My thoughts spiral.
Miles had always said Leo was “too soft,” “too trusting” with wolves…
“No.” I shake my head.
“You’re lying.”
“Am I?”
He grabs my wrist and drags me to a tall mirror.
“Look at yourself, Isabella. Look at how your eyes shook the second you realized the hunters might not be innocent.”
Our reflections blur together—
the dark-haired avenger and the silver-eyed beast.
His chest touches my back.
His heartbeat is too fast, too wild.
“Let me go.”
“No.”
His lips graze my ear, soft and lethal.
“This game is just beginning. You think I’m the murderer. I think you’re her replacement. Sounds fair to me.”
Then he does the worst thing—
His fingers trail my pulse.
Gently. Intimately.
Like a lover.
Like a threat.
“But you want to know something?” he whispers.
“You’re even more beautiful than she was. Lizzie cried when she was afraid. You… your eyes burn like hellfire.”
The night before the full moon, the entire manor feels ready to explode.
Servants rush around hanging wolfbane above every door.
I sit in my workshop, sharpening my silver dagger.
My hands tremble—not with fear.
With anticipation.
The door opens silently.
Caleb stands there, shirt undone at the collar, his chest rising with uneven breaths.
His eyes glow amber in the dim light.
“The moon’s call,” he rasps.
“It’s singing in my blood.”
I grip the dagger tighter.
“Stay back.”
But he moves toward me like he’s sleepwalking—slow, predatory.
I smell blood on him.
His knuckles are raw, split open.
“She was never afraid of me,” he murmurs, eyes distant.
“But you… you look at me like I’m a monster.”
“You are a monster.”
“I know.”
Suddenly he grabs my hand, pressing the dagger to his own chest.
“Then do it. Kill me.”
The blade pierces his shirt.
A bead of blood swells.
“Go on,” he whispers, gaze locked on mine.
“Do what you came here to do.”
But I can’t.
Not with the way he looks at me.
Not with the truth twisting everything inside me.
A shudder runs through him.
He drops to his knees, gasping—
the transformation beginning too early.
“Go…” he growls, claws scraping the floor.
“I don’t want you to see—”
Instinct overrides reason.
I throw the dagger aside and wrap my arms around him.
“Caleb! Hold on!”
He lifts his head.
Humanity and beast war in his glowing eyes.
“Why?” he chokes out.
“Why won’t you kill me?”
I have no answer.
Only the truth humming beneath my skin:
Some boundaries, once crossed, never come back.
His forehead presses against my neck, burning hot.
His heart pounds against mine.
Then his mouth finds mine—
not soft, not tender—
but desperate, breaking, consuming.
When his teeth catch my lip and he tastes my blood, he shudders with a sound that’s almost a moan.
“Now you’re in my blood forever,” he whispers,
“the way you’ve already carved yourself into my soul.”
The kiss hasn’t even faded when the nightmare begins.
I wake at midnight to a faint sound—
a lullaby.
An old one.
One our mother used to sing to both of us.
My heart stutters painfully.
I follow the sound through the dark halls, stopping at a tapestry-covered door.
Behind it—stone steps leading down.
In the candlelit cellar, a girl in a white nightdress hums softly, her back to me.
When she turns, my world fractures.
The same face.
The same hair.
But her eyes—blue as summer sky.
“Bella?” she whispers.
“I knew you’d find me.”
My knees nearly give out.
“Lizzie… you’re alive.”
“Alive?”
She gives a hollow laugh.
“Something like that.”
She lifts her wrist—
silver bruises circling it.
“He kept me here for three years. Because I wouldn’t be his toy.”
The truth slices through me.
Caleb didn’t just kill Leo.
He caged my sister.
“Tomorrow night,” Lizzie grips my hand, her fingers cold as death,
“when the moon is full, the lock will open. Take me away, Bella.”
When I return to my room, a new specimen sits on the vanity—
a butterfly pinned with silver nails.
Beside it, a card:
Some beauties are meant to be destroyed.
Will you be hunter or prey?
—Yours, K
In the mirror, I’m crying—
but I don’t know who the tears belong to.
My dead fiancé.
My stolen sister.
Or the monster who broke my heart with the truth.
Far away, a wolf howls—
long, lonely, aching.
Calling the name of someone who will never answer.
My name.