. He’s not a man anymore, but he isn’t like you. He’s a hollowed-out shell, a ghost filled with nothing but the Morettis’ ambition.”

    “The synthetic gene is a parasite,” Girard said, his amber eyes catching the dim cabin light. “It grants the strength of an Alpha, but it eats the soul to fuel the engine. It creates what we call a ‘Ghost Wolf’—a creature with all the predatory instinct of the beast but none of the honor of the pack. He won’t just try to kill us. He’ll try to consume us.”

    We landed on a private strip tucked behind a jagged cliffside, far from the prying eyes of the Monaco elite. The air was thick with salt and the smell of expensive jet fuel. We weren’t heading for the casino or the luxury hotels. We were heading for the Moretti’s private coastal villa—a fortress of white stone that hid a laboratory of horrors beneath its foundations.

    “Bastien and the vanguard will hit the front gates at 0300,” Girard briefed as we climbed into a blacked-out zodiac boat. “They are the distraction. While they draw the silver-nitrate fire, you and I are going through the sea caves. We hit the lab from the drainage intake.”

    The water was black ink as we cut the engine, drifting toward the jagged mouth of the sea caves. The waves crashed against the rocks with a violence that mirrored my own internal state. We slipped into the water, the cold hitting me like a physical blow. I gasped, but Girard’s hand was instantly on my waist, his heat a furnace even in the freezing depths.

    Stay close, his voice echoed in my mind, the bond acting as a private, silent frequency. I am your lungs. I am your strength.

    We swam through the narrow, kelp-choked tunnels, the light of our submersible torches cutting through the silt. The air in the caves was stagnant, smelling of brine and something chemical—the unmistakable scent of the serum being manufactured in bulk. We emerged in a cavernous sub-level where massive steel pipes hummed with the flow of cooling liquid.

    I climbed out of the water, my tactical gear dripping, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm. Girard followed, shifting partially as he reached the shore. His shoulders widened, his claws extending with a terrifying snickt sound. He was the Apex in his element—dark, silent, and utterly lethal.

    We moved through the service corridors, taking down guards with a terrifying, synchronized efficiency. I used my suppressed pistol to pick off the perimeter watchers while Girard moved like a shadow, breaking necks before the men could even scream. But as we reached the heavy, reinforced doors of the central lab, the air changed.

    The doors hissed open before we could touch them.

    The lab was a cathedral of glass and violet neon. Hundreds of tanks lined the walls, filled with human subjects in various stages of a horrific, twitching transformation. And at the far end, standing over a console of glowing data, was a figure that made my breath catch in my throat.

    It looked like my father, but his skin had turned a translucent, sickly gray, stretched tight over a frame that had grown too large for his bones. His eyes were no longer brown; they were voids of pulsating purple light.

    “Arielle,” the thing that was Marcel Monet spoke. The voice was a discordant echo, as if three people were speaking at once. “You’ve arrived just in time for the demonstration. The Moretti family wanted a weapon. I gave them a god.”

    Beside him, Dante Moretti stood with a manic, triumphant smirk, holding a detonator. “The ‘Ghost Alpha’ is ready, Don Roux. And unlike you, he doesn’t have a pesky human heart to hold him back.”

    Marcel turned toward us, his jaw unhinging in a way that shattered his human mask. He let out a shriek that wasn’t a howl—it was a sonic weapon that shattered the glass tanks nearest to us. From the shards, the half-formed Ghost Wolves began to crawl, their eyes glowing with that same violet rot.

    “Kill the Alpha,” Dante commanded, his voice trembling with greed. “And bring me the girl. I want to see if the Luna’s marrow is as pure as the legends say.”

    The Ghost Wolves lunged, a wave of gray fur and violet eyes, and the final war for the Roux soul began in a shower of glass and blood. I leveled my weapon, the bond screaming a warning in my brain as the first monster cleared the distance.