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Malakai’s grip on me gentles, but his answer doesn’t. “We do now.”

“Then figure something else out.”

“We will.”

“Out here.”

“No,” Ezra says.

I glare at him. “Why?”

A scream carries from the cornfield. Not from the barn. Farther away. A woman’s scream. Then another. Within seconds, dozens of voices are screaming somewhere beyond the darkness.

My blood turns cold.

Malakai looks toward the sound. “We’re exposed.”

“To what?”

His attention returns to me. “The Brides.”

For a second, I forget how to breathe.

Brides.

Plural.

Before I can ask what the fuck that means, something pale slips between the distant rows of corn… then it’s gone.

Mariah grabs my arm. “Sage.”

“I saw it.”

Another shape moves.

Closer this time.

Rhett pulls his mask into place.

Ezra raises his knife.

And Malakai moves in front of me, keeping one hand wrapped firmly around mine.

I should only be terrified.

I am terrified.

My heart is hammering, my friends are trapped beside me, something dead is moving through the corn, and an invisible boundary just dropped me for trying to leave. But his hand is wrapped around mine again. And beneath the fear, beneath the panic, beneath every rational thought screaming that this is completely fucked…that heat returns.

That same warmth gathers low in my body, unwelcome and impossible to ignore.

The ribbon loosens around my wrist.

Beneath our feet, the Earth gives one slow, satisfied pulse.

My gaze moves from Malakai to Rhett, then finally to Ezra. All three of them know. I see it in their faces.

Whatever woke beneath Ward Farm tonight isn’t satisfied with my blood.