CHAPTER 1: THE GIRL WHO DOESN’T BELONG

The silence followed me to work.

For three days since the alley, the static in my head had stayed dead. The relief was so huge it felt like stepping out of a room with a screaming alarm. I could think. I could breathe.

But in its place was a new kind of tension. A waiting feeling. He had said we’d see each other again. A man like that didn’t make empty promises.

My new job was at Veridian Biotech, in a silver tower that speared into the city sky. It was a clean, quiet, expensive place. My first real shot at a stable career. As I walked through the revolving doors, the waiting feeling sharpened into a point.

The lobby was too quiet. The marble ate sound. The security guard at the desk was named Marcus. He had eyes the color of ice on a river. He looked at my ID, then up at me. He didn’t blink. He sniffed the air, just slightly. A weird, animal gesture.

“Nyxara Vale,” he said. His voice was flat. “Level 42. Your card is black. Do not try to use it on any other floor. It won’t work.”

He handed me a single, black keycard. No welcome. No smile. I took it, my fingers cold.

The elevator was a polished metal box. A man in a perfect suit got in with me. He smelled like a forest after a lightning strike. The doors closed.

And then, he choked.

It was a strangled sound, like he was trying not to be sick. He pressed himself against the far wall, his knuckles white. A low, pained growl vibrated in his throat. He stared straight ahead, sweat on his temple.

I stood frozen. The air felt thick and wrong. At the 38th floor, the doors slid open. He all but fell out of the elevator, disappearing down the hall without a look back.

My heart was a frantic bird in my chest. What was that?

Level 42 was a world of glass and white lab coats. It smelled like chemicals and cold air. My new boss, Dr. Aris Thorne, had a face like a sharp bird. He shook my hand. When his skin touched mine, he flinched. He covered it with a cough.

“Your research on cell lines was… unusual,” he said, leading me past labs where people worked in eerie, silent sync. “We’re interested in anomalies.”

The word hung in the air. Anomaly.

“I’ll be doing routine data analysis,” I stated, more to remind myself.

“Indeed. The Cradle Project. Very routine.” But his eyes didn’t look routine. They looked hungry. He pointed to a desk. “Begin.”

The day was long and strange. People didn’t talk to me. They glanced, then looked away quickly, like I hurt their eyes. One woman, passing my station, suddenly sneered, her lip curling to show her teeth. She shook her head and hurried off.

I was a ghost. A wrong-shaped ghost.

Then, at 3:17 PM, everything changed.

It wasn’t a sound. It was a feeling. A drop in pressure. The hair on my arms stood up. Every person in the lab froze. Heads came up. They all looked toward the door.

He walked into the glass-walled corridor.

Rhydian Blackthorne.

He moved like he owned the ground under his feet. He wore a suit that cost more than my car. His pale gold eyes scanned the lab, a king surveying his domain. Dr. Thorne rushed to his side, talking fast, pointing at a tablet.

But Rhydian wasn’t looking at the tablet.

He was looking at me.

Through the glass, across the room, his gaze locked onto mine. The world narrowed. The strange, quiet bubble around me tightened. For a second, it was just us in all that sterile, bright space.

A young researcher carrying a tray of glass dishes was so busy staring, he tripped. A petri dish slid off and smashed on the floor. The sound was a gunshot in the silence.

Everyone jumped. The young man went pale as paper, trembling.

Rhydian’s head turned. He looked at the boy, then at the broken glass. He didn’t yell. His voice was calm, quiet, and it cut through everything.

“Clean it up. Report to Biosafety. Then report to Kellan for discipline.”

The boy flinched at the name Kellan like he’d been slapped. “Y-yes, Alpha. Immediately.”

Alpha.

The word echoed in my quiet mind. Not sir. Not mister. Alpha.

Rhydian’s eyes came back to me. That intense, curious look was back. It felt like being examined under a microscope. Seen, but not as a person. As a specimen.

Then he turned and was gone, his people flowing after him. The lab exhaled a breath it had been holding for five minutes.

Dr. Thorne came to my desk, his face serious. “That was Mr. Blackthorne. The CEO. He owns all of this. He takes a… personal interest in unique projects.” He leaned closer, his voice dropping. “Do your work. Be invisible. Do not give him a reason for that interest to become personal.”

The workday ended. On the train home, the city noise felt like an assault. But the static didn’t come back. The silence in my head was permanent now. A gift from a monster.

That night, in my small apartment, I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing his eyes. Not angry. Not cruel.

Interested.

I was the anomaly. The unusual data. And the most powerful man in the most mysterious place I’d ever been had looked at me like I was a puzzle he needed to solve.

I didn’t know much about this new world. But I knew one thing.

When a predator is interested, it doesn’t end well for the thing being watched.