Prologue

–Ethan–

I forgot my phone.

That's it. That's the whole reason my life fell apart — because I forgot my stupid phone on the bench after practice.

The natatorium was empty when I slipped back in, my sneakers squeaking against the wet tiles. The rest of the team had cleared out an hour ago. Even the lights were dimmed, that eerie blue glow bouncing off the pool's surface.

I wasn't supposed to be here.

I'm never really supposed to be anywhere on this team, honestly. Benchwarmer. Backup. The guy Coach keeps around because the scholarship paperwork was already filed. My best friend Tony calls it "decorative athleticism." Yen says I should quit. My sister Lina just looks at me with those sad eyes every time I come home without a single medal.

I spotted my phone near lane four and grabbed it.

That's when I heard it.

Coming from the locker room. A sound so wrong, so animal, that every hair on my body stood up.

Ragged breathing. Strained. Like someone fighting their own body and losing.

And beneath it — the slow, awful groan of metal bending.

What the—

I pushed the door open.

Karl stood with his back to me.

Karl Voss. Captain. Campus golden boy. Three university records. A new girl on his arm every other week. The guy whose name the coaches say like a prayer.

But right now, his bare back looked nothing like the back of a human being.

His muscles moved under his skin. Not flexing — shifting. Crawling. His spine pressed out in sharp ridges like something was trying to push through from the inside. His fingers were buried knuckle-deep into a steel locker, nails shredding through the metal like it was cardboard, leaving long, brutal gouges.

The air hit me next.

Blood. And something else. Something wild and thick that made my stomach drop.

"Karl?"

He snapped around.

His eyes burned gold.

Not a trick of the light. Not a reflection. Gold — glowing, predatory, locked straight onto me. Blood stained the corner of his mouth. When his lips pulled back, his canines were wrong. Too long. Too sharp. The kind of teeth that existed for one purpose.

My body made the decision before my brain did.

I ran.

I didn't even make it two steps.

Something slammed into me from behind like a freight train, and the floor rushed up fast. My chin cracked against the tiles. Karl's weight crushed down on me, his body radiating heat so intense it felt like lying against a furnace. My lungs refused to work.

A hand pressed flat against the back of my skull. Firm. Controlling.

His voice dropped low against my ear.

"You saw something you weren't meant to see."

"I won't say anything." My voice came out embarrassingly small. "Karl, I swear — I don't even know what I saw, I just came back for my phone—"

He didn't respond.

Instead, he lowered his head slowly. His nose grazed the side of my neck, and I felt him inhale. Long. Deep. Deliberate.

Every muscle in my body locked up.

"…You smell absolutely irresistible."

"Please don't eat me."

A pause.

Then — and I will never forgive him for this — he laughed. Low and rough, barely human, but genuine.

"Eat you." He said it like he was turning the words over. "That's not quite the right word for what I want to do."

Before I could process that, the locker room door exploded inward.

A figure filled the doorway — tall, dark-haired, dressed like he'd just stepped off a runway in the middle of the night. Sharp jaw. Sharper eyes. He scanned the room in under a second and landed on us with an expression that could freeze concrete.

"Karl." One word. Ice cold.

Karl went still above me. Completely. Like a dog that just heard its owner's voice.

"Adrian." His tone shifted — less predator, more caught teenager.

Adrian. I filed that name away.

The man — Adrian — walked in slowly, his eyes moving from Karl to me, then back to Karl. "You were supposed to be contained tonight."

"I was handling it."

"You were thirty seconds from a *disaster*." Adrian crouched in front of me, and up close, his eyes were an unsettling shade of grey. Almost silver. "Are you hurt?"

"My ego," I said. "Mostly my ego."

Something flickered across his face. Not quite a smile. Not quite not one, either.

He looked back at Karl. "Take the east exit. Now. I'll deal with this."

Karl stood. The heat lifted off me immediately. I rolled over, gasping, and caught one last look at his face — the gold in his eyes was fading, his expression complicated in a way I'd never seen on Karl Voss before. He looked almost *guilty*.

Then he was gone.

Adrian offered me a hand.

I took it. Bad idea. The moment his fingers closed around my wrist, something passed through me — electric, disorienting, like grabbing a live wire. I yanked my hand back and stood on my own.

He noticed. His eyes narrowed slightly.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Ethan Cole. I'm on the swim team. I was just—"

"I know who you are, Ethan."

I blinked. "How?"

He didn't answer. Instead he reached into his jacket, pulled out a card, and held it out between two fingers. Plain white. Just a phone number.

"Call that number tomorrow morning. Eight o'clock exactly."

"And if I don't?"

His silver eyes held mine, completely steady.

"Then the next time Karl loses control," he said quietly, "I won't be close enough to stop him."

He walked out.

I stood alone in the destroyed locker room, steel lockers gouged open like tin cans, blood on the floor, a stranger's card in my shaking hand.

My phone buzzed.

A text from Tiny: *bro where are you, Lina called me freaking out, also Yen says you're dead*

I stared at the card.

Eight o'clock.

The worst part wasn't the gold eyes. It wasn't the bent steel or the blood or even the teeth.

It was that Adrian said he knew who I was — before I ever told him my name.