LYSANDER

"You loved her to death." I circled him, watching for the next swing. "You were utterly obsessed with her. You consumed her until there was nothing left, and even at that, you still would not stop closing in. She saw only one way out, and that was why she did what she did."

"She was mine—"

"And Fia will be next." I cut him off. "I cannot sit back and let it happen to her too. Your obsession with mother is just like the one you have with healers. It will burn everything it touches. It will burn her to the ground."

"You would do this for some girl?"

"Everybody needs a catalyst."

I reached for the loose chain again and got it around his throat before he could stop me. This time I pulled tight. He gagged. His good hand clawed at the links digging into his windpipe.

Then his legs morphed.

I had never seen a partial shift like that before. His lower half had already taken on the form of a wolf, all muscle and sinew, with powerful hind legs braced beneath him and claws sharp enough to tear through anything, while his upper body remained entirely human. He snapped one leg upward in a movement too fast to track, the joint bending at a brutal angle, and drove his claws straight into my face, raking down with enough force to tear flesh open.

The motion stunned me for half a second. That was all he needed.

He then grabbed the ceiling chain with his transformed feet.

He pulled.

The anchor tore free in an explosion of plaster and wood. The ceiling caved inward. Chunks of debris rained down around us.

He hit the ground with both chains clenched in his hands, and before there was any chance to breathe, he snapped them into motion like whips. One lashed across my ribs before I could even react. The pain detonated through my chest, sharp and blinding, and I heard the sickening crack of bone giving way. I felt the rupture as my ribs tore loose from my sternum, something inside me shifting where it should have held firm.

He then wriggled the chain I had forced on his throat off and proceeded to wield both as weapons.

"I did not expect you, of all people, to be stupid." He turned his blind face toward where I’d fallen. "I raised you better than this, and you still turned out to be such a disappointment."

I snatched a jagged chunk of plaster from the floor and hurled it hard across the room. It struck the far wall with a sharp crack, loud enough to cut through everything. His head snapped toward the sound, and both chains lashed out in that direction, fast and violent, chasing the noise. In that split second, while his focus shifted, I moved.

But he was faster. The platinum caught me before I’d closed half the distance. It wrapped around my leg and jerked me off my feet. I hit the floor hard enough to drive the air from my lungs.

He reeled me in like a fish on a line.

I clawed at the marble, trying to find anything to hold onto, any edge or crack that might slow him down, but my hands slipped on dust and my own blood. My nails scraped raw against the floor, leaving streaks behind me as he dragged me closer like I weighed nothing. The sound of it, skin against stone, stayed loud in my ears even as everything else started to blur.

The moment I was close enough, he wrapped the chain tighter around his fist and swung.

The first hit smashed into my face, and I felt my nose give instantly, cartilage folded in on itself as warm blood poured straight into my mouth and down my throat. I choked on it, tasting iron thick on my tongue, and before I could even turn my head, the second blow came down harder. It split the skin above my eye wide open. I felt it before I understood it, that sudden release, like something had been peeled back. Blood rushed into my eye, hot and blinding, and I couldn’t see properly anymore.

The third strike caught my jaw at an angle that made something deep in my skull shift. Teeth came loose. I felt them, actually felt them move, one cracking, another tearing free from the root and rolling across my tongue before I spat it out without thinking. It hit the floor somewhere behind me with a small, useless sound that didn’t match the damage.

I tried to swing back. I tried to get my arm up, but he caught it, twisted, and drove another hit into my ribs just to remind me how little any of that mattered. Strength like his wasn’t something you worked around. It crushed through you. Every movement I made felt delayed, like my body had already given up and was just catching up to the pain.

He had done this before. Not once, not twice. Enough times that there was no hesitation in him, no wasted motion. Every strike landed exactly where it would do the most damage, and I could feel it, that cold certainty in the way he moved.

I was guessing. I was trying my best to react. Yet I was already losing.

"Where did I go wrong?"

The question came out of him almost casually, like we were standing in a quiet room instead of this, and then the chain came down again. It smashed into my cheekbone and I felt it fracture, a deep, grinding crack that made my vision flare white for a second before dropping back into red.

"When did I go wrong with you?"

Another hit came, this one landed lower, catching the side of my head hard enough that something inside my ear burst. Sound dropped out on that side, replaced by a high, constant ringing that swallowed everything else. The world tilted. Not just in my head, the whole room felt like it shifted, like the floor had been pulled out from under me and never quite settled back.

I tried to push up again, but my left arm didn’t respond. I could see it there, dragged along uselessly beside me, but it didn’t feel like it belonged to me anymore. My fingers twitched once, then nothing.

Blood kept filling my mouth. It pooled under my tongue, thick and warm, slipping down the back of my throat no matter how I tried to spit it out. I swallowed it again and again because the thought of choking on it, of drowning in it while he stood over me, felt worse than anything he was doing. I refused to go out like that.

Another blow came down, and I barely registered where it landed. My body jerked with it, more from instinct than anything else. My thoughts were slowing, slipping through my fingers the same way the marble had earlier, and I could feel myself fading somewhere at the edges.

Still, I kept trying to move. I kept dragging in breath, thick with blood , and forcing my body to answer even when it didn’t want to.

Because choking seemed like a pathetic way to die.

He paused after what might have been the sixteenth blow.

I looked up through swelling eyes. My father stared down at me with tears streaming from ruined eyes that had started to heal at the edges. Just enough to see. Just enough to recognize his own son beneath the damage.

"I..." He started.

"I cannot do it." His voice cracked. "I cannot bring myself to kill my boy. She would hate me even more. I—"

My hand morphed.

I didn’t think about it. I didn’t plan it. Instinct took over where conscious thought had failed. My fingers elongated into claws. Fur sprouted across my knuckles, and my arm drove forward with brutal force, straight into his chest. There was resistance for a fraction of a second, then it gave. His ribs split apart like they were never meant to hold. I felt them crack, felt muscle tear open around my hand as it pushed deeper, deeper, until—

There.

His heart.

It was still beating.

I felt it against my palm, frantic and warm, fighting to keep going even as everything else failed. For one suspended second, the world narrowed to that pulse. That fragile, stubborn rhythm.

Then my claws curled.

And I tore it free.

He fell on top of me.

The impact knocked the air from my lungs, but I didn’t push him away. I couldn’t. My hand was still wrapped around what I had taken from him, slick and heavy, while the rest of him bled out over me.

Blood poured from the cavity in his chest. So much blood that it soaked through my clothes in seconds. I held him as he died.

I felt his weight settle onto me like an accusation. Hot tears tracked down my face and mixed with his blood.

"It’s okay," I whispered into his hair. "It’s okay. You can rest now."

His body went still.

I lay there beneath him for a long time. Long enough for his blood to cool. Long enough for my tears to stop. Long enough to understand that I’d murdered my father and there was no taking it back.

The room smelled like death and wolfsbane and the fading remnants of rut pheromones.

Hazel groaned from across the room , and then I closed my eyes and started planning what came next.

A sacrificial lamb.