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Predator , the eye seemed to say. Not monster. Not yet.

"I never left," Kael replied. "I just stopped pretending the cage had a lock."

"I want to stop being kind," he said. "Kindness was the nightmare. This?" He raised a hand, and claws extended not with effort, but with the quiet certainty of a flower opening. "This is waking up."

Elias circled slowly, never entering Kael's peripheral vision. A tactic meant to unsettle. It didn't. Nothing unsettled Kael anymore—not the blood under his nails, not the dreams of running on four legs through cities of bone, not the way his shadow sometimes moved a second after he did.