Lyra's POV
I counted the heartbeats.
One. Two. Three.
The first howl came from the south. A chorus answered from the west. They were circling the block, cutting off escape routes. Standard wolf pack tactics. Corner the prey. Eliminate exits. Close in for the kill.
I should have been terrified.
Instead, I was furious.
My phone lit up again. Not Kael this time. A different signal. Three dots, blinking in sequence.
Leo. Aries. Cyra.
My blood turned cold.
"No," I breathed.
I swiped the screen. A live feed appeared. The safe room. Empty.
The steel door was open. The biometric lock had been overridden. From the inside. By someone who knew exactly which wire to cross.
"Damn it!" I slammed my fist on the counter.
They were gone.
A seven-year-old genius, a seven-year-old berserker, and a seven-year-old hacker had decided that tonight was the perfect night to disobey direct orders.
I pulled up the tracker app. The three dots were moving. Fast. South, towards the docks.
Towards the warehouse.
"You stupid, brave, beautiful idiots," I whispered.
Then I ran.
Cyra's POV
"Are we sure about this?" Leo asked, his voice shaking as we sprinted down the alley. He was fast, but his legs were shorter. I grabbed his hand, pulling him forward.
"Mom needs us," I said.
"Mom told us to stay in the safe room," Leo pointed out.
"Mom always tells us to hide," Aries growled. He was ahead of us, his eyes glowing faintly in the dark. The wolf was close to the surface tonight. "I'm tired of hiding."
I was tired too. Tired of running. Tired of new cities, new names, new lies. Tired of watching Mom cry when she thought we were asleep.
Tonight, we fought.
The docks loomed ahead. Shipping containers stacked like building blocks. Cranes towering against the moonlight. And in the center, the old warehouse that everyone thought was abandoned.
It wasn't.
We slipped through the side gate. The security scanner beeped once, recognizing our biometric signatures. The door hissed open.
Inside, the warehouse was chaos.
Not the messy kind. The organized kind. Starfire operatives in black tactical gear moved in perfect sync, loading weapons into transport crates. A dozen men and women, each one trained to kill. Each one loyal to the Shadow Lord.
Loyal to Mom.
Kael spotted us first. He froze mid-step, a rifle half-loaded in his hands.
"What the—Kids?! What are you doing here?!"
"We're here to help," Aries announced.
"Help? You're seven!" Kael shouted. "Your mom's gonna skin me alive if—"
An explosion rocked the building. The west wall shuddered. Dust rained from the ceiling.
"They're breaching!" someone yelled.
Kael cursed. He looked at us, then at the door, then back at us. His face twisted in panic. "Get to the evac point. Now. I don't have time to babysit."
"We don't need a babysitter," I said quietly.
I walked past him, towards the far end of the warehouse. The restricted zone. The place Mom thought we didn't know about.
Aries and Leo followed.
"Cyra! Stop!" Kael shouted.
I didn't stop.
I pressed my palm against the biometric scanner. It beeped. Red light. ACCESS DENIED.
I closed my eyes. I felt the machine. The circuits. The electric pulse of the security system. It hummed against my skin, a living thing made of code and current.
Mom called it magic. I called it listening.
I whispered to the lock. It whispered back.
The light turned green. The door opened.
Kael stared. "How did you—"
"Siren blood," I said simply.
Inside, three shapes loomed in the darkness. Massive. Silent. Waiting.
The Titan-3 units.
Each one stood three meters tall. Silver alloy frames reinforced with vibranium plating. Hydraulic joints. Pulse cannons mounted on each arm. Single-pilot cockpits designed for agility, not comfort.
Mom had built them for urban warfare. Compact enough to move through narrow streets. Powerful enough to level a building.
She'd never let us near them.
Tonight, she wasn't here.
"Dibs on the one with the railgun," Aries said, grinning.
Leo pushed up his glasses. "I'll take the EMP variant. Cyra, you get the aqua unit."
I nodded. The aqua unit had water-jet propulsion and cryo-canisters. Perfect for a girl who could feel the moisture in the air like a second skin.
We climbed into the cockpits. The seats were too big. Our feet didn't reach the pedals. But the neural interface didn't care about size. It cared about intent.
I pressed my hand against the control panel. The machine purred to life. Lights cascaded across the HUD. Engine status. Weapon systems. Fuel reserves. All green.
"Systems online," Leo's voice crackled through the comms.
"Locked and loaded," Aries added. He sounded way too excited.
"Kael," I said, switching to the external speaker. "Open the bay doors."
Outside the cockpit, I saw Kael's face. White as a sheet. He looked like he was watching his execution.
"Your mom is going to kill me," he whispered.
"Only if we lose," I said.
The bay doors groaned open. Moonlight flooded in. And beyond it, shadows moved. Dozens of them. Wolves. Shifting between human and beast, their eyes glowing in the dark.
They saw us.
They laughed.
"Starfire sent robots?" one of them howled. "Pathetic!"
Big mistake.
I pushed the throttle forward.
The Titan-3 stepped out of the warehouse. Hydraulics hissed. Metal feet clanged against the concrete. The ground trembled.
The wolves stopped laughing.
Aries's voice boomed through his mecha's external speaker. But it wasn't his war cry.
It was his normal, seven-year-old voice. High-pitched. A little nasal.
"Um, excuse me? Could you please move? You're standing on the flowers."
The wolves froze.
Then Aries raised his right arm. The railgun whined, charging.
"Oops. Too late."
BOOM.
The recoil shook his mecha, but the shot was perfect. A Wolf who'd been mid-shift took the blast square in the chest. He flew backwards, crashing through a stack of shipping containers. The metal crumpled like paper.
Silence.
Then chaos.
"ATTACK!" someone roared.
They came at us in a wave. Claws extended. Fangs bared. Fur rippling as they shifted fully into their beast forms. Ten wolves. Fifteen. Twenty.
against three kids in giant robots.
I almost felt bad for them.
Almost.
Leo's mecha moved first. He raised both arms. The EMP emitters glowed blue. A pulse exploded outward, invisible but devastating. Every wolf within ten meters collapsed, their nervous systems temporarily overloaded. They twitched on the ground, whimpering.
"Sorry!" Leo said through the speaker. "It's non-lethal! Mostly!"
A massive gray wolf leapt at my mecha, claws aiming for the cockpit. I sidestepped. Faster than something that big should move. The wolf sailed past me.
I caught him mid-air.
The mecha's hand closed around his torso. He snarled, snapping at the metal fingers. I lifted him up, eye-level with my cockpit.
He froze. Through the reinforced glass, he could see me. A little girl with pigtails, smiling.
"Hi," I said sweetly.
Then I threw him.
He sailed over the warehouse, a furry projectile, and splashed into the harbor. The water swallowed him with a loud SPLOOSH.
"Three points!" Aries cheered.
Another wolf charged. Then another. They learned quickly. Don't go for the limbs. Go for the joints.
Smart.
Not smart enough.
Aries spun, his mecha's leg sweeping out in a wide arc. It caught two wolves, sending them tumbling. One tried to bite the ankle joint. His fangs skittered off the vibranium plating. He yelped, a cracked tooth falling to the ground.
"That's gonna hurt in the morning," Aries said cheerfully.
Then he stomped.
Not hard enough to kill. Just hard enough to pin. The wolf squirmed under the metal foot, growling.
"Stay," Aries commanded.
I scanned the battlefield. The wolves were retreating. Regrouping. They'd expected humans. Guns. Maybe explosives.
They hadn't expected this.
"Cyra, we've got a problem," Leo said, his voice tight.
I checked my HUD. Energy levels. Still green. Ammo. Full.
"What problem?"
"That problem."
He highlighted a target. My blood ran cold.
A figure stepped out from behind a container. Bigger than the others. His transformation was complete. A wolf the size of a truck, fur black as oil, eyes burning gold.
An Alpha.
Not just any Alpha.
I recognized the scent even through the filtration system.
Damon Storm.
He stared at us. At the mechas. At the Starfire logo stenciled on each chassis.
STARFIRE TECH. PATENT PENDING.
His eyes narrowed.
Then he tilted his head back and howled. It wasn't a call to retreat.
It was a challenge.
"Oh no," Leo whispered.
"Oh yes," Aries corrected. He sounded thrilled.
Damon charged.
He was fast. Faster than the others. Faster than anything that big had a right to be. He zigzagged, dodging Leo's EMP blasts, leaping over my cryo-mines.
He went for Aries.
Aries braced. He fired the railgun. Point-blank.
Damon twisted mid-leap. The shot grazed his shoulder, tearing through fur and flesh. He didn't flinch. He slammed into Aries's mecha, claws raking across the chestplate. Sparks flew. Alarms blared.
"Hull integrity at 80%," Aries's onboard AI announced calmly.
"I noticed!" Aries shouted.
Damon reared back for another strike.
I moved.
My mecha's hand shot out, grabbing Damon by the scruff. He snarled, twisting to bite. I activated the cryo-jets. Liquid nitrogen sprayed from my wrist-mounted nozzles, flash-freezing his fur.
He yelped. It was almost funny. The big bad Alpha, yelping like a puppy.
I pulled him close, lifting him off the ground. His hind legs kicked uselessly.
Through my speaker, I used my sweetest voice.
"Bad dog," I said. "No biting."
His golden eyes locked onto mine. Even in wolf form, I could see the intelligence. The shock.
And the recognition.
He knew those eyes. He'd seen them before. In a mirror. In his own son.
I set him down. Gently. Then I let go.
He didn't attack. He just stared.
Behind him, the remaining wolves had stopped fighting. They stared too.
At us. At the mechas. At the three children who'd just beaten back an entire pack.
"Anyone else?" Aries asked, raising the railgun again.
No one moved.
"Didn't think so," he said.
Then, from somewhere in the distance, a slow clap echoed.
I turned. My sensors picked up movement. A figure stepping out of the shadows. Human. Male. Expensive suit.
Jax Vane.
He was smiling.
"Impressive," he said. "Truly. Starfire's little prodigies. But you've just made a terrible mistake."
"What mistake?" Leo asked.
Vane gestured to the battlefield. To the wolves, the damaged containers, the scorched concrete.
"You've proven you're not harmless refugees. You're weapons. And weapons..." His smile widened. "...belong to those strong enough to wield them."
He snapped his fingers.
The ground shook.
From the far end of the docks, something massive moved. A shipping container tore open, metal screaming. And from inside, it emerged.
A creature. No. A nightmare.
Ten feet tall. Humanoid, but wrong. Skin like cracked leather. Eyes glowing sickly green. Muscles bulging with unnatural growth. Claws that dripped with viscous fluid.
A bio-weapon. A werewolf, chemically mutated beyond recognition.
Vane's ace.
"Children," he said softly, "meet the Berserker."
The creature roared.
And every wolf on the battlefield, including Damon, flattened their ears and whimpered.
I swallowed hard.
"Guys?" I said.
"Yeah?" Leo and Aries answered in unison.
"We might need Mom."