Long before we could slip away, the screeching of tires tore through the silence, echoing across the valley road. The sound was deafening — innumerable cars grinding to a halt right outside Professor Duncan’s compound.

Doors slammed furiously.

Julius and I froze. We could already hear the heavy thud of boots stamping against the decking. Without wasting a second, Julius grabbed my arm, and we darted through the rear exit.

Left to me alone, I would have been caught. But Julius knew it all — he saw it all. Our escape was guided by his eerie ability to see both the past and the future.

We ran through the darkness, the wind slicing across our faces. My heart pounded so violently that I could barely hear my own breath. When I finally stopped, doubled over with exhaustion, Julius yanked my arm.

“Keep moving!” he hissed.

“Hold on…” I gasped, my voice breaking as my knees buckled. “I… I just need a minute…”

Before I could speak further —

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

A triple explosion shook the ground beneath our feet. The force knocked us off balance as the night lit up in fiery orange. I turned back just in time to see Professor Duncan’s duplex erupt in flames, swallowed whole by the inferno.

It burned like dried firewood in a raging furnace.

Through the roaring flames, we heard voices echoing from the compound.

“We must find that kid! He has the virus! This earth must be uncomfortable for him!”

Another voice replied, trembling,

“But Master, he isn’t here. I don’t think he survived.”

Then came the chilling voice of authority — the one I would never forget:

“I want two things — his corpse and the virus. No one will stop our mission. Not even the boy!”

A pause, then another voice:

“What now, Master?”

“We’ll keep scouring the earth until he’s trapped… and annihilated. Let’s move out!”

The growl of their engines faded into the night.

I sank to my knees, tears streaming down my face as I stared at the burning ruins. “Professor Duncan…” My voice broke. “He’s homeless now… and it’s my fault.”

Pain welled inside me like a flood. I had led this destruction straight to his doorstep.

“You have to perk up, Darius,” Julius said calmly, standing a few feet away. His tone didn’t match the gravity of what had just happened — almost as if he expected this.

While I wept, he only smirked faintly and snorted, his lips curling in a twisted smile.

“The task ahead,” he said, “is not for the faint-hearted.”

I glared at him through my tears. “What do I tell Professor Duncan now? How do I explain that I brought the shifters — the very monsters who should protect humanity — to burn his house down?”

Julius didn’t respond. His fish-like eyes had gone blank again, staring into the empty space as though watching another world unfold.

“What are you seeing now?” I whispered, trembling.

He didn’t answer.

“I’m done with this!” I snapped. “At dawn, I’m going straight to the police station. I’ll drop the virus off — let them deal with it!”

“Don’t prove your enemies right,” Julius said, his tone suddenly cold and sharp. “Don’t show them you’re a weakling, Darius.”

“My father discovered that virus and told me to get rid of it—”

He interrupted me so suddenly that I flinched. His face was inches from mine, eyes glowing eerily pale.

“Your father never gave you the virus to throw it away!” he thundered. “He entrusted it to you to save humanity. The baleful Lord Mayor and his shifters are out to wipe out mankind — including you and me — and rebuild this world in their own image. He wants to be called God!

The virus is the final piece of his plan — the key to making himself the only immortal wolf in the universe. Don’t you understand?”

I froze in silence as Julius grabbed my backpack and unzipped it.

“Imagine it,” he continued, pulling out the vial. “A universe filled only with loyal, bloodthirsty shifters — humanity extinct.”

He held up the glowing green fluid and gave it a slight shake. The light danced across his face.

Trying to calm myself, I pulled out my sketchbook — the one where I’d drawn dozens of werewolves. I flipped through the pages until I reached my favorite: the all-brown wolf, standing beneath a full moon, howling into the night.

I looked up — and froze.

Julius was holding a syringe now, filled with one milligram of the virus.

“You just have to inject it, Darius,” he said quietly.

My eyes widened. “No! No, Julius, don’t—”

Before I could move, he lunged forward, grabbed my arm, and drove the needle into my vein.

“NO!” I screamed. But it was too late.

The liquid fire coursed through my bloodstream, spreading like lightning. My body convulsed, bones snapping and reforming with sickening cracks. My skin burned and stretched as brown fur erupted across it. My vision blurred. My scream turned into a guttural howl.

In seconds, I was no longer human.

I had become the beast I once drew in my notebook — the all-brown wolf beneath the moon.

I leaped into the air, howled in agony, and my cry echoed through the universe…

A sound that marked the birth of something the world was never meant to see —

an immortal alpha.