Chapter One
My patience was wearing thin as I stared at the back of the old man’s bowed head.
Good things come to those who know when to wait, Ever.
The memory of my mother’s words should have comforted me.
Instead, I only felt anger. The same anger I’d been carrying for weeks now because she was gone.
Taken from me in the most cruel way possible.
I knew my anger wouldn’t last forever. Grief would eventually collect its due…
but only after I finished what I’d set out to do.
Shifting my weight on the hard wooden bench, I stifled a frustrated sigh and wondered how long one person could pray. The hour the old man had already invested hadn’t done him any good.
The evil that had followed him into the church continued to linger beside him.
Like a cloud of black smoke, it floated in the air, its form a mass of slowly undulating wisps that gave it an indistinct, elongated look, almost like a person, but not quite. It hadn’t left the man’s side since I’d started following him a few days ago.
It seemed to be waiting for something.
What, though?
That was the question. One of the many I’d asked myself over the weeks since I’d started tracking the shadow creature.
The old man was its newest potential victim.
Before that, it was a small-town librarian.
And before that, a grocery store clerk. I fisted my hands, thinking of my mother, the victim before her.
The clerk had lived. The librarian and my mother hadn’t.
And I had no idea why it spared one but not the others.
Or maybe it didn’t spare her. Maybe the clerk had simply gotten lucky, and it couldn’t kill her like the rest.
Why couldn’t my mom have been one of the lucky ones? Why had it even targeted her in the first place? I wished I knew. I wished I had some kind of explanation for the hellish turn my life had taken weeks ago.
But I didn’t. I only had a list of questions with no answers. There was so much about the thing that tore my family apart that I didn’t understand. Which made me hate it even more. I didn’t want to understand it; I wanted to kill it.
But how could I kill something that didn’t have a solid form?
A hunter’s success depended on their knowledge of their prey. I’d been tracking it for weeks, watching it. Learning everything I could.
It could pass through walls, metal…anything really.
It didn’t eat or sleep. The only way I’d seen it interact with anything was when it talked to the old man.
At least, that’s what seemed to be happening.
If the shadow spoke, I couldn’t hear it.
But the old man seemed to be answering it after it swirled around him.
His responses were always some kind of grumpy remark about not being able to change the past or about making peace with what he had.
So far, that was all it’d done to the old man. Talk to him. But I knew the evil was capable of…killing without hesitation or remorse…skinning people and wearing them like a meat suit.
I let out a slow breath, willing myself to calm down as I opened my hands and set my palms on my black pants.
Anger was fueling me, and that was fine so long as I didn’t allow it to cloud my thinking. I needed a clear mind to figure out how something that didn’t have substance could kill before it ruined another family.
A door near the front of the church opened, and a man walked out. He wore everyday clothes, but something about him said clergy even before he veered toward the old man.
Like every other human I’d observed, he didn’t seem to see the shadow at the man’s side either. Why could I see it? Was it because of what I was?
I looked down at my dark nails, permanently stained, not with polish but with my legacy. And I hated them almost as much as I hated the shadow. They were a reminder of what I wasn’t: Normal. Human.
Everything that was wrong with the world was because of shifters. It didn’t matter which race…Urbat or werewolf. Both were equally responsible for shattering the world twenty years ago. And now, both were equally responsible for letting that shadow monster continue to destroy lives.
Why weren’t any of them stopping it? Wasn’t that what we were made for? To hunt things? To kill?
My angry gaze returned to the shadow, watching it drift idly.
If the rest of my kind weren’t willing to kill it, then I would. As soon as I figured out how.
Withholding my sigh, I watched the clergyman sit next to the old man.
“Hello,” he said softly. “I noticed you’ve been here for quite a while. Is there something heavy on your heart?”
Trying to ignore their quiet conversation, I focused on the shadow as it floated a little farther away from the clergyman.
It hadn’t seemed to care about anyone else in the two days I’d been following the pair.
Each stop the old man had made—for food, the bathroom, and a room for the night—the shadow had only ever paid attention to him.
Why the old man and no one else? How did it choose its targets?
Hunters hunted prey they thought they could attain. What did all of its victims have in common? Other than being human.
The door to the church opened behind me, whisper-soft, too quiet for either of the humans to hear. But I did. No matter how much I tried to blend in, to look like I was one of them, I wasn’t.
I was a monster. An abomination.
You’re perfect just the way you are, Ever. You don’t need to change who you are for the world to accept you. The world needs to change for you to accept it.
My mom had forever been the optimist. I was a realist. The world would never change to accept me, and I didn’t blame it. My kind had done too much damage. We owed the world. And I’d start by cleaning up the mess the previous generation had ignored.
The shadow shifted closer to the old man, not noticing the new arrival or me, for that matter. Neither had noticed me the entire time I was following them. I was good at holding still. Something about calm stillness let the eyes pass over a person. Or in my case, a non-person.
A pew behind me creaked, and a tingle of warning teased the back of my neck, alerting me that the person was close—within my personal bubble.
The whole church was empty except for the old man and the clergyman, still quietly talking. Why did this person have to sit right behind me? I inhaled subtly, but instead of the person’s scent, I got a nose full of my perfume, which I’d applied with a heavier hand than usual this morning.
At least it was doing its job covering my scent.
The last thing I needed was some shifter coming across my trail while I was tracking the shadow.
Urbat males were nasty by nature, not caring whether or not a female was willing, only that she was the right species—non-human—and unmated.
Werewolves weren’t much better, once they figured out what I was.
The perfume kept both kinds at bay, though, neither able to tolerate the intense burn of my perfume.
It didn’t burn my nose at all now. I’d grown up using it, thanks to my mom.
When the wood creaked a second time, I looked over my shoulder and met the bright blue gaze of the man sitting almost directly behind me.
In a sweeping glance, I noted things most girls probably didn’t. He outweighed me by at least fifty pounds of pure muscle stretched out over his taller frame. His clothes were worn and simple. Purposely simple and natural fabrics. Easy to move in.
Two red flags in my world.
He was about my age with light brown hair and wasn’t shy since he was holding direct eye contact.
A yellow flag.
Then he smiled.
I probably would have found it devastating before everything. Now, though, I just saw the threat. Attractive men didn’t smile like that at a woman without a reason. Whatever he wanted, he was out of luck. That was his last red flag, and I wasn’t giving anything.
Turning forward dismissively, without returning his smile, I considered the old man who was listening to the clergyman’s prayer and didn’t seem in a hurry to leave.
He’d be safe enough in here with two other people.
The shadow hadn’t killed in front of witnesses yet and I doubted it would start today.
Since I knew where he’d parked, I could leave and watch for him by his car.
The pew behind me creaked again.
My neck tingled.
“These seats aren’t very comfortable,” the guy behind me said. “Want to wait outside instead?”
His breath teased the loose brown hair by my ear as he spoke, wrapping around me and triggering something primal and terrifying.
With his scent filling my nose, my world imploded for the third time in as many months. But this time, for a completely different reason.
He wasn’t human.
One word resonated in my mind.
Mine.
Instinct clawed at me, demanding that I turn my head and sink my teeth into his neck.
I fisted my shaking hands against my thighs and fought not to give in to what instinct was trying to force me to do.
After twenty years, I was finally feeling the mating pull, something I had done everything to avoid.
My heart stuttered a beat.
This couldn’t be happening to me.
He couldn’t be my mate.
Not now. Not ever.
I wasn’t one of them.
I refused to be.