Chapter 15 The Neon Purgatory

The lush, frozen silence of the North was a fading memory by the time the SUV crossed into the "Neutral Zone." This was a sprawling, lawless expanse between the Lycan territories and the human cities—a place where the neon lights flickered with a desperate, sickly hue and the air smelled of diesel, cheap synth-ale, and the metallic tang of blood.

To the world, this was a graveyard of broken dreams. To Scarlett, it was a gauntlet.

Scarlett kept her hood low, her fingers gripping the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white. This was the "Gray Market," a purgatory where monsters and men traded in things that didn't exist in the daylight. Here, the laws of the Lycan King meant as little as the laws of the Human Council. The only law was survival.

"Don't look them in the eye," Scarlett whispered as they drove down a narrow street lined with underground fighting pits. "In this place, a single glance is considered a challenge to the death. The rogues here aren't looking for a leader; they’re looking for a meal."

Caleb sat in the passenger seat, his massive frame radiating a cold, lethal aura that seemed to push back the very shadows of the car. He had pulled a black tactical mask over the lower half of his face, but his golden eyes remained uncovered—two burning suns that tracked every movement in the street with predatory precision.

"The scent here is foul," Caleb rumbled, his voice a low vibration that shook the dashboard. "It smells of desperation and rot. It reminds me of the cages they kept me in when my mind was still lost in the fog. Why must we pass through this filth, Scarlett? My wolf wants to tear this place apart just to breathe clean air."

"Because it’s the only way to reach the Thorne estate without Julian’s scanners picking us up," Scarlett explained, her eyes darting to the rearview mirror. "Julian has every highway and private airstrip bugged with spirit-sensors. But the Neutral Zone is a dead zone for digital tracking. The chaos here acts as a natural cloak."

She pulled the SUV into a heavily guarded lot, the metal fence topped with silver-tipped razor wire. As they stepped out into the humid, neon-drenched night, the atmosphere hit them like a physical blow. The music from the nearby clubs was a distorted, bass-heavy thumping that vibrated in Scarlett's marrow.

Immediately, the predators of the Neutral Zone took notice. A group of low-level Lycan rogues—outcasts who had been kicked out of their packs for crimes too dark to mention—began to circle them. Their eyes glinted with a feral hunger, their clothes tattered and stained with engine oil.

"A human girl and a masked stray," one of the rogues sneered, his tongue flicking over his yellowed fangs. He was a scrawny, twitchy man, but the jagged scars on his arms spoke of a hundred street fights. "You look lost, sweetheart. And that one next to you... he smells like he’s trying too hard to be important. Why don't you leave the big guy and come play in the pits with us? We pay well for pretty things like you."

Scarlett reached for the jade brush at her waist, her spiritual energy beginning to hum in her fingertips. But Caleb moved before she could even draw a breath.

In a blur of black silk and raw speed, he was suddenly in front of the lead rogue. He didn't use his claws—that would have been too merciful. He simply grabbed the man by the throat and lifted him three feet off the ground with one hand. The rogue’s laughter turned into a sickening gurgle as Caleb’s fingers tightened, his strength capable of crushing stone.

"I am in a very foul mood," Caleb whispered, his voice a tectonic plate of suppressed violence. He didn't shout, but the sheer weight of his Alpha aura made the other rogues stumble back, their primitive instincts screaming at them to run. "If you do not vanish in the next three seconds, I will use your spine to decorate the streetlights of this pathetic gutter."

The other rogues didn't wait to see if he was joking. They vanished into the shadows like rats fleeing a fire. Caleb dropped the leader, who scrambled away into the darkness, gasping for air and clutching his bruised throat.

"Caleb, we need to keep a low profile!" Scarlett hissed, grabbing his arm and pulling him toward the entrance of a nearby basement bar. "The more noise you make, the more likely someone is to recognize the way you fight."

Caleb looked down at her, his golden eyes filled with a dark, swirling intensity that made Scarlett’s heart skip a beat. The intimacy in the middle of this grimy, violent street was jarring. "I am tired of hiding, Scarlett. Every mile we drive south, the memories become sharper. I remember the cold tile of the labs. I remember the face of your father as he watched them inject the Void-Curse into my veins."

He leaned in, his forehead pressing against hers, his mask brushing her skin. "Find your Shadow-Driver. Find the tunnels. Because once we enter that city, I am not stopping until the name Thorne is a whisper in the wind. And you... you need to decide which side of the blade you’re standing on."

Scarlett looked into the eyes of her King and realized that the "lie" of her protection was no longer enough to hold him back. The King was awake, and he was hungry for the truth—even if that truth meant destroying the very family Scarlett had been born into.