Brett’s Perspective
I was starting to get it. In this hellhole, if you wanted to live, to not be treated like a bug waiting to be squashed, you learned two things: keep your senses sharp, and make yourself look like trouble.
Luka and a couple of the other marginally "friendlier" guys in this makeshift pack had been giving pointers. Not fancy combat moves or pack lore. Just the dirty, basic rules of street survival.
"Pup, ears up, nose working," said a stray they called Scarface—a deep claw mark furrowed his left cheek—as he chewed on suspicious jerky. "No one’s your friend here, but everyone’s a signpost. They get tense, guards are coming or soone nasty’s on the move. They relax, maybe you can breathe. Scents, sounds, even how tight their muscles are when they walk... you notice it all. We ain’t territory wolves with a cozy den. We’re scavengers. We live by being twitchy."
Vigilance. Lesson one. I tried, but I sucked at it. The slls were a toxic soup of sweat, filth, blood, disinfectant, and the sickly sweet stink of emotions. The noise was a constant background hum of whispers, heavy breathing, coughs, and distant clanging doors. It was overwhelming.
Lesson two was more direct: grow thorns.
"You can’t look like a soft target, Brett," Luka said coldly one day in the yard, after I’d once again looked away from a group of predatory stares. "Even if you’re pissing yourself inside, you stand straight. You glare back. You stare them down until *they* blink first. Weakness here is an invitation. For them to take your food, your spot on the floor, even..." He didn’t finish. I rembered the big guy’s leering suggestion.
Learning to look fierce. I practiced snarling at my reflection in the streaked cell wall, lowering my brows. It felt ridiculous, like a kid playing dress-up.
Then the test ca.
Near the end of yard ti one evening, the blond leader—’Ice’ for short, I’d learned—beckoned . He didn’t speak, just gestured for to follow. Luka and two other solid strays fell in behind . We moved across the yard to a secluded corner cluttered with broken maintenance equipnt.
He was already there. The big Black guy who’d first confronted . He wasn’t sneering now. He was on his knees, hands wrenched behind his back, face a ss of bruises and blood, one eye swollen shut. He groaned with each ragged breath, held in place by two of Ice’s wolves.
The rest of the yard watched from a distance. Their gazes—curious, eager, indifferent, fearful—prickled my skin like needles.
Ice stood beside , his voice utterly calm, carrying more weight than any shout. "Hit him."
I froze, staring at the man who’d been so vile. Anger flickered, but it was drowned by a cold, sick dread. Do it? Here? Like *them*?
Luka gave a firm shove from behind. "Go on, kid. This is the way."
I had no choice. This wasn’t a request. It was a requirent. Obedience was survival. Showing your teeth was survival. Now, they were the sa thing.
I took a breath, the air thick with blood and violence. I walked forward. Under the man’s terrified gaze, I swung.
The first punch hit his shoulder, glancing, weak. He grunted. A few snickers echoed around us.
Humiliation burned. I swung again, aiming for his cheek. Connected. The feel of flesh and bone against my knuckles turned my stomach. Again. A third, a fourth... I started kicking his arms, his legs, avoiding killing blows but putting force behind it.
At first, I rembered Luka’s lessons: *Don’t kill him. Just make sure everyone rembers.* But as I hit, sothing broke loose inside . A hot, alien fury surged up from a dark place, lava-hot, flooding my veins. It was more than anger. It was the fear of this cage, the hatred for this place, the rage at my own powerlessness... and sothing else, sothing primal and sleeping, awakened by the blood, the violence, the scent of predatory anticipation from the wolves around .
My fists grew heavier, faster. I stopped aiming for limbs. I hit his head, his ribs. I heard the wet crunch of cartilage, felt warm blood spray my hands and face. His cries weakened into whimpers, then into nothing.
I couldn’t stop. The heat consud . The edges of my vision tinged red. A roaring filled my ears, drowning out everything but my own ragged breath and the wet thud of impact. The world shrank to just and this thing that needed to be broken.
A hand grabbed my arm, the grip like iron. Luka.
"Enough, kid. Any more and he’s gone." His voice sounded distant.
I stopped, panting. A wave of dizziness and weakness hit . My legs buckled and I dropped to my knees, hands hitting the ground. The feeling was wrong... Not hands. *Paws*?
I looked down. Not my familiar human hands, but paws covered in pale grey fur, tipped with sharp, dark claws.
I jerked my head up to look at Luka and the others. The perspective was wrong—they seed taller. Scents were sharper, more layered. I tried to stand, but my posture was off, my back legs awkward.
"Wh—" I tried to speak. What ca out was a rough, guttural sound between a whine and a growl.
I looked at my naked body. The grey fur was already receding, my bones emitting faint pops and cracks as they reshaped. Within seconds, I was just a naked, trembling boy again, slumped on the cold, filthy concrete, sweat and blood-sared gri dripping off .
The man before was a unconscious, bloody wreck.
I looked up at Ice. His ice-blue eyes held no surprise. Only a cold, knowing acceptance. He gave a slight nod. *Lesson complete.*
Luka tossed a ragged scrap of blanket over .
I wrapped it around my shivering body, my teeth chattering, my mind reeling. The terrifying tide of violence still echoed in my nerves. And deep inside, sothing had shifted, irrevocably.
I... I think I shifted.
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