Something is coming.
And for the first time in centuries, I feel something other than boredom.
I feel alive.
The shadows in the corners of the room seem to deepen, reaching toward me with the familiarity of old friends.
Remembering what I used to be.
What I’ve been running from.
What I might need to become again.
Rogue steps up beside me. “Orders, Prez?”
I look around at my club. My brothers. These beings who followed me into exile, who traded their chaos for structure, their freedom for family.
“Lock it down,” I order. “Full security protocols. Hex, I want eyes on everything… digital and magical. Hades, start pulling death records, see if you can trace back to where this is happening. Grizz, Reyna, prepare for war. Because if the Crows are coming…” I pause, letting the weight of this news sink in. “They’renotcoming to talk.”
The club mobilizes instantly, each member moving to their roles with practiced precision. But I stay frozen, staring at Eden’s bloodstained face, and all I can think about is the scent of a burning village.
The taste of terror-laced blood.
The thrill of the hunt.
The darkness I thought I’d left behind.
Oracle’s words echo in my head.‘Your shadow’s been too clean for too long.’
He’s right.
And somewhere out there, someone is about to remind me exactly what happens when you wake a sleeping monster.
A slow smile creeps across my face, my fangs descending on their own in delight.
“Let them come,” I murmur.
Because the truth is—the truth I’ve been hiding from for centuries—I’ve been waiting for an excuse.
And they just gave me one.
Chapter Three
SLOANE
The Next Night
Blood seeps through my fingers in a raging torrent. I press down harder on the gunshot wound in the kid’s abdomen, my gloved hands slick and warm, the crimson pooling faster than I can control it. He can’t be more than nineteen. His eyes are wide, pupils blown with shock and terror, mouth working soundlessly in a futile search for air.
“Stay with me,” I tell him, my voice steady even as my heart hammers against my ribs. “You’re gonna be fine. Look at me. Look at me!”
But he’s not looking at me. He’s looking past me, through me, at something I can’t see. Something only the dying can witness.
The emergency room is chaotic tonight. Saturday nights always are, but this one is different. Worse somehow. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead, casting everything in that sickly greenish glow that makes living people look half dead. Somewhere behind me, a woman is screaming about her daughter. Metal clatters against tile. Someone is coding in bay three. The monitors are shrieking their discordant symphony of failing vitals.
And beneath it all, there’s that smell.
Copper, antiseptic, fear, and sweat, so thick I can taste it on my tongue.
