It had been an hour since Sheryl revealed the monster inside her. Out of sheer terror, Derek had pulled the trigger four times, each blast punching into her abdomen and dropping her to the floor.

  Now the house was silent except for the faint hum of the refrigerator and the slow, wet sound of her breathing.

  Sheryl's body began to shrink. Bone slid back beneath skin; claws retracted; fur melted away. When the last tremor faded, she stood upright, human again, drenched in blood, staring down at the four black punctures in her stomach. The shotgun pellets were still lodged deep.

  She staggered toward her bedroom, leaving a trail of crimson across the floorboards. In the mirror, she examined the wounds with clinical detachment. Her eyes showed no pain, only curiosity.

  Years in emergency medicine had taught her precision. Now she used it on herself.

  One by one, she extracted the embedded shells, each metallic click echoing through the quiet house. She didn't flinch once.

  When she finished, she wrapped a towel around her waist, turned on the shower, and stepped beneath the stream. The water ran red, circling the drain.

  Later, she walked into the living room still naked, droplets glistening across her skin. Through the large window, she watched the night sky above Bayou Mounds, dark, endless, familiar. Her stare was cold and emotionless.

  Later that night, Derek finally called Olivia Hale.

  The phone rang twice.

  "Hello," she answered.

  "Hey, look, we have to talk. ASAP," Derek said. "I've got a lot to tell you."

  "I'm listening," she said.

  "I'm at a hotel an hour outside Bayou Mounds. I'll text you the address."

  "What happened now?"

  "My mom turned into a werewolf."

  Silence filled the line.

  Then Olivia's voice, low and skeptical. "A werewolf?"

  "Yes," Derek's tone cracked. "I'm serious. These things are real. She transformed right in front of me. She grew in height, muscles bulging everywhere. Her legs bent forward, her face stretched into a snout like a dog. Her eyes turned bright yellow. She was at least eight feet tall when it was done. She filled half the living room."

  He took a breath. "As she came at me, I fired the shotgun, four rounds. Dropped her. But she got back up."

  Olivia exhaled slowly. "No one is going to believe this, Derek. No one."

  A pause.

  "But I'll try my best to help you."

  "All right," she continued, regaining her composure. "What did you find when you went through her room?"

  "I didn't see anything that says she's on drugs," Derek said. "But there was a list of names, her sorority sisters, and two business cards from a real estate broker. There were also maps for different national parks, mountain trails, and dense forest areas. She's never been into outdoor stuff."

  "Whose name was on the card?" Olivia asked.

  "Monica Scales," Derek replied.

  "Hm." Olivia's voice softened. "I remember her. Local celebrity. Had a reality show about selling houses. I always wondered what happened to her after she left TV."

  "Yeah, that's her."

  "All right," said Olivia. "Give me one of those cards when we meet. I'll dig around and see what I can find."

  "Thanks," Derek said quietly.

  "Just hang tight," she replied. "We'll figure this out."

  The next morning, Derek pulled into the Bayou Mounds Police Department just as the sun began slicing through the gray clouds. His eyes were bloodshot; he hadn't slept in almost two days. The station parking lot was nearly empty, just a few patrol units and Olivia Hale's black sedan parked near the side entrance.

  Inside, Hale was already behind her desk, a half-empty cup of coffee beside a stack of printed reports. She didn't look up as Derek entered.

  "Close the door," she said quietly. "We're doing this off the books."

  Derek nodded and sat down across from her. The blinds were drawn. The only sound in the room was the faint hum of the computer.

  "I ran that name you gave me, Monica Scales," Hale said, eyes glued to the screen. "Real estate mogul, former TV personality. But that's not what's interesting."

  She clicked a few keys, and a classified tab flashed across the monitor. The logo in the corner read Department of Defense, Restricted Archive.

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  Her eyes widened. "Well, this is something."

  "What is it?" Derek asked.

  "The name Scales triggered an old federal cross-reference. Project Lycan Recombinant Program."

  Derek leaned forward. "Lycan?"

  "Yeah," Hale said. "As in lycanthrope. Looks like a military genetics initiative from about fifteen years ago. Only two lead consultants are listed: Dr. Bill Carroll and Dr. Carlos Marsh."

  She scrolled further, her voice growing cautious. "It says here Marsh retired six months ago. Last known address, outside Baton Rouge."

  Derek didn't hesitate. "Then that's where we're going."

  Hale spun her chair toward him. "You do realize how insane this is, right? Going after a retired federal scientist based on classified data we weren't supposed to access?"

  Derek's stare was cold, determined. "You heard what I told you. My mom isn't human anymore."

  Olivia sighed and rubbed her temples. "This could cost me my badge."

  He stood. "And if we don't go, more people are going to die."

  Silence filled the office. Hale finally closed her laptop and stood as well.

  "All right," she said. "But this never happened."

  She grabbed her jacket, clipped her holster, and nodded toward the exit.

  "If this ties back to the explosion," she said, "then it's my mess too."

  They walked out into the morning light, unaware that the road ahead would take them to the one man who could confirm their worst fears.

  The drive to Baton Rouge was long and quiet, the kind of silence that only forms between two people who've seen too much. The bayou fog hung low, swallowing the road in front of them. When they finally reached the outskirts of the city, Hale turned onto a narrow dirt path that led deep into a wooded area.

  A weathered cottage appeared ahead, half swallowed by vines and mud. The windows were boarded, the yard overrun with weeds. But faint light flickered inside.

  "That's him," Hale whispered.

  They approached cautiously. Derek knocked twice.

  The door creaked open just enough for an aged voice to slip through.

  "You wouldn't be here," it said, "if one of them hadn't found you."

  The door swung wider, revealing a frail man in his late sixties with gray stubble and sunken eyes. Boxes labeled LRC Bioengineering Division were stacked high behind him.

  "Dr. Marsh?" Hale asked.

  He nodded once. "Come in. But keep your voices down. The walls remember things."

  Inside, the air smelled like old paper and swamp water. Research notes were pinned across every surface, with formulas, genome charts, and sketches of human musculature blended with those of wolves.

  Derek spoke first. "You were part of Project Death Claw, right?"

  Marsh exhaled through his nose. "Was was the keyword. What happened?"

  Derek sat down across from him. "My mother, Sheryl Brown, she's changed."

  He recounted everything.

  The nights she left the house, she wore only a robe. The mornings she came back, she was drenched in sweat, drinking four bottles of water back to back. The way she crawled on all fours, sniffing around the appliances. The rage. The strength. The night she lifted him by the neck and threatened to kill him. And the transformation, the yellow eyes, the expanding muscles, the snout.

  Hale sat silently, taking notes as Derek spoke, her skepticism fading with every word.

  Marsh's expression hardened. "And she survived multiple gunshots?"

  Derek nodded. "Point-blank range."

  The old man closed his eyes. "It's worse than I thought."

  "Explain," Hale said.

  Marsh leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. "The virus you're describing wasn't supposed to exist. It started as a regenerative bioweapon program. Dr. Richard Carroll believed he could merge human DNA with lupine genetic code to create soldiers that could heal instantly, resist pain, and survive any battlefield environment."

  "So what went wrong?" Hale asked.

  "I warned him," Marsh said bitterly. "The recombinant serum was unstable. It wasn't healing. It was rewriting. Carroll thought he could control it, but once the human genome begins adopting predatory coding, it stops following orders."

  He paused, his voice lowering. "The explosion you heard about wasn't an accident. Carroll triggered it himself. He wanted to destroy the samples before the serum could spread."

  "But it did spread," Derek said quietly.

  Marsh nodded. "Yes. A few vials survived. Enough to seed the air around Bayou Mounds. The virus doesn't make people sick. It searches for hosts with compatible DNA. When it finds one, the transformation begins. Your mother was one of them."

  Derek swallowed hard. "Then how many more could there be?"

  Marsh looked toward the window. "Dozens. Maybe hundreds. Teachers, police, doctors, tech workers, and anyone else. Some may not even know what they are yet."

  Derek hesitated. "My cousin, Karen, is acting strange, too. She told me the same thing my mom had told me. 'Stay out of our business before it's too late.'"

  Marsh's gaze darkened. "Then she's part of it. The virus carries a hive mind instinct. Once the first infected turns, the rest are drawn together. They organize. They protect the Alpha."

  Olivia leaned forward. "How do we stop it?"

  Marsh stared at them both. "You don't," he said quietly. "You contain it, before it remembers how to multiply."

  The old scientist's eyes flickered toward the window, where the wind brushed against the glass like distant breathing.

  "Because once it does," he said, "it won't stop until it remakes the world."

  Later that afternoon, sunlight filtered through the tinted windows of a sleek high-rise office overlooking downtown Baton Rouge. The gold letters on the glass door read Monica Scales Realty Group.

  Inside, the woman behind the name sat poised at her desk, polished, confident, and unshaken by the chaos unfolding across Louisiana.

  Stacks of property files lay open in front of her: riverfront estates, commercial tracts, foreclosed subdivisions. She was running numbers, reviewing bids, analyzing future developments, a rhythm she'd perfected long before her face appeared on billboards and reality TV.

  Monica Scales was more than just a real estate broker. She was a strategist.

  The kind who saw patterns where others saw paper.

  During her peak, she'd turned crumbling neighborhoods into high-value goldmines and taught her agents to close deals before competitors even drafted contracts. The Baton Rouge business community called her The Closer.

  She leaned back in her leather chair, eyes scanning the spreadsheet glowing on her monitor. Profits, projections, growth curves, all of it didn't feel very sensible now.

  "There has to be a better way," she whispered.

  Her reflection in the darkened screen stared back at her, poised, flawless, and deceptively human. But beneath the surface, something else stirred. The same force that made her dominate the market now pushed her toward something far greater than money or fame.

  She stood and walked toward the large, floor-to-ceiling window. Below her, the city pulsed with life, cars crawling, people moving, unaware that a new order was quietly forming in their midst.

  Her phone buzzed.

  A message flashed across the screen from an unknown contact.

  "Phase Two begins soon."

  Monica smiled faintly and turned back toward her desk. She powered down her computer, slid a folder labeled River Development Project into her briefcase, and locked it.

  Real estate had given her power.

  But what she was building now, this new expansion, would make cities obsolete.

  She glanced one last time at her reflection in the glass.

  Her pupils flickered gold.

  Then, almost inaudibly, she murmured, "Time to grow the pack."

  Bayou Blood: The Awakening. Comments, follows, and ratings help the story reach a wider audience on Royal Road.