“Some crimes,” I quote Ryodan stiffly, “are so personal, blood-vengeance belongs only to the one who suffered them.”

The beast snarls at me and gouges the floor with a taloned foot, ripping long gashes into the priceless rug. Crimson eyes flash. So much for the damage my heels do. I’ll remind him of this the next time he comments on my shoes.

“I wanted to be the one that killed them,” I say, in case I hadn’t made myself perfectly clear.

It roars so loudly, the windows rattle in their panes, then stalks forward, shaking the severed heads at me in wordless rebuke, crimson eyes flashing.

I stare into the princes’ faces. Eyes rolled back in their heads, their mouths open on screams. Faces don’t freeze like that unless pushed to breaking, where death itself becomes the kindness.

Around enormous fangs, the beast snarls, “You had ample time. You didn’t. Your time ran the fuck out.” Its horns begin to melt and run down the sides of its face. Its head becomes grossly misshapen, expands and contracts, pulses and shrinks before expanding again—as if too much mass is being compacted into too small a form and the beast is resisting. Massive shoulders collapse inward, straighten then collapse again. The princes’ heads thud wetly to the floor. The beast gouges deep splinters of wood up through what used to be a priceless rug, as it bows upon itself, shuddering.

Talons splay across the rug and become fingers. Haunches lift, slam down, and become legs. But they aren’t right. The limbs contort, the bones don’t bend where they should, rubbery in some places, knobbed in others.

Still it bays, but the sound is changing. Its misshapen head whips from side to side. I catch a glimpse through matted hair of wild eyes glittering with moonlight, of black fangs and spittle as it snarls. Then the tangled locks abruptly melt, the sleek black skin begins to lighten. It hits the floor, convulsing.

I can’t help but compare it to the sudden swiftness with which Ryodan transforms. Although both can become the beast quickly, Barrons’s reversion to human is lengthy.

I enjoy the beast, Barrons had said. Ryodan enjoys the man.

Although both are animal, they prefer to stalk different terrains. Ryodan dons the concrete and glass of the urban jungle like a second skin. Barrons glides into the dark, primitive, forested jungle with the lusty hunger of a long-confined, feral lion escaped from a zoo.

Suddenly it shoots up on all fours, head down. Bones crunch and crack, settling into a new shape. Shoulders form, strong, smooth, bunched with muscle. Hands brace wide. One leg stretched back, the other bent as it tenses in a low lunge.

A naked man crouches on the floor.

Barrons lifts his head and stares straight at me, a few feet above my indent on the sofa. “It was my crime, too. I may not have been there to see it, but I’ve seen it in my head every fucking day since.”

“I was the one that got raped.”

“I was the one that failed to save you.”

“And because you blamed yourself—”

“I wasn’t the only one blaming me.”

“I didn’t blame you for not saving me,” I growl. It’s nobody’s responsibility to save me but mine.”

“You blamed me for letting them live.”

“I did—” not is what I intended to say. But I’m startled to realize that he’s right.

Deep down I was harboring a grudge. I’d despised that Barrons hadn’t killed them the instant he learned what they’d done to me.

“I wanted to,” he says tightly. “They were fucking linchpins.”

V’lane had needled me that Barrons permitted my rapists to live, to go on after the hellish things they’d done to me. I’d hungered for him to go bloodlust crazy for vengeance, to do precisely what he’d done tonight, rip their heads off and bring them to me in a silent I may not have saved you but I fucking avenged you. All this time some part of me was measuring him by his failure to retaliate on my behalf, holding a piece of myself back. How could he not want them dead?

He’s right about the other part, too. I could have hunted the princes months ago. I didn’t want to. They changed me. Before the rape, I was good, genuinely never had a mean thought. If I hurt someone, it was by accident and I felt bad about it. But when they were done with me, there was something new inside me: something ruthless and feral and beyond law that hungered to be the one perpetrating the savagery, because when you are the savage, no one messes with you. I’d wanted to be bad. It’s safer to be bad.

When someone hurts you—and I’m not talking about forgivable offenses, some things are irrevocable and demand recompense—you have two choices: slice them out of your life or slice them into delicious, bloody pieces. While the latter would be infinitely more satisfying in an immediate, animalistic way, it changes you. And, although you think the memory of the battle won will be a pleasure—if it is a pleasure, you’ve lost the war.

They raped me. I survived. I moved on. I wanted someone else to be the animal I didn’t want to become.

I could have cold-bloodedly stalked into their goth mansion months ago. I would have enjoyed mutilating and torturing them, killing them slowly. Savored every minute of it. Painted my face with their blood, reveling in my dominance.

But it wouldn’t have been a sheepdog that walked out that gothic, towering front door.

It would have been a wolf.

“Wolves don’t kill with hate,” Barrons says. “They kill because it’s what they do.”