Chapter 21 · The Beast Knows Her Name

Carson hit the vault floor hard enough to crack black stone.

Then he got back up.

Not Carson. Not really.

The thing wearing his body rose on four limbs, huge shoulders rolling under torn black fabric. Blood ran down one side of its face. Its eyes burned silver-white, no pupils left. Its mouth opened around teeth way too long to belong to any man.

And it looked straight at me.

"Mia," Jonah said behind me, voice thin and shaking. "Maybe don't move. Like, seriously. Don't even blink weird."

The beast growled.

It wasn't loud at first. Just a low vibration that crawled through the soles of my boots and shook dust from the broken ceiling.

Then it got louder.

The sound punched through my ribs.

I had heard Carson angry. I'd heard him half-changed, jaw clenched, claws digging into his own palms while he fought the curse like it was a knife in his gut.

This wasn't that.

This was what the curse had been trying to make him all along.

Across the vault, the Black Moon Gate kept feeding.

The huge circular frame had split open where the First Lock used to sit.