Chapter 1 The real problem with becoming a monster, Bryn thought, was that you didn’t know whom to trust. Bryn Davis, monster, paced the floor in silence, surrounded by her friends and allies, and she didn’t dare trust a single one of them. Not fully, not now. Only one of them knew the truth of what she’d become . . . and even though Riley Block already shared the secret, and the curse, Bryn didn’t know whether she could, or should, trust her. As for the rest of them, they would be torn between horror and fury and pity, but someone would make it a mission to see her dead, and someone else would defend her, and it would tear everything, and everyone, apart. Some secrets just had to be kept in utter silence. “Bryn?” her lover, Patrick McCallister, said in the kind of voice one uses when the first few tries don’t break through the haze. She stopped and looked up to focus on his face. He’s tired, she thought, and despite how conflicted she was about her own situation, she wanted to comfort him. She loved him. It came from someplace deep inside, a wellspring she couldn’t block even when she tried. “Bryn, did you get anything from the Pharmadene lab to tell us what they were working on in there?” She felt a wild urge to laugh,