Theirs to Take Preview

Meet our serial killer brothers Kane and Zane. Read their full length romance here (releasing July 21, 2025).

Finding the perfect mark has never been easy, but there’s a routine to it that’s comforting. We fall into our roles seamlessly—he chooses the target, and I reel them in for us, getting them comfortable and compliant before the real fun begins.

It’s always the shock of the sudden transition from soft smiles and gentle touches to biting insults and rough consent that makes my balls ache. The look in their eyes as sheer disbelief quickly melts into whispers of fear and distrust is what makes it all so… addictive. Kisses turn cruel, and they still come back for more. Beg for more, even, when they’re face first in the dirt and gasping for breath.

They understand the truth: it’s still better than being alone.

It’s why we can’t rush this step in the process. We have to pick someone whose truth matches our own.

Pinching the fresh joint between my lips, I take a deep pull and roll my shoulders back to let it all in, leaving no crack or crevice of my lungs unscathed. The smoke burns my throat on the inhale, and I hold my breath as I pass the joint back to my brother. He takes a drag and spills the smoke into the air within seconds, growing impatient with it. With everything. He scratches the stubble on his jaw as his eyes scan the empty courtyard.

“The best muse is worth waiting for,” I remind him, following his gaze to the furthest lamppost across the quad. It flickers for a moment before going steady again, casting more shadows than light. From our vantage point atop the barrier wall that separates the dorms from the classrooms, we can see every rattling door and shadowed archway laid out in front of us. A few people linger in the eaves to bum a smoke or steal a kiss, but most have hurried inside to fend off the biting cold. I don’t blame them; we’re freezing our balls off out here.

The recent rains brought a heavy fog that rolls across campus slow and steady, not seeking any specific destination, merely existing in its own right. Sometimes I wish my brother and I were like that—methodical and unhurried, going through the motions because we enjoy them, not because we’re growing desperate for the next big spark, flash, bang—the moment when the fuzzy edge of consciousness dials in and finally becomes clear after too long spent wandering and waiting.

Everything always feels a little gray, a little unfocused, when we’re stuck in the in-between.

Kane clicks his tongue against his teeth. “Wait too long and the muse will be ruined.”

I understand his frustration—going months without a kill hurts us both. For him, it’s the creative spark that’s missing. All of the portraits he paints are ghosts, mere memories he’s trying to bring back to life. He needs something real, something tangible, to be able to elevate his artwork to that next level.

As for me? Well, we need the cash, and his latest work isn’t paying the bills. As his manager, part of my job is figuring out the problem and then fixing it. But I understand the problem—it’s the fixing it that’s impossible without a little patience. “If we don’t pick the right one, your reputation will sink.”

Kane scrunches his face against the cold winter wind. “I won’t pick a blonde.”

Both of my eyes twitch in the corners as they fight the urge to roll. No, never a blonde. Or someone old. Or forgotten, misplaced, damaged. Never the easy targets. Always someone difficult to obtain and tougher to hide. But after three months without a live model, he’s got the itch to snag a new one. Almost anyone. I’ll have to watch him closely in case he decides to grab the next best thing.

We can’t afford next best, only the best.

He finishes the joint and flicks the stub into the air. It bounces a few feet away and rolls to a stop near a drain. “You worry too much,” he says after a moment, flicking his gaze over to mine. His pupils are wide, black pools, stealing all the copper from his eyes. Most people look at him and see a demon, all angry lines and contempt wrapped in black clothes, studded piercings, and an attitude that makes cops go wild. Seriously, he fucked that beat cop every day for two weeks straight, had her begging for tighter, harder, darker.

But she was blonde, so she wasn’t a real muse. Just a distraction to fight off the itch a little longer.

He kicks his heel against the wall, scuffing his Converse against the stone.“Whoever we pick tonight will be good enough.”

The last time we chose someone who wasn’t perfect, we only sold half as many paintings as usual. I paid a middleman to haul off the rest. We barely scraped a profit, and it wasn’t worth the time sink involved in our process.

The Selection. The Ascension. The Break. The Hunt. The Final Death. Five key points in our process that take a millennia to complete, but results in dozens of artworks that sell for months to come. It’s how we can be strategic with our targets. But the last one wasn’t good enough for my brother’s muse, so this one has to be perfect.

I nod in the direction of a girl leaving her dorm. Tall. Dark hair. University hoodie and skinny jeans. “What about that one?”

“Too skinny,” Kane grunts immediately. “I can barely see the toothpicks she’s walking on.”

That’s another thing about my brother—his desires change with each rotation. No target ever looks the same. I can never pick out someone for him, only close enough for him to make the final decision. He’ll know it when he sees it, and I’ll know it when he gets that crazed glint in his eye.

Only the perfect muse will do.

He jumps down to the sidewalk and starts heading toward the library. “C’mon, let’s take a walk.” I’m expecting him to curve around the building toward the fine arts studio, but he bounds up the flight of steps to the library entrance. We have a rule about avoiding campus buildings—too many cameras, too many witnesses—but he shoves open the door like we’ve done this a thousand times.

We haven’t.

That doesn’t stop him from nodding at the clerk and veering to the right towards the first set of stacks, like he knows where he’s going. We aren’t students on campus, but we can still pass for them for the next few years, at least, so long as no one recognizes us or we bribe the staff to cooperate. We’ve only had to do that once, and I’d like to avoid a second time.

“Kane,” I hiss, following his zigzag through the aisles of books. “We shouldn’t be here.”

He’s barely watching where he’s going, so intent on scanning the bodies in the room that he nearly stumbles over a chair pulled out into the hall. I grab it as he storms past, not subtle in the least. The few students not absorbed in their latest psychology papers are looking up from their screens, their notebooks, their friends—

But my brother is on a warpath, and trying to stop him will only make things worse.

I follow him around the first floor, and after he heaves a disgruntled exhale like a child on the verge of a meltdown, he cuts to the stairs leading to the ground floor. The lighting is darker, the books dustier, the room quieter—

“Don’t stop.”

We both freeze as a breathy moan breaks the silence. Our eyes lock for a split second before Kane is slinking through the shadows, more careful now as he weaves through the shelves to find the source of the sound. All of the dorms are mere minutes away from the library’s central location on campus, so anyone going for a quickie between the stacks is either desperate for some attention or really fucking horny.

My money’s on the former, and by the way my brother’s interest is piqued, I’d say he’s thinking the same.

The ground floor study rooms are in the center of the building, built around the elevator shaft that cuts through the heart of the library. For the sake of either reputation or perversion, the architect left one side of the front row of rooms completely open, a single pane of glass turning study groups into exhibits for anyone to watch. My brother and I have glanced inside the library windows before and found nothing interesting about these rooms or their scarce attendees—the rooms aren’t exactly popular—but tonight is a different story.

Of the three rooms, the side two are dark, leaving the middle room shining like a beacon onto the rest of the ground floor.

Meaning that as my brother and I approach from the scant distance, we can see—and hear—everything happening inside.

The corners of Kane’s lips curve up as he stops directly in front of the glass, hooking his thumbs inside his pockets as he stares.

The couple inside doesn’t notice us at first, too enraptured with each other to pay attention to the show they’re putting on. The girl’s a picture of a goth’s wet dream, from the clunky combat boots to the jet black hair dye, her dark lips painted a deep maroon that brings out the flush on her cheeks. Her pleated skirt’s bunched up around her waist while the man standing between her thighs rails her hard and fast, his faded jeans having fallen to his ankles long before Kane and I arrived.

A sculpted ass and defined thighs speak to his athleticism, but so does the letterman jacket tossed carelessly to the floor. He’s blonde, though, so Kane won’t give a shit about him, no matter how pretty he is.

It’s the woman that’s caught his eye.

“You don’t usually go for someone so…” I consider the right words. “Like you.”

My brother is a study of contrasts—he’s dark and twisty, so he likes his targets to be bright and bubbly. It’s part of what makes the fall so delicious—we make them perky ones want things they never imagined before.

But the woman spreading her thighs in front of us isn’t dainty or covered in pastels—she blends into the shadows with her own shade of black. Her mouth spills open on another moan, and her crimson nails dig divots into the man’s shoulders—as bare and sculpted as his ass—as she molds their bodies tighter together. She exhales hotly against his neck before latching on with her teeth, leaving a smear of lipstick across his tanned skin. His head falls back and his rhythm stutters, and that’s when she opens her eyes.

A shudder courses through me as she licks her lips and smiles, cradling the nape of her lover’s sweat-slicked neck to pull him closer. Her eyes ping between Kane and me, but she doesn’t tell her lover about us. She wraps her legs around his waist and buries him deeper.

Judging by his groan, he’s blown his load.

Judging by her full-body shiver, she can feel every thick pulse of it filling her up.

I break my gaze away to check in on Kane. He hasn’t so much as twitched since our arrival, and now that the exhibition is winding down, he’s still not moving. “C’mon, show’s over.” I punch his shoulder on my way past him. “Let’s keep looking.”

“I am looking,” Kane snarls, knocking his knuckles against the window. “Are you?” He glances down at my crotch, a sneer curling on his lip. “Yeah, you like her too. That’s why you’re running scared.” Rolling his eyes, he flicks his arm out toward her. “It won’t kill you to take an interest. Blow off some steam for-fucking-once.” His expression turns pensive as he studies her, completely ignoring the way the blonde athlete in front of her jerks back once he realizes they aren’t alone.

“I’m not blind.” I grit my teeth and grind down the words hanging on the tip of my tongue. Getting into another argument about my lack of interest in our targets won’t solve anything. There’s a reason I keep my distance—whereas my brother seeks attachment, I avoid it. Tasting her, touching her, fucking her, will lead to another type of attachment I’m keen to avoid.

Kane can’t choose her.

I reach into my waistband and adjust the blazing hard-on that disagrees with that statement. “She’s not the one, man. Let it go.”

The blonde athlete finally comes out of his post-nut stupor and steps back, his limp dick sliding free and flopping against his leg. He glances over his shoulder and scrunches his face up when he sees us, saying something to the girl that’s too muffled for us to hear. While he pulls his pants up in record time and dives for his t-shirt, the woman lounges leisurely across the table, staring, the tiniest hint of a smile playing on her lips.

My brother catches all of this and grins right back. I know the look—he’s hooked. Fuck. “She is the one,” Kane insists, jabbing his finger against the glass. “Now go get her for us.”

I really don’t want to venture into a sexed up room with some muscle head bound to punch me for watching his girl, but he doesn’t even glance her way before shrugging on his jacket and leaving.

Clearly, they’re not together beyond the carnal sense.

“Go get her,” Kane grits out, clenching his teeth. “Before she leaves.”

She hasn’t moved from her perch on the table. In fact, she’s stretched her leg out to fondle the window with her foot, directly over my brother’s crotch. If her skirt hadn’t fallen back down over her thighs, we’d get a glimpse of her creamed pussy, I’m sure. A hot shiver runs down my spine. She’s baiting us.

And it’s fucking working.

Kane doesn’t usually go overboard for sex. Yeah, he enjoys it, but it’s easy to obtain so he doesn’t go out of his way or seek people out for it. They usually sidle up to him and murmur all of their dirty desires in his ear, knowing he’ll provide even before he does. It’s part of his aura: it screams fuck me like you fuck the system.

So I’m not surprised that the girl is curious, but I’m surprised at how visceral my brother’s reaction is.

He gnashes his teeth as he stares at the condensation spotting the glass around her toes. Her body is still hot from sex—maybe burning up inside, still liquid hot, aching for touch—

I screw my eyes shut and take a deep breath, holding it. “She’s not the one,” I say again, pressing the pads of my thumbs to the back of my eyelids. She can’t be the one, or I might go crazy. Knowing that my brother will fuck her senseless makes my senses go into overdrive. I can already hear the high-pitched whine she’ll make as he winds his fist in her hair and punches his hips into hers, both of them a panting, needy mess—

With a growl, I punch the glass, letting the reverberation shoot up my arm and into my teeth. Snapping my eyes open, I expect to find my brother just as pissed as I am. Not at the fact that I’m saying no, but at the delay. Usually, when he picks someone, I’m already moving in to claim them. A few soft words, a devilish charm and convincing smile, flirtatious brushes of my hand against her arm, her hip, her shoulder—that’s all it takes to sink the hook in and reel her, or him, in.

But not this time. I won’t do it.

A door in the distance slams into a wall, and it’s only then that I realize Kane is no longer in front of me.

He’s claiming her himself.

The urge to follow him is like magnetism—a fucking bitch to ignore. Whenever he goes on a rampage, I’m right there beside him to pull him back before he jumps over the edge and does something so irreparably stupid that both of us end up behind bars—or worse, in a box six feet under. But this time, I’m ready for him to fuck up. If he scares her off, great, less work for me. That’s the other thing about our process—the target has to be willing to step into the dark with us, or there’s little satisfaction in watching them unravel.

Kane won’t be able to pull her in without me.

It’s with this sense of confidence that I watch as she pulls her panties—black lace, of course—up her pale thighs and fixes her tits back into her bra, zips up her combat boots, and shrugs on a dark peacoat that cinches at the waist. As she plucks her hair out from beneath her coat and bundles it into a loose knot at the base of her neck, she watches me back, her cheeks still flushed, her eyes still wide, taking me in.

Although my brother and I look alike, we dress differently. He’s dark and moody and chaotic, but I’m more controlled and refined. The navy pullover keeping me warm bears one of those well-known logos, and my hair is styled with pomade I purchase from the best barber in town. I look good. I smell good. People are attracted to attractive things, so it’s no wonder she’s looking at me.

But the way I suddenly long to tuck the loose strand of hair tickling her cheek behind her ear is new, and it’s unsettling as fuck. I’ve done it a thousand times to a thousand different women, so it’s not the gesture itself that’s startling.

It’s the fact that I want to do it.

I clench my fists by my side and walk away. I can’t stand here a moment longer, looking at her, wanting her. It’s insane. She isn’t the one. I need to focus my attention on whoever is.

First, I need to get my brother back on track. I veer toward the entrance to the block of study rooms, sparing a glance for the gnarly hole in the wall from the door handle slamming through, and find my brother storming from room to room, checking each one. “She’s at the front,” I remind him, nodding in that direction.

“She’s not there,” he seethes, heading straight for the room. “I already checked.”

I follow him inside, breathing in the smell of sex and pointedly ignoring the twitch in my pants. The smear from her foot on the glass is still visible, and I wander to the table and press my palm flat against it.

Still warm.

“She was just here. I watched her get dressed.”

Kane groans. “She left?” He scrubs a hand down his face. “Why?”

“It’s not like she had a reason to stay.” I glance out the window, looking for her in the shadowed rows of books. “She already got some. She probably went back to her dorm.”

But Kane isn’t listening; he’s already spilling out of the room and back to the open floor. “You go left, I go right.” He doesn’t wait for my answer, either, rushing ahead to look for the mystery woman.

I take my time following him, watching him more than looking for the girl. He barrels through the aisles like a hurricane, kicking up dust, not looking where he’s going, frantically searching for her.

“She’s gone, man, let it go.”

He spins around and slams into my chest. “I will not let her go. She is mine.” Dark eyes wide, teeth bared, breathing ragged, he shoves me away from him and turns another corner. “Help me look, Zane. She’s the one.”

The whisper of footsteps on hardwood catches our attention. We both hear it at the same time, turning in its direction immediately. “She’s going up the stairs,” I warn, but my brother is already running. He bounds out of endless rows of books and up the first half flight of stairs, turning onto the next by the time she reaches the main floor. She whips around to smile at us, breathless and radiant, before darting away again.

“After her,” Kane roars, taking the steps two at a time.

We make it to the next floor and ignore the stares from regular college students actually studying and not fucking in study rooms. None of them matter. At this point, stopping my brother is an exercise in futility—the only way to convince him that she isn’t the one is to follow through with his hunt and prove that she isn’t special.

One of the brave souls nearest us points in a direction and murmurs a quick, “she went that way.”

Kane and I follow their lead without responding, too focused on finding her. I’m looking for a flash of black, the ruffle of her skirt, the sound of her boots. Kane has another, less subtle tactic. “Come out, come out,” he taunts. “I know you’re here. I can smell you.”

I stifle my laugh as best as possible. Yeah, I should have never worried in the first place. He really can’t bag a girl.

A feminine voice fills the air. “Come find me.”

It’s like a bullet to the brain—searing heat, a shock of nerves, the air rushing from my lungs—as desire rips through me. My steps stutter, and I catch myself on a shelf. No. This isn’t the order of things. The Hunt comes later—much later, after we’ve broken her down to her primal instincts—and hunting her now ruins our process.

“Wait.” I grab Kane’s wrist and hold fast, stopping him from charging ahead. “We can’t.”

He’s vibrating from head to toe, trembling with an anticipation I know very well after years of harnessing it. “Let me go,” he rumbles, the words thick and heavy on his tongue.

I shake my head. “We’ve skipped steps, Kane; you know this isn’t how it goes.”

Snapping his head back, he smashes the back of his skull into my nose and breaks my hold on him. “Fuck the process,” he snarls, tearing himself away from me. “She is my muse, and you will not get in my fucking way.”

As he tears a path through the library in search of her, I hold my shirtsleeve up to my bloodied nose and swallow as much anger as I can. It radiates through my core and into my bones, blurring the edges of my vision. Fuck the process, he says, like that process is pointless. Pain throbs like a dull knife stabbing the back of my eyes, and I prod my nose with my fingertips. It’s not broken, thank Christ, but still hurts like a motherfucker.

Kane never pulls his fucking punches, not even for me.

As I wait for Kane’s temper to settle, I move away from the common area and to the back wall, away from the harsh fluorescent light, and lean against a windowsill overlooking the gloom of campus. The fog has increased intensity, making damn near everything impossible to see. Even the streetlamps cast a fuzzy glow, making visibility worse. Walking home is gonna be a bitch.

I clench my jaw as the soft patter of footsteps reaches my ears, trying my damnedest to ignore the shifting shadows to my right, the hint of floral perfume hitting my nose, the pale skin just outside my field of vision.

But resisting is pointless. She draws my gaze like a flickering flame, casting shadows all around me, tempting me with the promise of warmth and light, even if just for a moment. It’s all a ruse—a trick of the light—I tell myself. No one sane would willingly approach the men who salivated over her body and then chased her like starved beasts.

No one except her, apparently.

She gestures toward my face. “He do that?”

My jaw clenches as I chew on my response and refuse to spit it out. Silence fills the air around us, yet she waits patiently, like she isn’t being hunted right this very moment. Kane could be around the corner or coming up behind her right this very second, but she’s unbothered in the slightest, like this is all a boring game of hide and seek.

Maybe to her, it is.

But to us? This is life and death, the most rewarding game of all.

She draws a breath. “Vance, the guy I was with? He chose that spot. The study room.” She shifts her gaze to the window, watching the fog roll lazily across the hazy blur that was once the campus courtyard. “We were studying at first, believe it or not. That’s usually how it goes. I help him, and then…” Her voice trails off, but not in a remorseful loss for words. She’s wistful, brushing her hand down the front of her pleated skirt, the soft pink blossoming on her cheeks making my mouth water.

For once, I’m jealous of a man I’ve never met. My cock throbs painfully, impatient for this woman’s touch, much like I imagine Vance was while sitting across from her, staring at the delicate curve of her neck or bumping thighs with her under the table. The pale stretch of her legs wrapped around his waist is burned into my memory. My fingers twitch with the desire to feel how soft they are beneath my palms.

“I didn’t ask for your fucking reasons,” I snap, rearing my head back. God, I need some distance from this girl. I choke on her perfume as I suck down lungfuls of air in an attempt to clear my head. All it does is make my headache worse. I brush my sleeve beneath my nose, the metallic tang of blood helping drown out her scent. “I don’t care why you let him rut you like a whore.”

All I care is that it happened. That Kane and I saw it. That now she’s here instead of far-fucking-away from us.

She’s a poison infecting our bloodstream until we choke to death.

Ironic, considering she’s the one who’s supposed to die.

She shrugs one shoulder, like she isn’t bothered by my outburst. “Just thought you should know. Seeing as how you watched, and all. Didn’t want you getting the wrong idea.”

“And what idea would that be?” I shouldn’t be talking with her at all, but if she’s here with me, that means Kane is getting further and further away from finding her.

A means to an end. That’s all this conversion is.

Moonlight breaks through the rolling fog and casts her in soft, silver light. It bathes her pale skin in a pallor of death, sickly white and pristine, and my blood runs cold. I can see it then—why my brother is obsessed. It’s more than the sex. It’s the way her eyes stare back, wide and unflinching. How she looks like living death—pale and pretty, a perfect corpse without even trying. Her painted lips turn black as the moonlight fades and the moment passes, but I’ve seen all I need to.

She is the one.

I fucking hate it.

“Shut up,” I hiss, cutting her off before she can say anything else. I don’t care why she let some guy fuck her—or why she invited us to watch. None of that matters since she’s the one.

It means that I have to seal the deal. Turn on the charm. Become the man who lures people in and coaxes their walls down.

I take a deep breath. Getting this part right takes precision. Practice. It’s part of the Selection. I’ve done this a thousand times before.

So why is it so fucking hard to calm the fuck down right now?

I do my best at swallowing my simmering resentment and dip my head closer to hers. Every breath I take sears that sweet, flowery scent into my mind, so I hold it to block out as much of her as I can. This is already bad enough. Lifting my hand, I brush my bloodied knuckles over hers.

They’re cold as ice, just like a corpse’s. Fuck.

That shouldn’t get my dick so fucking hard that it aches.

Lowering my voice to a murmur, I tell her something else. Something sweeter. “You were beautiful down there.” I press my face into the curve of her neck, exhaling the breath I’ve been holding. “You took him so well. You were so good for letting us watch.”

Yes, that’s it, praise. Women eat that shit up.

She presses her palm against my chest and pushes me back, taking me by such strong surprise that I let her.

Her wistful expression from earlier flatlines as she presses her lips firmly together. “That means you got the wrong idea.” She cinches the tie of her coat tighter and stares me down with as much anger as I feel pulsing through my veins.

Shit.

“I don’t let just any guy fuck me. They have to earn it.” She lifts her chin in a show of defiance. “And you definitely haven’t earned it.” Turning on her heel, she stalks away from me toward the front exit.

Shitshitshit—

I stumble after her, praying that I haven’t fucked this up, but knowing deep down that I have. What did I do? I praised her, didn’t I? Was she listening to the same words I was? “It’s a compliment,” I call after her, “you were stunning.”

That, at least, is true.

She whips around to glare at me. “You know, I actually took pity on you at first. That nose hit? Looked pretty nasty. I was going to offer you a fucking Tylenol.”

Kane hears us, I know he does, because there’s no mistaking the thunder of his thudding footsteps as he closes in. The floor vibrates with every step.

“I’m sorry, just—let me start over, okay? My name’s Zane.” I hold out my hand for her to shake. “My idiot brother is Kane.”

I look over just in time to see him appear, looking as crazy as I expected. Hair twisted from where he’s been tugging the ends. Face pinched and cheeks red. A firm set to his jaw that mirrors the scowl across his lips. The picture of unhappiness.

Then, he sees her, and the tension in his body evaporates within seconds, replaced with a smooth calm that can’t be faked. He sees us together and actually smiles, like he’s expecting good news. Usually, this is the easy part. Hooking into our target and slowly reeling them in toward not just me, but my brother as well.

But this time, things aren’t going according to plan. Nothing about this girl or her Selection is normal. Once my brother finds out that I’ve lost her, he’s going to lose his shit.

“Let me make this up to you,” I try again, pulling my hand back once it’s clear she’s not going to take it. “Anything you want. A date? Breakfast?” I gesture broadly between us. “Name your price, and it’s yours.”

This catches her interest. She licks her lips, sizing me up with a full-bodied glance down my body. “Yeah?” Then her gaze flicks over to my brother. “Are you two a package deal?”

“If you want.”

She hums softly to herself before pulling out a cell phone from her pocket. “Alright, I’ll take an IOU. Give me your number.” Handing me the phone, she nods in Kane’s direction. “His too.”

I punch in both of our phone numbers and hit save under the names Kane and Zane. Before I’ve finished, she snatches the phone from my hands and slips it back into her pocket.

Annoyance zings down my spine. “Call us real quick so that we know it’s you.” I pull out my phone from my pocket. “I’ll save you in my contacts.”

She tilts her head to the side. “Nope. Not happening.”

“What?” I grit my teeth. That’s not how this works, either. We’re supposed to keep communication up. No ghosting allowed on either end.

Gesturing toward Kane, she takes a step back as he walks closer. “Don’t need a psycho stalker, thanks.” Then, she turns on her heel and speeds out the door. “I’ll text you when I’m ready for that IOU!”

I follow her into the cold winter night, Kane hot on my heels. She’s fast, already disappearing down the steps and into the fog. “Hey, at least tell me your name, ghost girl!”

Her pale skin makes it easy to spot her as she walks under a lamppost. She turns around for only a moment. “Mercy!” The light overhead flickers, and she slips back into obscurity, taking the path toward the dorms. At least we know she lives on campus. That will make it easy to track her movements.

Kane shudders, grasping his chest. “Mercy,” he repeats, sighing as the weight of an unfinished Selection lifts. As far as he’s concerned, stage one is over and stage two has begun. But not all Selections are easy—I have a feeling that although we’ve chosen her, she has yet to choose us back.

“She’s perfect, Zane.”

I swallow the bitter taste in my mouth. “Yeah, she might be.” Walking home through the fog feels like a dream: fuzzy at the edges, with images from the library replaying in my mind. Creamy thighs. Dark lips. Skin as pale as moonlight and just as soft.

My brother is right—she’s perfect. Not just for him, but for both of us. We’ve never shared interest in a target before—not like this. Not so quickly, not so strongly. It’s how I know that Mercy isn’t just perfect, she’s dangerous. Killing her will be a high that we’ll never come back from.

There’s no mercy involved here. Not for Kane. Not for me. And especially not for the girl we’re about to tear apart.