LOGINRyanThe light didn't so much appear as arrive, like it had always been there and the dark had just been pretending otherwise, and I put myself between it and Zara before I'd even decided to move."Don't," I said, though I wasn't sure who I was talking to. Her. The wall, the thing that had just spoken with her mother's patience and no mother at all behind it."Ryan, I see it too." Her hand was still in mine, and it was shaking, but her voice had steadied out some. "It's not attacking.""Yet.""Yet," she agreed.The seam widened, slow, unhurried, the way a door opens when whoever's on the other side already knows you're not going anywhere. Light spilled through it, pale and wrong, not warm like sun and not cold like moon, just light, like something had described the concept to itself and gotten close but not quite there.My ribs screamed when I shifted my weight, and I let them. Pain was information. Pain meant I was still mine."Talk to me," I said. "What are you feeling right now? No
ZaraDarkness came and went in waves, and every time it pulled back I was somewhere different, Ryan's arms under my knees, his heartbeat slamming against my ear, the world tilting sideways as he ran."Stay with me." His voice, low, cracked at the edges. "Zara, please.""I'm trying." My own voice sounded wrong to me, thick, like it was coming from somewhere underwater.The heat under my skin hadn't stopped since the stairwell. It moved in pulses, up through my chest, into my throat, and every pulse brought another flash of the thing I'd seen when my eyes went red. A room that wasn't a room. A mouth with no bottom."Where are we going?""East door. Marcus said east door.""Marcus helped us?""Don't talk. Save it."I wanted to tell him I didn't have anything left to save it for, that whatever was happening to me felt less like dying and more like being rearranged, piece by piece, into something that wouldn't need breath the same way. But talking took less out of me than thinking, so I ke
RyanThe dark took her out of my arms in pieces, her weight sagging, her breath gone ragged against my collarbone, and I did the only thing that made any sense in that moment. I held on harder."Zara. Zara, stay with me.""I'm here." Her voice came out thin, stretched over something enormous. "It's so loud, Ryan, why is it so loud...""What's loud? Tell me what you're hearing."She didn't answer. Her whole body arched against me, and the red light under her skin flared bright enough that I saw my own hands for half a second, saw the stairwell, saw Jude's silhouette standing very still above us like he was watching something he didn't want to blink through."Someone light a torch." My voice came out a snarl I didn't have to fake. "Now.""Patience." Jude's voice, infuriatingly calm. "This part doesn't like light.""I don't care what this part likes.""You should. It's the only reason you're both still breathing."Zara convulsed again, and I dropped to my knees with her, one arm locked a
ZaraWe ran, and the whole cavern ran with us, a thundering wave of bare feet and dragging boots that filled every inch of dark behind me like water finding the shape of a container."There." Ryan's hand found mine and pulled hard toward a gap in the rock wall, a crack barely wide enough for a body to slip through sideways. "Through there, go.""That's not big enough for both of us.""It's big enough for you so move.""I'm not leaving you behind for a gap in a wall, Ryan.""Then argue with me on the other side of it." He shoved me toward the opening, and the stone bit into my shoulders as I forced myself through, breath scraping out of me in short furious gasps, and behind me I heard him grunt as he wedged his broader frame after me, cursing under his breath the whole way."Ryan, hurry, they're not slowing down.""I'm aware."He tore through a heartbeat later, stumbling into me hard enough that we both went down again, tangled together on cold stone, and for one suspended second neith
ZaraThe surge hit like a wave breaking against rock, and my body moved before my mind caught up to what it was doing."Ryan, down!" I didn't know where the words came from, only that some instinct older than fear had taken the wheel, and I shoved him sideways as the first of them lunged, milk-white eyes wide and unblinking, hands outstretched like they'd forgotten they'd ever needed to grab something gently."Zara!" Ryan's shoulder hit stone hard, but he was already twisting back toward me, already reaching. "Behind me, now.""There's no behind you anymore." My voice came out strange, layered with something that wasn't quite my own, and when I looked down at my hands I found the claws had finished what they'd started, curved and dark and steady in a way that should have terrified me more than it did."They're everywhere."The one Ryan called Marcus reached me first, and up close the wrongness of him hit harder than it had from a distance, skin the color of old candle wax, coat hangin
RyanDarkness swallowed the room whole, and the first thing I lost wasn't my sight, it was the sound of Zara's breathing."Zara!" My hand was still locked around her wrist, I could feel her pulse hammering under my fingers, but the room had gone so black and so loud at once that I couldn't separate her voice from the chord still rising and falling around us like something enormous breathing through the walls."Say something, tell me you're still here.""I'm here." Her voice came out thin, stretched tight over something close to panic. "Ryan, my hands, I can feel them, it's like fire under the skin, I don't know how to stop it.""You don't stop it." I didn't know why I said that, except that some old instinct in me recognized the shape of what she was describing, the way a body starts to unmake itself and remake itself into something else entirely. "You just don't fight it either. Not yet...fighting it now could tear you apart before it finishes.""That's supposed to help?""It's suppo
Zara"Rude" I mummured. Judging from the kind of person Alpha Ryan was, it wasn't hard to see that he was a man of pride who didn't beg. He saw begging as a way of being weak and left for me, I was ready to break him until the only thing left for him to do was to beg. I closed my eyes for a bit, th
RyanShe was here in flesh and blood. The last living Eserai.When my elders told me about an Eserai at first, I was sure they had gone mad. It was impossible. My seer confirmed that the Eserais had been wiped out by my father’s reckless drinking from them, and his abuse.But the moment I saw her, I
ZaraWith my hands pinned to my back, I dragged my legs to let them carry as far as I could go, but I was a fool to think they would let me off so easily.Someone was behind me with light steps, almost like they were gliding over the air. Freaking werewolf speed. Everything happened in a blur, and
ZaraThe email didn’t make sense. I stared at it a few more times, certain there had to be a mistake or some sort of glitch that would disappear if I had to blinked hard enough.Anxiety had me pulling out my phone for the umpteenth time to read through the email, word for word to make sure it wasn’t







