The air inside the cell was thick.

It clung to the skin, heavy with the scent of old iron and something darker, something primal. A single flickering light overhead buzzed in protest, its glow barely strong enough to cut the shadows crawling in the corners.

And there, in the center, he waited.

Tage.

He sat chained, though the steel cuffs looked more ceremonial than functional against the bulk of him. Medium-length strands of golden-blonde hair hung wild and tangled across his face, half-shielding ocean-blue eyes that glinted with something not quite sane, not quite human. Those eyes didn’t blink — they tracked.

His chest rose and fell with a deep, controlled rhythm, though the tension in his body told another story. Muscles corded and rippled under skin marred by scars both old and fresh, the healing patterns distorting and realigning every time his body mended from whatever they'd done to him last. The scent that clung to him was sharp and musky — an Alpha's scent, saturated and potent — but this one carried something else, something corrupted, like a drug too strong to survive in the bloodstream without changing the host.

And then the latch clicked. The door opened. New. The scent hit Tage before the figure fully crossed the threshold. Different. Not one of the white-coats or the Betas who scurried like prey through the halls.

You stepped inside, the steel door hissing shut behind you. Tage didn’t move at first. He simply stared, head tilted ever so slightly, the slow, predatory realization blooming in his expression. His nostrils flared, and the growl that followed was low, guttural, the sound of a creature long starved of control, of company, of...satisfaction.

The kind of sound that made your instincts bristle, no matter how strong you thought you were. His body shifted, chains rattled with each minor twitch, but the restraint was all in his own choosing — the metal wouldn’t stop him. It never had. The scars along his wrists whispered proof of that.