Burn It Down

CONNOR

Moments after Willow crashed through the building’s glass door, the mist shut off with a final mechanical hiss.

A collective gasp passed through the forest after the poison fog cleared. Its damage was done, its victims bleeding out across the battlefield.

The bodies of a quarter of our warriors littered the ground like discarded pieces on a broken chessboard.

The remaining wolves seethed—blood-starved and grief-wild. So when all three of us alphas gave the order, “~Advance. Inside. No mercy~,” they surged forward. Howling, ready to kill, and hungry for vengeance, they raged into the clearing beyond the fallen fence.

From my position in the tree line, I watched the storm unfold. My snipers continued clearing the facility’s outer defenses, but the humans didn’t fold. If anything, realizing they were outnumbered seemed to make them dig in deeper.

It didn’t take long to understand the source of their confidence.

Now that they were forced to fight wolves, they began utilizing weapons I’d never even considered before: compressed air launchers that fired fléchettes coated in silver, sonic flares that triggered seizures, and proximity mines that released powdered silver.

One human soldier took down three wolves before a fourth got in behind him and tore out his throat as he reloaded.

~Fuck~. This wasn’t a war. It was a meat grinder.

But my men had something those other wolves didn’t: precision.

My snipers were silent, lethal shadows. They cut through the enemy, dropping soldiers mid-trigger-pull. We’d trained for this, and it was working. We pushed them back, inch by bloodstained inch.

The moment a sniper said through the mind-link, “~Outer perimeter clear. All targets down~,” I broke from cover.

The field between me and the facility was a graveyard of skin and fur. Wolves writhed in silver-laced agony, soldiers screamed beneath gnashing teeth, and still, I ran. Zigzagging through the wreckage, low and fast, I splashed through mud slick with blood.

A mine went off to my left, its silver dust fanning out in a drift of poison snow. I clenched my jaw and forced my legs to keep moving. A wolf leapt past me, snarling, before its teeth clamped around the neck of a wounded but still-living soldier.

The lab’s steel-and-glass shell loomed closer, and somewhere inside it was Willow.

At the last stretch, I dropped to a knee, drew my gun, and took out a soldier inside the entrance. One clean shot, and he folded.

From here, the sounds of continued fighting bled out the door. Muffled bursts of gunfire, boots pounding tile, echoes of carnage.

Glass crunched underfoot after I charged into the lab. Willow’s scent hung in the air—sharp, wild, familiar—like a marker only I could follow. Ducking between bursts of gunfire, I caught glimpses of fur, claws, and muzzle flashes.

A wolf passed, dragging a severed leg. Another covered a fallen packmate.

Still, I pushed forward and up the stairs to Willow.

Her scent grew strong as I neared the seventh floor, but before I could reach it, an explosion rocked the building. It was close, too close. The impact shook the lights, sending sparks down in a cascade of dying stars.

I continued on, my pistol raised, stepping into a hallway torn apart by violence. Bullet casings littered the floor. Blood splattered the walls and ceiling. A torn fire hose snaked across the tiles.

And then there she was, kneeling in a blown-out doorway. Blood streaked down one side of her face. She held a gun in one hand, the other braced against the wall. And right next to her—

Fuck. Another Willow.

I’d known the clones were real, had seen them before, but this? Two of them, side by side in front of me, and not knowing which was mine? It nearly broke something in me.

“Willow!” I called out, my voice sharper than I’d intended.

The bloodied one kneeling in the door turned, her face pale but fierce. My Willow.

Relief slammed into me. I hadn’t realized how badly I’d needed to see her. We were both alive. For now.

“Connor!” she cried, and we raced into each other’s arms.

For a second, nothing else existed. I kissed her, hard and deep, but she pulled away, her eyes sharp as she tugged me into the room.

Where four small figures lay on hospital beds behind her. Unmoving.

“Are they…?”

“They’re alive,” she said. “Another four next door.”

The clone shifted on her feet beside me, and I readied myself to strike if needed.

“I’m Clara,” she said, offering her hand. “But I think we’ve met before.”

Before I could respond, my headpiece crackled. “Alpha, it’s done!” Josh said, practically cheering. “I’ve gotten into their systems, and we’ve seized control!”

***

We tore through the place with military precision, taking down every human who tried to stop us. The survivors, those medical types who had the sense or cowardice to surrender, were rounded up and packed into one of the military trucks.

Josh had made it clear: leave no stone unturned, no evidence untouched. We scavenged anything that held a scrap of information—hard drives, flash drives, and paper files. It all went into our bags, loot after a heist.

This had been a war, but it was now time for cleanup. A brutal, methodical purge. We were going to burn this place to the ground. The council had made the decision that nothing would remain, and no one could agree more than I.

The unconscious pups were carried out by their fathers and fellow pack members, who clutched them as if they were made of glass. We ripped out the GPS trackers from the ambulances and used those to transport our wounded and dead.

I was just about to herd everyone outside so that we could start pouring gasoline on every conceivable surface when a white-faced warrior from Crystal Moon rushed over.

“Uh, Alpha Connor, I think you’ve got to see this,” he said as he came close.

“See what?”

“There’s, like, a shitload of little kids in the basement.”

WILLOW

Connor and I locked eyes for half a heartbeat before he gave the young man a grim nod.

We followed him out of the lab, past rows of overturned gurneys and bullet-riddled walls, and down the stairs to the building’s guts. Eventually, we reached a heavy door tucked behind a surgical wing, half hidden by a fallen sign.

The warrior pushed it open, and I immediately heard them—children, crying and whimpering. I stepped into the basement room, where the air hung thick with fear.

There were at least twenty of them, maybe more, and not one over four years old. Toddlers and infants were scattered across cribs, sleeping mats, and blankets. The room resembled a daycare, with bright colors and soft toys, but I knew better.

Movement caught my eye, and I locked onto the three women hovering in the corner like frightened animals. A man in a lab coat soaked with something too red to be finger paint stood between them and us.

“You can’t hurt them,” he said, both hands raised as if they could stop bullets.

“We’re not going to,” I said, stepping forward. “But what the hell is this? Who are these kids?”

He blinked at me, then furrowed his brow and tilted his head.

One of the women lunged forward and snarled at me, “You’re not supposed to be here!” Her voice was shrill and sharp.

“What the fuck does that mean?” I snapped.

Her face tightened with contempt, her lips curling with disgust. “Stupid clone.”

The word ~clone~ struck—sharp and sudden. But before I could react, Connor moved.

“Watch your mouth,” he said, stepping in front of me. “She’s not a clone. She’s the ~original~.”

The silence that followed was louder than gunfire.

The doctor went white, paler than the lab walls. “You’re…serious?” he whispered, his eyes glued to me, unblinking. “I never thought I’d get to meet the original.”

Connor grabbed him by the collar so fast I barely saw it. “Did you make the clones? Huh?” he growled, slamming the man against a cabinet before sniffing him. “And you’re a wolf, too! Why are you working with humans? How could you betray your kind like this?”

Fury rolled off him in waves. His alpha aura filled the room as his whole body trembled with rage. Every adult cowered and ducked their heads, unable to meet his eyes.

With his face turned away, the doctor gasped, choked, but didn’t fight. “Yes, I betrayed my kind. Yes, I worked with the humans. But my job wasn’t with the clones. It was with these babies.” He lifted his head and locked eyes with me before adding, “Her babies.”

The ground fell out from under my feet.

I could barely force out the words, “What do you mean ~my~ babies?”