His first memory was cold.

Not snow—not the clean kind of cold. Metal cold. The kind that lived in cages and tables and instruments.

They called him Unit Seven.

He never had a mother in the way wolves were supposed to. No den. No heartbeat to sleep against. He had handlers, trainers, and white-coated breeders who wrote notes while he learned to stand.

Half wolf. Half human.

Not born—made.

The official records described hybrids like him as “adaptive combat assets,” engineered during a generation of wars that governments wanted won without human losses. Unofficially, everyone knew what they really were:

Disposable.

By the time Seven was old enough to understand words, he was already training.

Run.

Bite.

Track.

Kill.

He learned to tear through obstacle courses before his adult teeth came in. Learned to ignore pain. Learned that hesitation meant punishment.

Other pups disappeared.

Sometimes they failed training.

Sometimes they got sick.

Sometimes they simply weren’t aggressive enough.

Nobody explained where they went.

Seven stopped asking.

Years passed in concrete compounds and battlefields that never officially existed. They dropped him and others into ruined cities and forests and places where uniforms had no flags.

Humans pointed.

Hybrids fought.

He became good at it.

Too good.

His senses sharpened into weapons. He could hear breathing behind walls. Smell fear before a trigger was pulled. Move faster than ordinary soldiers.

People praised his results and ignored his injuries.

When he returned from missions, nobody asked if he was hurt.

Only if he still worked.

Then one day, something changed.

It happened during a village operation.

Orders came through his earpiece:

Eliminate all witnesses.

Routine.

He moved through smoke and broken stone until he found them.

Three people.

An old man.

A woman.

A child.

None armed.

The child stared at him.

Not screaming.

Just... looking.

Seven raised his weapon.

The child stepped forward and held out a piece of bread.

That was all.

No fear.

No hatred.

Just a hand offering food to something she thought looked hungry.

For the first time in his life—

Seven lowered his weapon.

His handler repeated the order.

He refused.

Silence.

Then:

“Unit Seven has become noncompliant.”

He tried to explain afterward.

Said they weren’t soldiers.

Said they weren’t threats.

Nobody listened.

Conscience wasn’t considered a malfunction they could repair.

Only one they could remove.

His combat status was revoked.

His designation changed from Asset to Failed Asset.

He expected termination.

Instead, they sold him.

Officially, combat hybrids had become illegal years earlier after public exposure and international outrage. Creating them, owning them, fighting them—all banned.

But bans only changed where the money moved.

There were buyers.

There were always buyers.

Seven disappeared into the underground.

No records.

No name.

No rights.

The slavers renamed him Fang.

Less paperwork that way.

People rented him.

Sometimes as security.

Sometimes as entertainment.

Sometimes for things nobody spoke about afterward.

When he resisted, they used shock collars.

When he fought back, they starved him.

When customers wanted violence—

they sent him underground.

Illegal fighting rings.

Crowds packed around steel cages while bets changed hands overhead.

Fang fought people.

Other hybrids.

Anything thrown inside.

The rules were simple:

Win and eat.

Lose and suffer.

Years blurred together.

He became a legend no one admitted existed.

The Wolf Man.

The Soldier Beast.

The One That Didn’t Die.

But people misunderstood why.

They thought he survived because he was stronger.

Truth was—

he survived because somewhere along the way he had learned something dangerous.

He still cared.

He protected weaker fighters.

Ended matches early.

Shared food.

Took punishments for others.

And every time he did—

he remembered the child with the bread.

One night one of his handlers took him out of his cage, put a leash on him and bundled him into the back of a van. The van drove for around 2 hours before coming to a stop.

Fang lay there, wondering what horror an pain awaiting him this time and how long for