TERESA'S P.O.V.
It had been two years since my world flipped itself over, shook me by the ankles, and left me dangling. Two years of pretending I didn't know Adrian and his friends weren't exactly running on good old human DNA. Two years of keeping my head down, raising my twins, and trying to figure out how the heck to break out of this gilded cage.
Well, maybe gilded is underselling it. Try
gold-plated with diamond trim, haunted by the faint smell of despair, and—oh yeah—occasionally blood-dripping-from-the-walls. Fancy, right?
At first, it wasn't all that terrible. Adrian was…charming as usual. The kind of charming that felt like stepping into warm sunlight after a cold storm. His smile? Deadly. His voice? Like liquid velvet. And his eyes? Sharp enough to cut glass. Add that to his distinctive scent—a combination of rain-soaked forests and something I couldn't quite name—and it was no wonder people fell for him. Hard.
