Ithilien didn't even have time to gasp.
One second Marco was standing in the middle of the room, pale and unnaturally still beneath the flickering light, and the next he crossed the distance between them with a speed that no human body should have been capable of. The impact sent her backward hard enough to knock the air from her lungs, her body slamming into the metal edge of a table before both of them crashed to the floor.
Pain flared hot and immediate through her shoulder and spine, but it barely registered, because Marco was already on top of her.
Not above her the way a brother might fall by accident, not even like a man fighting for survival. He moved with horrifying efficiency, his hand closing around her throat as if his body already knew exactly what to do, exactly where to press, exactly how much force it would take to pin her without killing her too quickly.
His face was inches from hers.
Close enough that she could see the black veins darkening beneath the skin at his temples, close enough that she could smell blood and chemicals beneath the familiar traces of him. For a shattered, impossible second she saw both versions at once—the brother who had stayed up through nights in medical school with dark circles beneath his eyes and coffee cooling beside him, and the thing looking at her now with an expression that was too focused, too calm, and far too empty to belong to the same man.
"Marco—"
The name barely made it out.
His fingers tightened.
She clawed at his wrist on instinct, trying to drag in air, and something in his gaze flickered at the sound of his name. It was only a fraction of a second, barely enough to call hesitation, but it was there.
Kidd moved before it could disappear.
He hit Marco from the side with enough force to throw him off her and send both of them crashing into a bank of metal cabinets. The impact rattled the whole room, glass shattering somewhere to the left as Levi and Zane surged forward, but Kidd was already there first, already in it, grabbing Marco by the back of the neck and driving him face-first into the nearest table before he could recover.
"Don't touch her."
The words came out low and raw, stripped of anything but fury.
Marco twisted under the hold in a way that made Ithilien's stomach lurch, his body bending with an unnatural fluidity before he slipped out of Kidd's grip and came back up hard. He moved like the creatures in the cages had moved, but cleaner, sharper, as if whatever Fenrir had done to him had burned away every wasted motion and left only instinct wrapped in intelligence.
Kidd barely avoided the first strike. The second caught him across the ribs and drove him back a step, not enough to stagger him but enough to make Levi swear under his breath and move in from the right.
"Watch his angles," Levi snapped. "He corrects too fast."
As if to prove the point, Marco shifted mid-motion, changing direction with brutal precision and turning his attention straight back to Ithilien.
Not Kidd.
Not the others.
Her.
Something inside her went cold.
This wasn't random. It wasn't blind aggression. Somewhere inside whatever he had become, there was still a target, still a command, and it had settled on her with terrifying certainty.
Tauriel surged up under her skin before she consciously made the choice. The shift came hard and fast, bone and muscle reshaping as she lunged out of his path, claws striking across his side instead of taking the full impact to her chest. He turned with unnatural speed, one hand catching her by the shoulder as if he had anticipated exactly where she would move, and slammed her into the floor hard enough to crack tile beneath her.
Pain burst white across her vision.
She heard Kidd roar.
It was a sound so close to Adrahill that it sent a shiver through the whole room, and then he was on Marco again, dragging him off her with a violence that was no longer fully human. His canines had lengthened, his eyes gone bright and savage, his whole body locked halfway between control and shift as he drove Marco back step after step until they crashed through the open doorway and into the corridor.
Ithilien pushed herself upright too quickly, dizzy from the impact, and Levi was suddenly there in front of her, one hand extended, the other already bloodied from some glancing strike she hadn't seen.
"Stay down for a second."
She shoved herself past him before he could stop her.
The corridor outside had become chaos. Kidd and Marco tore through it in a blur of force and movement, slamming into walls, metal, doors that buckled under the impact. Every time Kidd tried to pin him, Marco adapted. Every time Levi or Zane moved in to help, he shifted his attack just enough to avoid being boxed in. He was stronger than he should have been, faster than the other mutants, and worst of all he still retained just enough awareness to make choices.
When his gaze landed on her again, Ithilien felt the certainty of it like a blade between her ribs.
He wanted her.
Not because he was her brother. Not even because he remembered her.
Because something in him had been shaped to go for her first.
"Get him out of the corridor," Kidd snapped, catching Marco's arm and slamming it against the wall hard enough to shatter bone.
Marco didn't even cry out. He simply twisted, let the broken limb hang for a grotesque half-second, and then drove his other elbow straight into Kidd's throat.
Kidd staggered.
Only once.
Marco lunged past him.
Straight toward Ithilien.
This time she was ready enough to shift fully. Tauriel met the charge head-on, not trying to overpower him but to turn him, to change the angle, to stop him from reaching her in the dead center of that narrow space. They crashed together and rolled, claws scraping concrete, teeth flashing, his strength too human in some ways and not human enough in others. He didn't fight like a wolf and he didn't fight like a man. He fought like something designed to survive.
Tauriel went for his throat.
He caught her.
Actually caught her, one hand clamping under her jaw with impossible force before he drove her down and pinned her against the floor. His face lowered until his mouth was at her neck, and for one wild second she thought he was going to tear her open right there.
Instead, he paused.
His body went still.
She felt it rather than saw it—the tremor under the skin, the war happening somewhere behind his ruined control. His breath came unevenly. His grip shifted. His eyes, when she managed to look up at him, were no longer empty.
They were terrified.
"Ith…" The sound scraped out of him like it hurt.
Her heart stopped.
"Marco."
He flinched at his own name, and the hand at her throat loosened by a fraction.
That was all Kidd needed.
He hit him from behind with enough force to break the moment completely, dragging him away from her and throwing him into the opposite wall. This time Adrahill broke through harder. Kidd's body blurred into a larger, darker shape, his shoulders broadening, claws replacing nails, his whole frame becoming something massive and terrible as the wolf crashed into Marco and drove him through a half-broken door into the loading bay beyond.
The room opened around them into a cavernous, dim space lined with rusting equipment and old freight rails sunk into the floor. Rain drummed faintly on the roof overhead, and the air smelled of oil, wet concrete, and the old, rotten stain of blood.
Ithilien stumbled after them, shifting back just enough to run, her lungs burning now, her pulse roaring in her ears. Levi caught her arm for a second.
"You're bleeding."
"I know."
The words came out harsher than she intended, but she didn't stop.
By the time she reached the doorway, Kidd and Marco were already in the center of the loading bay, circling each other with the awful stillness that comes just before a killing strike. Adrahill towered in his half-shift, blood running dark down one side, chest heaving. Marco looked worse and yet somehow more dangerous, his broken arm hanging at a sick angle that was already beginning to correct itself beneath the skin.
And then he smiled.
Not like her brother.
Not even like a man in pain.
Like something that had finally stopped pretending.
"You should have let me finish," he said, and although the voice was still Marco's, the shape of it was wrong enough to turn her blood to ice.
Kidd stepped forward, every line of his body taut with murderous intent.
"You're done."
Marco's eyes flicked past him to Ithilien once more, and something in his expression sharpened with a horrible kind of purpose.
"No," he said softly. "I'm not."
Then he moved again, and this time he didn't come at Kidd.
He came for her.