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“‘Lets people go’?” I repeat.

“He makes a point of calling them in for a meeting personally. They’re not only released from the department, but from Preston.”

“Lyle and Therese said the same.”

Arjun scoffs. “I do not want to talk about them right now. They’re basically freeloaders.” He lowers his lips to the dip between my breasts. For a single second, he blinks—and I know he cannot feel my heart beating. There is no breath. I am freezing.

I catch his chin with my fingers and bring him up for a chaste kiss. “I feel we are almost somewhere I can let off. Just one more thing. Pretty please?” I bat my lashes at him. “Tell me one more thing. Don’t you think it’s strange that they simply … disappear? Have you ever checked in?”

“No. Of course not. It’s not my concern. Better odds for me.” He pulls back. “Are you going to put out or what?”

It’s barely any information, but it implicates the dean enough that I feel I might have a direction. Plus, if I put a glamour on him, it’s possible I can filch the key.

I place my hands to either side of his face and pull him in for a deep kiss. His lip’s split, the taste of pennies and salt slicking my tongue. His cock swells in his suit pants, his skin heating. Sweat ripples over his skin, painting him silver in uncanny winter light. The windows of his car fog. But I’m so, so cold.

My fingers graze his waistband, unhooking his belt with studied ease, then the button. I pull away briefly, studying his dewy skin, still wan from my first feeding.

He’s panting for me, grabbing at me. He pulls my hand to the weight of his cock, and I give him a gentle squeeze.

“Delicious,” I purr, and press my mouth back to his.

Goddess, he is. He’s so fucking delectable, I’m salivating. My tongue grows barbed as a cat’s, and I scrape it over the split skin on his lip, worrying the cut wider. Arjun groans as I suck on it.

But I don’t want blood, tasty as it is. It wants something else.

The thrum of his veins, the soft whisper of his capillaries. And beneath that, power, power, power.

My teeth clamp down and Arjun gives a strangled scream.

“Shh,” I hush, my articulated jaw stretching as my teeth bristle and erupt.

I can’t—I can’t control myself. No, no no, no—

If I kill him, it’s a calling card. They’ll know. I’ll threaten Lacie and myself.

But it is so terribly famished.

With a roar, my body shifts and changes, bones cracking with earth-shattering pain as my claws lengthen, the soft palate of my mouth ripping and splitting with a crunch. My black tongue twists out of me and I pull away, monstrous.

Arjun backpedals, half undone. His belt catches on the gearshift and I lunge for him. My teeth clamp around his throat and he wails until I snap my jaws shut. My tongue seeks the ragged holes I tore in his skin, splitting into hundreds of strands as it surges forward, beetling inside, slipping through his flesh, into his tissue, to where his heart beats. Arjun struggles, writhing, kicking and hitting at me as I spear deeper into his body, slicking up his heart blood and devouring something better, more primal.

My tongue whips back into my mouth and I smile, a toothsome, animal thing. Gore drips from my teeth.

“Pretty boys,” I whisper, my voice an adder’s hiss, “should learn when to keep their mouths shut.”

Arjun screams, but it’s really a bloody burble as he presses his hands to his ruined throat. He’s already dead. There’s nothing he can do.

And even though I know this is wrong, there is nothing I can do to stop it anymore. That ship has sailed, and I’m still so,

so

damned

hungry.

His hand slips on his car handle and the door swings open. Arjun gives a triumphant gurgle. He thinks he’s won.

I drive my bristle of teeth into the back of his skull, cracking through the bone, tongue spearing into his brain with a wet suck. Arjun spasms and stills, and I drag him backward into the cab, closing the door behind me.