[A BRIEF DISCLAIMER:
This book contains elements of blood and violence, brutality, alcohol and tobacco use, gore, domestic abuse, disordered eating behaviors, explicit language, and explicit sexual content. If any of these topics trigger you, please refrain from reading further. Thank you.]

- PART 1 -

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C8H18

Octane.

Hydrocarbon. Colorless liquid. Highly flammable.

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Here's the secret of life: Or die trying.

If you want a translation, that means: Win.

Don't start saying it about cooking your eggs or buying your tennis shoes, but for the most part, there's your motto, clean and simple. Win. Or die trying.

If you were everyone, you'd roll your eyes and wave me off and move to the next story. That's your problem. Whether that's a loss depends on how much you respect yourself. If you're a winner, you already know what I'm talking about and I'm wasting breath as we speak.

But if you don't, well. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.

Not to say I'm a winner. That's what the gods of the world get to say. The ones in bronze, on cotton linen bills, reincarnated in Hollywood movies, frozen mid-life on plaques in New York museums. The ones with bones in their closet worth hiding. The ones with cuffs worth biting off. The ones who wear crowns on their wrists, in red under their heels, in the pockets of their suits, in the velvet of their bags. The ones who know blood because of paper cuts and baby teeth. The ones who know heat because of southern summers and sex.

So, no. Not me.

But those are born winners. And what's the story in those? No, you want a made winner. The last breath in the cell. The last runner beneath the wall. The last dog in the ring.

Translation: you want a survivor.

Which, depending on who you're talking to, could be me. But then you'd have to debate what that means. The winning part, that is. Not the surviving part.

Give me some trust then, and I'll tell it. At least this way, you only have to hear the story once, and we can know that somewhere in the crevices of this, we'll all walk away a little satisfied at having heard what we want to hear. That's how you do it, anyway.

Again, not the surviving part. The winning part.

The surviving part, well. You'll see.

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So you trust me, I'll tell you a secret from the get-go: I'm a Class III Stirling Omega. Read that S-T-I-R-L-I-N-G. Not your silver. Fuck your silver, what are you, a murderer in the making? STERLING is your earrings. STIRLING is Walter.

Walter M. Stirling was one of those gods I was talking about. He's praised for his American industrial empires mostly and occasionally the Stirling Stir-Up Special at Wendy's. But if you went by search results, he was most known for being the leader of the dead-last lycan pack in the entire Northern Hemisphere.

The entire system by which we run on was constructed, historically accurately speaking, 2100 BC. But everyone argues about that validity considering humans wrote it, so, most will say 1300s. The world had thousands of packs, some ghouls, some witches, some bloodsuckers. You had your indie groups with the centaurs or the sirens or the bulgae. You had your underground ones with the gumiho or the oni or the banshees or harpies. And God forbid, don't get me started on the fae.

But who really ran the joint were the lycans.

There were seven main packs that ran the entire place (read: the whole damn world).  Five packs rearranged themselves year by year between differing economics or political leaders or welfare or general weather patterns, but two had never moved since the 1300s, or really, much more likely, 2100 BC—as it sure as hell feels like that.

We'll get to the top dogs eventually. For now, all you need to know is that the one on the bottom. As in, my pack. And the only thing worse than being part of the Stirling pack was to be a Stirling Omega. The only thing worse than being a Stirling Omega of the Stirling pack, was to be a Class III one.

See where I'm going?

Good. Because that's just the preliminary stuff.

Let's talk about the fun part.

Despite us all being half fur freaks, we, like you humans, who are full skin freaks, have our differences. But also like you, we had a few things in common.

Racing was a unanimous one.

Everyone raced, sure, in go-karts and tricycles and repurposed high school track fields. But lycans raced.

It had become a mass corporation in it and of itself. It had people breathing for it, killing for it. It had people living for it, dying for it. And it was a hellish, damn good of a time doing so. Depending on where in those seven levels you landed, it gave you options. Some people crawled their way upwards with it, while others lost their lives doing so. Most were adrenaline addicts that got into college with it and used it to keep in good shape or have easy methods of severe concussion. Which is a safer place to start.

The track can be intimidating at first, after all. Even the stands are leering if you get too close. The bikes, oh, the bikes. They'll eat you alive.

But, January 11th. Avaldi in Los Angeles. Nia Zhang.

Just to start somewhere.

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Avaldi University of Los Angeles, California was an educational institution meant for three types, and three types only: the prestigious, the pretentious, and the racers.

Although its acceptance rate only barely breached the double digits and its campus was in constant argument of being a gross imitation of a New York skyscraper garden, its notoriety relied on something vastly different. Its rankings were far and few between third or fifth or tenth for academics, organizations, dining halls, location, and living quarters, and it had the stats to prove itself with the alumni to upkeep its name. But square racing was where Avaldi took the number one spot, no matter what. 

Which was helpful for me, to say the least.

"Yun!" 

My head snapped to the side. Nia Zhang held up a single hand in greeting, her duffel slung over her shoulder and her forehead beaded with sweat from practice. The short black braids around her jaw made her pale face even paler, although the January fog didn't help that either. The look on her dark eyes and dark frown gave some life back to her, though.

"I know I ask you this every time I see you," she said, "but do I want to know what you're doing?"

Frankly, no one wanted to know what I was doing at any time ever at all. But, I digress.

I faced her, leaving my back to the stadium. The air burned my ears and cheeks, nipping at the skin. I shoved my hands into my jean pockets, and shrugged. "Not even a little," I said.

She glanced behind me. "Well, quit sitting there looking like a goose without a head. It's five o'clock, don't you have to get out of here?"

"It's a chicken," I told her. "And bus comes at five-thirty."

"Gawking at the Corvidae until then," she deduced. 

"Gawking's cruel." 

"Oh, you're out of your mind. You're about to lose your shit for good." She turned on her heel. "Come on. I'll take you home."

"Nia—"

"Hush and move before someone calls you in for stalking a stadium," she said with a snort. 

I turned my eyes back to the Corvidae one more time, a big steel beast of silver and ink, a black hole occupying a hemisphere of Avaldi with its high walls, its champion status, its beaming white lights. The buzz of them breaking open the blue evening now made me feel like a moth in the dark. I swore if I leaned in close enough, I could hear the bikes pounding pavement, the wheels skidding sparks.

Nia said, "Oh, boy."

I said, "Easy for you."

She cocked her head with a smirk, but didn't argue. Mostly because I was right. 

Most top notch racing universities kept their prized team small and lucrative, but a few thought themselves generous enough to bestow some spotlight unto a second team of more amateurish racers, maybe for the publicity stunt. Avaldi had taken such a route, which meant they had one team for their crème de la crème, and one team for the so-called. 

Nia took a neutral position between the two as the captain of the so-called, the Jackdaws, which meant she got to dabble in glory and settle for mediocrity. I'd only come to know her because we happened to live in the same, terrible neighborhood and our schedules proved to be strikingly similar in the first semester, where she'd taken a pity on my loner tendencies and sat with me through chem labs or protein synthesis lectures, from one miserable biochem major to another less miserable, more stable one. In another world, and a kinder life, I'd be right there with her. But, that's another world. In this world, I was know-nothing, no-record freshman on a false scholarship with nothing to race on but night streets and my depleting vitality.

That being said, I'm working on it.

Nia said, "Come on. I've got a surprise."

"For who?"

"The holy ghost. Shut the hell up and follow me, kid. It's cold as shit out here."

I shut up and followed her.

We made it all the way to her car, her things in her trunk and her arms over the hood, when I said, "What's the surprise?"

Nia pushed the bangs from her forehead and cocked a brow up at me. The air was frigid, fast-moving, gearing up for something to shift. 

"A pony," she said.

I hummed. "Shetland?"

"Welsh Cob."

"Where is it?"

"You think you're hilarious, don't you?" Nia rolled around the hood towards the passenger side. She popped open the door. "Someone came knocking on the Jackdaws' doors the other day." She reached to open the glove compartment, then withdrew a piece of paper from the mess inside. "I know it was meant for the Jackdaws, but I had a feeling you might do better with it than any of them."

I cocked my head at that. Nia slouched against the door. She narrowed her black eyes at me. She rolled up the paper, and bonked me on the head with it, ringing out with a hum.

I sputtered, gaped. I held the crown of my head.

"What the hell, man?" I snapped. "If that was the surprise, you seriously baited me with the pony."

"Neither of those are the surprise." She unrolled the paper, and handed it to me. "This is the surprise."

I took the paper from her.

Scrawled across the top in big, black, bold letters, read CORVUS RECRUITING, with underlined text beneath it spelling out the unmistakable FRESHMEN WELCOME.

It was enough to knock me out. Clear off my feet. Breathless. Headless. My whole world went careening somewhere to the left.

Corvus, in case you didn't know, was the crème de la crème.

Inarguably, and without fail, Corvus was the top collegian racing team in the entire country, and had been for the past decade, with countless Red Diamond wins in their wake and enough sponsorships, both solo and team, to fuel their incomes to stratosphere-level numbers. Their number one spot never once wavering despite their less-than-pretty publicity having wavered endlessly alongside it. They were grade A bastards, ruthless fuckers with cleats and teeth, and champions. Inarguably, without fail, champions.

Something I could only see from the outside of a stadium.

I held up the paper to the light as if to convince myself it was real. I said, "Why?"

Nia shrugged. "Don't know. They've never had open recruitment, especially not for first years before. But they seemed pretty keen on it when they delivered it."

"It's for the Jackdaws." I pushed the paper back to her, as if just holding it stung my skin. "I can't go."

"You just need to give them the paper," she argued, pushing it back. She waved me off with a flick of her wrist. "You have a better shot at getting recruited there than any of the Jackdaws."

"What about you?"

"What about me? I don't want in on anything with those crows," she scoffed. "I've got a team."

I stared hard at the letters, re-reading them over and over and over again. My brain rattled just by looking at them. "I'm an Omega," was all I could muster.

Nia waved that off. "So what?" she replied and tapped the paper. "They don't have to know that."

"You want me to tryout under a double lie?" I scoffed. "And you said I'm losing my mind."

"I want you to stop ogling square racing in a school whose whole schtick is square racing," she said. Nia grabbed my wrists, her face hardening. "This is your chance, is what I'm saying. This is the first time this has ever happened, it might be the last."

"It says not to come without proper experience," I argued. "Street racing doesn't count."

"It does when you've won," she said pointedly. 

I pursed my lips. I pushed my fingers against the paper. It was right there in front of me, crisp and tangible. A straight shot, right through the door.

"I'm not saying you have to," she said. "But this could be your shot to go right into the big leagues. Fuck the streets, even the Jackdaws, you could go straight to Corvus."

"They'll never take me," I said. "Thanks, Nia, but they'll never let me in."

Nia looked unimpressed at that. "So?" she told me. "Make them."

I stared. Nia gestured at the Corvidae. "The worst that can happen is you don't get through."

I turned to stare at the stadium, a crown on the outskirts of Avaldi. Glowing white, enveloped in black. 

"And the best that can happen?" I asked, just to hear it.

She laughed. "Welcome to Corvus, kid."

Well. Trust me when I tell you I was in no position to pass that up.

This is your chance.

Nia, if not anything else, was right about one thing: it wasn't likely to happen again.

Corvus. Champions. A straight shot for the big leagues. I could almost laugh.

I took the paper and folded it into my pocket. 

"When's the tryout?" I asked.

That's the surviving part.