Chapter 107 The Bites
The lab felt colder after that.
Not physically colder, the climate controls hummed at their usual sterile setting ,but something in the air had shifted. The word royal was still echoing in my skull like a dropped blade.
Fred didn’t sit. He didn’t soften. He moved around the central table, pulling up additional scans, layering image over image until the holographic display glowed with rotating skeletal overlays and magnified tissue samples.
“There’s a reason these hybrids look like that,” he said quietly.
Darius’s arms were crossed, but I could see the tension in his shoulders. “You already said the mutations were rushed.”
“Yes,” Fred replied. “Rushed. Sloppy. Unethical. But that’s not the whole story.”
He tapped the display.
The captured hybrid’s facial structure appeared in three-dimensional rotation. The bone distortions were exaggerated in red. The jawline stretched unnaturally. Teeth elongated unevenly, some fully formed fangs, others half-developed and fractured.
“Whoever is making them doesn’t have access to your maternal line,” Fred said, glancing at me. “They’re trying to replicate you without the stabilizing royal markers.”
I swallowed.
“And failing,” Darius said flatly.
“Yes. The wolf DNA integrates. The vampiric conversion initiates. But without the First Blood markers, the transformation destabilizes. It becomes violent. Cellular regeneration competes with lupine shift triggers.”
The projection shifted to microscopic imagery. Cells splitting, mutating, overcorrecting.
“They’re forcing two apex predators into one body,” Fred continued. “Without the genetic architecture to sustain it.”
My stomach turned.
“So they break,” I said.
Fred nodded grimly. “They warp.”
He paused.
“And there’s something else.”
The way he said it made the back of my neck prickle.
He zoomed into a section of the captured hybrid’s neck. The image sharpened, revealing puncture wounds,twin indentations along the carotid, they were too large to be that of a vampire.
Bite marks.
My chest tightened.
“We found these on all recovered bodies,” Fred said.
Darius leaned closer. “From vampires?”
“No.”
Fred tapped another command.
A second image appeared, one pulled from archived footage. Grainy, night-vision enhanced. Me.
The night our pack was attacked.
The night I killed the hybrids that stormed our territory.
In my shifted form.
My fangs embedded in a hybrid’s throat.
The footage froze. The image isolated. Measurements calculated.
Then overlaid with the bite mark from the new hybrid.
Perfect alignment.
The lab went silent.
“That’s not possible,” Darius said first.
Fred’s voice stayed steady. “The spacing matches.Size. Depth ratio matches. Pressure distribution matches.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“You’re saying,” I began, but my voice fractured.
“The bite marks found on these hybrids,” Fred said carefully, “are identical to yours in full form.”
“No,” I whispered.
Darius turned sharply. “Lyra killed all hybrids that night.”
“Yes,” Fred agreed immediately. “You did.”
My heartbeat thundered in my ears.
“Then how,?”
Fred didn’t look away from me.
“These aren’t the same hybrids.”
The words hit like impact.
“These hybrids,” he continued slowly, “were omegas before.”
The room tilted.
“Omegas?” I repeated.
“Yes. Genetic tests confirmed it. Pack registries from the border territories match the DNA of missing omegas.”
The missing omegas.
Vanishing from border packs.
My pulse dropped into something cold and hollow.
“They were kidnapped,” Fred said. “Then bitten.”
The screen shifted again, showing molecular sequencing patterns.
“Not scratched. Not injected. Bitten.”
My knees weakened.
The royal family has the ability to turn others into full vampires.
It wasn’t myth. It wasn’t folklore. It was biological authority embedded in bloodline markers.
And apparently.
I carried it too.
Darius’s voice lowered dangerously. “You’re implying someone like Lyra is creating them.”
Fred held his ground. “I’m stating that the conversion method matches royal vampiric transformation.”
I stepped back slowly.
“I didn’t,”
“We know,” Darius said immediately, turning toward me.
Fred nodded. “Lyra, you killed the hybrids that attacked your pack. All of them. We verified.”
“Then how do they have my bite?” I demanded.
Fred inhaled slowly.
“Because the conversion wasn’t completed.”
He enlarged the cellular scan.
Fred’s voice dropped.
“Royal lineage carries the ability to convert others through bite alone. No ritual. No council approval. Direct transformation, in pure royal transformation, a bite initiates a controlled vampiric shift. The subject dies. Then reanimates as a full vampire.”
Cold dread pooled in my stomach.
“But these hybrids didn’t fully die,” he continued. “They were beaten by a vampire werewolf hybrid .”
“And Lyra carries that lineage,” Darius said.
“Yes.”
Someone knew exactly what I was. And they were trying to replicate it.
Weaponize it.
Mass-produce it.
Without the stabilizing architecture that kept me sane.
“They don’t have my mother,” I said slowly.
“No,” Fred agreed.
“Which means they’re compensating.”
“Yes.”
“With forced integration, they are taking a gamble .”
“Yes.”
“And failing.”
“Yes.”
Silence fell again.
But this time it wasn’t shock.
It was understanding.
I was the template.
And templates get copied.
Darius’s hand found mine.
Steady.
“They’re using my sister,” I whispered.