As a rule of thumb, I don’t have a problem with guns. Daddy kept a rifle and a pair of pistols—relics from his life before I was born—and taught me the basics: safety, cleaning, respect. I can handle them fine. I just prefer a bow. And lately, I’m even starting to like my flogger.

  Guns are okay.

  Except when they’re pointed at me. That’s a deal-breaker.

  And right now, the woman who survived my first kill is pointing a pistol at me.

  “You’re alive.” The relief in my voice sounds wrong—wrong for someone I killed, wrong for someone still aiming at me.

  “Aye.” Her voice is raw, her eyes bloodshot. The hair—no, fur—covering her body ripples in the breeze, shading darker, blending into the stone. “Ye gonna flog me this time, or just stare?”

  I take a hesitant step forward. “You fell.”

  “Aye. Didn’t stick the landin’.” She flicks the pistol as if reminding me who holds the leverage.

  Behind me, Lenora and Frankie murmur urgently over Tess—rubbing her limbs, pouring healing potions over the glowing lines of Inanna’s star. Copper and spice cling to the air. Every few seconds one of them whispers her name like a prayer.

  I stop with my hands open. “You’re Rhea, right?”

  “Aye—and yer Lizzy Loren.”

  “I just want to talk—”

  “That why ye tried to kill me? Heard that loud an’ clear.”

  “You saw us. You were going to report—”

  “Mind reader, are ye?”

  “No, but what else—”

  “Doesn’t matter now, does it—bròg clag-ghorm?” The pistol stays steady.

  I freeze. My hands drift to my thighs. How does she know that name? Coincidence? Impossible. I look past the mud, the exhaustion, the fine auburn-and-blonde fur striping her from neck to toe. My gaze finds her face—sky-blue eyes, soft nose, lips that should smile but don’t.

  Color ripples across her arms—muddy brown sliding to copper, to pale gold, brightening into the strawberry-blonde I know like a childhood song.

  “Wolfie?” I whisper.

  “Aye. So ye remember me, do ye?” Rhea’s hues settle into a sun-kissed blend of strawberry and gold—her old self flickering beneath the new.

  I blink. Her coloring isn’t just hair—it moves. Hues shimmer like light over velvet, adjusting with breath and heartbeat. Not cosmetic. Not natural. Engineered.

  Half-forgotten lessons crowd my mind: failed genetic trials, adaptive-skin projects banned before I was born, nanobot symbioses meant to let humans live bare in any climate. The tech worked—but people didn’t. Society rejected them, shaved them, shamed them, exiled them.

  A new strain of humanity, built for survival, outlawed for existing.

  My chest tightens. “What happened to you?”

  “I went home.”

  “Home? Ballycastle’s under three hundred feet of water.”

  “Nay, lass. Home’s no’ a place. It’s family—folk who accept ye for what ye are, not what they want ye to be.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Ye think I’m gonna spill my life story to the lass who tried to kill me?”

  “Gun?” I lift my chin toward it.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Rhea huffs and holsters the weapon. Her fur fades to a soft, translucent blonde. “Fair point. Still don’t trust ye.”

  “Wolfie—you were in Rocky with us! You played Janet for two years—me, Mom, Dad, you—the whole floor show!”

  Rhea snorts. “And look at ye now—struttin’ like Magenta wearin’ Frank-N-Furter’s corset.”

  Heat floods my neck. “It’s armor, not lingerie,” I snap, tugging it higher. “It keeps dressing me like this on its own, so don’t start.”

  Her smirk sharpens.

  “You dated Dad for a year after Mom died… then vanished. He hunted the country for you.”

  Rhea flinches. Her hands twitch, then fall limp at her sides. For a heartbeat she looks smaller—haunted. Her fur ripples again, colors draining until she all but vanishes against the rocks and reeds. My throat tightens. She’s hiding, the way prey does. The way survivors do.

  Her voice drops, rough and low. “Darkmore.”

  My heart stops. The name hits like a gut punch, all air ripped from my lungs. “Darkmore? You went to prison? Why?”

  Rhea’s gaze slides away, fixed somewhere far beyond the loch. “Prison’s a word for the livin’, lass. Darkmore’s… different.”

  Lenora mutters something urgent behind me—Tess’s chest just moved. Frankie hushes her, but the spark of hope cuts through the air like flint.

  “Ask yer lady friend—the dancer princess,” Rhea spits.

  I turn, catching the flicker of movement—Tess twitching, fingers flexing as if waking. Then my gaze finds Jenny.

  Sparkles flare in Jenny’s palms, throwing harsh light across the lochside. “Step back, Lizzy.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s a criminal.”

  Rhea growls, low and animal. “Malarkey. And what was my crime, princess?”

  Jenny’s eyes flash. “Look at you.”

  I whirl, anger boiling under confusion. “Jenny—what are you talking about?”

  Rhea exhales—slow, bitter. She drags a calloused hand along her forearm, combing through the fine auburn fur. “Lizzy…” Her voice cracks. “I was born a criminal.”

  “You can’t be…” I glare at Jenny. “Birth is not a crime!”

  “Parliament passed anti-mutant legislation before we were born—”

  “Frack that! We’re not in the UK. We’re not even on Earth!”

  Frankie shifts, jawbone club and shield catching the light. “The mutagenic prohibitions are written into the Colonial Charter.”

  “Why? Why does the law hate her? She should’ve been my stepmother—Dad loved her—but instead the law stole her and stuffed her core in a box under the Channel!”

  Frankie’s face hardens. “Lizzy, you weren’t alive during the Nanobot War. You didn’t see towns vanish for weeks, then come back blank-eyed and smiling. Memories wiped. Breeding like mad. And what came next?” Her voice drops. “Children with claws. Gills. Wings. Fur. Parents terrified of their own kids. And those teens didn’t care who they took to bed. Didn’t care if they asked.”

  She slams her shield into the earth. “So yeah—mutants are illegal.”

  Rhea’s howl tears across the stone.

  “Lies! Fear-mongerin’ propaganda!” Her fur darkens into mottled camouflage as anger blooms beneath her skin. “Go on then—light me up, dancin’ princess! Nothing I say’ll change your mind. I’m not human enough for ye.”

  She turns.

  I step forward.

  “Stay back,” Frankie warns, shield rising.

  Another step.

  “Lizzy,” Jenny snaps.

  Rhea wipes a muddy tear away. “Or ye’ll what? Kill the woman who should’ve been her step-mum?”

  The world tilts. I stop dead.

  “Do ye know why I was arrested?” Rhea asks Jenny. “Should I tell her? Or will you, Princess Sparkles?”

  My mind whirls. Daddy’s abrupt retirement from MI5. Mom’s death in a world where nanobots cured everything. The closed-casket funeral. Rhea’s disappearance. His hollow grief.

  The pieces snap together like bones set wrong.

  My throat aches. “He proposed to you…”

  Rhea shakes her head. “No. He bought the ring. Had to register it with his superiors—procedure, because of his job—”

  “And they arrested you?”

  Her voice breaks. “Aye. I didn’t even know till the trial.”

  Behind me—a soft gasp. Tess’s.

  Jenny’s orb flares white-hot. The air crackles, ozone sharp on my tongue. “I’m sorry,” she says, trembling but resolute. “The law is clear—”

  I shove between them, hands raised. “No! Please—”

  Frankie barrels forward, ready to bowl through all of us.

  And then—

  “Pacem. Bellum finitum est. Aufer iram tuam.”

  The words roll across the lochside like the hush after thunder—low, melodic, commanding. They vibrate through my bones, warm as sunrise, soft as a mother’s hand.

  I turn.

  Tess is sitting up.

  Her eyes blaze—gold and indigo, the colors of Inanna’s star. Water pearls on her skin and runs in rivulets down the glowing lines of her new armor. Each pulse of her voice sends ripples through the shallows, and for a breathless moment, even the wind forgets to move.

  Jenny lowers her hands, the radiance flickering away in hesitant sparks. Her voice trembles, small in the silence that follows. “Tess? You’re awake. What do you mean—peace? The Nanobot War never really ended. The law…” Her words trail off as Tess’s gaze finds her. Whatever she sees there stops her cold.

  Frankie slams into me a heartbeat later, knocking us both to the rocky ground—but my eyes never leave Tess.

  “Pacem… filiis et filiabus… sit. Haec filia belli verum dicit.”

  The Latin rolls from Tess’s tongue like molten gold, each word heavier than the last. The glow fades from her eyes. Her armor dulls from sunfire to dark leather.

  Then she crumples.

  Lenora dives forward, catching Tess before she hits the stones. She kneels, cradling her like something holy and furious all at once. “Damn idiots,” she snaps, glaring up at us. “I don’t know what she said—but I hope it was worth it.”

  She presses two fingers to Tess’s throat, jaw tight. “She’s out again.”

  I look from Jenny—my friend—to Rhea, the woman who could have, should have, been my mum, and wonder if peace is anything more than a word we use to mark time between wars.