Chapter 1

The rain in San Francisco didn't wash the city clean; it just made the neon lights bleed.

I stood under the dripping awning of the Golden Gate Bakery, clutching my chest. My heart rate was hovering around one-forty beats per minute—tachycardia, clinically speaking. My skin felt too tight, as if the fascia beneath the dermis was being pulled by invisible hooks. And the smell... God, the smell.

The damp concrete smelled like wet dog. The trash can three blocks away smelled like rotting crab. The man passing me smelled of cheap bourbon and fear.

I checked my watch. 11:50 PM.

The moon wasn't even visible behind the fog, but I could feel it. It was a gravitational shear in my blood, pulling the iron right out of my marrow.

*Diagnosis,* I thought, my nurse’s brain trying to categorize the horror. *Acute psychosis? Lycanthropic delusion?*

I didn't care what the DSM-5 called it. I just wanted it to stop.

I pushed off the wall, stumbling down Grant Avenue. The tourists were gone, leaving Chinatown to the shadows and the rain. I scanned the storefronts until I saw it.

*The Jade Cicada.*

It looked like a tourist trap. The window was cluttered with plastic waving cats, jade bangles that were definitely glass, and boxes of incense. But the internet forum—buried deep in a subreddit for "unexplained hematology"—swore this was the place.

I shoved the door open. A bell jingled, a bright, tinny sound that hurt my sensitive ears.

The inside was a shock to the system. The noise of the city vanished, replaced by a thick, velvety silence. The air was warm and smelled of dried mugwort, ginseng, and something older—like dust settling in a tomb.

"We are closed," a voice said.

I looked toward the counter. A man stood there, weighing dried mushrooms on a brass scale. He looked young, maybe in his late twenties, with sharp cheekbones and hair tied back in a messy knot. He wore a crisp white button-down with the sleeves rolled up, revealing forearms that seemed too strong for a shopkeeper.

"I need help," I gasped, leaning against a display of tea sets. My voice sounded wrecked, guttural.

Ren looked up. He didn't blink. His eyes were dark, almost black, and they swept over me with the precision of an MRI scanner.

"The hospital is six blocks west, Miss..."

"Lin," I choked out. I stumbled forward, gripping the edge of the wooden counter. My fingernails were lengthening, turning into hard, translucent claws that scratched the varnish. "I don't need a hospital. I need... I need wolfsbane."

Ren paused. He slowly placed a mushroom on the scale. "Wolfsbane is a neurotoxin. It causes paralysis, cardiac arrest, and death. I do not sell poison to suicidal nurses."

"It’s not for suicide," I hissed. A spasm of pain shot down my spine, making me double over. "It’s for the... the sickness. I read it suppresses the... the shift."

"The internet is a library of fools," Ren said calmly. He stepped around the counter. He didn't look afraid. He looked bored. "And you are not sick, Lin."

He walked to the door, flipped the sign to *Closed*, and threw the deadbolt.

"You are just hatching."

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