The Zero Instinct
Zayn Sanusi · Ongoing · 41.9k Words
Introduction
Veynar Solis starts at Rank Zero, a nobody scraping by in the streets of Veyra City. One life-or-death encounter awakens his Zero Instinct, and with it, a world of superpowers, underground battles, and enemies who will stop at nothing.
With a sassy, sarcastic system at his side and a street-smart ally, Lyra, Veynar must fight, evolve, and outsmart every rival from cunning underground bosses to lethal foils while uncovering the dark secrets of the system itself.
Survival isn’t enough. Power, strategy, and instinct will decide who dominates and who dies.
Chapter 1
“Wallet. Phone. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”
Veynar didn’t turn around immediately.
The voice was close too close and edged with the kind of confidence that didn’t come from bluffing. He kept his hands visible, fingers slightly curled, the plastic bag from the convenience store dangling loosely at his side.
“Take it,” he said, calm, flat. “And walk away.”
A short laugh behind him. Not amused dismissive.
“You think I’m asking?”
Footsteps. One step closer. Then another.
Veynar exhaled slowly, eyes shifting to the dark reflection in the glass of the closed storefront ahead. It gave him just enough two figures behind him. One holding something low. The other circling slightly to the left.
Not random.
Planned.
“Turn around,” the first voice said.
Veynar did.
Two men. Late twenties. One with a knife, cheap, dull edge, but close enough to matter. The other with clenched fists, shoulders loose, ready.
The knife-holder tilted his head. “Took you long enough.”
Veynar met his eyes. “You’re making a mistake.”
That got another laugh shorter this time.
“Yeah? And what part of this looks like a mistake to you?”
The second guy moved first.
Fast. No warning.
The punch came straight for Veynar’s jaw
and landed.
Hard.
The impact snapped his head sideways. His vision flared white as his body stumbled back, heel catching uneven pavement.
Pain rang sharp and immediate.
Too fast.
Too close.
Too
Threat detected.
The words didn’t appear in front of him.
They slid across his awareness cold, precise, like a thought that didn’t belong to him.
Veynar blinked.
“What…?”
The second punch came.
Reaction window: 0.7 seconds.
His body didn’t move.
Not in time.
The fist crashed into his ribs. Air punched out of his lungs as he folded slightly, pain blooming deeper this time.
“Stay down,” the knife-holder muttered, stepping closer. “This goes faster if you stop thinking.”
That’s ironic, something inside him noted, dry.
Veynar staggered back again, breath uneven.
Something was wrong.
Not just the situation but the way his mind was splitting, like one part of him was watching everything happen from a step removed.
Critical stress reached.
His pulse spiked.
The knife-holder lunged.
No warning. Just movement.
Fast.
Too fast
Reaction window: 0.6 seconds.
And then
Silence.
Not outside.
Inside.
The panic, the noise, the instinct to flinch or freeze just… stopped.
His vision didn’t slow.
The world didn’t blur.
But his body
moved.
He stepped to the side. Clean. Minimal. Like he’d done it a thousand times.
The knife missed him by inches.
The second attacker blinked, thrown off just enough
Veynar’s hand snapped up.
One strike.
Not wild. Not desperate.
Precise.
Knuckles connected with the man’s throat.
A choked sound. The man dropped, clutching his neck, collapsing to his knees.
Veynar didn’t think.
Didn’t hesitate.
He pivoted.
The knife came again
Pattern detected.
His hand caught the attacker’s wrist mid-swing.
Too clean.
Too easy.
The man’s eyes widened. “What ”
Veynar twisted.
The knife clattered to the ground.
A step forward. Elbow into ribs. Knee to stomach.
The man folded.
Veynar followed through with one last strike to the jaw.
The attacker hit the pavement and didn’t get back up.
Silence.
Real silence, this time.
Veynar stood there, breathing uneven, chest rising and falling too fast.
His hands trembled.
“What… was that…” he muttered.
Zero Instinct activated.
The words slid through his mind again, sharper this time.
Veynar swallowed.
“No,” he said under his breath. “No, that’s not ”
Engagement complete.
A pause.
Then
Efficiency: 41%.
“…Forty-one?” he repeated, blinking. “Forty-one percent of what?”
No answer.
Of course not.
He ran a hand through his hair, wincing slightly as the movement pulled at his ribs. The pain was still there but duller now. Manageable.
Too manageable.
“That wasn’t normal,” he muttered.
Correct.
Veynar froze.
“…You’re real?”
Unfortunately for you, yes.
He let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “Great. I’m concussed and hallucinating.”
If this were a hallucination, I’d make you look less pathetic.
“…Wow.”
He looked down at the two men on the ground.
Both breathing. Barely moving.
Alive.
“You just what, saved me?” he asked.
I corrected your incompetence.
Veynar exhaled sharply. “Right. Of course you did.”
He bent slightly, picking up the dropped knife, then tossing it aside, out of reach.
“This doesn’t make sense,” he said quietly. “What are you?”
A beat.
Then
Disappointed.
Veynar stared ahead, expression flat.
“…That’s not an answer.”
It’s the most accurate one available.
He let out another breath, slower this time.
“Yeah. I’m definitely losing it.”
He turned, starting to walk away
Hostile presence detected.
Veynar stopped mid-step.
“…You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I rarely joke.
He didn’t move.
Didn’t turn.
But his eyes shifted slightly, scanning reflections again.
Nothing obvious.
No movement.
“No one’s there,” he said.
Confidence without verification. Bold strategy.
“…You’re annoying.”
And yet, correct.
A faint sound.
Behind him.
Footsteps.
Slow. Measured.
Veynar turned.
A figure stood at the far end of the alley, half-shadowed under a flickering streetlight.
Not rushing.
Not panicking.
Just… watching.
“Those yours?” the man asked, nodding toward the two unconscious attackers.
Veynar’s jaw tightened. “They made a bad decision.”
The man hummed softly, stepping closer.
He moved differently.
Not aggressive.
Not careless.
Controlled.
“You handled that… cleanly,” the man said.
Veynar didn’t respond.
Threat level: unclear.
Translation: you have no idea how outmatched you might be.
“…Helpful,” Veynar muttered.
“What was that?” the man asked.
“Nothing.”
The distance between them closed just enough.
The man stopped, hands in his pockets, gaze sharp.
“You don’t look like someone who’s done that before,” he said.
Veynar met his eyes. “And you don’t look like someone who just happened to walk by.”
A faint smile.
“Fair.”
A pause.
“But you moved like it,” the man continued. “Like you knew exactly what they were going to do.”
Veynar said nothing.
The system stirred again
Observation: subject displays heightened awareness.
Suggestion: do not underestimate him. Again.
“…Again?” Veynar whispered.
The man’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You talk to yourself often?”
“Only when it’s necessary.”
Another faint smile.
“Then I’ll keep this necessary,” the man said. “What you did just now, where'd you learn it?”
“I didn’t.”
Too fast.
Too honest.
The man caught it.
Of course he did.
“Interesting,” he murmured.
Silence stretched between them.
Tight.
Uncertain.
Then
“You should leave,” Veynar said.
The man tilted his head. “Or?”
Veynar held his gaze.
“Or you’ll find out if that was luck.”
A beat.
Then the man chuckled low, quiet.
“I don’t think that was luck.”
He stepped back.
One step.
Then another.
“Keep moving like that,” he added casually. “You’ll attract attention.”
Veynar didn’t ask what kind.
He already had a feeling.
The man turned, disappearing into the shadows.
Gone.
Just like that.
Veynar stood there for a moment longer, tension still coiled in his muscles.
Then
“…What the hell is happening to me?” he muttered.
You’re improving.
“By getting jumped in an alley?”
By surviving it.
He let out a slow breath.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Fantastic.”
He started walking again, faster now.
The city felt different.
Sharper.
Every sound carried weight.
Every shadow felt like it could move.
“You’re going to explain this,” he said under his breath.
Eventually.
“That’s not reassuring.”
It wasn’t meant to be.
Veynar clenched his jaw.
“Then start with this: what is Zero Instinct?”
A pause.
Then
Think less. React faster.
“…That’s not an explanation.”
It’s the only one you’ll survive with.
Veynar exhaled slowly.
“…Fine.”
He turned the corner, stepping into the brighter street.
People moved. Cars passed. Life continued.
Normal.
Or at least it used to be.
Behind his eyes, that silence lingered the place where hesitation had disappeared, where his body had moved without permission.
And for the first time
He wanted it back.
Ambitious.
“…Shut up.”
Make me.
A faint smirk touched his lips despite everything.
“…This is going to be a problem.”
Correction.
A brief pause.
This is going to be interesting.
Veynar stepped into the crowd.
Unaware that across the street
someone else was watching.
Not curious.
Not amused.
Focused.
And this time
the system didn’t say a word.
Last Chapters
#32 Chapter 32 Where It Stops Being Safe
Last Updated: 5/7/2026#31 Chapter 31 Convergence Point
Last Updated: 5/7/2026#30 Chapter 30 No Second Chances
Last Updated: 5/7/2026#29 Chapter 29 Unreliable Edges
Last Updated: 5/7/2026#28 Chapter 28 Fractured Read
Last Updated: 5/7/2026#27 Chapter 27 Unsteady Ground
Last Updated: 5/7/2026#26 Chapter 26 Fault Lines
Last Updated: 5/7/2026#25 Chapter 25 Threshold Trial
Last Updated: 5/7/2026#24 Chapter 24 Holding the Line
Last Updated: 5/7/2026#23 Chapter 23 Forced Rhythm
Last Updated: 5/7/2026
You Might Like 😍
Goddess Of The Underworld
When the veil between the Divine, the Living, and the Dead begins to crack, Envy is thrust beneath with a job she can’t drop: keep the worlds from bleeding together, shepherd the lost, and make ordinary into armour, breakfasts, bedtime, battle plans. Peace lasts exactly one lullaby. This is the story of an orphan pup who became a goddess by choosing her family; of four imperfect alphas learning how to be better. Steamy, fierce, and full of heart, Goddess of the Underworld is a reverse harem, found-family paranormal romance where love writes the rules and keeps three realms from falling apart.
The Pack: Rule Number 1 - No Mates
"Let me go," I whimper, my body trembling with need. "I don't want you touching me."
I fall forward onto the bed then turn around to stare at him. The dark tattoos of Domonic's chiseled shoulders, quiver and and expand with the heave of his chest. His deep dimpled smile is full of arrogance as he reaches behind himself to lock the door.
Biting his lip, he stalks toward me, his hand going to the seam of his pants and the thickening bulge there.
"Are you sure you don't want me to touch you?" He whispers, untying the knot and slipping a hand inside. "Because I swear to God, that is all I have been wanting to do. Every single day from the moment you stepped in our bar and I smelled your perfect flavor from across the room."
New to the world of shifters, Draven is human on the run. A beautiful girl who no one could protect. Domonic is the cold Alpha of the Red Wolf Pack. A brotherhood of twelve wolves that live by twelve rules. Rules which they vowed could NEVER be broken.
Especially - Rule Number One - No Mates
When Draven meets Domonic, he knows that she is his mate, but Draven has no idea what a mate is, only that she has fallen in love with a shifter. An Alpha that will break her heart to make her leave. Promising herself, she will never forgive him, she disappears.
But she doesn’t know about the child she’s carrying or that the moment she left, Domonic decided rules were made to be broken - and now will he ever find her again? Will she forgive him?
The Human Among Wolves
My stomach twisted, but he wasn’t finished.
"You're just a pathetic little human," Zayn said, his words deliberate, each one hitting like a slap. "Spreading your legs for the first guy who bothers to notice you."
Heat rushed to my face, burning with humiliation. My chest ached — not from his words alone, but from the sick realization that I had trusted him. That I had let myself believe he was different.
I was so, so stupid.
——————————————————
When eigteen-year-old Aurora Wells moves to a sleepy town with her parents, the last thing she expects is to be enrolled in a secret academy for werewolves.
Moonbound Academy is no ordinary school. It's here young Lycans, Betas and Alphas train in shifting, elemental magic, and ancient pack laws. But Aurora? She's just...human. a mistake. The new receptionist forgot to check her species - and now she's surrounded by predators who sense she doesn't belong.
Determined to stay under the radar, Aurora plans to survive the year unnoticed. But when she catches the attention of Zayn, a brooding and infuriatingly powerful Lycan prince, her life gets a lot more complicated. Zayn already has a mate. He already has enemies. And he definitely doesn't want anything to do with a clueless human.
But secrets run deeper than bloodlines at Moonbound. as Aurora unravels the truth about the academy - and herself - she begins to question everything she thought she knew.
Including the reason she was brought here at all.
Enemies will rise. Loyalties will shift. And the girl with no place in their world...might be the key to saving it.
The mafia princess return
Accardi
“I thought you said you were done chasing me?” Gen mocked.
“I am done chasing you.”
Before she could formulate a witty remark, Matteo threw her down. She landed hard on her back atop his dining room table. She tried to sit up when she noticed what he was doing. His hands were working on his belt. It came free of his pants with a violent yank. She collapsed back on her elbows, her mouth gaping open at the display. His face was a mask of sheer determination, his eyes were a dark gold swimming with heat and desire. His hands wrapped around her thighs and pulled her to the edge of the table. He glided his fingers up her thighs and hooked several around the inside of her panties. His knuckles brushed her dripping sex.
“You’re soaking wet, Genevieve. Tell me, was it me that made you this way or him?” his voice told her to be careful with her answer. His knuckles slid down through her folds and she threw her head back as she moaned. “Weakness?”
“You…” she breathed.
Genevieve loses a bet she can’t afford to pay. In a compromise, she agrees to convince any man her opponent chooses to go home with her that night. What she doesn’t realize when her sister’s friend points out the brooding man sitting alone at the bar, is that man won’t be okay with just one night with her. No, Matteo Accardi, Don of one of the largest gangs in New York City doesn’t do one night stands. Not with her anyway.
Let Them Kneel
Cast out by her pack. Forgotten by the Lycans.
She lived among humans—quiet, invisible, tucked away in a town no one looked at twice.
But when her first heat comes without warning, everything changes.
Her body ignites. Her instincts scream. And something primal stirs beneath her skin—
summoning a big, bad Alpha who knows exactly how to quench her fire.
When he claims her, it’s ecstasy and ruin.
For the first time, she believes she’s been accepted.
Seen.
Chosen.
Until he leaves her the next morning—
like a secret never to be spoken.
But Kaelani is not what they thought.
Not wolfless. Not weak.
There is something ancient inside her. Something powerful. And it’s waking.
And when it does—
they’ll all remember the girl they tried to erase.
Especially him.
She’ll be the dream he keeps chasing… the one thing that ever made him feel alive.
Because secrets never stay buried.
And neither do dreams.
Rise of the Banished She-Wolf
That roar stole my eighteenth birthday and shattered my world. My first shift should have been glory—blood turned blessing into shame. By dawn they'd branded me "cursed": cast out by my pack, abandoned by family, stripped of my nature. My father didn't defend me—he sent me to a forsaken island where wolfless outcasts were forged into weapons, forced to kill each other until only one could leave.
On that island I learned the darkest edges of humanity and how to bury terror in bone. Countless times I wanted to surrender—dive into the waves and never surface—but the accusing faces that haunted my dreams pushed me back toward something colder than survival: revenge. I escaped, and for three years I hid among humans, collecting secrets, learning to move like a shadow, sharpening patience into precision—becoming a blade.
Then, under a full moon, I touched a bleeding stranger—and my wolf returned with a violence that made me whole. Who was he? Why could he wake what I'd thought dead?
One thing I know: now is the time.
I have waited three years for this. I will make everyone who destroyed me pay—and take back everything that was stolen from me.
Invisible To Her Bully
The Prison Project
Can love tame the untouchable? Or will it only fuel the fire and cause chaos amongst the inmates?
Fresh out of high school and suffocating in her dead-end hometown, Margot longs for her escape. Her reckless best friend, Cara, thinks she's found the perfect way out for them both - The Prisoner Project - a controversial program offering a life-changing sum of money in exchange for time spent with maximum-security inmates.
Without hesitation, Cara rushes to sign them up.
Their reward? A one-way ticket into the depths of a prison ruled by gang leaders, mob bosses, and men the guards wouldn't even dare to cross...
At the centre of it all, meets Coban Santorelli - a man colder than ice, darker than midnight, and as deadly as the fire that fuels his inner rage. He knows that the project may very well be his only ticket to freedom - his only ticket to revenge on the one who managed to lock him up and so he must prove that he can learn to love…
Will Margot be the lucky one chosen to help reform him?
Will Coban be capable of bringing something to the table other than just sex?
What starts off as denial may very well grow in to obsession which could then fester in to becoming true love…
A temperamental romance novel.
The Lycan Prince’s Puppy
“Soon enough, you’ll be begging for me. And when you do—I’ll use you as I see fit, and then I’ll reject you.”
—
When Violet Hastings begins her freshman year at Starlight Shifters Academy, she only wants two things—honor her mother’s legacy by becoming a skilled healer for her pack and get through the academy without anyone calling her a freak for her strange eye condition.
Things take a dramatic turn when she discovers that Kylan, the arrogant heir to the Lycan throne who has made her life miserable from the moment they met, is her mate.
Kylan, known for his cold personality and cruel ways, is far from thrilled. He refuses to accept Violet as his mate, yet he doesn’t want to reject her either. Instead, he sees her as his puppy, and is determined to make her life even more of a living hell.
As if dealing with Kylan’s torment isn’t enough, Violet begins to uncover secrets about her past that change everything she thought she knew. Where does she truly come from? What is the secret behind her eyes? And has her whole life been a lie?
Falling For The Biker: The Vice President's Girl
His eyes darken, flicking to my mouth.
"It's wrong. Your brother would slit my throat for just standing this close. But tell me, little bird" his breath ghosts my skin, "are you trembling because you hate me… or because you've wanted this just as much as I have?"
Wren thought she'd buried the chaos of New Orleans for good—the clubs, the blood-soaked loyalties, the men who lived and died by their kuttes. Seattle gave her everything she ever wanted: freedom, love, a future.
But one betrayal shatters it all.
Dragged home by tragedy, Wren finds herself under the watchful eye of Ezra Jax—the Raven Reapers MC's vice president and her brother's best friend. He's infuriating, dangerous, and far too tempting for a man she should never touch.
And the deeper Wren is pulled back into his world, the more she realizes nothing about her past—or about Ezra—is what she believed.
In the chaos of gang wars, mounting debts, and old betrayals, he becomes the one constant. The more she fights him, the harder she falls. And the more he pushes her away, the more lethal his pull becomes.
Because in this world, love isn't sweet.
It's brutal. Bloody.
And it's bound to break them both.
When loyalty is everything and love can cost your life, will Wren risk her heart on the one man she was never meant to love?
