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Prologue

Oh God Oh no What have I done?

My heart was in my throat as I hurriedly wiped blood from my hands The harder I tried to clean them, the more dirt and blood smeared the skin With a shaky breath, I looked beyond the small copse of trees that shrouded me to the reason my pal back and forth, talking on a phone, his features blurred from the distance Every few moments, he paused and stared into the trees

Anteros

I sucked in a sharp breath—it was like he could see h I was cloaked in darkness My hands stilled and I stopped trying to clean, paralyzed by his stare piercing the shadows In the rown to a beard It made him wilder, more Beastly

“What have I done?” I whispered, breaking the spell and putting my head in my hands An instant later, I tore theainst my cheeks I quickly jumped up and ainst a thin tree Anteros resuh occasionally he looked back, and each tiolf balls

There was just one building around for low of one faraway street laht on the empty lot Windowless with one door, it looked like some kind of abandoned concrete factory, but inside all kinds of debauchery went on It was a club owned by the Beast, but not like the one he’d taken round, a place for the dark and dirty

A walkie-talkie blared static, angry, white noise next to the body, and even knowing I should leave, knowing my otten to Anteros since I’d escaped It had been so long since we’d been in the sa, the yearning—hoas utterly powerless, even before he spoke

The first day I searched for hione back to the penthouse and sat outside, hidden, waiting for him to come out I did that for a week before I realized he didn’t live there anyiven up

Instead I became obsessed

A dark part of o back to the penthouse, the sa for him until I found him

As I watched Anteros, I tried to ignore the throbbing betweenin hs Weapons gliht and a lued me to the spot It all soerous I hadn’t thought it possible for hierous

I was transfixed by the way Anteros was only in a tank despite the bitter air, lingering on how his skin rolled with his ue darted out to wet my lips The Beast had always been lethal, but noas mythic

I was so engrossed watching hi the diaiven me I should have thrown it away the ht about it every day for aletting bloody as I rubbed it

Bloody because I’d killed someone

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way—but then, I’d never really considered hoould happen I’d just listened to the need tugging at ut, the one that threatened to rip me apart if I didn’t follow And when I’d finally found Anteros, someone had found one

Big O

I killed Big O

It all happened so fast I’d been in the trees, staring at the lone door, and then out of nowhere hands were around my neck Before he could yell for help, my knife was in his side and blood ran down ht, but dark too…like su O I could have run and he would have been alive and I wouldn’t have been a killer I hadn’t even planned on using my knife; the only reason I kept it was because Anteros’s dried blood was still on the blade

I could have left

But a rush of adrenaline, like fire inelectricity in my veins, had filledO again And again

What d