The creature in the corridor took a slow, unhurried step toward Claire.

The featureless grey skin of its face rippled like liquid mercury, settling into the sharp, aristocratic jawline of Killian Virel.

It adjusted its charcoal cuffs with a terrifyingly familiar elegance, its amber eyes soft, glowing with the specific warmth Killian only used behind the closed doors of the penthouse.

"Claire," the mimic whispered, its voice a perfect, honeyed echo of Killian's morning devotion. "Don't be afraid. I'm here."

Claire's back struck the cold, damp brick of the corridor.

Beside her, the real Killian was a coiled spring of violence, his tactical vest shredded, his skin slick with gore, eyes burning with a feral, crimson rage.

He tensed, ready to rip the impostor apart, but the mimic's posture was too precise, too familiar. It was a mirror of a moment Killian hadn't even realized he'd left behind.

The monster ignored the Alpha. It leaned toward Claire, its hand reaching out—pale, clean, and trembling with a faked tenderness. 

"You're shivering, Claire," the duplicate murmured, its thumb hovering near her jaw. 

Claire stopped breathing. 

She watched the duplicate's thumb. It was searching for a cheekbone, but it was moving toward the spot where her glasses usually sat. 

She wasn't wearing her glasses. They had been lost in the woods. 

The real Killian lunged, his trajectory a blur of dark wind, his claws slicing through the air with a sound like a whip-crack. 

The monster parried.

It moved with a calculated, defensive grace—the exact tactical logic Killian used during the rooftop fight.

"Killian, It can copy you!" Claire screamed, her voice echoing through the hollow processing room.

Killian froze, his claws hovering inches from the duplicate's throat, his chest rising and falling in explosive cycles.

She took a step forward, her boots crunching on shattered glass.

"It's reading my memory, Killian! It's stuck in the memory! It can't track your current logic"

The real Killian's jaw locked. The amber flare in his eyes flickered, the beast inside processing the data point.

The monster hissed—a sound of escaping steam—and its voice distorted, jumping between frequencies.

"Claire... don't... don't run around... I'm... I'm on my way back..."

"It's lagging!" Claire screamed. "Break your pattern!"

Killian didn't wait for the rest of the sentence.

He discarded the tactical precision of a billionaire's guard. He discarded the discipline of the executive wing.

He dropped to all fours, his spine arching with a wet, rhythmic crack.

He launched himself at the duplicate, not as a fighter, but as a force of nature.

He didn't use a parry. He didn't use a strike.

He slammed his entire mass into the duplicate, pinning it against the brick wall with a force that sent a spiderweb of fractures through the mortar.

The creature shrieked, its Killian-mask dissolving into a chaotic blur of grey flesh and black veins.

Killian's right hand—now a massive, obsidian claw—drove straight into the center of the duplicate's chest.

Killian didn't stop. He pinned the creature against the wall, his hand plunged deep into the pulsating, grey mass of its sternum. He flared his own bloodline, a surge of pure, ancient Alpha power that turned the air in the room scorching hot.

Under the pressure of his lineage, the disguise began to peel away. The "Killian" skin sloughed off in strips of oily, viscous sludge, revealing the writhing, parasitic core of the Suture underneath—a pulsing knot of stolen tissue and dark, runic energy.

"Die," Killian growled, his voice a distorted, inhuman rasp.

The creature didn't scream like an animal. As it began to dissolve into ash.

The mimic vanished into a cloud of pungent, chemical smoke.

The silence that followed was absolute. Killian stood amidst the rubble, his chest heaving, his claws slowly retracting back into his fingertips. The rage was fading, replaced by a dark, simmering confusion.

Claire stepped forward, her hand reaching out to touch his arm. "Killian, are you—"

He flinched.

He didn't pull away, but his body went rigid. His amber eyes, still rimmed with the residual red of his bloodlust, searched her face. He looked at the carnage, then back at her.

"Were you scared?" he rasped.

Claire didn't answer with words. 

She reached out and pressed her palm flat against his bloodied chest, right over the heavy gouge in his tactical vest. 

His skin was burning. "I was focused on the objective."

"Fear is a biological response to an unknown variable, Killian. But I know what you are now." 

Killian froze. His wolf hummed in the marrow of his bones—a sound of raw, unadulterated relief. 

He looked down at her small, pale hand against his gore-stained chest. 

"I have spent my life hunting monsters," he whispered, his scent turning sharp and acidic. "I know that look of fear. Claire, I never expected my mate to be so unusual."

Killian reached out, his hand trembling as he tucked a loose golden curl behind her ear, leaving a smear of dark blood on her temple. 

"Leon is clearing the secondary exit," he whispered, his breath hot against her face.