CHAPTER 8: THE SCIENTIST'S SCAR

Kain doesn’t summon me to his tower. He sends a guard with a sealed note and a vial of clear liquid.

Drink. It won’t kill you. Day 4 starts when you do.

I stare at the vial for a long time before I unstop it. It tastes like nothing, which is worse than poison. At least poison is honest.

The guard leads me through the castle, not to the north tower like Theo’s, but down. Past the dungeons. Past the crypts. Into stone corridors that smell like antiseptic and old blood.

Kain’s lab isn’t a room. It’s a cathedral.

Glass walls. Steel tables. Jars with things floating in them that I don’t want to name. The air hums with magic and machinery, and in the center of it all stands the Scientist King.

Ice-white hair. Lab coat over leather armor. Eyes like winter looking at me like I’m a problem he already solved.

“You’re late,” he says without looking up from the microscope. “The sedative should have taken effect three minutes ago.”

“It wasn’t a sedative,” I say, though my tongue feels thick. “I’m still standing.”

“It was a suppressant.” He finally looks at me. “Your hybrid markers spike when you’re angry. Makes you unpredictable. I prefer my data clean.”

Day 4. Twenty-six days left. I’ve bled Rook, Silas, and Theo. I’ve seen Silas murdered by his mother and Theo promise to die for me on Day 16. Now I’m here, in the lair of the King who supposedly built me.

“Project Moonbane,” I say.

Kain doesn’t flinch. “Theo told you.”

“He told me you made me to end Kings. To end the Law.”

“Did he tell you why?” Kain sets down his tools and walks to a glass case. Inside it, suspended in blue fluid, is a heart. It’s still beating. Slow. Steady.

He doesn’t wait for me to answer. “Because the Fifth Law is a mistake. Four Alpha Kings forced to share one Luna, three forced to die. It’s inefficient. Cruel. It creates monsters like Draevor who use little sisters as leverage.”

He looks at me. “So I made something better. I made you.”

The way he says it—*made you*—like I’m one of his experiments in a jar, makes my hands curl into fists. “I’m not a thing.”

“No,” Kain agrees. “You’re a result. Twenty years of blood magic, wolf genetics, and forbidden alchemy. The only successful hybrid of four bloodlines. Rook’s regeneration. Silas’s witchcraft. Theo’s prophecy. And mine.”

He taps the glass case. The heart beats faster. “Mine was the hardest to replicate. Scientific precision in a world ruled by instinct. I needed someone who could think while the others fought. Someone who could break the Law without breaking herself.”

“So you grew me in a lab?” My voice comes out quieter than I want.

“I planted you in your mother’s womb. Accelerated the gestation. Ensured you survived the birth that killed her.” He says it like he’s reciting data. “Draevor thinks he sold you to us. He didn’t. I retrieved you. The Fifth Law activation was just the extraction method.”

Twenty years. My whole life has been his experiment.

“Why tell me this?” I ask.

“Because Day 4 is my rotation.” He opens a drawer and pulls out a scalpel. Not ceremonial like my knife. Surgical. Precise. “And the Law requires bonding. You need to see how I die to understand what you have to do.”

He holds out his hand, palm up. No fear. No hesitation. Scientists don’t fear data.

I don’t move. “If you built me, you already know how you die.”

“I know probabilities.” His winter eyes meet mine. “I know that in 73% of futures, Rook kills me before Day 20. In 19%, Silas does it. In 7%, Theo. But in 1%—the one I’ve been engineering for two decades—you kill me on Day 30, take my crown, and end the Law.”

He steps closer. “I need to know if that 1% is still viable. Bleed me, Nyx.”

I take the scalpel. It’s heavier than my knife. Colder.

“You want me to kill you?”

“I want you to choose to.” He doesn’t blink. “The Law says you must crown a King. It doesn’t say you can’t be the one holding the knife when the other three die. Project Moonbane wasn’t designed to choose a consort, Nyx. She was designed to become one.”

I press the scalpel to his palm. His skin is cold. No calluses, but not soft either. Hands that build and destroy in equal measure.

“Do I save my sister in your 1%?” I ask.

He smiles for the first time. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “In the 1%, everyone survives except the Law itself. Cut deep. I want accurate data.”

I drag the blade across his palm.

His blood isn’t red. It’s silver. It wells up like mercury, beading instead of flowing, and when it hits the air, the world doesn’t fall away.

It calculates.

Numbers scroll across my vision. Probabilities. Timelines. I see myself standing in this lab a hundred different times, holding a hundred different knives, making a hundred different choices.

In most of them, I’m crying. In most of them, Kain is already dead.

But in one—one timeline that glows brighter than the rest—I’m not crying. I’m standing over four thrones. Three are empty. One has Rook in it, alive, watching me. My stomach is round with his heir. And in my hand isn’t a knife.

It’s a crown.

My crown.

The vision snaps off like a switch.

I’m back in the lab, on my knees, gasping. Kain is crouched in front of me, his silver blood already clotting, his expression unreadable.

“You saw it,” he says. It’s not a question.

“The 1%,” I breathe. “I was pregnant. Rook was alive. I was wearing a crown.”

“Mine,” Kain says quietly. “You took my crown and made it yours. That’s how Moonbane ends the Law. Not by choosing a King. By becoming one.”

He stands and offers me his uncut hand. When I don’t take it, he grips my wrist instead, his fingers clinical as he checks my pulse. “Elevated heart rate. Dilated pupils. The bond is taking.”

“Is that all I am to you? Data?”

“No.” He releases my wrist. “You’re the variable I couldn’t predict. I built you to be ruthless. Efficient. I didn’t build you to care about a seven-year-old in a Claiming dress. That part was yours.”

He walks to a cabinet and pulls out a small glass bottle. Inside it is a black liquid that moves on its own. “This is for Mira. If Draevor tries to move her before Day 8, give her three drops. It will simulate death for twelve hours. Enough time for me to extract her.”

“You’re helping me save her?”

“I’m protecting my investment.” He sets the bottle on the table between us. “But yes. Draevor’s contingency violates my calculations. I won’t allow it.”

He looks at me then, really looks at me, and for a second the scientist drops away. “You’re not just Moonbane, Nyx. You’re the first King who might actually deserve the title.”

The door opens. Rook leans against the frame, his grin sharp and bloody. He’s been fighting. Again.

“Day 4’s over,” Rook says, his eyes on Kain’s hand. “She bled you. That means she’s mine until midnight.”

“Biologically, the bond needs six more hours to stabilize,” Kain says flatly.

“Biologically, I don’t care.” Rook pushes off the frame and walks to me. He doesn’t touch me, but he stands between me and Kain, blocking him from view. “You done playing with your toys, Scientist?”

“She’s not a toy,” Kain says.

“Could’ve fooled me.” Rook’s hand finds mine, and his fingers are warm compared to Kain’s. Alive. “Come on, little Luna. You’ve seen enough death for one day.”

He tugs me toward the door. I go, but I take Kain’s bottle with me.

At the threshold, I look back. Kain is already back at his microscope, like I was never there. Like I’m just another experiment he’s logged.

But his hand is clenched on the table. Silver blood wells between his fingers.

He’s not as clinical as he pretends.

Rook doesn’t speak until we’re in the corridor. “What did he show you?”

“The future where I win,” I say.

Rook stops walking. “And?”

“And you’re in it.” I meet his eyes. “Alive.”

Something flickers across his face—hope, maybe, or hunger—and then his grin is back. “Good. Then I’ve got twenty-six days to make sure you don’t change your mind.”

He pulls me down the hall, away from the lab, away from the 73% where he kills Kain.

Day 4. Twenty-six days left.

I’ve bled all four Kings now. I’ve seen three deaths. I know what Kain built me for.

Three Kings must die. One becomes mine.

But Kain’s 1% says I can keep the one that matters.

I just have to survive long enough to take his crown.