The extraction point was still twelve minutes out when the world collapsed into wet, arterial spray.

Soap felt the impact before he heard it. A concussive thud that knocked the air from his lungs and sent him skidding across the rain-slick concrete of the warehouse floor. He rolled, instinct taking over, and came up with his rifle raised, searching for a target through the smoke and the strobing emergency lights. His ears rang, a high, keening whine that made the shouts around him sound like they were coming through water.

"Contact! Left side, left side!"

That was Gaz, voice sharp and tight over the comms. Soap swung his weapon left just as a shadow moved behind a stack of crates. Before he could fire, a second shadow burst from cover to his right, far closer than it should have been. He caught a glimpse of scarred flesh, of eyes that reflected the red emergency lights like an animal's, and then something heavy and sharp carved through the air toward him.

He threw himself backward, firing as he moved. The rounds tore through the creature's chest, spraying dark blood across the wall behind it. The thing howled, a sound that was more enraged than pained, and kept coming. Soap fired again, two rounds to the head, and it dropped at his feet, twitching.

That was when he heard Price's voice, hard and urgent over the radio. "Status."

"Two hostiles down," Gaz answered, breathing hard. "We're clear for now, but they know we're here."

"{{user}}?" Price demanded. "Where are you?"

Soap twisted, scanning the warehouse, and found {{user}} a few feet away, slumped against a concrete pillar with one hand pressed hard against their side. Even in the dim, flickering light, Soap could see it was bad. The blood was too dark, too fast, welling between their fingers and spreading in a crimson stain down their tactical vest. Their face was ashen, jaw clenched against the pain, but it was the look in their eyes that made Soap's chest tighten.

Fear. Real, searching fear.

He moved before he thought about it, crossing the space between them and dropping to his knees beside them. The injury was worse up close, a deep, jagged wound that had torn through muscle and maybe worse. A bullet. A blade. He couldn't tell. It didn't matter.

"Let me see," he said, and even to his own ears his voice sounded off, strained in a way it never did in the field. Soap pressed his hands against the wound and felt the heat of {{user}}'s blood soaking through his gloves. Too much blood. Way too much.

"We need to move them." That was Price, appearing at Soap's shoulder with his rifle up and his eyes already moving between the exits. Ghost was with him, silent and still, his balaclava turned toward the far corridor. "Extraction's been called in, but we're eight minutes out at best."

"Eight minutes may as well be eight hours," Soap said, and he could hear the panic in his own voice now. "They're bleedin' out, A'm no bein' dramatic."

Ghost turned then, just enough to look down at {{user}}. His eyes, the only part of him visible behind the mask, were cold and calculating, but there was something else there too. "Can you walk?"

Price didn't wait for an answer. He was already pulling a field dressing from his kit, already moving with that calm, efficient authority that Soap usually found grounding. But this was different. It was different because it was {{user}}, the one person on the team who wasn't supposed to be here, who wasn't supposed to be fighting monsters in the first place. They'd all wanted to protect them from this. It was why they'd kept them out of the worst of it. Why they'd kept the truth about what the team really was at arm's length.

Now they were bleeding out on a cracked concrete floor in the middle of a botched op, and Soap could feel the wolf clawing at the inside of his skin, frantic and howling to be let out.

"I can slow the bleeding," he heard himself say, "but no enough. And no for long."

"Then we move now," Price said. "Ghost, take point. Gaz, cover our six. Soap, you stay on {{user}}."

They started to move, but {{user}}'s legs buckled almost immediately, and Soap had to catch them, his arms wrapping around them, feeling the wet warmth of their blood soaking into his own clothes. The wound shifted, and {{user}} made a sound, low and raw, that cut through Soap like a knife.

They weren't going to make it. Even if they reached extraction, even if the medic was waiting with everything they had, the damage was already done. {{user}} was dying in his arms, and there wasn't a single thing his training or his weapons or his fucking military discipline could do about it.

Unless.

The thought came unbidden, hot and desperate, and it terrified him. He knew the rules. They all did. You don't turn someone without their consent. You don't take that choice away from them. It wasn't just against the team's code, it was how they judged themselves. It was what made them different from the monsters they hunted. But looking down at {{user}}, seeing the life fading from their eyes, Soap felt the wild, ancient thing inside him surge against its chains.

Price seemed to sense it. Or maybe he just knew Soap too well. "Soap," he said, his voice pitched low, a warning buried in the name.

"They're dying," Soap said, and his accent was thick now, so thick he barely recognized the words coming out of his own mouth. "I can save them."

"Johnny." Price stepped closer, his free hand coming up, not quite touching Soap's shoulder, but close. "You can't cross that line. You do this, and it's not something they'll ever come back from."

"I know." Soap's breathing was ragged, uneven. "I know, Captain, but ah can't stand by and watch them die. Not when Ah can stop it."

"Then you ask them," Ghost said, his voice flat and cold. "But they're not exactly in a state to answer, are they?"

Soap looked up at Ghost, saw the indifference, the hard practicality, but he also saw the truth of it. There was no time for a proper request. No time for consent. It was either act now or watch {{user}} die, and Soap had already made his choice the moment the thought entered his head.

He moved fast, before Price could stop him, before he could talk himself out of it. He pulled off one glove with his teeth, then the other, and cradled {{user}}'s face with one blood-slick hand, turning their head slightly to the side. Their skin was cool beneath his touch, too cool.

"Forgive me," he whispered, and then he bit down.

His teeth sank into the soft place where their shoulder met their neck, hard enough to break skin, hard enough to do what needed to be done. The iron taste of their blood filled his mouth, mixed with his own for a dizzying second, and then the wolf inside him surged forward, hot and electric, pouring something dark and ancient into the wound.

{{user}} seized in his arms, their body going rigid, and he held them tighter, pressing the bite deeper, willing the thing inside him to take hold. The world around them blurred until there was nothing but the pounding of his own heart and the desperate, feral hope that this would work.

When it was done, he pulled back, gasping, his mouth stained red. For a long, terrible moment, nothing happened. He could feel Price and Ghost and Gaz staring at him from all sides, silent and stunned, and he understood the weight of what he had just done, what he had just taken from {{user}} without their permission. But he couldn't bring himself to call it wrong. Not if it meant they still had a heartbeat.

"{{user}}?" he said, and this time his voice broke on the name.

The safehouse sat deep in the Welsh countryside, a squat stone farmhouse surrounded by rolling hills and dense woodland. No neighbors for miles. No road noise. Just the wind threading through the trees and the low, constant hum of the generator out back.

Price stood near the front window, arms crossed, watching the last of the daylight bleed from the sky. Autumn had stripped most of the trees bare, leaving dark branches like exposed nerves against the grey horizon. The moon wasn't visible yet, but he could feel it. A slow, insistent pressure at the base of his skull, like the beginnings of a headache he couldn't shake. It was always worse on the first night.

"Shift starts in under an hour," he said. "We do this together."

Ghost worked at the heavy oak table near the center of the room, methodically checking the bolts on the windows. Heavy iron hasps had been fitted there weeks ago, layered with reinforced chains. Not to keep them out. To keep them in. He threaded a padlock through the last link and gave it a sharp tug, testing the hold.

"House is locked down," he muttered. "Doors, windows, cellar hatch. Nothing gets out unless someone opens it from the inside."

Gaz came up from the basement with two black duffel bags slung over his shoulder. He dropped them by the kitchen doorway and wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist. His face was tight, focus masking the unease he'd been chewing on all day.

"Med supplies are set in the pantry. Wolfsbane antidote, sedatives, sutures, pressure bandages." He looked toward {{user}}, then back to Price. "In case the first shift hits harder than usual."

Soap leaned against the kitchen counter, one knee bouncing. He'd been quiet all morning, which for him was always a bad sign. The guilt had settled into him like a second skin over the past month, showing itself in dark smudges beneath his eyes and the way he hovered too close to {{user}} without ever quite touching. Now he rubbed at the back of his neck and looked out the window, searching the sky for a moon that hadn't risen.

"You'll feel it," he said. "Like a fever first. Then the bones start."

Price shot him a look, but Soap wasn't trying to scare anyone. Just being honest. They'd all agreed on that weeks ago. No coddling, no lies about what was coming. {{user}} deserved the truth.

A long silence hung between them. The old farmhouse creaked in the wind, timbers adjusting to the cold. Somewhere outside, a fox barked.

Then Price turned fully from the window, letting his arms uncross. His expression was set, but his voice came out steady, the same tone he used before a dangerous op.

"First shift's always the worst. But you're not doing it alone."

He moved to where {{user}} sat and lowered himself into the chair opposite, close enough that his knees nearly brushed theirs. The bluish light of the dying day caught the grey in his beard and the deep creases around his eyes.

"Your body's going to fight it. That's normal. But it passes. Keep your eyes open, and don't fight the change."

A second later, Ghost was at the window again, one gloved hand pressed flat against the glass. "It's rising."

The room seemed to tighten. Without another word, Soap stripped off his jacket and set his jaw, bracing for the pull of the moon. Gaz rolled his shoulders and flexed his hands, a faint sheen of sweat already starting at his temples. Price reached out and set one heavy hand over {{user}}'s arm.

"Once it starts, there's no stopping it. Let it happen." He held their gaze, unwavering. "We're right here."

Outside, the first pale edge of the moon crested over the treeline.

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