The days blurred after that.
Each morning, I woke up feeling a little less human.
A little more other.
It wasn’t just the instincts anymore.
It wasn’t just the way I could hear whispered conversations from across the room or smell the bitterness on someone’s skin when they lied.
It was in the way I felt everything—sharp, visceral, raw.
Like the world wasn’t made of stone and metal anymore, but threads I could pull apart with a single thought.
Something inside me was coiling tighter by the hour, a tether pulled taut.
Like it was waiting.
Watching.
And I knew—without Killian having to say it—that the time was coming.
Not tomorrow.
Not next week.
Soon.
—
Ridgeway High buzzed with an energy that had nothing to do with me.
Prom season.
Posters were slapped on every wall.
V
