Page 5 of Monsters Like Us
“Eyes forward, Katana,” Marcy snaps, tugging at her sleeve. She stares at me for a moment longer before looking up at Marcy. A defiant look flashes on her face before she straightens it like a shield.
Katana.
Her name slides over my tongue. I say it inwardly until it tastes like fate.
I don’t claim people. I’ve never done it before.
But when she glances over her shoulder, catching my gaze, and doesn’t look away, something new settles inside me. A possession that feels like pure instinct and law.
She’s mine.
And I will destroy anyone who stands between us.
CHAPTER 3
Katana
The hall smellslike bleach and a sour, lingering scent that clings to the back of my throat. Marcy’s grip on my arm is firm but not cruel, her keys jingling against her hip with every step.
My eyes flick over the numbered doors as we pass, each one a reminder that I’m in here with dangerous people. Some of them murderers. Criminally insane. Lunatics.
Her grip tightens suddenly, hard enough to make me stumble. “Don’t look at him again,” she snaps, her voice low and sharp. “Do not look at Micah Morrow.”
The way she says it—spitting the name out like it tastes foul—makes the hairs on my arms rise.
“He’s the most dangerous patient ever to set foot in Holloway.”
The name sinks into me, heavy and cold.Morrow.Like tomorrow. Like something inevitable, always waiting just out of sight.
“What did he do?” I whisper.
Marcy’s lips thin. For a moment, I don’t think she’llanswer. But then she mutters, almost grudgingly, “Slaughtered his parents and sister when he was fourteen. On Halloween night.” Her eyes flick to mine, sharp as broken glass. “Now drop it. Curiosity in this place will get you hurt—or worse.”
A chill runs through me as we stop at a door. She unlocks it and waves me inside. The room is bare—gray walls, thin sheets, a narrow desk bolted to the floor. My entire life shrinks to these four walls in an instant.
She runs me through the rules: curfew, guards, cafeteria times, meds. Her words blur. All I can think of is Micah Morrow, fourteen years old, standing over his family’s bodies with blood on his hands.
By the time she ushers me back down the hallway, my pulse hasn’t slowed.
The smell of institutional food thickens as we descend the stairs. The cafeteria is loud—voices echoing, trays clattering—but the second I step inside, everything else fades.
Because he’s there.
Micah Morrow.
He sits at a table near the far wall, cuffed hands moving under a guard’s watchful eye. His dark head lifts like he senses me, and then his gaze slams into mine.
My chest constricts. His dark eyes are sharp, unblinking, cutting straight through skin and bone to the rawest part of me.
I should look away. Marcy told me to.
But I don’t.
And when his mouth curls—just slightly—I know I’ve stepped into something inevitable.
Cold chills run up and down my spine as murmurs cut through the noise of clattering trays. One patient leans toward another, his voice cutting through the chatter. “Is she staring at him? At Micahthe monster?”
Heat crawls up my neck as I wrench my gaze away, my eyes cutting forward.
