“What the fuck did you do to me?” I’m a monster. There was no other word for what he’d become. The mirror didn’t lie.

“You are a soldier for the future. A shining example of what anyone can become.” The man who’d done this to him didn’t even have the courtesy to look ashamed. He justified his vile act.

Because he wants us to kill him.

“Why would anyone choose to become thisss?” The words emerged with a sibilant hiss, his tongue having split to become more serpent’s than man’s. He lifted his fingers and noted their change, the claws at the tips, the coarse and scaly skin. No part of him remained untouched. He didn’t dare take a peek inside his pants.

Here lizard, lizard. He ignored the other voice.

“Who wouldn’t choose to be stronger and faster? You should thank me for the improvement. Especially since it didn’t cost you a thing.” His uncle held the same cold stare he always did, but his lips curved, hinting at a smirk. A smirk Brandon wanted to smash.

To think he’d been excited when his rich relative came for a visit months ago. “Want to come work for me?” How he wished instead he’d done as his mother recommended when she spotted Uncle Theo stepping out of his luxury car. “Get the shotgun and shoot that varmint.” But Brandon chose to follow the financial lure promised by his uncle’s swanky clothes and expensive wheels.

“You are deluded if you think I’ll thank you for making me a frrr-eak.” Brandon found it hard to control the lisp. He no longer truly had lips, and his tongue wasn’t the one he’d been born with—the one he used to kiss the girls so they’d drop their panties for kisses elsewhere.

They might not want a kiss now. He kept his lips clamped, lest he hiss. Not for the first time, he wished things had never changed.

I wish I hadn’t changed.

Nothing about him was how it used to be, except for his eyes. Those bright brown orbs appeared so out of place within his monstrous new visage. He couldn’t stop staring at the face in the mirror. The scaly skin, the thick ridges across his cheeks, the alien nature of his features. Shocking. I no longer look human. Then again, he had never been quite human, not even at birth.

“Congrats, it’s an alligator,” the midwife, also known as his Aunt Darlene, had announced after she’d helped birth his, according to his mother, “Fat head”—spoken with the utmost affection and also quite true. All the Mercer boys had big noggins. A good thing, too, since they got smacked around a lot—by each other, the joys of a large family. As for Ma, why give them a smack when she only had to point that evil eye in their direction for them to behave, and by behave he should note that bar was perhaps a little lower than the usual, the one other, more civilized folk adhered to.

Brandon was a gator shifter, descended from a long line of swamp gators. Most of them miscreants. More than a few in jail or just out of. And Brandon had fit right in. At least, he used to. Now with his mutant shape, he didn’t know who he was anymore. What am I?

Better. The cold thought wasn’t his own, so he ignored it.

“Change me back,” Brandon demanded. He couldn’t live like this.

“No.” A flat, one-syllable reply that ignited his anger.

He whirled around to confront his uncle, the smarmy bastard in his custom-fitted suit and his coiffed hair. Fucking pansy. He even wore some girly fucking scent, but it didn’t camouflage the smell of asshole.

A mottled green fist shot out as he grabbed Uncle Theo by the lapels and lifted him. He brought his face close and growled, “Fix me.” Brandon punctuated the demand with a shake—which he considered pretty restrained, given his first impulse was to rip the bastard to shreds.

Do it. Eat the flesh of our enemy. Crunch.

No. He wasn’t that kind of monster.

Yet.

Not an ounce of fear entered Theo’s gaze. His expression remained flat. “Have you forgotten the terms of our bargain?”

Of course, he hadn’t. It had all started a week after his sister had gone missing, and it turned out Theo had her. Brandon remembered the conversation.

“You let us run a few experiments, and your little sister goes free.”

“Will these tests hurt?”

“Would I hurt family?”

Brandon should have known better than to trust the wide smile with the white, capped teeth.

Turned out, Uncle Theo would and could hurt family. In his quest for power, he didn’t mind using his nieces and nephews to further his agenda, which, on the surface, was to improve the plight of shifters and make breakthroughs in the field of experimental treatments. In truth, Theo wanted to make hybrid shifters, soldier shifters that he could sell to the highest bidders. But his madness didn’t stop there. He even had plans to change humans, who could pay the price, too.

“I remember our bargain, but I didn’t agree to this.” Brandon swept a hand across his body, more lizard on two legs than man. The wings at his back fluttered with his agitation.

Wings. Fucking wings. Birds flew, not six-foot-plus men—unless someone tossed them across a room in a barroom brawl.

“Stop your whining. It’s too late to go back now. The changes cannot be reversed. Your DNA has been spliced, fused into something new. This is who you are now. Get used to it.”

Rage filled Brandon and needed an outlet. He shook his uncle. “I will not get used to it. You made me into a monster.”

“And I’ll make your sister one, too, if you don’t release me,” shouted his uncle, finally losing his cool.

Hurt Sue-Ellen? The threat froze Brandon. He dropped his uncle, even if inside he seethed, a dark wrath that demanded justice.

Needssss blood. The cold presence of his beast spoke to him very clearly, stronger now in this form. Not necessarily a good thing, given his animal side saw things in more basic—AKA, violent—terms. His gator wasn’t one to cater to affection.

“Don’t you dare hurt my sister.”

Theo smoothed the lapel of his jacket. “Behave, and she never has to see the inside of a lab. I’ve got other plans for her.”

“If you dare lay a hand or anything else on her…”

“Why would I do that? She’s family. And I still need her.” His uncle smiled, and while he might have Mercer blood running through his veins, it was Lupine, not gator. His uncle was a wolf, the big bad wolf. “There’s a reason I’m considered the smart one in the family. I don’t compromise my assets, but I also won’t tolerate disobedience. You will obey me.”

“Suck my dick.” At least Brandon hoped he still had one. He’d yet to take a peek.

“We have other plans for your sperm, dear nephew. Another stage of our plans will involve impregnating women with your modified spermatozoids. We want to see if your new genes transfer to your progeny.”

“You’re sick.”

“I am a man who is looking forward to the future. A future we shall own. It is time our kind stopped hiding in the shadows. It is time we took our spots at the heads of governments. Lycans and other shapeshifters are the predators of this world. We were meant to rule.” Theo’s very words were treason against all shifters.

“You’re a madman.”

“I prefer the term, visionary. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I do have other business to attend to.”

“What about me? What happens now?” Going home was out of the question. His family would lose their shit if they saw him.

“What happens is you will stay under observation. While the genetic splice appears to be a success, it remains to be seen whether your mind can handle it. ”

“What do you mean, whether my mind can handle it?”

“We’ve had issues with other subjects. Minor setbacks. The humans we’ve modified all seem to turn into mindless animals. They’re weak and can’t handle the beast.”

“What about the shifters? What happens to them?”

“That depends on you, and your beast. But just in case you lose that battle, we have to take precautions.”

His uncle turned to a table and opened the box sitting on it. Brandon didn’t react at all when his uncle pivoted to face him holding a hinged ring of metal.

Thisss isn’t good, his cold side advised. Should bite him.

He would most certainly not bite—unless backed into a corner. A corner that was pretty fucking close, given that his uncle held up the ring and said, “Put it on.”

“No.” Like hell would he collar himself. A collar would make a slave of him. It would take away all of his control. It wasn’t just Braveheart who’d screamed freedom. Every man’s and beast’s instinct was to never let anyone fetter them.

“You will put this on, or I will have my people put it on you. Your choice.”

“Go ahead and try. I’ll die first.”

“Die? Oh no, not after the trouble I’ve gone through to remake you. But at the same time, while I won’t let you expire, I see no reason to tell my staff to be gentle. The doctors are curious to see if your healing ability has increased at all.”

“Don’t you have any conscience at all about doing this? Were you not hugged as a child? Were you that freakazoid kid who pulled the legs off spiders?”

“Actually, it was frog legs, and they were quite delicious, especially when Grand-Mère battered and deep fried them. And to answer your question, my conscience is clear. I act for the greater good of my kind.”

“This isn’t good for us.”

“It is for me, as it means power and money.”

The man was a raving lunatic. Brandon couldn’t let him go through with his plan. He would put all of them in jeopardy. “I won’t let you do this!” Brandon dove at Theo and managed to clasp the metal ring. He fully intended to rip it from his uncle’s grip and snap it around Theo’s neck.

It took only one name to drop him to his knees. “Sue-Ellen.”

It sucked the fight from him. His fingers went limp, and his arms fell back to his sides as he bowed his head in submission.

No. Sacrifice the youngling. Do not do thisss. Bite him. Fight.

The list of violent suggestions continued, but he wouldn’t give in to the seeping coldness within. I am not a monster.

His knees hit the floor.

No. The rage in his head hissed and thrashed, but while he might appear a beast on the outside, Brandon was still a man. A man who would do anything for his little sister.

It proved hard not to flinch when the metal curved around his neck, a harsh reminder of what he was now.

Nothing. I am no one.

And over the next weeks, he quickly learned to obey commands, even the heinous ones, the electrical shocks they poured through his body a harsh punishment. Disobeying wasn’t an option.

So he did things.

Horrible things.

He hated himself, but he hated his uncle even more, which was why, when the day of reckoning finally arrived, and Brandon broke the chains of bondage that held him, he set off after Theo, and his sister.

The dark within demanded vengeance—and dinner. Crunch.