Carolina Moon

Breaking Point: K.C.

The moment before Tess hit Execute, the “Countermeasure” shifted from a hum to a physical assault. It felt like someone was driving heated needles into my ear canals and pouring liquid lead down my spine. It wasn’t just static anymore. It was a targeted frequency designed to rip the human skin apart and force the wolf to the surface in a state of blind, homicidal rage.

My vision fractured. I seen the room in strobes of gold and grey. I was on my hands and knees, digging into the high-tech floor tiles until they screamed. I could hear my bones grinding, the wolf trying to lengthen my limbs and rearrange my face. I held onto the image of Tess’s face in the glow of the monitor to keep from slipping.

I managed to turn my head to the door. Marcus was worse off. Because he wasn’t an Alpha, he didn’t have the same mental fortitude. He was halfway through a shift — his jacket was shredding, his face distorted in a state of agony, and he was losing the grip on his humanity.

The boots on the stairs were getting louder. I heard the distinctive clack-clack of tactical rifles being readied. “Contact!” a voice barked from the corridor. They were definitely not coming for a conversation. They had every intention of “securing the assets.”

I forced myself to stand. Every muscle fiber was screaming, and I could taste blood in my mouth from where my jaw was reshaping and my canines were lengthening, slicing into my lip. I focused on Marcus. “Hold…the door…” I growled. The words came out barely human.

I used what strength I still had to push a surge of raw Alpha energy through the air, not to hurt him, but to act as a psychic shield. It was a temporary “ground wire” to keep him from losing his mind to the frequency. He looked up. His eyes were bloodshot and yellow, but he nodded. He picked up his sidearm with claws that shouldn’t have been able to fit the trigger guard.

I turned back to Tess. She was a blurred shape in the center of the chaos, her fingers still moving with that Beaumont precision. She looked so small against the backdrop of the screaming servers and the mercenaries at the door.

A flash-bang grenade skittered across the floor from the hallway. Clang. Bang!

The white light didn’t blind me, it just fueled the wolf. I howled — a sound that shook the server racks. I lunged toward the doorway, just as the first grey-clad mercenary appeared.

I didn’t need to use a gun. I used the speed and strength that the frequency was trying to force out of me. I caught the first man by the throat, his body armor felt more like paper under my hands. I didn’t shift fully. I stayed in that mid-transformation state that I’d taught the Steelclaw Pack to use for combat. It was a dangerous middle ground where I had the wolf’s power, but the man’s intent.

Behind me, I could hear Tess shouting over the noise. “The upload of at ninety-five percent! K.C., the cooling system is failing! The servers are going to blow!”

I stood in the doorway, a wall of fur, muscle, and teeth, staring down the barrels of three more rifles. I could feel the server room behind me reaching a critical mass. I looked over my shoulder one last time. Tess met my eyes. For a second, the gold in my vision cleared. “Do it!” I snarled.

The screen flashed white. The high-pitched whine of the servers cut to a dead, terrifying silence. And then, the backup lights turned red.

The immediate silence after the system fried was more jarring than the static had been. For a split second, the pressure in my skull vanished, leaving a vacuum of raw, jagged adrenaline. The static was gone, but the wolf was already at the surface, and he wasn’t going back in until he was fed.

I didn’t waste time. While the mercenaries’ night-vision giggles recalibrated to the red emergency lights, I reached for my radio. “Holden, Mason!” I roared into the comms, my voice a gravelly bark. “Grid is down. Tactical team in the basement. Move in! Now!”

The three remaining mercenaries seemed to adjust to the new lighting as they moved in together. They didn’t fire blind. They used localized strobes on their rifles to try and disorient me. It didn’t work though. To my eyes, they were moving through molasses.

I didn’t focus on the guns. I moved with a speed that defied my size, a shadow in the red light, and took the first of the three from the side. My claws shredded through his tactical vest like it was made of silk. I wasn’t killing — yet — but I was ensuring he wouldn’t stand up again.

Behind me, Marcus had finally found his footing. The frequency was gone, but he was still trapped in the half-shift. He didn’t use his gun, he used his weight, slamming into the next mercenary with the force of a freight train, pinning him against the concrete wall.

The last mercenary backed away towards the stairs. He leveled his rifle at Tess as he realized the “assets” weren’t going to be “secured” easily, and he needed leverage. I moved between him and the doorway to the server room. My back arched, and the scorched skin of my shoulders pulled painfully against the transformation. I growled — a sound that vibrated in the very floorboards. I was not going to be an “asset.” I was the Alpha of the marsh they wanted to pave over.

From above, we could hear the sounds of another fight. Mason and Caleb had breached the service entrance. The tactical team upstairs was being hit from the rear. I heard the distinctive, terrifying sound of a full wolf shift — the snapping of bone and the rearing of fabric — followed by a scream that ended with an abrupt gurgle.

“Holden, status!” I barked.

The radio cracked. “Perimeter secure, Alpha. Two vehicles are fleeing towards the main road. Mason and Caleb are clearing the top floor. Get the girl and get out of there.”

“The heat in here is about to hit a melting point,” Tess added, confirming the urgency of our departure as she secured her laptop. Her face was illuminated by the red strobes.

The acrid scent of melting plastic and burning lithium was filling the air around us. The server racks were beginning to smoke.

The last mercenary started to laugh, clearly thinking he had us at his mercy. He choked on the sound as I snatched the rifle and snapped the barrel like a dry twig. I didn’t kill him, but I did knock him out. He would be a piece of evidence for Sheriff Grady to find that “Lowcountry Development” had brought a private army into our backyard.

I turned back to Tess, and grabbed her around the waist, tucking her against my side. She wasn’t a damsel in distress by any means, but I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to hold onto her. Beside us, Marcus was breathing hard, his face slowly settling back into its human features. His eyes remained gold though.

“Up the stairs, now!” I ordered.

We burst out of the basement into the cool night air. The purple glow on the roof was dead now. The static was gone. Cypress Hollow was dark, lit only by the flickering lights that actually belonged in the town.

I looked back at the facility. It was now a tomb of high-tech failure. As we reached the SUV, Tess’s phone buzzed. It was a text from an unknown number: You only fried the local branch. —G.S.