The final bell of the day rings with a resonance that seems to vibrate through Ella's bones, signaling freedom from another day of pretending to be normal. She's managed to make it through her remaining classes without any major incidents, though the effort has left her drained and edgy. The constant vigilance required to suppress her enhanced senses, to ignore the symphony of heartbeats and the cocktail of emotions radiating from her classmates, feels like holding her breath underwater for hours at a time.
All day, she's been hyperaware of the mysterious twins moving through the hallways like beautiful predators. She's caught glimpses of them in her peripheral vision—the red-eyed one in her chemistry class, sitting three rows behind her with an intensity that made the back of her neck bu
